Retroulette #3: Gods

The pick-o-matic gives us another Genesis game this time, Gods, by the Bitmap Brothers. You know it's by the Bitmap Brothers, because they made sure to put their name fucking everywhere. 

 

It's impossible in this case to look anywhere on the screen and NOT see some Bitmap Brothers action.

Who the hell are these jokers, and why should I care? Was this a selling point? Am I supposed to see that name and think "Oh shit you know this game is going to be awesome."

Next you're given a short clip of what is (presumably) your character gearing up.

Ok that guy looks pretty badass. This game might be pretty cool. Maybe it's going to be about hacking and slashing your way through ancient Greece fighting gods and shit, like a 16-bit God of War. But upon starting the game you're hit with the reality of the situation. The Brothers Bitmap clearly took some artistic liberties in that intro. Not only does your character not resemble that mighty warrior in any way, he also looks like this:

So, an unfathomably muscular gladiatorial Troll doll in a purple leotard. That guy couldn't hack his way through a Carrot Top routine. He moves like a mummy on fast forward and he jumps like a bag of sand. And if you press the up button you're treated to this lovely view:

Gah! His back has a six pack. A backpack if you will. (You will)

Immediately after you take control of your character you're attacked by an enemy, some sort of weird lizard head thing on two legs. But it will hit you, because you don't start out with any way to attack back. The only way to attack in this game is by finding knife power up icons around the level, allowing the character to throw an infinite supply of them that I assume he hides in between his muscles. They stack, so the more you find, the more he throws at once which is pretty cool. Further on in the level I'm attacked by some flying torsos. These flying enemies always hit me. They swoop in out of nowhere and every time I die it's because of these guys.

You little legless bitches.

 When you die, your character explodes into a flurry of screaming souls. This explains a lot about your character's physique . He's clearly a pile of people being held together by the purple leotard.

I found a key on the ground and it took me quite a while to figure out how to get the damn thing. You press down and the action button, and you pick it up, but as soon as you stand up you drop it again. What you have to do is crouch and pick it up, then switch to one of your other inventory slots and then you can stop holding all 10 of those buttons at once. This is a really crappy way to handle the simple video game activity of "Get thing" but it's probably an accurate way of simulating how hard it would be for a man of that build to bend over without exploding.

C'mon key, just give me you.

There's switches all around the level that you have to flip to open doors and turn off traps, and some multi-switch puzzles where you need to figure out the correct combination of switching to proceed. In short, there's a lot of switches in this game. Too much fucking switches. At least 98% of the game is flipping switches, and the other 2% is thinking about what switches to flip. They really could have mixed things up with some button pressing or some dial turning.

The music is the classic assortment of staticy grinding noises you'd expect from the Genesis and the graphics are as generic as can be. But mostly the game is just boring.

HOW MUCH DID THE COVER ART LIE?

By the Bitmap Brothers? You don't say!

I think that guy could just smother that dragon in his pecs. He's got a sword that makes Cloud Strife's look like letter opener and a wrist bracer that a crowd of tourists could walk through. Alas, there's not a single switch in sight, so this box art cannot be said to accurately portray any part of this game.