The other day I came downstairs to pull out a record, maybe some Duran Duran or some Van Halen. I started flipping through my album collection and found something very interesting. As I was digging through here I noticed this great collection of late 80s and early 90s rock like the Scorpions, Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, Faith No More, Def Leppard, Billy Idol, Luke Leilani and his Hawaiian Rhythm, Ministry, more Def Leppard of course, Country Mike’s Greatest Hits, Huey Lewis and the News, Bee Gees, ZZ Top, and then this one: Truxton. Demo 1989 featuring Edit Station One. And I swear I’d heard of Truxton before. It wasn’t just a Sega Genesis game.

Truxton is a late 80s heavy metal band. And I think this might have been the only album they ever made. Curiosity got the best of me and I had to pull it out. Look at this thing. It’s great. If I’m the only person in the world who has this, this is actually a very valuable album. This is really interesting because most groups would have just cut a cassette for their demo, but not Truxton. They went all out and created a vinyl record. I think I heard some rumors back in the day that they were supposed to go on tour with Trickster, Cinderella, Winger, and the Bullet Boys, but for whatever reason they didn’t do that.

YEEEEAAHHH. I fly through space. I am a spaceship. My name is Truxton, I’m Truxton. Screw you. I blow things up. It makes me happy. My name is Troncin, I’m Troncine. Screw you. This is my big mission. I’m the last hope of my kind. In this two dimensional environment I’ll kick your alien behind. Because I’m Truxton, Truxton, last hope of my kind. Thanks to these Japanese and this Mega Drive, the universe is safe again, assuming I survive.

Truxton is a vertical scrolling space shooting game from Toaplan for the Sega Genesis. It’s tough, it’s fast, and it’s one of the best shooters on the system. You fly a spaceship through waves of enemies with red, blue, and green weapons. The red one is your standard shotgun blast. The green one emits a green laser that’s very powerful. And the blue one is an electrical magneto beam that locks onto enemies so you can fly around while it keeps attacking. The downside is that it’s not very powerful. In traditional shooting game fashion you pick up power ups that increase the strength of your weapons.

There’s also a super bomb that explodes into a giant skull flash across the screen, which is pure 80s hair metal. Truxton is a tough game because enemies come from behind you, from the bottom of the screen, and from the sides. Your weaponry mostly shoots forward, so you’re constantly reacting to attacks from all directions. It’s a challenging game that requires multiple playthroughs to really figure out what’s going on in each level. The end bosses are tough, but the real difficulty comes from enemies sneaking up from the bottom of the screen.

There are a couple modes of gameplay: easy, medium, and hard. On easy you get unlimited continues, which is nice for practicing because you really do want to memorize the levels. If you like shooting games and you like Fire Shark in particular and other Toaplan shooters, Truxton is essential. It’s not terribly hard to find today. It’s the kind of game where you get hit once and you explode. You pick up speed power ups to increase the speed of your ship, and when you die you lose your speed. So it’s very challenging if the enemies explode your spaceship.

There are few things greater in life than playing Truxton and rocking out to Truxton. Fire Shark does whatever a shark can do on fire. With my safety Genesis intro I’ve rocked a million people at my show. They scream my name, write a song about the game. Wind. Squid.