Eight Way Third Degree Burns

It's almost fall. I've got one last chance to squeeze in a post before August comes to a close, so let's talk Hellfire.

Not that hellfire. By the way, who shouts "Dersh!" as a victory cry? That's the worst exclamation for a warrior since The Tick's "Spoon!"

Yeah, okay, that's the Hellfire I meant. Hellfire is an early Sega Genesis shooter tragically buried under an avalanche of early Sega Genesis shooters. Sure, it doesn't have the visual flair or the clever hook of Gaiares, or the blistering speed of Thunder Force II, or the depth and open level design of Granada. However, in keeping with Toaplan tradition, it's a hypercompetent shmup which makes its appeal obvious once you get used to the dull colors and questionable enemy designs. I still don't know what the hell this thing is supposed to be, other than deadly.

Unfortunately, Hellfire has one especially nasty fly stuck in its ointment. It takes a lot of inspiration from SNK and Tose's Vanguard, which puts emphasis on firing not just forward, but around your ship to take out dangerously close enemies. That's the good part. Hellfire is designed to force the player to frequently switch between bullet trajectories, to either concentrate fire on one target or to sink shots into cannons tucked between impenetrable walls.

Now comes the bad part. When you only have three buttons on a stock Genesis controller, you have to cycle through forward, back, vertical, and diagonal firing with button taps. In all fairness, the arcade game was like this too, but it's nevertheless awkward and counterintuitive, especially after forty years of twin stick shooters like Robotron: 2084 and Smash TV. Your mind is forced to find a perfect balance between dancing around the bullets Hellfire throws at you and hammering the bullet cycle button to find the right trajectory for the current situation. That inevitably leads to confusion, chaos, and ultimately, a fiery death from a collision your brain was too knotted up to notice.

What I'd like to see is a hack that removes the trajectory cycling button completely and replaces it with omni-directional firing, provided by the six button Sega Arcade Pad. Holding B fires forward, while holding X fires backward. Y or A fires vertically, while any combination of the two buttons lays down a spread of diagonal fire. Finally, Z or C fires the Hellfire cannon, a forward facing thermonuclear ray that scorches all enemies in its path. 

You could even adapt this control scheme to an older Genesis controller... it wouldn't be ideal, but it would certainly be an improvement over Toaplan's default setting. A fires backward, B fires vertically, and C fires forward. Any two buttons fire diagonally, and all three together unleashes hellfire on your enemies.

I'd like to see this happen, but I doubt there's enough interest in a crusty old shooter like Hellfire for anyone else to tackle this project, and I just don't have the mad hacking skills to make it a reality. Even making Peter Pan green in the Genesis version of Hook without everything else adopting the same hue was beyond my reach...

Green cherries. Mm, bitter and possibly toxic!