A Psikyo shooter is a pretty recognizable thing. If you've had some history with the company's shmup fare, you could easily have won a ''Name That Developer'' challenge with, say, the Dreamcast's Gunbird II. Similarities amongst their games prevail in every nook and cranny, from their obviously similar 2D coding to their uncannily familiar menu screens. Most of all, though, up until the release of Cannon Spike, the mild redundancy that ran so deeply through Psikyo's games was mostly due to an ea...

T.R.A.G. wasn't even a great concept to begin with. Its base elements manage to be generic AND completely plagiarized at the same time. It wanted to be just a boring action game; T.R.A.G. feels like it was destined to be completely one dimensional in its craptitude. The developers, in a moment of pure idiotic ingenuity, fiddled with what was already guaranteed to suck; the result is one of the most worthless discs ever put to press.

Over the years, Acclaim has tortured the world with its arduous library of licensed fodder, ''original'' garbage and malicious mixtures of the two. Acclaim has consistently released turd after turd into the underpants of the videogame world, soiling the seats of gamers and leaving its foul streaks to never be forgotten.

It's something of human nature to form rifts and divisions over situations. When you're older, serious issues like divorce, abortion, religion, etc. cause people to choose a side and defend/attack zealously. When you're younger (or just a geek), less important things occupy your time, so less important things cause you to rally for a side. For modern youth, including my own childhood, this behavior was embodied much in the form of the Sega Vs Nintendo argument.

It must be a case of brainwashing. For, if any doubts ever entered the rabid SNES fan's head, they'd be soon shaken away by the word ''Super'' in the game's title. No game with such surname hyperbole could ever be second-best.

Sometimes you have to look where the coal is to find the diamond.

Space Harrier is a game of unique mold from a time when there were practically no conventions for games. In its day, most genres hadn't been carved yet and games only resembled each other in minimalistic principal similarities. As the lines that defined games became more clear, Space Harrier continued to remain untouched in its simple quality. Space Harrier is a shooter, but it is a groundbreaking and important shooter that would remain unchallenged in its playability and its archetype.

It doesn't take much for a great game to be overlooked. Lack of marketing, release window too late in a console's life... just one snafu can make an excellent and potentially successful game disappear from gamers' minds.

Shooters, typical in their brievity and to-the-point nature, have never been known for scale. They're reknowned for intensity and adrenaline, but they most usually come without grandeur or flair. This isn't to their detriment; it rather makes them pure gameplay powerhouses, and the games do not suffer for lack of scope. However, Panzer Dragoon Zwei is not a typical shooter, and instead brings to the genre the first ''epic'' shooter.

Never call this game Galactic Attack. Its arcade form was called RayForce, its home conversion in Japan was titled Layer Section... both were great, virile names. Acclaim saw fit to ravage such an eminent mixture of gameplay and nomenclature by dubbing it the horrendous Galactic Attack; join me, though, as I attempt to ignore the words on the disc and review this game, this peak of 16-bit-style design: Layer Section.