I have the rom, I bought the game. But I can't find much info on it. Like most Super FX games it seems like a response to what Sega was doing at the time. Far as Super FX games go I'm quite impressed by it's frame rate but this is on an EMU so I have to wait to see how it runs on the SNES. That said I hooked up SNES back up to my TV using a Monster S-Video cable. MY (scant) SNES games have never looked better.
A good game, but very hard. I really like the music. If you want better framerates you can overclock the SuperFX chip inside the cart. I swapped out the 21.4MHz ceramic resonator with a 24mhz crystal and got a noticeable improvment in framrate. I heard from a guy that swapped out for a 27MHz crystal as well.
Another (small) fan of Vortex here. It flopped in every market, so I was able to find it selling for like 300 yen a few years ago, and had fun playing through it to the end. There's probably not much info on it because when Vortex came out people probably had stopped caring about 3-D on the SNES. The Saturn and Playstation had already been released in Japan at that time...
it's really an amazing game and just a testament to what the SNES could do. I'm still amazed at what developers got out of the SNES/Super Fami where as the Saturn, Dreamcast, and Gamecube never got to show what they could really do. I wish FX Fighter had come out. Then we'd have all Nelson laughed at Sega.
I bought the Japanese Vortex a few weeks back. I've always loved the audio on it (Done by a French guy I believe) so it was great to hear it coming from real hardware rather than an emulator. I don't like the filght sections mind you. They are way too long and slow as hell but apart from that I really like the game. @GodOfHardcore, running it on a EMU or a SFC will get you the same speed unless you had messed with the EMU's frame rate settings. Yakumo
Vortex... wow, it's been a while. I think it was even on the cover of the official Nintendo Magazine in Mexico. I recall renting it and not liking it at all, but I can't recall why.
Wait, there's more to the game than just the flight sections? I couldn't make myself continue after the first teleport. Awesome music, but man, talk about plodding gameplay.
One of the hardest games I played on the SNES and one of those that still stick to my mind. The fact that you could transform into vehicles was of course the best part. And I can still see the last stage in front of me with the impressive "light shining through clouds"-background and a great BGM. The level design was a bit dull and the game was indeed too hard though. Could only finish it with a invincibility cheat. On a side note: the German PAL release had English and Spanish as language options if I remember correctly. Pretty unusual.
