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4 Rating: 4, Useful: 20 / 26
Date: May 20, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Iridion 3-D is one of the few original Majesco games releasing for the US launch of the Game Boy Advance. A spin on the classic side-scrolling shooter, Iridion 3-D puts you in a single ship that must shoot its way through a horde of futuristic environments complete with traps, enemies, and obstacles. We recently had a chance to sit down with a near-final build of the game to see how Iridion 3-D stacks up against the rest of the genre. Iridion 3-D doesn't have much of a storyline. You're a futuristic fighter pilot who must shoot his way through a series of environments in an effort to defend Earth from a horrible enemy invasion. The game doesn't exactly explain who the enemy is, or why you're fighting them, but the lack of details is quickly forgotten when you get into the action of the game. Iridion 3-D plays very similarly to your standard side-scrolling or top-down shooter. You play as a jet, and you must move back and forth and shoot your weapons at the enemies that fly at you. Killing certain enemies will leave power-ups behind, and picking them up will equip your fighter with better weapons. The game currently has at least three types of power-ups, and most of them are slightly different versions of the classic weapon power-ups found in other shooters. Unfortunately, there didn't appear to be any special bombs or missiles in the game, and the secondary button didn't do anything. Additionally, at this point, the control isn't as precise as we would have liked, and we found that the fighter would often float a few millimeters to the left or right after we stopped pressing the D-pad.

The graphics in the game look very good, and the game runs at a very slick frame rate. Unfortunately, there are no alternate view modes, and the behind-the-ship perspective frequently obscures the action and makes it difficult to gauge exactly where incoming fire is headed. The sound is pretty awesome, and it really takes advantage of the GBA's superior sound technology with some hot music and sound effects.

At this point, Iridion 3-D looks like it could be a great game for fans of the genre. With its unique perspective and the classic gameplay that makes shooters such great pick-up-and-play games, Iridion 3-D should balance out the GBA launch lineup swimmingly.

Put out first so people will buy it

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 9 / 9
Date: June 06, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Having bought an import GBA, I was grabbing at any chance I had to get a new game for it. It was too expensive to buy many import games, so I had to wait like anyone else for a new game. So, when Majescos titles hit the sales floor, I grabbed this one, looking to be the most exciting of the bunch (having already played the highly mediocre Pitfall remake and beating Earthworm Jim.) Little did I know I was falling for one of the oldest tricks in the books. People will be lining up for new GBA games even before the system comes out, so if your game is first on the shelf, it will probably sell. Majesco knew it had some mediocre titles, so they put them out extremely early to help guarantee sales, and it shows.

First the good things. I heard that it had incredible scaling effects, but I never expected this. It is gorgeous at first. It will knock your socks off. Then, you start to notice how repetitive the game is. Each level is unique in the flight zone, but never changes. And, from lack of anything better, it has a password function.

And on to the bad. This game is no fun to play. It is extremely difficult and aggrivating. The powerups are non-existant and hardly add any power to your ship. And there is hardly any reward for knocking out fighters, because they still tend to hit you, so all you do is avoid getting hit 90% of the time. There is no fun to it and is too frustrating to be played often, killing the replay value.

So my opinion is to only get this one as a show-off of the insanely good graphics of the system, but dont let the person play more than 2 minutes or theyll get the wrong impression of this great new handheld. Just sit back and wait the wekk until Castlevania and F-Zero come out and catch this one in the clearance racks in a month.

Eye candy

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: June 13, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Pure eye candy. Iridion 3d's graphics are a visual delight. This is one of the only games at release that truly showed off the GBA's graphics processing power. It's actually 3d!

The music is decently standard japanese anime-style. The opening scene started me laughing because the cheap anime and mecha animation, combined with the music, reminded me of, well. . . cheap anime.

The gameplay is where the game falters, unfortunately. It's terribly hard to tell exactly where those enemy projectiles are going on that small screen. Repetetive levels (all 5 of them), generic enemies, and the steep difficulty level make this one frustrating game. There's no continue option! At all! You get a few lives, and when they're gone, that's it! What's more, the password you get after each level saves not only the level you're on, but also the number of lives you have. So if you spend 4 of your 5 lives getting through levels one and two, then get your password and quit, guess what: you only have ONE life left to finish the rest of the game when you input your password to pick the game back up. Talk about difficult.

