Personality is better articulated through the game’s adorable sprite animations, where characters go bug-eyed when pushed into strenuous situations or perform a jubilant handstand after conquering one the game’s protracted stages. Although the game complements its text-driven dialog with serviceable voice-overs, it’s hardly needed. Like it’s source material, Freedom Planet‘s charm emanates from it’s anthropomorphic cast of characters. Where corporate groupthink might be blamed for decisions like focus-group fashioned sidekicks or episodic delivery methods, indie studio GalaxyTrail has deftly stripped away the feature-bloat excess, delivering an experience which feels like finding the unbeknownst warhead that could have conceivably tipped the balance in the fifth-generation console war. Recreating the vibrant hues and parallax-scrolling backdrops of a late 90’s action-platformer, the title adds a dose of combat-driven physicality to ensure that it doesn’t feel like a toothless copycat.
Pleasingly, the recent Steam release of Freedom Planet strikes a virtuous balance. In retrospect, the publisher spent the succeeding decades trying to duplicate its Sonic-era glory, an endeavor as awkward as a middle-aged man trying to rekindle his high-school swagger. From Sonic Team’s eponymous series, as well as their work on Ristar, to Treasure’s string of stirring hits- Gunstar Heroes, Dynamite Headdy, Alien Soldier and Light Crusader, players saw a succession of truly superlative titles.Īnd while the following generation’s shift to polygon-pushing hardware produced a number of memorable games, few of these would match the charm and effervescent vitality demonstrated by SEGA’s sixteen-bit output. There’s a very good reason why the Genesis/Mega Drive is so revered by retro gamers: the console played host to several prodigious programing teams.
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