273. Metal Flame Psybuster (Sculptured Software, Famicom, 1990)

Metal Flame Psybuster (released in the US as Metal Mech: Man & Machine) is an exploration-based platformer developed by Utah's Sculptured Software. While they primarily worked on porting arcade games to home computers and consoles, Metal Flame Psybuster was both an original title and Sculptured Software's first game on a Nintendo system (and strangely released in Japan before the US).

Metal Flame Psybuster puts you in control of a a huge Robocop-looking mech, but you can also eject a tiny pilot out of the mech to traverse ladders and get to hard to reach places. While it's admirable to see something closer to a mech simulator on the Famicom, the mech controls are pretty sluggish and don't feel great in 2D. The best part is the jump, which at least allows you to setup on pesky enemy vehicles, even if it's also pretty floppy. The on-foot controls, on the other hand, just feel strange, like an old arcade game where they hadn't quite figured out what good movement and jumping felt like. The on-foot movement at least feels precise, though in a restrictive way, and I don't think there are more than 4 frames of animation on the pilot.

You can shoot in 5 directions as the mech, though only straight/up/down when you are out of it. Your human shots also predictably do less damage, though it's also much easier to both shoot enemies as well as avoid enemy fire. All in all I much preferred the on-foot controls and saw the mech as more of a car I had to get in to protect me when travelling longer distances as enemies constantly spawn while you move around. Even with the restrictive movements, I did mange to jump off a skyscraper and shoot 2 enemies down before landing, which didn't look nearly as cool as it would in a modern video game.

Metal Flame Psybuster gives you no real guidance on what to do. At first I thought the objective was to explore the level and collect a certain number of radiation icons, but after I eventually walked far enough to the right, the level suddenly ended and I was on level 2. In the second level, you are in a huge multi level building that the mech can walk through, but I was not able to figure out what to do, until a guide clued me into the fact that each level has a key that you need to find in order to proceed, so it is actually kind of exploration-based, at least until you know what to do.

While the levels each have their own feel/atmosphere to them, they are too large and empty, and the design of each feels internally repetitive, which makes exploration a chore. This is really driven home by the fact that he enemies are mostly just generic gun turrets, but I rarely went down a new path to find something interesting.

2/5, a ropey mech-piloting run & gun with a cool central mechanic but no execution