The Turbografx-16 (PC-Engine in Japan) was a niche console in the western world, but it had its fair share of hits. In retrospect it’s revered for its shooter games which was a highly popular genre in its heyday. Titles like Star Soldier, Aero Blasters, Air Zonk, etc are frequently mentioned on the best of lists, but because of the sheer number of these you’ve got several that can be classified as hidden gems. Deep Blue does not fit into this category. It’s rarely mentioned, hasn’t been ported to any other system, but there’s a good reason for these. Deep Blue kinda stinks. Let’s take a look!
Deep Blue has no introductory sequence. You get an endless title screen, and are then thrown right into the action. Deep Blue sets itself apart from the pack immediately. Most shooters have you flying through space shooting down alien ships, or gliding over realistic landscapes in wartime. That’s not the case with Deep Blue. In this case you play as a ship, but the setting here is in the ocean. That’s where the title of this game comes into play. It’s admittedly unique, and I had high hopes that the developers would take proper advantage of this motif.
Unfortunately the potential is squandered. Yeah it’s cool floating through the sea instead of outer space as per the usual, but Deep Blue is pretty badly designed. So this is a side scrolling shooter. You can move in all directions, and fire. That’s the extent of controls here. Your cute little ship can take a lot of hits before you lose a life, and take a lot of hits it will. Every stage has an onslaught of incoming foes that you must deal with. Every once in a while a sunfish scrolls onto the screen, and destroying it will leave you with a weapon pick up. This is however where Deep Blue falls on its face.
Shooters live and die by the arsenals that they offer. Deep Blue has very little to offer in this regard. You begin with just the simple dot (I have no idea it’s actual name, but that’s what I’ll call it) shot, and you’ll find several different power-ups that change it. Unfortunately these are all pretty much the same thing. Some weapons fire through enemies, and some don’t. Others seem slightly more powerful, but that’s just my best guess to be honest. It’s not significant enough to notice either way. That’s about the extent of the strategy here. Just get a weapon you prefer slightly to the others and have at it.
Deep Blue certainly could have used a little more variety. You can power up your weapon one time by collecting the same color weapon, but touching any others (or taking damage) brings it back down to its most basic form. This system is very basic, and it’s not compelling in the least. Most other shooters on the Turbografx have more to offer than Deep Blue. Even the enemy patterns are pretty basic and offer little variety. There are pretty much no environmental elements, and just an onslaught of oncoming enemies. I suppose Deep Blue is unusual in that you won’t really have to worry about projectiles. Enemies just shoot other fish or sea creatures your way. These can be destroyed with a well placed shot which is nice.
As you can probably tell by now Deep Blue’s biggest weakness is that it is unremarkable in just about every way. Everything from the level designs (they’re all exactly the same and have almost no elements you can interact with) to the enemies (they’re all based on sea creatures which is cool, but the designs are so boring) are all stale. They had a cool nautical theme going but failed to take advantage of it in any meaningful way. I would almost venture to guess that the unique motif was thought up as a means to make Deep Blue more interesting after the fact.
Deep Blue is a very ugly game. It has, what I like to call, the Turbografx jank. Graphics that look like something you could draw in paint. A few solid colors with mostly white pixels thrown in to give the appearance of textures. It’s certainly not pretty. The visuals are so poor it’s borderline offensive. What’s more is that the enemies are extremely boring. They look surprisingly realistic for the most part, but who wants to be shooting realistic looking fish and squid? In this case more cartoon style visuals would have done the game a lot of favors. The soundtrack is also pretty awful. It’s definitely a product of its time, and actually sounds like something you’d find in an early Genesis game. There are lots of weird high pitched notes that don’t seem to fit.
