Thank you folks for shedding a "ray of light" on the subject!

I don't remember most people giving a crap about "ray tracing" until Nvidia made it THE thing your graphics had to have in order to be taken seriously by tech bros. The tech dates back to the 80s, but broadly, people didn't care. So, I think it's as noted. There were other "Ray" games, and "Ray Tracers" sounded cool for another "Ray" game. I don't think it's any deeper than that, honestly.

I actually tried finding any development history concerning the game after reading your comment (ie 10 minutes) and couldn't find any explanation for the title. Though, I should mention that Taito also had another series, a shoot'em up series, around this same time where each game started with the word Ray: RayForce, RayStorm, and RayCrisis.

My basic take on this is that maybe they really liked using the word Ray and thought Ray Tracers sounded cool.

How interesting to see a 1997 game called "Ray Tracers", given that ray tracing has recently become better known for providing fancy graphics in systems like PS5. I wonder why Taito used such a technical name for their title?

"I had to fight through the labyrinth of sub menus to try and find the order to turn on the tractor beam under a very harsh time limit, and I ended up ejecting the warp core instead."

Something tells me Kirk & Picard had better computers than that...

Congratulations on reaching that milestone. It was exciting to watch, even if I didn't always have anything to say in the moment.

I hated writing this review, and I've been trying to do it for near on 10 years now. The only reason I pushed through to the end now was because that awful T.V. show of the same name was loosing relevance by the second and I didn't want to rewrite the intro for the dozenth time. I remember it started with 'this show has been announced' and then 'this show is being made', then 'this show is out', 'this show's season has completed', 'this show has been cancelled'. Even then, it belonged to a completely different review because I'd tried to write something based on talking about a single playthrough but realised it was painfully unfunny and dull. And that was after I'd scrapped one which was more of a hard comparison between the SNES and the 32X strains, which meant I put hours into both bloody versions (the SNES has less missions, less ship models does not have the pool mini game and, unsurprisingly, looks pretty bad by comparison). And now we have this; something with a casual intro and the rest just stuffy, hard facts. I had an easier time writing for the text-heavy strategy game released solely in Japan...

But now it's done and I can stop. I think there's a very good chance that I've spent more time with 32X games than anyone else in the world and that the end is this game is kind of fitting; it was an idea whose ambition was destroyed by the technological limitations of the time. It leaves me only with the memory of a mission where I had to fight through the labyrinth of sub menus to try and find the order to turn on the tractor beam under a very harsh time limit, and I ended up ejecting the warp core instead. I did not pass that class.

Thanks for reading this and the rest of the 32X reviews no one asked for. Genuinely, I'm not sure I would have powered through this nonsense if I thought I was writing stuff that was just dropping into a void, so I appreciate all the feedback from yourself and everyone else.

I can't recall ever playing a menu-heavy based game on an older console, where actions took place in real-time, and having a good time. At the very least, the games I remember with heavy menus paused the action when accessed.

Looking at the images, the 3D in this game, based on the slow movement described, seems like it could have easily been done on a normal Genesis or a Super Ninten... oh.

Good review, and congratulations on finally reviewing every 32X game for the site! I actually thought you would never touch this one, and it got to a point where at one time I actually contemplated playing the SNES version out of morbid curiosity.

I have a decent amount of nostalgia for ActRaiser, I think mainly because it was one of the first SNES games I played and it looked and sounded so much better than the NES stuff I spent most of my time with, so it was one of those games for that system that truly captivated my imagination. Which would ordinarily mean I'd have some sort of desire to play this game, as I do occasionally bust out reviews for games I played simply due to some sort of nostalgia factor.

But tower defense stuff added to the mix? No thanks. I'm on the other end of the opinion on that than you, not being a fan. Hell, I remember with the last Ezio Assassin's Creed game how, if you were too active in being an assassin without paying off guys to lower your infamy, you'd have to do a tower defense sequence around a district's hideout. After doing the tutorial one to let you know what you were facing, I made sure to pay off people every single time I did anything to raise that infamy even a tiny bit. Just not my thing.

You know, I was looking through his catalog of games, and I was surprised just how many non-Double Dragon/Kunio-kun titles I played that he was involved with in some capacity.

I didn't know he was involved with the arcade version of Block Out, which makes a helluva lot more sense why Technos Japan created a "similar" game for the PlayStation 1 called Geom Cube a few years later.

I also own the Sega CD ports of Cobra Command and Road Blaster, which I think I recall him being director of the latter arcade version but didn't know about the former.

Surprised about him producing the PS1/Saturn Choaniki games.

Regardless of the quality of some of his games, he certainly made an impact on the industry considering a lot of mechanics from his titles are still incorporated into newer games to this day.

!@#$! Leroux reviews still slap. Really good writing in the end section about the boss fights.

Glad that my descriptions were clear enough to understand! I would've submitted some images, but SMS screenshots are a colossal pain for "reasons."

The mechanics make this, at least for me, one of the more fascinating games for the system, but the brutal difficulty escalation ruins any potential fun past the first ten stages. There's zero continues and dozens upon dozens upon dozens of stages... isn't that hard enough???

Thanks for reading.

Great review. This game sounds really weird and somewhat challenging to describe, but your descriptions left me feeling like I had a good idea of how it worked (and didn't work) mechanically.

Thanks for the read and that catch! Going to be working on a few more Dreamcast reviews and am working on balancing my different voices - me playing the games as a late teen and me playing the games now. Appreciate your thoughts.

I'm glad to see another review from you, and this was a nice retrospective on a game I have yet to play.

I don't consider Episode I the worst Star Wars film (that honor goes to The Last Jedi, because it tried its darndest to not to feel like a Star Wars film and mostly succeeded), but I also didn't love Episode I so much that I wanted to explore the games based on it.

You did a nice job of comparing your old experiences with the game with your more recent ones, and letting me know why I might want to finally get around to playing it in 2026. I only found one line that you will want to revisit at some point:

"By far and away the single worst part of any track are zero gravity corridors appear in a handful of levels."

There are a few ways you might fix this sentence, but here's one possibility:

"By far and away the single worst part of any track are the zero gravity corridors that appear in a handful of levels."

Good stuff!

I had no idea! I remembered after playing this game that AVGN did a video on the US prototype, Super Pitfall II, but I went through the entire game without realizing this one was the groundwork for it. And yes, Switch Online and various other collections (like Capcom's arcade collection) have allowed me to pump out a few reviews here and there. Hell, my Dig Dug II review came about because of Switch Online, and that and my history of renting the game a few times way back.

I see this game is just a month away from its 40th birthday. When these games came out, who would've thought that decades into the future, they'd get new life on services like Switch Online!

A nice review of a piece of gaming history!

Interesting how the obscure Virtual Boy anticipated today's immersive headset systems.

For me, the Bonk series has been one of diminishing returns. I really enjoyed the first TG one and then thought the second and third were, more or less, more of the same, but not quite as fun. And this one was a step below that. For me, I'd say the controls only really have been an issue in boss fights, particularly after the first game. Large enemies where you may only have a small portion that you can hit don't necessarily work when your main move is jumping in the air and directing your head into them.

Nice review, brother. I've dived in and bounced off this one so many times, and sometimes I wind up with cognative whiplash as a result. Bonk is one of those games that has a limited appeal to me thanks to its poor controls. It is not a laggy game--or series--but has never felt suitably responsive to make Bonk, and me, feel powerful. The times I have attained any skill with the controls, the levels bore me and I move on to something else that gets it right.