Retro Review: Somer Assault [Turbo Grafx 16]

This is probably one of the few games with such a bizarre premise to make it state side, especially back in 1993 when most of the weirder Japanese titles stayed over in the land of the rising sun. However with the Turbo Grafx 16, having very little 3rd party support in the US market, Atlus brought this eccentric game to us. Somer Assault (AKA Mesopotamia) is an action title where you play as a sacred slinky like creature with guns mounted on it that hatches from a pink polka-dotted egg dropped by god.. bear with me.. it sounds very odd but the game plays surprisingly well.

The graphics are very nice, with color mixing used very nicely with the Turbo Grafx 16’s 512 color palette used to create a vibrant world with a mythological theme, as the design of the game follows the Astrological Zodiac for each level and it’s boss character which are a mechanical manifestation of their respective animals/figures. The animation of the slinky is pretty fluid however the enemies have only a few frames of animation and the bosses are pretty static but it doesn’t detract much from the presentation. While a late contender in the US on the cartridge media, the graphics actually show just how much the TG-16 could compete with the much more powerful SNES and the Genesis back when NEC was a contender in the 16-Bit War.

This game came out late in the era of the Turbo Chip (AKA Hucard), the credit card sized cards that they stored their games on before the Turbo CD, so it had the space limitations of any other cartridge media. Hence forth you wouldn’t expect much in the sound department but surprisingly Somer Assault’s soundtrack is steller and very catchy. The sound effects are clever but not all too impressive.

What sets this game apart from a lot of other action platformers from the early 16-bit days is that gravity works very differently, in that there is none. You move along the tops and bottoms of the platforms only jumping to attach to another surface. You start out with one set of turrets and rather slow but killing the enemies which include Knight Chess Pieces, Spiked Lanterns and other odd contraptions yield power-ups to increase your speed, make your bullets ricochet, increase your max vitality, give an extra life and increase your turrets to a set of 3 for killing on the move. There is also an negative power-up that reverses directions as well. The only thing about this game that is especially irritating is the timer, in the later levels you’ll find yourself losing lives to it because the developers gave you just barely enough time to get to the boss chamber in each level, it starts to make the game lose it’s appeal as it’s such a trivial way to lose a life when some key factors in the game play is finding your way through a maze with blocks that either teleport you, expand a bridge or flip you to the otherside. So more time is required to traverse the levels then is provided. Also you lose your gun and speed upgrades when you die..

The game has some replay, it’s fun, it’s challenging and the music is good. But once you beat it there isn’t much else to do but play through again. But then again, that was how most of the games from the early 90’s were.

Somer Assault is one of those obscure treasures from the golden age of gaming and if you ever find a copy at a flea market or online you could probly snap it up pretty cheap. So I would say keep an eye out for it if your looking for a bizarre but good time.