Launch is one of the most important periods for any video game console. This basically sets the tone for how the market will receive this hardware both now and in the future. Unfortunately this was one of the first nails in the coffin for the Atari Jaguar. The console launched with both a pack-in title Cybermorph, and a scrolling shooter Trevor McFur in the Crescent Galaxy. It strikes me as odd that Atari was banking entirely on sci-fi shooters for the entire line-up, and bad ones at that. Despite the fact that the system was capable of 3D graphics (even Cybermorph proves this) Trevor McFur in the Crescent Galaxy is entirely two dimensional. What’s worse is the fact that the developers tried to copy the Star Fox motif to some extent by making all of the characters anthropomorphic animals. This was okay in Star Fox, but here the developers were lazy and just copied and pasted real life-animals (in this case it’s all wild cats) heads over human bodies. If that isn’t unsettling enough this is also one of the most uninspired video games I’ve played. Today I’m here to tell you about it.
Far away across the vast reaches of space exists the Crescent Galaxy. The story begins with its downfall at the hands of a maniac named Odd-it. His motivation? He wants to make everything weird like he is. Trevor McFur is one of the last standing pilots in this galaxy, and along with his gal pal (or romance interest I guess. Who knows?) Cutter to defeat this odd nemesis. What’s really off-putting about all of this is the fact that Trevor McFur is a jaguar (har har har), Cutter is a lynx, and General Patton (with whom you correspond between each level) is a lion. It’s very unsettling especially with the realistic in-game art work. With that aside let’s move on to the gameplay. As I previously stated this is a two dimensional horizontal scrolling shooter. Enemies approach from off-screen and attack, and you blow them up with your basic dot shaped shot. They leave behind power-ups that increase the size and strength of each individual blast with the most upgraded form being a very fitting crescent wave. Your ship can only take one hit before you lose a life, but you can continue from where you’ve left off but your shot goes back to its initial form each time.
The way that the stages are divided is unique. Every level takes place on one of four moons, and you can select the order in which you tackle them. Thematically they’re pretty weird and it’s hard to decipher what the developers were going for with some of them. The only one that’s common for this genre and obvious is the forest stage. Each level is composed of two separate stages. One takes place above the atmosphere of the moon with meteorites and space debris as the major hazards, and the secondary is right on the surface where an army of enemies is blocking the way to a large boss awaiting at the end. Unfortunately none of the hazards are particularly interesting in my opinion. Enemies share the same patterns and are typically very easy to predict and dodge. There are very few environmental obstacles as well. Unfortunately this makes the whole experience mindless. To make matters worse the boss characters are offensively simple and far too similar to one another. They move and shoot in almost the same exact way, and it just makes the whole experience boring. This is obviously a game made by people with no passion for this release.
There are a few decent things Trevor McFur in the Crescent Galaxy has going for it however. The first is that the difficulty is just about right. This isn’t an overbearing shooter, and despite the fact that your ship can only take one hit before you lose a life it’s very forgiving by letting you continue where you left off. In addition spare lives are not difficult to come by, and even losing all of your power-ups because they’re frequently dropped by enemies. Even with the standard firepower even the bosses aren’t particularly hard. Easily the best part of this game is the power-up aspect. You can gain access to several secondary weapons, and switch between them on the fly. These include standard attacks such as a linear laser shot, circling orb, and more. Beyond this things get a little more interesting. There’s a magnet tool that sucks all enemies in as well as an item that summons Cutter’s A.I. controlled ship to assist you in battle. I found these unique and kind of cool. The game constantly throws these tools your way thus encouraging you to use them frequently.
Atari was boasting 64-bits of power in the Jaguar console, but unfortunately Trevor McFur in the Crescent Galaxy fails to show this off. Truth be told this title, for the most part, looks like a mid-range 16-bit title most of the time. In some ways it doesn’t even match what developers were pulling off on the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo during the same time period. One example of this is in the parallax scrolling. At most there’s a single layer in the background, and one in the foreground. It just looks cheap in comparison to the Thunder Force titles. In addition this isn’t a particularly colorful game. It looks bland in this respect, and the scenery lacks significant details. The stages all look like something slapped together by an artist in mere minutes, and it’s all very sloppy. The style is also very weird with realistically designed anthropomorphic characters copied and pasted over human bodies. The enemy designs are also very weird with floating eyeballs, spiders, and more. Nothing really makes sense here, and this is not a good thing. To make matters worse the soundtrack is virtually non-existent. Music plays only during certain story scenes, but not during gameplay. That makes the game feel unfinished in my opinion, and makes the entire package even stranger.
