Caliber Fifty (Genesis) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
130A playthrough of Mentrix's 1991 arcade run-and-gun shooter for the Sega Genesis, Caliber Fifty.
Played through on the normal difficulty level.
This port of the highly regarded Seta coin-op (originally named Cal.50), while heavily compromised in its Genesis rendition, is still more than solid enough to be a fun, if ultimately disposable, early-generation title for Sega's 16-bit home console.
The plot is pretty hilariously nonsensical (if this is the early 70s, why are Tomcats flying around?) but sets up the action well enough by late 80s standards. The game is a top-down run-and-gunner, feeling much like Ikari Warriors and Heavy Barrel - any other rotary dual-stick shooter - but the controls here do a surprisingly good job at adapting them to the 3-button pad (you can choose to have A and C rotate the player in place, or instead have them act as strafing buttons - B shoots in both configurations), so you're likely to find one that suits you. Grenades are thrown by releasing the shoot button, so you'll be holding it down a lot of you don't want to go through your supply before reaching a boss battle.
It plays much, MUCH better than Ikari Warriors ever did on the NES, much like how Cal.50 was way better than the arcade Ikari Warriors in just about every way. The Genesis port is a bit slow-paced and slows down often, but these are ultimately good things. This game is damn hard, and any faster would made dodging bullets in later areas nearly impossible. The bosses tend to be pretty cheap (its barely possible to avoid being run over), but they go down quickly if you grenade spam them.
Overall it's fun, but it will have you sweating. Caliber Fifty doesn't compare to the fantastic Mercs, but if you've finished that and want something similar, this isn't a bad option.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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