Fatal Rewind
As usual with the Sega Genesis, a lot of my game purchasing decisions were based on whatever crazy art graced the cover, or whatever tiny snippet of a screenshot I caught while flipping through a friend's magazine. In this case, I caught an ad in a magazine I was flipping through while I was bored one day at a schoolmate's party back when I was very young. It was an ad for two Psygnosis games, Shadow of the Beast and Fatal Rewind, both of which looked pretty scary and somewhat ambiguous as to what they were about. Now, from the cover you can only imagine the kinds of incredible possibilities were in store for this game. Turns out it was pretty much nothing like I had imagined, like a lot of 16 bit games I'd purchased. So I can't say I was exactly disappointed.
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Fatal Rewind was still really dark and scary, but more in concept than design. I didn't really know the story until I bought it and read through the manual for the backstory (as it's not explained in-game). Turns out, Psygnosis took the Running Man story and changed it up a bit. The concept in Fatal Rewind is that you are in control of a convict, forced to run a maze as penitence for your sins; survive the maze and you are free to go. However, I don't see that ever happening, because: a. it's damned impossible and b. you've been irreversibly surgically altered in order to play this game. It's described in the manual that your skin and limbs are removed and you are placed into a robot shell, one with mounted guns that walks on it's hands. You look nothing like a person anymore, just this horrifying monstrosity. I'm not sure who would choose that over incarceration, or death.
On the upside, you don't exactly get attached to your disgustingly deformed protagonist. (Would it be a protagonist?) The concept behind the name 'Fatal Rewind' (Renamed from The Killing Game Show in japan.) is that you aren't controlling one single person, but rather an unending number of them. Your run through the maze is broadcast as part of a game show, you watch along with all the other viewers as each contestant attempts the maze. The concept, is that since you are watching each person run the maze, you should see where each one makes his mistakes and avoid them. So each time you start after dying, you have the chance to 'fast forward' right up until the moment you last died. This way if you did great up until the end, but made one bad jump or flipped one wrong switch, you don't really have to start from the beginning again. Which is great because honestly, this game is hard as hell.
Fatal Rewind really doesn't want you to succeed. The maze's exit is upward and shortly after you start moving the floor fills with a pit of acid. HALFs, or Hostile Artificial Life Forms attack you in waves and keys and weapons are littered about as you make your way through the maze. Of course, backtracking is very difficult because you risk getting dissolved in acid if you take too long. So you pretty much have to play this game via trial and error, lots of it. This game is one of the harder Genesis games I'd ever played. I think I was pretty happy to make it to the second level and I most definitely never got any further than that. Maybe on an emulator, with save-states I may be able to get further, but I am pretty happy with the amount I've played. As neat as it was, I'm pretty sure the later levels would have ended up getting pretty repetitive anyway.
As usual with the Sega Genesis, a lot of my game purchasing decisions were based on whatever crazy art graced the cover, or whatever tiny snippet of a screenshot I caught while flipping through a friend's magazine. In this case, I caught an ad in a magazine I was flipping through while I was bored one day at a schoolmate's party back when I was very young. It was an ad for two Psygnosis games, Shadow of the Beast and Fatal Rewind, both of which looked pretty scary and somewhat ambiguous as to what they were about. Now, from the cover you can only imagine the kinds of incredible possibilities were in store for this game. Turns out it was pretty much nothing like I had imagined, like a lot of 16 bit games I'd purchased. So I can't say I was exactly disappointed.Fatal Rewind was still really dark and scary, but more in concept than design. I didn't really know the story until I bought it and read through the manual for the backstory (as it's not explained in-game). Turns out, Psygnosis took the Running Man story and changed it up a bit. The concept in Fatal Rewind is that you are in control of a convict, forced to run a maze as penitence for your sins; survive the maze and you are free to go. However, I don't see that ever happening, because: a. it's damned impossible and b. you've been irreversibly surgically altered in order to play this game. It's described in the manual that your skin and limbs are removed and you are placed into a robot shell, one with mounted guns that walks on it's hands. You look nothing like a person anymore, just this horrifying monstrosity. I'm not sure who would choose that over incarceration, or death.
On the upside, you don't exactly get attached to your disgustingly deformed protagonist. (Would it be a protagonist?) The concept behind the name 'Fatal Rewind' (Renamed from The Killing Game Show in japan.) is that you aren't controlling one single person, but rather an unending number of them. Your run through the maze is broadcast as part of a game show, you watch along with all the other viewers as each contestant attempts the maze. The concept, is that since you are watching each person run the maze, you should see where each one makes his mistakes and avoid them. So each time you start after dying, you have the chance to 'fast forward' right up until the moment you last died. This way if you did great up until the end, but made one bad jump or flipped one wrong switch, you don't really have to start from the beginning again. Which is great because honestly, this game is hard as hell.
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