Deep Blue (TurboGrafx-16) review "Deep Blue? How about DEEP SHIT! "

Deep Blue? How about DEEP SHIT!

Man, I’ve played a lot of HARDCORE shooters in my day, but rarely have I subjected myself to a game quite as woeful as the one I’m about to describe. Deep Blue was figured to be a pretty cool little HuCard for offering an aquatic setting a buttload of fish to fry. But it turns out that this little nemo couldn’t get some of the simplest concepts right, like allowing adequate wiggle room for when the going gets tough, and providing more than a meager laser from which to defend yourself.

No one can hear you scream underwater

And you’ll scream plenty when you try going through this oceanic atrocity. The little fish robot you control is pretty weak – three hits and he’s dead. And worse, you’re given only one life from which to march on with. The screen gets filled with enemies very quickly, and your fish ship is sloooooooow. Power-ups are meager.

This game was made by a company called PACK-IN.

Pack it in, baby!

The graphics are pretty good, if a little bit grainy. Yeah, they’re pretty old in today’s fantastic realm of beauteous gaming, but back in 1989 they were pretty darn appealing, especially coming off a HuCard. Those things are, like, not cartridges! If you can get past the game’s ridiculous difficulty level, you’ll see some pretty cool aquatic stages that get progressively more interesting the farther your fish-bot swims. Best part – the bosses are gigantic and full of detail. Knocking them out is especially satisfying because it means that A) you successfully resisted their huge mass and unrelenting onslaught and B) that you have a lot of patience and therefore can rationalize all the time spent at getting better at this game.

You probably won’t be patient enough to get to the last level.

Deep Blue has many uses

I once saw this game for sale on eBay doubling as a beer coasting/ash tray. I’d say that’s a pretty good use for it. You could play it, but you may regret it. I know I made the graphics sound pretty ace, but the game truly does play like crap. It’s just a slooooow swim through seas of death, and you’re not dodging bullets, but fish. Yeah, they look great, but it just doesn’t feel right getting killed by Flounder from The Little Mermaid.

Community review by Sucrose_Sally (December 01, 2010) A bio for this contributor is currently unavailable, but check back soon to see if that changes. If you are the author of this review, you can update your bio from the Settings page.