Hayato's Journey Longplay (Sega Genesis) [Homebrew] [2024]

Game Info
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Developer: Master Linkuei
Year of Release: 2024
Download: https://master-linkuei.itch.io/hayato...

Game Review & Impressions
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One of the most prominent homebrew developers for the Genesis in recent years, Master Linkuei (  / masterlinkueibr  ) has finally released Hayato's Journey for the classic Sega console. Powered by Erik Hogan's (Earok) Scorpion Engine, the game is a love letter to the classic Shinobi arcade and home console releases, plus a few sprinkles of Ninja Gaiden for good measure.

You must hack and slash through multiple levels of non-stop action, rescuing hostages and taking down end-of-level guardians before proceeding to the next zone. It's all remarkably impressive, runs almost flawlessly, and aside from some ill-fitting and occasionally unaligned level scenery tiles, you wouldn't necessarily know this wasn't an original title. It also has some suitably fitting music by Edmo Caldas, which sounds really cool.

What makes the game even more interesting is the way combines assets from other classic games and repackages them into a a new form which, if you weren't familiar with the source material to begin with, you probably wouldn't realise. Some backgrounds are clearly taken from Revenge of Shinobi and Shinobi III on the Genesis, while others -- and I can't be 100% sure about this -- look similar to The Astyanax. Leave comments if you recognise which games the sprites and other art assets are from - it would be cool to figure it all out.

Overall, this is a really solid release and a lot of fun. My only complaint is the collision detection on some of the bosses feels a little bit off, but this is seriously impressive stuff - definitely worth checking out.

Information & Trivia
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Developed using Earok's Scoprion Engine

Chapters
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TBC