Back in the 90's, we were far too edgy and cool to spell words the correct way, becuz everyone nu that spelling korrektly was boaring.
I think there were more Zs used between the years of 1989 and 2003 than there were in the entire rest of the history of the English language. You better believe that if you could swap out a boring, lame-o S for a Z, you were doing it. And Cs? Who needs those when you have Ks. The video game world was certainly not immune to this trend, I have legitimately met people that truly believed the word 'combat' started with a K until they were in their teenage years. We may not have been paying attention in school, but we were certainly focused on playing round after round of Mortal Kombat, battling each other tooth and nail while seeking out a bevy of secret Kharacters to battle. Mortal Kombat might have been the most popular game franchise to decide properly spelled words weren't cool, but it was far from the only one.
Which brings us to Skeleton Krew, released in 1995 for the Sega Genesis. That's not to be confused with the equally orthographically challenged 80's rock band Skeleton Krewe, who I kept getting search results for. I know I've been kind of slacking on covering games that are off the beaten path this year, but this one certainly qualifies. What makes me say that, you ask? Well, this game doesn't even have a Wikipedia page. In 2026. That was genuinely shocking to me. It's not that I couldn't find any web results at all, but the fact that it has no Wikipedia is amazing in this day and age. It's not like Skeleton Krewe was designed by a small studio either. This game came from Core Design, a studio that already had tons of credits to its name and would go on to create some game about raiding tombs that ended up becoming juuuuuust a bit more popular than this one. So yeah, information about the krew was hard to find, but how was the actual game?
Well, it's a little bit difficult to say. Because we very, very nearly had an absolute hidden Genesis gem on our hands. Because Skeleton Krew's gameplay was really, really good. It was a well designed, fast paced run and gun title that controls surprisingly well and features some excellent boss fights. Unfortunately, it also incredibly short, even for its time. We are talking five or six fairly short levels, which is just simply not enough. I totally understand and agree with the argument of quality over quantity, and there is very much quality here. But at the same time, you need to get what you pay for. When I play these games, I try to put myself back in the 90's, as if I just spent my hard earned $50-80 worth of allowance to bring home the game I'm playing. And I can assure you that had I paid full price for this I would have been absolutely enthralled by it for an hour or two before eventually being disappointed when it ended entirely too quickly.
But we have to begin with the positives, which start with the graphics. This game looks outstanding the animation is incredibly smooth. Honestly, I didn't think the Genesis was capable of rotating sprites this cleanly. The levels perfectly fit the edgy 90's aesthetic the game is going for and the game manages to feature a lot of color while still having a sci-fi dystopian vibe. The graphics have almost a pseudo 3D look to them which fits perfectly with the gameplay. The sound is okay, this is the kind of game that the Genesis sound chip was made for. The metallic, synth-y noises further add to to the atmosphere. Skeleton Krew definitely nails the presentation, I guess it makes sense as it was a fairly late release in the Genesis lifecycle, but it was still impressive.
There is a story here, one that absolutely epitomizes the overt edginess we all know and love the 90s for. You take control of one of three mercenaries, Spine, Rib or Joint, as they head to Earth to take on the forces of the evil Moribund Kadaver (that's with a K, just like Krew). Kadaver, again with a K, is is the leader of D.E.A.D. (Deadly Enforcement Agrressive Destruction Inc, who have taken control of the cryogenics plant in MonstroCity. Their goal? To create an army of super powered mutants to tak over the world. Let's be honest, you would have absolutely been able to tell this game was made in the 90's if I told you the plot. Everything about this game, from the graphics to the sound to the story just screams sterotypical 90s and you know what, I'm all for it. It isn't the most interesting story, but it doesn't have to be.
