Here’s a crazy thought: Twenty six year delay.
(Editor’s Note: A review copy was provided for the purpose of this coverage)
A history lesson: Ultracore is a shooter originally developed by Digital Illusions for the Amiga, Sega Genesis, and Sega CD systems. You remember Digital Illusions, right? You may know them by their current name; DICE. They created the Battlefield games, Battlefront (the new ones), and of course their most famous release of Shrek on the original Xbox. I guess I could have led with that one and just left the others out.
Digital Illusions was working on Ultracore (known then as Hardcore) in the early 90s and completed roughly 99% of the development. And then the game got canned. Yep, with the upcoming release of the PlayStation and the expectation that sales would fall into the gutter for Genesis games, publisher Psyognosis said sayonara and just decided to shelve everything.
It wasn’t until over two decades later that Strictly Limited Games picked Hardcore out of the ashes and got it into a completed state with the help of some of the original devs. It was released as Ultracore due to licensing issues on the Analogue Mega Sg as well as the Switch and PlayStation 4 last month and now the PlayStation Vita.
What better way to experience a game that was never given the opportunity to thrive than on a console that was never given the opportunity to thrive? I love my Vita and I am ashamed to say it’s been so long since I’ve had an excuse to dig this out. 2020 me wishes that 1994 me could actually play this game but 26 years late is better than never.
It’s hard to talk about Ultracore in a modern context but at the same time I don’t want to talk about it like it’s from the view of “well it’s a 90’s title” because it is while it also isn’t. It was made in the 90’s for a 90’s audience but someone made the deliberate effort to drag it up and release it in 2020. Nobody got to play it during the 90’s so there’s no personal nostalgic draw to it. It is a piece of history from a time capsule that nobody got to see outside of the devs at the time.
Ultracore is a side scrolling shoot em up from a time when all you needed is a score keeper, a timer, and some lives, and to shoot a lot of things. You are a sci-fi warrior whose name may as well be Biff Beefstock, Chuck Steak, or Shoot Mandead, a macho guy with cool hair and the type that would probably get parodied by Duke Nukem just a couple years later. Each level is a sprawling labyrinth of various science fiction doohickeys trying to kill you with bullets, lasers, and rockets, and it’s all set to on a futuristic post-apocalyptic Terminator-esque set of blown up buildings. You need to shoot them before they shoot you because trust me when I say everything in this game is out to kill you. Except the corpses that litter the levels, they are pretty chill.
If you want a nostalgic trip that you can be guaranteed to have never played as a child, I wholeheartedly recommend Ultracore. Ultracore really benefits from having two joysticks since it gives a better feel to the aiming than using a simple d-pad. Which you can also use, they are interchangeable at all times. Shooting with the square button is the old 8-way style of straight lines or diagonal, but Ultracore is very versatile when it comes to shooting your gun.
For instance if you hold down the fire button while moving you can strafe back and forth while still shooting in the same direction. If you are standing still when you hold down fire you can aim your character in a more precise fashion with feet firmly planted to the ground. Switching your aim height with the joystick isn’t great, but it isn’t bad. It’s much more enjoyable and precise to use the right joystick to shoot.
I can’t say good enough things about the soundtrack for this game. It is a beautiful composition of synthwave and it brings me warm feelings and memories of Escape From New York, The Running Man, Terminator, Kurt Russel, you know how it is. There’s no lyrics but you’ll be rocking out the whole time you’re playing the game.
Don’t believe me? Check out the official soundtrack below.
But this is a 90’s action game and that means not everything is fantastic. I will praise the fact that hardcore players can absolutely take advantage of bouncing on enemy’s heads and using that as a method of solving certain jumping puzzles. In fact the game kinda expects you to do that to reach certain secrets.
Ultracore has a lot of things we would think of today as stupid. Levels are littered with deathtraps you are expected to succumb to at least once, like pitfalls you must jump down that have instant death unless you land on exactly the right spot as well as areas where a leap of faith is absolutely necessary. There are also instant death floors that are accompanied by platforms that disintegrate beneath your feet.
Even worse the game likes to throw new tricks at you and only use them once. In level 1 you come across these circular floating platforms that bounce a little when you jump on them. You are expected to jump at just the right spot to jettison up to the next one. These same platforms are in level 2, and only at one certain area with low ceilings do you jump on the platform only for it to suddenly zip up into the ceiling, letting you drop into the instant death floor below.
This game would be nearly perfect without the instant death floors. Oh and there are no game saves, just level passwords.
It is a long-forgotten trick from a game developed before those tricks were rightfully forgotten. There’s another point where you fight the same creature but their laser balls inexplicably bound off the floor now. They don’t do that before or even after and it is overall just stupid.
Every level has a couple of bosses that follow the old style where they have a small library of attack patterns and you pretty much just have to learn how they work and how to avoid them. There is a life system coupled with a continue system as well as points and highscores. Using a continue starts you at the beginning of the level and also kicks you to the highscores (if you made it on there) to put your 3-digit initials in, then you lose your score when you start back up.
Still Ultracore is a load of good fun. I’m not sure how much we’d be reminiscing on it today if it actually had released in 1994, but that’s neither here nor there. It’s also the first legit Vita game to launch since probably Romancing Saga 3 last November.
Verdict: 4/5. There are a lot of pitfalls that are just ancient game design but overall Ultracore is a very enjoyable experience and a good value at $20. If you don’t have the Vita or don’t want to pull it out, you can play on Switch or PS4.
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