WHIP RUSH

 I didn't want to buy WHIP RUSH. For one thing, I was thinking, Why do I want
another shoot-'em-up type of game for my Sega Genesis? And for some reason, I
just assumed this game would be a cheap knockoff of THUNDERFORCE II. But after
seeing a demo at a videogame store, the graphics just floored me, and I had to
give WHIP RUSH a try. Now, I'm very glad I did!

 WHIP RUSH manages to take the spaceship shoot-everything-in-sight game and keep
the genre fresh in a number of ways, most obviously by making great use of the
Sega Genesis hardware. It takes fantastic advantage of the Genesis machine's
background scrolling capabilities. In level one, your ship (Whip Rush) is flying
forward against a background of clouds and glaciers, with about three scrolling
planes on the top, and three on the bottom. It's not so much the number of
planes, but how they are arranged on the screen that presents such a great
effect. Another impressive use of backgrounds is in level three, where you pilot
the Whip Rush inside a cavernous complex. Multiple planes make up the
background, but they glow softly with blue color, fading to black, then to blue,
back and forth again.

 The designers of WHIP RUSH must have put in a good amount of time to come up
with something new on these screens. It's not just like the lava lake scene in
MYSTIC DEFENDER, where you get the feeling they said, "Look, Ma! I can do nine
separate scrolling planes!" Here, they actually arranged the scrolling planes
for a certain effect.

 Another innovation of WHIP RUSH: Most shoot-'em-ups tend to scroll either
upwards or to the left. WHIP RUSH throws away that restriction. You may be going
from left to right, right to left, south to north, or north to south in this
game!

 For example, in the first level, you go through the clouds from left to right
for a bit; then you start to descend through the clouds, past large hovering
objects, fighting off ships; then you enter the city and begin going left to
right again. In level two, you repeat this pattern, except here you descend into
the ocean/river and fight underwater ships. In level three, you navigate the
cavern going left to right, then north, up through some tiny passages, then in
reverse (right to left), with enemies on either side of you!

 There are some neat "bad-guy" characters for you to fight in the game, as well.
A tricky one to watch out for is the "Boomerang Yaro," who fires a missile that
returns to him -- and the only time he's vulnerable is when he doesn't have the
missile! On level three, you'll encounter many "Walkers," mechanical spiders
that shoot missiles and glitter with orange and white light. So far, I haven't
encountered any flickering in the enemies or large sprites.

 As usual in these types of games, there are four different power-up weapons for
your ship: Laser, Missiles, Fireball, and Power Claw. The Power Claw is the one
that stays by the side of your ship and is very advantageous to use. You can
manuever it to point north, south, east, or west of the Whip Rush by pressing
button C. This is very important when you are travelling upwards and need to
shoot an enemy to the north, or when you are unprotected from behind. You can
actually get two Power Claws and shoot both -- either backwards and forwards at
the same time, or north and south at the same time.

 The designers of WHIP RUSH also put a good deal of effort into the music for
the game. There is fine use of stereo effects, and an exciting "sci-fi" (ugh! I
can't find any other term that would be appropriate) beat to it. The music
rather overpowers the sound effects, which are pretty standard.

 How challenging is the game? I can't say conclusively, because I can't get
through level three yet! While the manual says that there are only four levels
to WHIP RUSH, the ads claim that there are seven, and a Gamers' Forum member
confirms the number seven. The first level was pretty easy to conquer, the
second less so, and the third even less, so I believe it does become
progressively harder. But a super-duper whiz-kid arcader might get through it in
no time at all. If there is a downside to this game, it'd be in the lack of
gameplay value once you've actually finished the game: It doesn't include enough
subtle nuances to make you want to play it forever (at least from what I've seen
at this point).

 I certainly rate this game overall as very good -- a little better than a 7 on
a scale of 1 to 10. If you like THUNDERFORCE II for the Genesis, and you'd like
to play something else in the genre with exciting graphics and a twist in
gameplay, then by all means take a look at WHIP RUSH! It's one of the better
quality games for the Sega Genesis.

 WHIP RUSH is published and distributed by Renovation Products.

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