None of us are playing a run and gun game for the story, we are playing it to blast the heck out of anything that moves. Skeleton Krew certainly allows us to do that. You move about the levels from an isometric perspective, which works surprsingly well here. A lot of these games don't work well on controllers with d-pads, but I never felt overly restricted in my movement. You shoot with A, switch weapons with B and lock yourself in place with C. That last one is incredibly important as it allows you to strafe effectively to avoid the myriad bullets and also reliably fire diagonally. It was actually very impressive how well this controlled and how much freedom of movement you have with just a three button contoller. It did take some time to get used to, but once I did I felt in complete control. That wasn't always the case with games like this.
There are plenty of enemies to fight, they don't flood the screen like they do in some run and guns but they definitely give you plenty to shoot. You can collect items for points, but they really don't do anything for you other than provide extra lives. That's standard for the time, but it would have been nice to have some level of upgrades. Your only weapons are your standard machine gun and grenade, which doesn't really get much use because it has a delayed detonation and the enemies move entirely too fast. The level design is straightforward, but in a good way and the bosses are big and intimidating. They aren't as difficult as they look, but sometimes atmosphere is important and they definitely offer that. Overall, the action is fast paced and frantic, exactly as it should be in a game like this.
But at the end of the day, this is a relatively easy game that only has six levels. That might have been a bit more forgivable for an early Genesis game from 1989 or 90, but by the time Skeleton Krew was released the 5th generation had already started. Even more action oriented games like this typically had double this amount of levels. And they were much more difficult too. Run and guns are one of those genres where fans tend to like them on the difficult side and this just isn't there. That's kind of a shame becasuse the difficulty was actually ramping up quite nicely. Had they kept building, they might have actually had something above and beyond. But as it was I was able to beat this in under an hour, which I shouldn't be able to do as someone who's terrible at run and guns. A lot of that had to do with the crazy number of continues, but still.
We were so close to a having a hidden gem here, but the lack of difficulty and short length keep it from reaching its potential. Again, quality is far more important than quantity, but quantity is still important. I still think Skeleton Krew is worth playing if you could get it cheap or if you could find it by other means. But I will reiterate that I would have been upset if I paid full price for this back in the day, even if I did have fun during the short playtime. Skeleton Krew was pretty kool, but it's far from being a klassic. Not a must plae, but definitely a solyd, 90's-tastic effort.
6.25/10
I think there were more Zs used between the years of 1989 and 2003 than there were in the entire rest of the history of the English language. You better believe that if you could swap out a boring, lame-o S for a Z, you were doing it. And Cs? Who needs those when you have Ks. The video game world was certainly not immune to this trend, I have legitimately met people that truly believed the word 'combat' started with a K until they were in their teenage years. We may not have been paying attention in school, but we were certainly focused on playing round after round of Mortal Kombat, battling each other tooth and nail while seeking out a bevy of secret Kharacters to battle. Mortal Kombat might have been the most popular game franchise to decide properly spelled words weren't cool, but it was far from the only one.
Which brings us to Skeleton Krew, released in 1995 for the Sega Genesis. That's not to be confused with the equally orthographically challenged 80's rock band Skeleton Krewe, who I kept getting search results for. I know I've been kind of slacking on covering games that are off the beaten path this year, but this one certainly qualifies. What makes me say that, you ask? Well, this game doesn't even have a Wikipedia page. In 2026. That was genuinely shocking to me. It's not that I couldn't find any web results at all, but the fact that it has no Wikipedia is amazing in this day and age. It's not like Skeleton Krewe was designed by a small studio either. This game came from Core Design, a studio that already had tons of credits to its name and would go on to create some game about raiding tombs that ended up becoming juuuuuust a bit more popular than this one. So yeah, information about the krew was hard to find, but how was the actual game?
Well, it's a little bit difficult to say. Because we very, very nearly had an absolute hidden Genesis gem on our hands. Because Skeleton Krew's gameplay was really, really good. It was a well designed, fast paced run and gun title that controls surprisingly well and features some excellent boss fights. Unfortunately, it also incredibly short, even for its time. We are talking five or six fairly short levels, which is just simply not enough. I totally understand and agree with the argument of quality over quantity, and there is very much quality here. But at the same time, you need to get what you pay for. When I play these games, I try to put myself back in the 90's, as if I just spent my hard earned $50-80 worth of allowance to bring home the game I'm playing. And I can assure you that had I paid full price for this I would have been absolutely enthralled by it for an hour or two before eventually being disappointed when it ended entirely too quickly.
