Earthion – as retro as life gets when it comes to Genesis shmups. It’s magical

I used to have the reflexes of a cat. People would watch me play games like DoDonpachi and think I was possessed. I lived for shoot ’em-ups/shmups back in the day. Now, these days I occasionally find myself wandering down a street and having to stop and wonder where I am going. The unstoppable march of time.

Yes, the reflexes for this kind of lark may be long since gone, but I still know a shmup treat when I see one, and Earthion is just that, and it is finally here.

When Yuzo Koshiro, Sega Genesis / Mega Drive legend responsible for the music of games such as Streets of Rage and Revenge of Shinobi – games I also grew up on – announced he was working on a new shooter, actually for the Genesis, yes, in 2025, people like me got very excited indeed.

So, for clarity, the Sega version is delayed – boo-hiss, but Earthion has appeared on Steam and, besides not having a cartridge to blow on and slide in, man, this is the 90s all over again.

Earthion today is a magical homage to the genre that came of age with games such as Thunderforce and Truxton on Sega’s home console.

Koshiro-san’s Ancient Corporation has created something that seems to have come from the era it purports to be from. Many have tried previously, but nothing comes close to this in terms of that ’90s Mega Drive energy. It’s beautiful.

Beyond looks and sound, the game ‘plays’ like a 90s shmup, even in this emulated PC version I am playing. Yes, you can add or remove scanlines, etc, as you would expect, but the real joy will be when I get it on my real Sega hardware with my original Sega pad. That is when it will be like a true new Genesis/MegaDrive game has come out, and I can slip back into my youth, when life was so much simpler.

Update already: People have already managed to get Earthion running on the MiSTer FPGA by using the bin file that comes with the Steam version. That’s my evening sorted.

Earthion is available now on Steam, priced £14.99/$19.99, and there are PlayStation, Xbox, and Switch versions also available.

While the Genesis version will now tragically be next year, there are Deluxe physical versions on the horizon, also at the end of October for PlayStation and Switch.