Ultracore Review
by Amr (@siegarettes)
- Ultracore
- Developer: Digital Illusions Computer Entertainment
- Publisher: ININ Games
- Switch, PS4, Mega SG
Originally developed by DICE for the Amiga and Genesis, Ultracore was recovered and released as part of the launch of the Analgoue Mega SG, a high definition Genesis hardware clone. It remained exclusive to the system, only playable by purchasing expensive, niche hardware. Alongside a physical release from Strictly Limited, Ultracore is finally available to the wider public on Switch and PS4 as a standalone title.
Despite picking up the Mega SG on release, I never played Ultracore, aside from the times I accidentally picked it from the home menu. My reasons were the same as why I never played the release of Super Turrican-Director’s Cut on the Super NT: I’m simply not fond of the European style platformer-shooter hybrids. But with the new Switch release, and after enjoying the PS4 release of Gunlord X, I decided to give this one another chance.
Ultracore is dead simple: shoot everything in sight, pick up keycards, then repeat for the next area. Along the way you’ll pick up various new weapons and battle the occasional boss or take on some platforming puzzles. The usual Amiga-rooted shenanigans are here, with imperfect hitboxes, strange physics quirks and a propensity towards fast and loose design combat design. It’s not quite on the level as some of the worst Amiga titles, but be prepared to fall off platforms you clearly landed on, and take unavoidable damage.
When it sticks to combat and exploration, Ultracore is generally enjoyable, even if its simplistic enemy design doesn’t force you to do more than point your gun in their general direction. Unlocking new areas and stumbling on secret areas is enough to keep you engaged, if not enthralled. When it begins asking you to do more complex platforming it immediately turns into a chore, and all its quirks begin to turn into annoyances.
Floating platforms bounce as you land upon them, to communicate a sense of weight, and comes off as a technical flourish more than anything. Until it asks you to use the rebound of those platforms to trampoline onto higher platforms. The bouncing platforms already caused trouble for regular platforming, interrupting the rhythm and causing inputs to not respond as you’d expect, so being forced to intentionally use them turns out to be even more messy. Which would be bad enough, and only gets worse in an early section where they place you over instant death spikes that kill you should you fail the jump.
The more complicated the stage layouts become the more the quirks of Ultracore’s physics begin to wear on you. My character fell to their death so many times, either because of a slight hitbox quirk or the aforementioned platform physics. Ultracore’s platforming simply isn’t precise enough for what it asks of you.
Combat suffers that same sloppiness, getting hectic in less enjoyable ways as it progresses, and a limited by an ammo system that sees you picking up plenty of fun weapons, but stifled by always having a little less ammo than you’d like. This is at least mitigated by the new dual-joystick controls added in this version, which make your main gun much more versatile.
The original release already had a surprising amount of fine tuning to the aim, but you’d either have to use the finicky “Free” aim system that locked and adjusted your aim depending on context, or the “8-Way” option that fired instantly in the direction you pointed, but limited you to only 8 directions. The 8-Way option is totally gone from this version, replacing it with the more modern second stick aiming, with the face buttons used for the Free aim system, letting you strafe and adjust aim without the second stick should you prefer it.
Other than dual-stick aiming, not much has changed from the original version. No widescreen graphics, no borders, and no extra menu options. In fact, as of writing, Ultracore doesn’t even have a save system. It uses the password system of the original, and each password is *long*. There isn’t any save state system or visual options either. It’s more or less a straight emulation with no modern conveniences.
As nice as it is to have this title preserved, and to have a look at the early work of the studio that would go on to make heavy hitters like Battlefield and Mirror’s Edge, it’s hard not to be underwhelmed by both the game and its packaging.
Ultracore has the unfortunate luck of being up against both modern games in the genre, and even newly released Genesis titles like Xeno Crisis and Tanzer which show off what can be done on the system with modern design sensibilities. Ultracore is a game resurrected from a past era, with a sense of design strictly rooted in the past. It has its moments, but divorced from its novelty as a previously unreleased game, it’s hard to argue that it can stand out against the excellent action games already on the Genesis.