Iridion 3d would make a great tech demo for the GBA, but it was most certainly NOT worth my hard-earned money. Of all the GBA games I've purchased since getting my import console in early May, this is the only one I regret buying.

More fun than... Nothing

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: July 30, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I got Iridion 3D from amazon.com the other day ..., and thought I'd post a little review of it.

In short for the skimmers, I'm having more fun writing this review than I did playing the game.

The story of the game goes something like this:

Show picture of city
Show picture of battleship
Show 1, no... 2, no.... 3!! blips on a radar screen
Show distressed guy in control room
Show city again
Show UFO over city!
Show 3 evil space ships shooting city!
Show two buildings of the city on fire!!

Yes, that is literally how the introduction cinematic plays out, scene by scene. But before you see that, you watch 20 seconds of logos by the companies that made the game (they are non-skippable of course).

After that you are given a menu with a couple of options:

Start
Options
Password

Yes, that's right, the game has no memory at all. It doesn't save your options settings, and it doesn't save your progress in the levels. When you complete a level you are given a 9 digit code to write down in order to start the game from that level in the future. Amazingly, when you turn the game off and on again, that code still works, so it is obviously hard-coded into the game. But who is going to carry around a pad of paper with them so they can "save" and "load" their game? This may have been acceptable back in the days of the NES when you sat at home and could actually write down numbers, but the GBA is a portable game machine.

So after you press start or enter your password to start where you left off, you enter a level. The level names are quite creative... here are a few of them:

Dogfight above the Ocean
Air Combat above the Clouds
Escape through the Disposal tunnel

Yes, those are the real names of the levels. I think they fit in nicely with the storyline, don't you?

Upon entering a level, you begin moving forwards through the tunnel or over the ocean or above the clouds. You hold down the A button to start shooting, then you move up, down, left and right randomly. Repeat until you finish the game.

By holding the A button down, you reach the maximum firing rate of your ship. You don't even have to tap the shoot button really fast to shoot faster. Just holding down the A button is as fast as you can get. Then you move around, trying not to get shot by the other ships. The only problem with this is, your ship is so big and the angle so wrong, you can't even see the bullets that are coming at you half the time. In order to shoot an enemy ship, you have to position your own ship directly in front of them because of the perspective of the game, but in doing this, you completely block the enemy ship out of view and can't tell if you are hitting him or not, or if he is shooting at you. After 30 seconds of this, you quickly realize that it isn't worth it to try and shoot the other ships, so you just start hiding in a corner of the screen so you can actually see the bullets before they hit you.

However, this raises another problem. The field of depth in the game is completely wrong, and it is quite nearly impossible to tell when a bullet is about to hit you. When a bullet looks it is 300 "game feet" away from you, it is actually about 2 feet in front of your ship, and is about to hit you. Plus because your ship is so big, you don't even see half the bullets before they hit you.

Needless to say, this all makes the game terribly unfun to play, because you really have no way of avoiding a bullet that you can't see, or that looks like it should not hit you for another 2 seconds.

The boss battles are a little more varied, but still revolve around you trying to dodge their bullets while strafing back and forth enough to hit them until they die. But at least they are different, and allow you to see a few more visual tricks and treats.

The game is actually pretty easy once you realize that you should just focus on dodging bullets rather than trying to shoot at anything. I got to the 4th level out of 7 in less than 10 minutes. Sadly I don't think I will beat the game, because it is simply too boring to waste time on.

The one good thing I can comment on about the game is the graphics. They really are quite amazing for a GBA game, especially considering it was a launch title. The framerates are extremely smooth, and the graphics, though they are all 2D bitmaps, really give an excellent illusion of being 3D. Each level is unique, and matches the level description perfectly (Air combat above the clouds, for example).

Overall this is easily the worst GBA game I have played, and I would not recommend it to anyone. If I had payed any more than the [$$] I paid for it, I would consider suing the company that designed it to get my 10 minutes back.