But we have to begin with the positives, which start with the graphics. This game looks outstanding the animation is incredibly smooth. Honestly, I didn't think the Genesis was capable of rotating sprites this cleanly. The levels perfectly fit the edgy 90's aesthetic the game is going for and the game manages to feature a lot of color while still having a sci-fi dystopian vibe. The graphics have almost a pseudo 3D look to them which fits perfectly with the gameplay. The sound is okay, this is the kind of game that the Genesis sound chip was made for. The metallic, synth-y noises further add to to the atmosphere. Skeleton Krew definitely nails the presentation, I guess it makes sense as it was a fairly late release in the Genesis lifecycle, but it was still impressive.
There is a story here, one that absolutely epitomizes the overt edginess we all know and love the 90s for. You take control of one of three mercenaries, Spine, Rib or Joint, as they head to Earth to take on the forces of the evil Moribund Kadaver (that's with a K, just like Krew). Kadaver, again with a K, is is the leader of D.E.A.D. (Deadly Enforcement Agrressive Destruction Inc, who have taken control of the cryogenics plant in MonstroCity. Their goal? To create an army of super powered mutants to tak over the world. Let's be honest, you would have absolutely been able to tell this game was made in the 90's if I told you the plot. Everything about this game, from the graphics to the sound to the story just screams sterotypical 90s and you know what, I'm all for it. It isn't the most interesting story, but it doesn't have to be.
None of us are playing a run and gun game for the story, we are playing it to blast the heck out of anything that moves. Skeleton Krew certainly allows us to do that. You move about the levels from an isometric perspective, which works surprsingly well here. A lot of these games don't work well on controllers with d-pads, but I never felt overly restricted in my movement. You shoot with A, switch weapons with B and lock yourself in place with C. That last one is incredibly important as it allows you to strafe effectively to avoid the myriad bullets and also reliably fire diagonally. It was actually very impressive how well this controlled and how much freedom of movement you have with just a three button contoller. It did take some time to get used to, but once I did I felt in complete control. That wasn't always the case with games like this.
There are plenty of enemies to fight, they don't flood the screen like they do in some run and guns but they definitely give you plenty to shoot. You can collect items for points, but they really don't do anything for you other than provide extra lives. That's standard for the time, but it would have been nice to have some level of upgrades. Your only weapons are your standard machine gun and grenade, which doesn't really get much use because it has a delayed detonation and the enemies move entirely too fast. The level design is straightforward, but in a good way and the bosses are big and intimidating. They aren't as difficult as they look, but sometimes atmosphere is important and they definitely offer that. Overall, the action is fast paced and frantic, exactly as it should be in a game like this.
But at the end of the day, this is a relatively easy game that only has six levels. That might have been a bit more forgivable for an early Genesis game from 1989 or 90, but by the time Skeleton Krew was released the 5th generation had already started. Even more action oriented games like this typically had double this amount of levels. And they were much more difficult too. Run and guns are one of those genres where fans tend to like them on the difficult side and this just isn't there. That's kind of a shame becasuse the difficulty was actually ramping up quite nicely. Had they kept building, they might have actually had something above and beyond. But as it was I was able to beat this in under an hour, which I shouldn't be able to do as someone who's terrible at run and guns. A lot of that had to do with the crazy number of continues, but still.
We were so close to a having a hidden gem here, but the lack of difficulty and short length keep it from reaching its potential. Again, quality is far more important than quantity, but quantity is still important. I still think Skeleton Krew is worth playing if you could get it cheap or if you could find it by other means. But I will reiterate that I would have been upset if I paid full price for this back in the day, even if I did have fun during the short playtime. Skeleton Krew was pretty kool, but it's far from being a klassic. Not a must plae, but definitely a solyd, 90's-tastic effort.
6.25/10
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