Metamor Jupiter (Turbografx-CD) review "Man, they named the hero Jupiter when Uranus was on the table? So much potential for comedy squandered..."

As someone who’s played a lot of retro shooters over the years, I’ve gradually come to believe that judging a game on originality is the wrong way to go about things. You had a handful of games that set templates for how this genre would go and those that followed typically were influenced by them. They might have their own, original ideas contained within them, but it still will be difficult to play them without being regularly reminded of their inspirations — whether it be level designs, power-ups or how enemies and bosses look and fight that provide those feelings of deja vu.

No, the way I’ve come to look at things is to judge those elements simply by how well they’re implemented. How proficiently any original ideas get integrated into a tried-and-true template. If I’m feeling an endorphin rush while playing it or if I simply want to toss my controller in frustration and pick up something nice, relaxing and easy-going like Nioh.

NOTE: That last part is a joke. Nioh is steadily ruining my life, but I’ve put so much time and effort into trying to overcome its challenges — making it through the main game and into the DLC! — that my damn pride refuses to give permission to pull the plug on things, regardless of how costly all of this is to my sanity and well-being. But that is a story for another day/week/month/year/life.

This story is about Metamor Jupiter. Released for the PC Engine’s CD system early in 1993, it’s one of its many shooters that never left Japan. Since it’s a CD game, that means there will be a fair amount of dialogue and cinema that tells a story. Since it never left Japan, your guess is as good — or, more likely, better — than mine as to what the hell people are chattering about. I mean, I recall reading that Jupiter is the name of your protagonist and the final boss bears an uncanny resemblance to Satan, but that’s all I have. You can fill in the blanks.

It’s a side-scroller that is fond of the old-school R-Type and Gradius style of intricate and claustrophobic levels where terrain can be just as deadly as the enemy’s forces. To deviate from this formula, Metamor Jupiter has a few quirks to it that admittedly do enhance the experience. You can choose from three different forms of weaponry by hitting the select button. You control your ship’s speed by pausing the game and pressing up or down on the controller. You only have one ship, but it has a life meter. Getting hit by enemies both depletes it and lowers your weapon’s power, but collecting weapon orbs will serve the dual purpose of bringing back that power and restoring some of that health.

Also, by hitting a button, you can turn your ship around to fire at foes coming up from behind you. This plays a key role throughout the game. Many bosses will move all over the screen, so you’ll have to fly around them and flip your ship to continue your assault. Also, a number of levels will have you changing direction on a regular basis. Like its inspirations, Metamor Jupiter forces players to memorize aspects of its levels, as knowing where enemies will appear or when a stage suddenly will send you plummeting down a shaft and then start flying right-to-left often pays off better than simply having good reflexes.

Metamor Jupiter is a pretty long game, with a total of 10 stages to blast through. Alas, this is where the flaws in what is an intriguing game start to appear. Late in the game, I got the idea the designers were running out of ideas. Much of the eighth level looks near-identical to the second one — until you have to traverse a large battleship where, frustratingly, you have next-to-no room to maneuver at times. The penultimate stage is little more than a boss rush, although this game was at least kind enough to come up with original fights instead of just recycling adversaries from earlier in the mission. To conclude things, the journey to His Infernal Majesty in the final level takes one through a collection of corridors covered in organic matter that looks and plays very similar to the fifth level.

Other flaws also raise their head throughout this game. One key component of shooters is recording a high score to brag about to friends, acquaintances and whomever you think might care. Metamor Jupiter doesn’t keep score.

Also, most of its bosses are pretty generic and forgettable. Yeah, Ol’ Scratch looks pretty impressive and a couple other foes grabbed my attention, but way too many of this game’s main opponents took the form of generic spaceships and machinery. On the game’s Wikipedia page, there is a screenshot of your ship fighting one of those bosses. From looking at the notes I took while playing, I think I’ve narrowed down which one it is to about three or four possibilities. So many of them just blended together into one giant blob of unexceptional.

Most damning, though, was my ship’s weapon power. My biggest love/hate thing about shooters revolves around how utterly godly your ship can get if you’re diligent about snagging power-ups and are skilled (or lucky) enough to avoid enemies and their attacks. The hate comes from that moment when I die and realize I now am controlling a near-defenseless vessel that’s horribly outmatched — like if I transformed from a warlord holding weapons of mass destruction to Dennis the Menace and his trusty slingshot. The love comes from just how awesome I feel when I’ve powered up that ship and my lasers, spread shot, missiles and whatever are just covering the screen and enemies are going down in flames as soon as they appear.

That NEVER happens in Metamor Jupiter. I never felt powerful or like I was on top of the situation. I could have a weapon powered up to max and I’d still be dodging as many (or more) enemies as I was putting down simply because it often was less risky to just get out of the way. This game was basically 10 levels of me working to destroy the foes capable of flooding the screen with bullets and doing what I could to avoid contact with anything else. Those not-so-strong attacks also don’t come remotely close to covering the screen, as well, so it was all too commonplace for small foes to slip between my onslaught to pose a threat for longer than they should have. Even with my ship at its best, it was still easy for me to be outmatched, so imagine how things felt when a couple hits took away a portion of that firepower.

Not being able to keep score, having a couple duplicate levels and possessing a bunch of bosses that didn’t impress me are offenses I can forgive in a game that otherwise hits the right notes. But consistently feeling like a weakling who’s lucky to still be alive is a different story. I’ve been reviewing shooters for a long time and feel I’ve probably overused the complaint concerning how, in many of these games, losing one well-powered ship essentially is a death sentence for the rest of your lives because you simply won’t have the opportunity to build them up before being overwhelmed. Well, turns out there’s something worse than that: Never getting to that level of power in the first place.

Staff review by Rob Hamilton (September 11, 2026) Rob Hamilton is the official drunken master of review writing for Honestgamers.