DUD OF THE MONTH COLLECTION!
SINISTRON
(IGS, 1991)

Intro and story:
The Turbografx-16 is notorious for having way too many shooting games for it and here is yet another shooting game for the system if you care? Unlike other games like Super Star Soldier, Blazing Lazers, and Aero Blasters this side scrolling blaster here is actual made by one of the few third party supporters the Turbo had so maybe this one can stand out from the crowd, eh? The game is Sinistron and it was created by the good people at IGS. Now I remember renting this one as a kid and I can recall a lot of good things about it and plenty of crappy things too and lets see what my feelings are on it now.

Just like millions of other shooters you are a ship that must kill a bunch of aliens and stuff. Sadly I don't know what's doing on since there were no instructions on the eBay auction I got the game from and it has absolutely no story in the game iteslf so your guess is as good as mine to what the hell is going on here but do you really care anyway? We play these titles to blast sh@$ and that's pretty much it.
The game play and bottomline:  
Now this game really gets off to a good start here. Although your spacecraft is damn weak because it only takes one hit to waste you, it at least does have some protection with a special orange jaws or a mouth .... thingy mounted on the front of the ship. This weird gizmo can not only guards the head of your vessel from a few attacks but with enough power ups you can open it up to enhance the spread fire of the three different guns here which is pretty cool. What isn't so cool is this leaves you wide open to attack so it's a big trade off. Another cool thing with this game is it had some fairly good looking and colourful visuals in the 6 stages here and it comes with some rather decent background music as well.

Sadly, for all the game's good points Sinistron ultimately fails to gain any real ground because of the lack of true innovation and a rather useless charge attack (a lameass circle with very bad range). If that wasn't enough the game also has a very high difficulty especially in the last 3 levels here and unless you find way to cheat the game is virtually impossible. Honestly, Sinistron is perhaps the hardest video game I ever played in my life! You want to know the worse part about that: the ending in this one is really disappointing so going through this entire game is completely and utterly pointless! Sinistron could have been an excellent game if these problems were fixed but it's way too late for that now, eh?
Here is my 7 minute video review of Sinistron too!


Conclusion:  
Sinistron
overall rating: 56/100

Find Sinistron on eBay here!

For 1 player only
graphics: 7/10
sound: 7/10
gameplay: 6
/10
replay: 3/10

-StarSoldier
(Ryan Genno) 2008


See other Total Recall duds of the month