Uploaded May 2026 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Hellfire is one I never really had that much experience with, never saw it back in the day, never rented the Genesis version, but seemed to remember that it carried a reputation of being a hard game. And it sure is!
There are two main arcade versions of this, one is a 1-player version which sends you back to a checkpoint on death, the other is a 2-player version with no checkpoints. You might think the 2-player version is easier, but that version also nerfs your firing rate which makes it a lot harder to kill certain enemies, so it's actually harder overall. So I played the 1-player version here.
A lot of this game feels.... padded? The screen always moves slowly, some enemy patterns get repeated more times than are necessary. At least it gives you more time to listen to the music, I do like this game's soundtrack a lot.
Encountered a "fun" glitch on the 5th boss at 29:37 - apparently when the boss is dead, a lingering hitbox remains! As it takes a few seconds for the game to fully acknowledge a death, it's possible to get taken to the intermission scene between stages after this happens, which made me think that maybe it prevented that death... but then when the next stage started, a glitchy animation played out and then it finally took that life from me. Weird stuff.
Didn't get very far into loop 2, died just before the boss on stage 1. The loop is kinda interesting because besides the usual things like enemies firing more bullets at you, it actually ADDS enemies that weren't there in loop 1, which is a nasty surprise. I don't know if I'm going to try to push for a score that gets farther.
Got this in one attempt on stream so no full VOD necessary
Hellfire is one I never really had that much experience with, never saw it back in the day, never rented the Genesis version, but seemed to remember that it carried a reputation of being a hard game. And it sure is!
There are two main arcade versions of this, one is a 1-player version which sends you back to a checkpoint on death, the other is a 2-player version with no checkpoints. You might think the 2-player version is easier, but that version also nerfs your firing rate which makes it a lot harder to kill certain enemies, so it's actually harder overall. So I played the 1-player version here.
A lot of this game feels.... padded? The screen always moves slowly, some enemy patterns get repeated more times than are necessary. At least it gives you more time to listen to the music, I do like this game's soundtrack a lot.
Encountered a "fun" glitch on the 5th boss at 29:37 - apparently when the boss is dead, a lingering hitbox remains! As it takes a few seconds for the game to fully acknowledge a death, it's possible to get taken to the intermission scene between stages after this happens, which made me think that maybe it prevented that death... but then when the next stage started, a glitchy animation played out and then it finally took that life from me. Weird stuff.
Didn't get very far into loop 2, died just before the boss on stage 1. The loop is kinda interesting because besides the usual things like enemies firing more bullets at you, it actually ADDS enemies that weren't there in loop 1, which is a nasty surprise. I don't know if I'm going to try to push for a score that gets farther.
Got this in one attempt on stream so no full VOD necessary
