Today I’m here to talk about a little game called Panorama Cotton. If you’ve read my review of Fantastic Night Dreams Cotton for the Turbografx CD then you already know that I’m not a big fan of this franchise. That was just the first installment, but it set a bad tone for what would bloom into an entire series of shoot’em ups. Oh wait I stand corrected; ‘cute’em ups’ is what I meant to say. After the arcade release and home port the developer Success sought other avenues of release for the sequels. They began to stray away from the arcade market and instead focused on the two major home consoles of the time; the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis.
They started with an SNES release that was poorly received (I haven’t played it but I have a tough time imagining it being worse than the original) and then moved on to the Sega Genesis (or Mega Drive as it’s known in Japan). Neither of these were released outside of Japan. The Genesis game is the topic of today’s review. It was no easy task but I procured an expensive copy of the game because it looked different from every other Cotton game in the best way possible. I was surprised to find that I actually enjoyed this title, Panorama Cotton, quite a bit actually.
I honestly can’t make heads or tails of the story here. What I do know is that you play as a magical pink haired witch named Cotton who is assisted by a fairy. You’re out to defeat some bad guy and that’s as much as I was able to make out here. As I mentioned earlier Cotton doesn’t play like the other games in the franchise. Previous installments were all horizontal shooters, and this one is a behind the back view 3D shooting game. Think Space Harrier, but with cutesy characters and a highly colorful palette. A game of this type is pretty darn ambitious for the Sega Genesis. Many developers (even Sega themselves) failed to get an engine that can support this type of play up and running on the archaic (and even then) underpowered hardware.
While they didn’t exactly succeed with this title Panorama Cotton fares significantly better than most other efforts. You play by guiding Cotton who flies on her broom all around the screen dodging incoming enemies, projectiles and obstacles. You fire back by shooting small magical bursts in succession destroying everything in your path. Well, not everything but you do often need to clear a path in order to progress. Some might call this game a Space Harrier rip-off, and while it looks similar Panorama Cotton has enough pizzazz to be considered its own thing. It’s infused with its own personality.
I’ll start things off by mentioning your speed. By pressing the C button you can switch between slow, medium and fast. This not only affects who quickly you can whip around the screen but also your speed for completing the stage in question. This comes in to play with the scoring system; how quickly you complete a level is one of the factors that determines how many bonus points you’re awarded at the end. Next up Panorama Cotton makes use of an RPG-like experience points system. As you defeat enemies an experience meter at the top of the screen slowly fills. When it reaches max you gain a level which improves the power of your basic shot. It’s a pretty cool system, and honestly I didn’t really mind that you don’t power-up in the typical way.
Cotton also comes equipped with secondary attacks. These are her magical spells, and are acquired by touching various colored scrolls in each stage. I really like that you can stockpile a few of these and have an inventory of them because they’re pretty helpful. What’s also cool is the fact that by shooting the scrolls as they approach from the background you change their color and thus the spell you gain from it. These offer a variety of different effects such as shooting flames forward and having electricity circle around your character. They’re pretty common and not as debilitating as bombs are in other similar shooters, but I found myself really enjoying the magic system here.
My favorite aspect of this game is the level design. The developers put a lot of work into keeping things exciting at all times; you’re going to have enemies flying in at you from all directions constantly. Things get hectic right away, and they stay that way until the end. The developers did an awesome job at making some very inventive stages with fun obstacles and enemies. Most of the time you’ll be flying forward through corridors or narrow paths on wide open landscapes, but every once in a while the dynamic switches and the screen scrolls left or right which makes it feel more like a horizontal shooter or shooting gallery to be honest. It’s a nice change up.
In other stages you can choose routes by either going above or below the current track. The sections you can switch planes is indicated with flashing arrows either up or down. There isn’t a huge amount of variety between the different routes but it’s a nice change nonetheless. I also really enjoyed the boss fights especially the very final one where he’s running and jumping atop floating platforms. It’s quite exciting and I was surprised that the developers were able to create such an illusion of depth this way. The programmers were on-point here with some real tech wizardry.
The graphics are intense. That’s the best way to put it. The game has a bright colorful aesthetic that looks amazing even today, and the art style is on point. It’s a cutesy game but I really did not mind it because of the wide range of enemy designs and different fantastical terrain. With that said there are some issues. The resolution seems lower than in your typical Mega Drive game. Things look very blocky, and even moreso in the indoor area. Also this game is perhaps a bit too colorful in some sections. I found myself actually getting headaches while playing for extended periods of time. The screen often flashes, and the colorful terrain moving is a bit nauseating. This is one of those rare cases with the Genesis hardware where the backgrounds actually scroll in a smooth fashion. I was really impressed with this.
Unfortunately the same doesn’t hold true for the incoming objects, enemies and projectiles. They pop in and animate with a very low frame rate. The scaling for these is not smooth at all, and I found myself absolutely struggling with it at first. Pair this with the fact that there’s so much going on at once and you have a convoluted mess of a play area. The screen is just too busy for its own good making it tough to dodge enemies and attacks. It adds a lot of artificial difficulty to the game. The soundtrack is also a little too busy in my opinion. The Genesis sound chip was put through the ringer here, and while it sounds better than most games on the platform there isn’t any music that I would listen to outside of the game. At least you don’t have the typical screeching effects.
Panorama Cotton is, as of this point, the only good game I’ve played in the franchise. The move to 3D is just what the series needed; some may call it a Space Harrier clone but that’s really not a bad thing in my opinion. I just wish the cartridge wasn’t so expensive because the price of entry will steer a lot of gamers away from this release. Still, if you’re into importing Mega Drive games this is a decent choice.
