Deep Blue

The underwater theme is a cool idea for a shoot 'em up when it was common for games in its genre to be in space or in the sky for the time. Developed by Hi-Score Media Work and published by Pack-In-Video in Japan and NEC in North America on 1989 and 1990 respectfully for the TurboGrafx-16/PC-Engine, Deep Bluemis just that. So, in the year 2016, a hostile alien presence has descended upon the Earth's waters. Using their own bacteria, the aliens have infected and mutated numerous deep sea and marine life forms causing them to enlarge and to follow every alien command. The aliens use their infected marine life to attack the shores of the Earth's continents, initiating an invasion from the deep. Alone, players control the Earth's only defense against the attack, the A.N.G.E.L. Fish Attack Sub. All three weapons suck. They do an awful job of killing enemies on the screen. Your default weapon uses tiny bullets that don't do a lot of damage. The two weapons that you can replace it with only allow you to shoot one bullet on the screen at a time. Powering up your weapon only make the size of the bullets slightly bigger and deal more damage, but not increase the firing rate. Every time you get hit by an enemy (some of which use decent sprites), you cannot move for a few seconds and you lose your power-ups and speed boosts. Because enemies usually crowd the screen, it makes it practically impossible to not get hit. While you're stunned, you can't collect any power-ups, speed boosts, or health. These enemies are ruthless in trying to hit you. Some enemies are so small that they make it extremely difficult to hit them. They also move very fast when you move as slow as a snail. Some enemies also move erratically and when combined with the the amount of enemies crowding up the screen makes it very frustrating to get through. In the fourth level, there are enemies that fall from the top of the screen. Because you have no way of defending yourself and not be fast enough to avoid these enemies before they make contact with you, you will not only be guaranteed to get hit but also get a game over. You only have one life with no way of getting more. Instead of the game asking if you would like to continue when you lose your life, you have to press I and start on the title screen like in Super Mario Bros. Because of this, points are completely pointless. The game doesn't even save your high scores like most shoot 'em ups. The music and sound effects are bad to the point that you should mute the volume. No, really, you must. The backgrounds are boring to look at. They don't have many colors and the colors that are used are bland. They don't look like you are in the ocean. There are only four levels in the entire game. The game can completed in under 20 minutes as shown by the gameplay video by World of Longplays posted below. But because of the high difficulty, it will take much longer to complete for some people. Also, on the fourth level, there are pillars that are on the foreground. They obscure your view of your ship and the enemies which makes it harder to focus on staying alive. When you beat the game, the words "Next" appear and the game crashes. Because of this, there is no ending to speak of. There are no credits either. Its like the developers were ashamed to put in their names when the game is over because they knew how terrible this game is. The credits aren't even listed on the game manual either! This is one of the hardest games for the TurboGrafx ever. If you're into hard games, then don't even play this.