Red Dog: Superior Firepower kind of plopped into my lap. Around the end of the Dreamcast’s life I ended up getting the console and this title as a gift. I haven’t thought much about until recently. Otherwise it more or less just sat in my collection gathering dust. After finally playing through it, I can say it’s no hidden gem. What it does try to do though, it does well.
It’s a title by Argonaut Games, who you may know for their earlier work on Star Fox. At this point, they were hot off the heels of their successful 3D platformer, Croc. However a large chunk of their output in the early 90s was vehicle-based. Red Dog: Superior Firepower feels like a melding of these two schools of design.
The Red Dog is an agile tank that’s more like an ATV than a slow lumbering chunk of metal. It has the ability to grip onto various types of terrain as well as move at high speeds. It’s mobile, fast and adaptable.
There are two types of movement. The standard uses the Dreamcast’s analog triggers for a controlled acceleration. When moving at this speed, the Red Dog’s wheels have a grippy property to them, which allows it to catch itself on ledges or slopes. The second type is a boost mode. Double tapping the analog trigger will cause the tank to jet forward. The wheels become slippery and any major change of direction will lead into a drift.
While the earliest levels are pretty straight forward, later and optional ones have jumps between narrow platforms, riding up pipes and wall riding over obstructions. You’ll be surprised by the feats this little tank can do.
Integrating both movement types makes for some intensive obstacle course runs, especially with instant death pits and strict time limits that rarely let you rest. Most of the game’s strategy comes from boosting to quickly traverse a space or perform jumps, before switching back to the slower grippier acceleration to stop yourself from falling off a ledge.
Combat is a bit simpler. Red Dog’s equipment includes a rapid-fire laser gun, reflective energy shield and lock-on missiles. Firing at stationary enemies in front of you is as easy as shooting and reflecting their shots. However getting attacked from multiple angles or shield piercing bullets can be harder to deal with. The Red Dog is lightly armored at best, so it largely becomes about evasion. That’s easier said than done, because aiming and steering are both handled by the Dreamcast controller’s single analog stick.
Drifting is more than just a convenient tool for going fast. In more open environments, it allows a continuous momentum while also curving in to aim shots or lock-on missiles. Being aware of your surroundings so you don’t just slip into a death pit is probably the main concern of combat. Otherwise, most things are a light challenge at best, unless you’re trying to defend something else.
Individually, each part may not seem to be special. Putting all the pieces together though creates a particular type of challenge: A weird obstacle course ATV game with a mix of platforming and 3rd person shooting.
