Space Gun got some polarising reviews. Is it good or bad?

[dangreen]

I was browsing some old Sega mags. Sega Power gave it 70% which is a not bad score.
Mean Machines Sega however gave it  16%!!!!

I have never played it so to all of you that have, which review is right?

Also are there any other Master System games that anyone remembers getting very polarising reviews from magazines back in the day?
There were always games  that got either positive reviews (Wonderboy 3) or negative reviews (Back To The Future 2) the same from every magazine  at the time, but it's the games that get mixed scores that strike my interest. 

[Transatlantic Foe]

While it's considerably stripped down from the arcade, it's honestly not a bad game. While not many aliens are on screen at once, they do take a lot of damage -particularly late on things can get hectic. Bosses have some unavoidable attacks which is a bit cheap but on the whole it's not too difficult.

I mostly remember games that got horrible reviews in spite of actually being quite good. Which I thought is where Space Gun fit in, because that 70% score is honestly the first time I've seen a positive review for it!

[Stan]

I really enjoyed it.

[ian]

I've always quite liked it. There's some good graphics with some scary-looking aliens. That coupled with the eerie music makes for a creepy atmosphere. I reckon playing it with the lights off would make for a fun experience.

Plus, it contributes a proper light phaser game to the library, which helps make it superior to the NES Zapper library

[jay86]

I had it as a kid, I thought it was brilliant at the time. It was reminiscent of things like Alien or Space Hulk in how it looked and felt. Never managed to play it with a working phaser though which sucks. Played a bit like T2 arcade.

[ShadowAngel]

I don't like it at all. Boring graphics, snail pace, not enough action, way too easy. The Arcade version already wasn't that great to begin with but all those home ports are just bad (The C64 is even worse than the MS version)

[lambrettadave]

I put a review of the game on the main site

www.smstributes.co.uk/viewuserreview.asp?gameid=317&userreviewid=1571

[BobSega]

I bought it even though I'd seen the bad reviews. I thought the arcade game was really impressive so I took a chance. I'd played worse, but the SMS version was a real drag. I did almost complete it. I died at the final boss, accidentally destroying the base(I think it was a neat idea for a final challenge, a bit like in Operation Thunderbolt, where you have to avoid killing the pilot while trying to kill the enemy leader in the cockpit).

But on the overall idea of polarized opinions of games. Well I like Altered Beast for SMS, as well as for Gen/MD and arcade. It has some problems with it so I don't blame people for hating it, but I just like too many things about it to call it a bad game or a bad conversion. I was reading the article for Altered Beast on Wikipedia Japan recently (the Japanese title of the game translates to something like "Beast King Chronicles" so I understand). I don't read Japanese, but Google translated the page and it seemed to say that opinion of Altered Beast was overall, quite divided.

[lambrettadave]

Nov 17, 2017 8:40:47 GMT BobSega said:

I bought it even though I'd seen the bad reviews. I thought the arcade game was really impressive so I took a chance. I'd played worse, but the SMS version was a real drag. I did almost complete it. I died at the final boss, accidentally destroying the base(I think it was a neat idea for a final challenge, a bit like in Operation Thunderbolt, where you have to avoid killing the pilot while trying to kill the enemy leader in the cockpit).

But on the overall idea of polarized opinions of games. Well I like Altered Beast for SMS, as well as for Gen/MD and arcade. It has some problems with it so I don't blame people for hating it, but I just like too many things about it to call it a bad game or a bad conversion. I was reading the article for Altered Beast on Wikipedia Japan recently (the Japanese title of the game translates to something like "Beast King Chronicles" so I understand). I don't read Japanese, but Google translated the page and it seemed to say that opinion of Altered Beast was overall, quite divided.

I think personally the bad reviews of altered beast is that it seamed to be very limited in moves and poor graphics and animation and reviewers probably though our money be better spent on a better quality game to get value for money.
However I do play this game on sms and megadrive too and can look over some of the earlier reviews of the game and it's short comings.
To be honest I have trouble in finding what some folk call some games "The Bad Games" on the system.