Of the many games Sega published in 1992, the company brought out two horizontal-scrolling shoot-'em-ups for the Sega Genesis. One of them was Lightning Force, which already had a fan base hungrily awaiting its release. The other was Bio-Hazard Battle. Bio-Hazard Battle didn't sell very well, and many shooter fans missed an opportunity to play a game they probably would've enjoyed. The game apes the formula laid out by Gradius and R-Type with generally solid results, and its creepy-crawly creatures give the game an atmosphere that's quite different from typical futuristic shoot-'em-ups. Now that Bio-Hazard Battle is available for the Wii's Virtual Console, perhaps more shooter fans will take the time to discover its finer points.
As happens in every shoot-'em-up, enemies fly onto the screen in small groups from all directions. It's your job to dodge their bullets and shoot them down as you guide your ship to the boss at the end of each of the game's eight horizontally scrolling stages. You have four ships to pick from, each with its own weapon capabilities and flight speed. The main gameplay twist is that your ship itself is only capable of shooting forward with bullets or a thicker charged shot. Any weapon orbs that you collect are used by the helper pod that's always following close by, chained to your ship by some invisible force. The pod doesn't stay fixed in one spot. Instead, when you push a direction on the controller, it moves and focuses its fire in the opposite direction, as if it's being dragged by your ship. This goofy setup forces you to constantly reposition your ship to aim the pod's weapons, but it's not as annoying as it sounds, because you can rely on homing and spread weapons to cover a significant portion of the screen with deadly firepower. The first couple levels are easy, but the rest will keep you on your toes with tricky enemy patterns, tunnel sections, backward-scrolling sections, and larger enemies that (for lack of a better term) "give birth" to smaller offspring that join their mommies in attacking you.
What distinguishes Bio-Hazard Battle from other shoot-'em-ups is its menagerie of gross organic beasts. Gradius and R-Type feature spaceships and robots. In Bio-Hazard Battle, the hero's ship and all of the enemies are mutated insects, amphibians, and other creepy crawlies. One boss is a snake that juts out of the carcass of some petrified beast. Another looks like a giant space battleship at first, until you start blasting away pieces of the hull and reveal the organs and tentacles underneath.
Bio-Hazard Battle allows two players to play simultaneously. That's major when you consider that the majority of 16-bit shoot-'em-ups, including Gradius and R-Type, only offer solo play. You'll notice some sprite flicker and slowdown while playing cooperatively, but the action doesn't bog down long enough to compromise gameplay.
Except for the first two levels, which don't do much graphically, the game otherwise does a good job of flaunting the Genesis console's ability to push multilayered backdrops, loads of sprites, and various distortion effects. The fins and wings on the shiplike creatures flap as they fly through the air, and there are wiggling globs and bendy insects all over the place. Accompanying those organic visuals are some generic shooter sound effects and a thumping soundtrack that's often unsettling, much like how the graphics are. The Virtual Console emulates the game without any problems, though you may want to play using a Classic Controller or GameCube controller, since the rapid-fire function is mapped to the A button on the Wii Remote, which is too close for comfort to the directional pad.
If you like shoot-'em-ups, Bio-Hazard Battle is worth checking out. It's a good alternative to Gradius and R-Type, it offers the rarely seen two-player option, and the quirky visuals and challenging stages further justify the 800 Wii points ($8) that it costs to download.
