M.U.S.H.A. on Genesis: What a game!

Genesis failed in a lot of ways when compared to the SNES, the games that were on both systems rarely looked or sounded better on Genesis, as a matter of fact I can only think of one particular type of game that almost always looked better on Genesis than it did on SNES and that was shooters.

It might have been something to do with the hardware, actually it almost certainly did, but the shooters on the Genesis were incredible and even though today's systems rarely even have shooters aside from "bullet hell" which i DO NOT like, the Genesis ones might be some of the best ever made. M.U.S.H.A. was one of the best.

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I wasn't really certain if it was an acronym but it turns out that it was and it stands for Metallic Uniframe Super Hybrid Armor - which is stupid but whatever, they had to name the game something and the Japanese don't always do things that makes sense to us over here. There are enough typos and English mistakes in the dialogue to let you know that the story, and the translation of said story, wasn't really a priority at the time.

The game was a vertical scrolling shooter and there were already a lot of these in 1991, so it was really tough for a game to stand out in a way that would get attention. I don't actually have any idea of MUSHA sold well but it was frequently played at my house and was one of the few shooters that after renting it, I decided to buy it rather than just leave it at 2 days of fun.

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In retrospect it was a bit silly that you are basically attacking gigantic traditional Oriental houses that are flying for some reason and equipped with loads of defensive weaponry. It wasn't terribly clear why it is that we needed to take down these flying houses which were called bombers in some instances, and if these were bombers they aren't terribly effective ones because honestly, how aerodynamic is a flying house going to be?

Whatever, shooters at that time didn't need to be realistic... actually all shooters don't need to be realistic because I recall fighting giant skulls, ships that split into pieces for some reason, i gigantic mermaid in a shell, and a flying giant Grim Reaper from the confines of my ship on a wide variety of games.

MUSHA was actually one of the easier shooters on the Genesis and I don't know if this was intentional or not in order to attract a wider audience. There were also plenty of powerups and this was a big part of what made the game so much fun. You could overwhelm just about anything, including bosses with a fully upgraded ship and a little bit of knowledge about where to put your ship on the screen to avoid damage.

I don't expect many people want to watch the entire game played from start to end but I just did. It took 40 minutes and brought back a bunch of memories of how difficult it was to see what the hell was going on in Genesis games because of that constant flicker that would happen rather than slowing down the FPS in the 90's. It's crazy to me that we were once willing to tolerate such nonsense.

While some critics weren't happy with the game and called it too easy, there were many others who listed it as one of the top 10 classic shooters of all time. So I guess you could say the reviews were a bit mixed.

You can play the rom of the game HERE for a bit of classic fun!