Heavy Nova

On paper, this game has a neat premise. I'll skip some details of the lore to this: You are a robot that initially goes through some training. You go through some obstacles and wreck some small annoyances in a side-scroller setting before fighting 1-on-1 against another robot that's kinda like you. Rinse and repeat as the game goes along, and you eventually face a robot that is you, but better!

Unfortunately, the execution of this idea was absolutely horrible.

The side scrolling stages are very, very uninspired. I understand that the first three stages are just training, but they are so short and with better controls, they'd be a complete joke. The controls of this game are the biggest problem with it, by far.

Your character, a "Doll" that moves quite slowly, has some awful controls. You have a jab, and a high kick to start with. Jumping is uncomfortable because you don't just jump in an arc, like a proper side scroller, or a fighting game. No, the developers tried to get fancy with the air movement, giving your robot some jetpacks on the back and front of its torso. If you have to make specific jumps to areas with mines on the ground AND spike balls in the air, it's not a comfortable experience to wiggle the D-pad around to dodge that stuff.

You can speed up with a dash, but this is mostly not convenient because you dash very quickly, and pick up a lot of momentum. If you jump off of a dash, you will shoot towards whatever horizontal direction you want. Even backwards. This may sound neat, but again, it's mostly not convenient, barring moments in boss battles where you'd want to create some distance.

The side-scrolling parts are very short, and not much thought was put into many of them. Hit a switch, find health items or an item that levels you up, giving you more attacks for 1-on-1 battles, jump over rocks, and it's over. There aren't a lot of stages to this game, either, but the later ones do get more annoying. For instance, one stage has an obstacle with electricity coming out.

Gamer logic usually says that you can't touch this obstacle because it's going to hurt. Heavy Nova logic is "no, you can actually kick this" - however, this object, whatever it is, has the ability to throw some white metal frame of death at you. It's very hard to predict where it's coming from, so as a player, you will either get past that and easily beat the stage, or...just lose.

That's what I mean when I describe the side-scrolling stages. The "difficult" ones are designed in a way where one part will annoy you a lot, but if you get past it, there's no real challenge left.

Whenever you beat these stages, the game will give you points for the enemies you beat, it will let you know what new moves you have if you leveled up, but it will not tell you how to do them. That's a big problem, considering that some of these are very useful, including a "back drop" (a german suplex) and a pile driver. I'm sure Dan Ryckert knows the names of other wrestling moves that made it into this game.

You can also get bonus points if you clear stages quickly enough - don't bother with that. No one cares about in-game scores these days.

After all of that, you get into the meat and potatoes of the game: the 1-on-1 boss battles. This is where the game's quality falls off a cliff. With whatever health you have left, you have to fight in a system where everyone's attacks are really weak. Even if you're getting blown out by the opponent, the fight will take forever. As if that's not bad enough, there are little bars below the energy (health) meters. These are stamina bars. Getting knocked down will make a robot lose some bars. If a robot has 3, they will stand up very slowly and won't be able to fight until they have 4 (you have to mash A and B to speed up the charging). If a robot has less than 3, that robot will be unable to move.

Yes, you read that right. In this system where health bars go down very slowly, you can be rendered completely useless via this stamina gimmick. Who thought this was a good idea? I've been in boss fights where I got knocked down to 0 bars of stamina and had to watch the AI pick me up and knock me back down repeatedly for what felt like an eternity, until my health ran out. This is horrific gameplay.

There are ways to mess with the AI, and to make a long story short, this is a game where you either beat the holy hell out of the AI, or they will do it to you. There is no in-between. What's weird is that during these battles, when a robot jumps, it is invincible until it lands and the game decides to count hits. This can be used to your advantage, but the AI is aware of the gimmick as well. In fact, when you get the AI opponents down to 3 stamina bars, they will actively avoid combat until they can fight back. I guess the game is like this because you can't block during these fights.

Let me repeat: this is horrific gameplay.

You can pull off combos starting with jabs and knees at close range, but good luck getting the timing down. Even if you learn what the proper timing is, the game can simply decide not to count hits because your opponent is in mid-air.

The cherry on top is that there's a timer that is super slow. If time runs out, you lose the fight, regardless of whether you have more health than your opponent.

It really is a shame that the soundtrack to this game is actually good. What a waste of talent, putting together nice music for a terrible game. The developers tried to get cute with jets and the momentum system that only kinda becomes useful during boss battles. They also gave players a bunch of moves without making it clear how they are done - I beat the game and I'm still not very sure of how I did the pile driver. My guess is that when you come off a jump, and you are close to your opponent, press forward+B multiple times and maybe you'll do it if the move's unlocked. If your opponent isn't facing you, then you may end up doing a german suplex instead. The controls left me with too much uncertainty. One more detail about the general controls: let's say you're facing right, but an enemy is behind you. In a good game, you can easily turn around instantly. Not here! In this example, you have to hold left for about a full second before your character faces the left.

It's such embarrassing game design.

You can also shoot missiles, but there are a few problems with how this was implemented: first, the killer to this is that the bosses will always be able to dodge them somehow, so do not bother using them. Secondly, you need to pick up an item for these missiles, and it's only available in one stage. These projectiles are basically useless.

Realistically, the only reason to play this game is to be able to say you played one of the worst Sega Genesis games ever made. Graphically, it's not too bad, just a little too gray for my taste. The music is cool and anyone reading this should go ahead and look up the soundtrack. However, the gameplay is absolute garbage, and it's a short game. Even watching a longplay isn't fun because of what a slog the boss battles are. If nothing else, playing any decent fighting game after playing Heavy Nova will make you appreciate so many little details you might not have cared for before.