Trevor McFur is one
of those great tragedies in the video game world. The screen shots were constantly
alongside the console in advertisements as a sales pitch. There was no logical way this
could be a bad game looking at the pictures. Then it moved. The backgrounds are undeniably beautiful, using every single color from the console's palette. It's awe inspiring, and then you play it only to realize it's flat. There's no depth to these backdrops at all, and you can see some heavy compression too.
Enemies look painted on worse than they did in some FMV games. Foreground objects show the only parallax scrolling in the game, and block the player's view from incoming firepower. That's inexcusable in a shooter where you're regularly overwhelmed.
Actual shooting of this nature was possible on 8-bit hardware. There's nothing here, other than a secondary weapon system, that offers anything in the way of innovation. The player's ship is slow, unwieldy, and the controller is hardly comfortable for this type of game.
Boss battles are even weaker than standard shooting, each one
providing a far too similar battle each time out. Their designs attempt to fit in with the
backgrounds, and they only end up looking worse than the rest of the enemy set. Their
powers are standard fare, and veterans of this genre will have only minor trouble,
especially if they're powered up. The total lack of musical accompaniment doesn't help
matters. If shooting is what you want on the Jaguar, Tevor McFur is not the game you're looking for. Raiden, even with its mistakes, is far more tolerable. McFur is nothing more than an advertisement for faux 64-bit hardware.
