Devilish: The Next Possession (known in Japan as Bad Omen) is the Megadrive/Genesis sequel to the 1991 Game Gear game, Devilish. It was developed by Genki and first released in 1992.

For some reason the game features zipper transitions between screens. I don’t know why because it doesn’t seem to relevant to the backstory, or to the game itself, but it looks nice and is at least different.

Devilish: The Next Possession can be played either single-player, or two-player cooperative, and there’s also a time trial mode. In single-player mode you control two paddles and must prevent a bouncing ball from dropping out of the bottom of the screen while at the same time advancing upwards – and sometimes sideways – through a course of obstacles (and bosses), in order to drop the ball into a goal at the end. The two paddles can be switched into different configurations, and the top paddle can also be moved up and down (or left and right if it’s in an ‘L’ configuration). In two-player mode each player controls a separate paddle and they work together to keep the ball in play and moving forward. In one and two-player mode the most pressing problem is the limited time you are given to reach the exit. This differs depending on which difficulty level you’re playing, but in normal mode it’s pretty tight. With some practise, however, you can learn a few tricks to power through the course more quickly.

Time trial mode is different in that the aim is to complete a course in a shortest possible time, so the timer ticks upwards instead of downwards. You can also choose which of the first six courses to play before you start, and the best three lap times are saved and shown before running a course (although I’m not sure if they’re saved to the cartridge with a battery backup or not).

Moby Games states that this game has a split screen multiplayer mode, but shows no visual evidence of it, and I couldn’t find any split screen mode in the game myself. Sooo… I can only conclude that the split screen feature is not true. Unless I’m missing something…

Overall, Devilish: The Next Possession is an excellent update and sequel to the Game Gear original, and is fun to play even now. I’m surprised, actually, that the Devilish series never really branched-out to other systems, because it’s a good idea; is an interesting twist on an already established concept, and also a fun two-player cooperative game.

A third Devilish game, known as Devilish: Ball Bounder in Japan, Classic Action: Devilish in North America, and just Devilish in Europe, was released for the Nintendo DS in 2005.

More: Devilish on Wikipedia
More: Devilish: The Next Possession on Moby Games