The game is essentially broken up into two primary game types. There is a puzzle solving section where you get an overhead view and must push these large blocks or use bombs to blow them up to find the right doorway. And then once upon entering one of those doorways, you are treated, or mistreated, to a platforming section where you collect various items and whatnot while avoiding enemies, and if you get hit by them, you lose oxygen (which acts like a life bar). Dash Galaxy is basically a tale of two games, the puzzle section is actually pretty clever, but not particularly compelling - but, I must say, if that were the entire game, it might actually be a good game.

     The platforming sections, where the game turns into a traditional side-scroller, is horrible. The controls are clumsy and terribly sluggish. The jumping is awkward and unresponsive. What I don't like is how Dash actually moves: first when you press forward he just walks, then after a few seconds he'll then jog, and then with enough room, he'll run. Why? What's the point of that? Trying to make a jump from one platform to the other becomes very annoying if you don't leave yourself enough room to charge up your running - which you just shouldn't have to do in the first place. In any good game like Mega Man or Castlevania for instance, you can just jump from one platform to another without any issue, but in Dash Galaxy you are subject to this trial and error like experience, and how could a platforming section of a game be messed up when it is such a simple fundamental of NES games of the time? You'd think by 1990 when this game came out, developers wouldn't make such awful games, but, this here stands as an example of poor execution. And another quick note, unless you somehow find some bombs, there seems to be no way to fight oncoming enemies in these platforming sections, so trying avoid them with these horrid controls is not fun.

     I give the game a little credit when you jump and float in the air a little bit, as to imply perhaps a sense of gravity, because it apparently takes place in Outer Space somewhere, but, it's unnecessary, and it doesn't make the game fun. Since the control is already so busted as it is, having any other additions is simply superfluous.

     The music is the game isn't bad either actually, so I certainly give it that. However, that won't salvage this game. The graphics are a coin toss too. On the puzzle sections, they are clear and vivid, and on the platforming sections, they are hideous, and Dash himself looks practically like a glorified stick figure - there's no excuse for that.

     So as fate would have it, I was somehow destined to play Dash Galaxy in the Alien Asylum, and I must say, what a disappointment it was. If only this game existed as a puzzle game, it would have been good, otherwise, it's a disaster. Before receiving this game by accident, I had never heard of it. Frankly, I was better off because sometimes ignorance is bliss.

-Kurt L.

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