Hard at first...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 8 / 9
Date: July 02, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I was really looking forward to this game, even though all the reviews give this game a low score, so I ordered it. When I got it, it was really disappointing to play it - it was just too hard. Way too hard. So I stopped playing it for a while. Well, my friend came over a few days ago, and when I first turned my GBA on, he was blown away by the loading screen! But then, the game - well, he just loved it! I told him how I wanted to sell it, and he basically said I was crazy. So after he left, I started playing Iridion 3D again, and now I can't stop. The graphics are amazing - so is this sound. Controls are simple - just navigate through, and keep your thumb on the A button. This is a hard game, but I'm getting better. I know if you get this game, you'll be disappointed at first, but you'll get better. I rated this game 4 stars because of the password save. I have a big piece of paper filled up with passwords. It's just so annoying to have to carry paper and a pencil around with you everywhere you go. But other than that, this is a great game. You'll find out it's a great game if you continue to play it - if you stop, you'll want to sell it. I own this game, so I know. People were reviewing this game even before it came out, and they rated it 5 stars just because of how it looks. Then, when it came out, people were reviewing it with low ratings. But I enjoy these kind of games, and if you do, get Iridion 3D. It looks even better than Playstation games!!!

Great Graphics, Terrible Game

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 9 / 11
Date: June 06, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Iridion 3D proves that cliches from the PC market can and will writhe their way into the console world. Iridion 3D sports top of the line, beautiful graphics, but unfortunately the gameplay just isn't enough to keep you entertained. It's fun for one level, but afterwards you'll be wishing you had spent your money on better games, like F-Zero or the fantastic Tony Hawk 2.

Nice Graphics, but the game ... ...

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: June 18, 2001
Author: Amazon User

When I bought the game, I was expecting something akin to Gradius, with some great graphics. And yes, it does have good graphics, however, no matter how good they are (and I've seen much better), it doesn't make up for the high price, terrible play control, and ultra-simplistic gameplay (even though they added in two extra buttons for the GBA, the only button you use the entire game is the A button). The game is also only one-player, which all in all, leaves it a game for sheer boredom. I'll be attempting to sell my copy shortly, to try and get another game (it doesn't matter which I get, it'll be better).

One flaming piece o' crap comeing right up!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 7 / 9
Date: April 22, 2004
Author: Amazon User

If you buy this game your basicly getting ready to buy well, a flaming piece of crap! Although it may sound rude stareing at burning poop is more fun because you might catch on fire ohhh how exciteing. The only thing this game has going for it is graphics. Its not fun you shot at spinning dots for goodness sake! Ill go threw everything in the game and youll see why it sucks so so much

Gameplay 1/10: The game play is painfully bad. There is no saveing system you have to wright down a 'password' witch you get after beating a boss at the end of the level and of course in bad taste loseing to the boss causes you start all over. Also the game is incredibly difficult often takeing 10 or more trys to beat the first level!! Also you have no enemys really in the first level you shoot at spinning dots that change colors what the heck is that!!?? It takes about 2 mintues to die and start all over, gahhh!

Graphics/Music: 8/10 The music is pretty dang annoying but the graphics are very good especcialy for a gameboy. Of course the graphics are dark makeing it hard to see alot of times wow another mistake but theres no surprises there

Fun factor: 0/10 Yes the dreaded zero. Why do i give it zero, well its not a fun game at all not one bit. It feels like you are forceing your self to play it and since its so hard if you want to beat it youll be throwing it at your wall and screaming "Why the heck did i waste my money on THIS!" No wonder it comes free when you buy game boy advances.... Anyone who plays this most likely is forceing them selves to do it or are programers forced to play it.

Storyline: 3/10 The story line is pitiful but at least they tried. And its best jet fighter games dont have storylines no matter what. If its a airplaine fight game its goona suck in the storyline department so dont hold it against the makers.

All in all I think this game is painfully bad and the only good thing about it is its graphics witch simply do not make up a game. I cant believe any company made this much less nintendo. Dont waste your money on this spend it on something else theres so many better games then this, this flaming piece of crap!

This Game not very good

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: June 18, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I own this game and I wish i didn't. After you play it for an hour its sooooooooo boreing! you only get 1 ship, and the graphics are horible! If you want a good game thats similar, get F zero, its so much better.

Peace out

nice try...

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: September 30, 2001
Author: Amazon User

not a very fun game. The day I got it I was so excited, the back makes it look cool like starfox 64. But it turned out horrible. Here is a list of things that bug me:
No saving
1 weapon
slow movement
ship blocks screen
very very slow levels
Extremely hard
confusing weapon upgrades
extreme depth(hard to shoot)
I would say it is not worth the money, buy something like Advance Wars or Castlevania.

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