Vectorman, Megadrive/Genesis

Developed by BlueSky Software of California and published exclusively for the Megadrive/Genesis by Sega in 1995, Vectorman is an extremely well-regarded platform/action game with outstanding presentation and a humorous backstory.

The year is 2049 and the Earth has been overwhelmed with pollution. It’s so bad that humans have left, to live in space, sending automated robots down to Earth to try to reverse the out-of-control climate change. After interfacing with a nuclear warhead one of the robots becomes self-aware and declares itself to be “WarHead – The Destroyer of Humanity“. WarHead reprograms all the other robots and turns them against the humans, taking over Earth. You, as Vectorman, are a weird-looking robot that is returning from a dumping mission to the sun, and has inadvertently stumbled upon this bad situation. Since Vectorman is immune to WarHead‘s mind control, he sets out to save the Earth by destroying him.

Vectorman‘s health is shown by the four globes at the bottom of the screen. If the globes are lit up white then you have some health left. If they all go black: you lose a life.

You collect power-ups by shooting TV sets. Once you’ve destroyed a TV set it’ll leave behind a collectible. Jump up and take it and see what happens… Sometimes Vectorman will morph, sometimes he’ll get some health back, sometimes he’ll get an upgrade. It’s a bit of a roll of the dice, with maybe a few scripted rewards depending on where you are in the game.

It’s fair to say that Vectorman looks… erm, unique. He’s made up of 23 different sprites that are joined together, and he animates similarly to a man in full cartoon ninja mode. He can jump, shoot and duck. Which is pretty much all you need in the game like this. There is more, though: he can shoot bullets from his arm and can also power up the arm by collecting certain items. He can also boost his jumps by pressing jump twice. Rocket feet! 🙂

Vectorman on the Megadrive/Genesis has 16 stages, each punctuated with the most excellent art and humorous text descriptions, shown as cut scenes. They’re some of the best I’ve seen on the Megadrive.

The art style in Vectorman is phenomenal. I absolutely love it. It’s one of my favourites on the Megadrive. If it’s not the outstanding cut scenes, or the unbelievably good intro sequence, or the brilliant lighting and shadow effects during the game, that’ll “wow” you first, before you’re even a few minutes into it. Or it could be that the polished run-and-gun gameplay impresses you more. Or the superb lowkey chill soundtrack. Or the beautiful 2D pixel art. There’s a lot to be impressed by in Vectorman…

There are some great little gameplay touches, like allowing you to use the Sega logo in the demo, if you fancy some diagonal shooting and double-jumping practise. That’s a superb detail, and a lot of fun figuring it out and blasting away like a maniac! It’s definitely worth a try for first-time players. I’ve shown grabs of it here. In fact this entire sequence of grabs has been selected to show in detail the overall visual style. These are more condensed than a usual set of grabs, in order to show the quality and ‘feel’ of the graphics and animation.

Vectorman was both a critical and commercial success, with reviewers particularly praising its style, presentation and gameplay. It was also among Sega‘s top-selling games of 1995.

I think Vectorman is a damn fine game. Definitely a classic side-scrolling action game with some good ideas in it. Definitely a Megadrive/Genesis-only classic. Up there with the very best run-and-gun games in the entire genre maybe, and there are some really good ones in existence (Contra III: The Alien Wars, Contra: Hard Corps, Atomic Runner, The Chaos Engine, Mega Turrican, Gunstar Heroes, The Terminator, Ghouls ‘N Ghosts, Rolling Thunder 3, Metal Slug, and, um, Mega Man, spring to mind, off the top of my head). 🙂