I didn't know anything about this game going into it, other than it being developed by Tamsoft, who are always welcome on this blog, and published by Takara, who are mainly known (to me, at least) for their surprisingly good ports of SNK games to the Mega Drive, SNES, Game Boy and Game Gear. Despite the involvement of those two companies, it's neither a fighting game nor does it feature almost-naked ladies fighting monsters. Instead, it's a cute isometric action game, with some interesting ideas.
You play as a round little heavily-armed robot, followed around by a tiny, constantly-meowing cat, and you walk around various isometric stages shooting enemies and looking for each area's boss. There's a little dash of the Metrovania in there, too as the the path to the next stage is always blocked by a coloured block that can only be destroyed by the weapon acquired by beaten the stage's boss. There's sometimes other blocks that get in the way of even reaching the boss, though the weapons to destroy them can be found hidden about the stage somewhere. It's all fairly standard semi=linear action game stuff so far, right?
The most interesting thing this game has though, in my opinion, is the controls. Because the Saturn controller doesn't have two sets of directional controls, some other solution had to have been made with regards to being ables to move and shoot in different directions simultaneously. They could have used the A, B, X and Y buttons as a second d-pad, I guess, though that wouldn't have left many buttons for things like jumping and changing weapons, or alternatively they could have used the shoulder buttons to swivel the top half of your robot like a tank's turret. But they did neither of these, going for a much more unorthodox solution. There's various different aiming options that can be cycled through with the left shoulder button, and they're utilised with the right shoulder button, though some of them have to be found as upgrade items as you play the game.
These options are things like Lock, which keeps you firing in the same direction when you change your walking direction, Back, which shoots in the opposite direction of your movement, Stop, which keeps you in one place and lets you shoot all around, or Roll, which lets you walk around in straight lines, while the top half of your body spins around, shooting in a circle. It's an odd solution, and some would say and over-complicated one, but the important thing is that it's an interesting one.
Other than that, Steamgear Mash is a pretty good game. It's not going to blow any minds or anything, but it's still pretty fun, and it's also really cute. They didn't have to put in a tiny meowing cat following you around, it doesn't serve any actuual in-game purpose, but there it is. That kind of superfluous detail really speaks in this game's favour, I think. If you get the opportunity to play Steamgear Mash, you should probably give it a try.
