Who run the world?!
Apparently it’s this guy! That’s very disappointing.
3D WorldRunner (also known by its full title, The 3D Battles of WorldRunner) was released by Square (yes, that Square) in 1987. It’s heavily inspired by the excellent 1985 Sega game Space Harrier – both are early “rail shooters” in which you play as a cool space guy making his way through 3D levels, dodging enemies and defeating cool bosses. It also originally came packaged with 3D glasses, though I sadly don’t have those.
This game definitely lives up to its name, as you mostly spend a lot of time running. There’s a lot of stuff to dodge and a bunch of pits that you’ll need to jump over, too, and it can get quite frantic. You can’t fight the enemies for much of the game – it’s all about just avoiding them. That’s still decently fun, if a bit unintuitive. The more Space Harrier-esque parts, where you can fly and shoot stuff, is reserved for the boss fights. These are probably my favorite part of the game – they’re fast-paced and pretty exciting.
I wish more of the game was like the above. The other parts are totally fine, but this is where 3D WorldRunner really shines. There are a total of eight worlds, so the game can be completely fairly quickly with a bit of practice. The amount of obstacles can get pretty intense, and it’s enjoyable enough that there’s a decent amount of replay value in trying to get farther and farther along, beat your high score and so forth. It has the feel of a solid arcade game, in that regard.
3D WorldRunner is a solid game, and if you like and/or you’re looking for the best possible release in this genre, I can’t recommend Space Harrier enough. It’s a legit classic. There are a handful of different console ports of it, though the most faithful is, somewhat surprisingly, the one for the 32X. There’s a solid port (with 3D imaging) for the 3DS as well. It also has a truly bizarre and delightful attract screen! Just look at this:
Awesome. While 3D Worldrunner’s legacy is that of a passable Space Harrier rip off, its creators didn’t really suffer from it – the next game by its core team, including programmer Nasir Gebelli and composer Nobuo Uematsu, was Final Fantasy.
Next week’s going to be our fourth straight NES game, and it’s a shoot-em-up I know very little about. Is it good? I look forward to finding out.