Genre: 2d platformer
Developer: Realtime Associates
Publisher: Sega

Starting with the 3DO and Jaguar in 1993 and moving on to the Saturn and PlayStation in 1994, the next wave of home consoles consoles could freely scale and rotate high resolution, texture-mapped triangles or quads in 3d space, something the 16-bit predecessors could only dream of. Bug! is seemingly a game designed just to show off those capabilities, with quad-based navigable platforms and astonishingly well animated SGI pre-rendered sprites. Some of the game's scenes, such as the armies of grasshoppers leaping towards the player from the background, beggar belief. The only fly in the ointment is that the stage aesthetics, while pleasing to the eye, aren't particularly memorable.

Like a lot of Saturn games, all of the music in Bug! is supplied compliments of the system's DSP, and the chip characteristically delivers ultra high quality samples. Compositionally, the tunes sound like they came straight out of a Saturday morning cartoon, and that's no bad thing, as they fit the game's overarching movie theme well. The sound effects are likewise impressive in quality, with various wacky cartoon-inspired samples playing when enemies are hit. The lead character occasionally throws out quippy one-liners, vaguely reminiscent of the 3DO's "Gex". The "Buuuuug Juuice!" sound effect is particularly amusing. Nothing aurally in Bug! is going to blow anyone away, but it gets the job done.

The premise in Bug! is that the player moves along two-dimensional edges not just left-to-right, but foreground-to-background! Otherwise, the gameplay is standard platforming fare: jump on enemies to kill them. Crouching is accomplished with the shift buttons. Some levels dole out powerups, which let the player zap enemies with electricity, or spit at them. The levels are positively massive in scope, and feature a nice blend of exploration and tricky platforming bits.

Bug! has one major problem: it is way too stingy with doling out extra lives, to the point where every last jump feels like the end of the world: "If I miss this one, I won't even be able to finish the game!" Which is a shame, because the level secrets are almost always designed around risk taking-- risks the player will essentially never attempt, because the game is so unforgiving. At least it has the best save system this reviewer has ever seen, which lets the player load from any completed world: lost too many continues in world two? Go try it again, without starting the whole game over! Even with the unnecessary tension, Bug! is a fun twist on the traditional 2d platforming formula.