Decided over the weekend to treat myself to a copy of Ex-Ranza for the Mega Drive (also known as Ranger X abroad) after a January spent working more late nights than I would've liked. It's an expensive game to get these days that pretty much always invites competition when it shows up on Yahoo Auctions, one I should've bought a few years ago when it was slightly less expensive, but ever since I first played it a few years ago and immediately fell in love with it, I knew deep down I was going to end up getting it sooner or later as I slowly build up my collection of Mega Drive clamshell cases here in Japan. It does a lot of neat things in terms of both gameplay and presentation (I'm a giant sucker for the lo-fi polygonal stage briefings in particular), but if I had to describe the experience in a sentence, it's simply A Cool Robot game that's quintessentially Mega Drive in its sound, looks, and feel and I love it to bits.
I'm going to hold off on actually playing this copy until my Model 1 SCART cable arrives that I ordered from the UK, but even just looping the title screen demo and hearing the Yamaha chip do its thing puts me in my happy place. Cool ass game that's quite possibly my actual favorite Mega Drive game, play it however you can and make sure you're playing with the 6-button controls like God intended. π