September 1, 1991 — HyperZone

I understand that this game came out in the second week of the SNES’ North American career, but it sucks.

Not as bad Drakkhen does, but it’s not great.

Though, it makes use of mode 7, which at the time must have felt pretty high tech. It’s billed as a ‘racing game’ and a ‘shooting game’ and there are no other racers nor is time an issue. It’s purely a shooting game on a race track.

If I’m being merciful, HyperZone lacks a lot of functionality that a game in the last 20 years would have had access. You pilot a weird doughnut along a 3d-ish track. In the first stage, everything not on the track is making use of every colour available to the game designer. Later stages remind me of maps we’ll see when mode 7 is used successfully in later years.

This was HAL’s first SNES submission, and it’s one of the first game’s to come out in Japan around the same time as it would be released in North America. Chessmaster came out in North America before it was released in Japan, but the American appetite for chess has always been maniacal.

I wish there was more to say about HyperZone, but you only need to play through the first stage to have a pretty thorough understanding of the entirety of the game. You fly and shoot stuff and there don’t seem to be any boosts, and if you die three times, that’s it.

Entertainment Weekly ranked this game an “A” while most other reviews panned it.