Super Probotector: Alien Rebels (SNES) Review

Something struck me as odd when I first started playing Super Probotector on the Virtual Console. It was hard. Damn hard! I don't remember the game being so difficult when I played it all those years ago on the SNES, in fact, I remember the difficul...

Something struck me as odd when I first started playing Super Probotector on the Virtual Console. It was hard. Damn hard!

I don’t remember the game being so difficult when I played it all those years ago on the SNES, in fact, I remember the difficulty was pretty much par for the course. I am sure I was much more familiar with the side-scrolling shooter style of game back then, but I just I just don’t remember it being so frustratingly difficult. Cheap deaths, enemies popping out of nowhere, bosses that seem completely unaviodable, you name it, Super Probotector found a way to whittle down those precious lives in no time at all.

It just didn’t seem to be this hard way back when, and that got me thinking. Why was this fondly recalled game now so frustrating? Then it struck me, the game wasn’t more difficult, I had simply been lulled into a false sense of security by modern video games.

Think of it this way. I can’t remember the last time I played a game where it mattered if you died. Simply load up a previous save and away you go. Unlimited continues? Check! Frequent checkpoints? Check! Weak bosses? Check! Modern games just too often hand it to you on a silver platter. But I guess that is the price you pay for a more cinematic experience. The story takes precedent over all and if a game is too hard, most players wont ever experience past the first few hours.

Super Probotector is not that type of game. It’s very hard and it is meant to be that way. There are no energy bars here, one shot and you are dead. You need to keep playing, keep dying and eventually you will succeed. No leading you by the hand tutorial levels here, read the instruction booklet and get right into it. What at first seems an impossibility, becomes second nature, levels that took all your available lives to beat, are soon passed in one life. Super Probotector is about twitch reactions, not progressing storylines. Stick with it and it will reward you, not with jaw-dropping cinematics, but with ever-more engaging levels and more difficult challenges.

This is one of the best examples of the shooter genre ever produced and it has influenced some of the best modern iterations. Halo’s excellent two gun dynamic can be seen here, to much the same effect. The ability to carry only two weapons makes strategic weapon choice a key part of beating a level. Choose the wrong guns and you are dead meat. Choose the right ones and you might, just might, get through the level with enough lives left to have a go at the next. An excellent co-operative multiplayer mode rounds out one of the most playable games from the SNES back-catalogue.

Excellent visuals accompany the compelling gameplay, with for-its-time amazing graphics and awe-inspiring Mode-7 scaling and rotation effects. Huge bosses and loads of sprites on-screen at once make for an intense experience. There were better looking games on the SNES, but for one of the earliest games available on the system, there were few that looked better. The graphics have aged reasonably well and still make for a visually appealing experience today.

The audio on the other hand has not aged well. Seriously lacking in quality across all sound effects, the less said about the audio experience the better. The soundtrack is reasonable, but not able to make up for the dreadful squeaks and squeals.

This game will not be for everyone, just like it wasn’t for everyone back in the 16-bit days of yore. It is a good game though and for those willing to persist, it is a rewarding experience that often reveals some of the great things the shift towards cinematic gameplay has removed from modern gaming.