Mars Matrix is a side-scrolling space shooter of the same ilk as Gunbird 2 and Giga Wing, also from Capcom. As if the previously mentioned games weren't enough to give everybody and their mama all the side-scrolling, space-shooting, bullet-dodging fun they can possibly handle, Mars Matrix is here to give us more. For those who have resided either in a cave or a country where videogames have been banned for the last decade, here's how the game is played: You control a ship, dodging from one side of the screen to the other, trying to dodge bullets and destroy the ships that are shooting them. Weapon powerups can be gained by picking up square-shaped, cracker-shaped objects, that increase the deadly output of the players' ship -- allowing them to wreak more havoc on their enemies.

The game is certainly colorful, though that's the best thing we can say about the graphics. Aside from the occasional, gratuitous graphical flare, there is nothing here that could not have been reproduced on the PlayStation or any other ancient console. Is anybody really still playing this kind of game? Is there perhaps a renegade community of Amish people who have decided to embrace the gaming technology of the late '80s, but remain somewhat tethered to the archaic belief that all post-'85 technology is junk, who are buying and playing these games? One struggles to think of the alternative to this theory.

There are three types of attack in Mars Matrix: the standard firing attack, a pulse cannon and a mosquito attack. The mosquito attack (of course) can only be activated when players have filled up the power bar at the top of their screen, and will suck in all the enemy bullets before shooting them back out. Players are invulnerable during this "sucking" process, and must coordinate the release of the enemy bullets with the appropriate level on the meter (so that it doesn't take too long to fill it up again). This, and the fact that players can move around the entire screen (only enemy bullets will impede their movement) are the only things that make the actual gameplay of Mars Matrix different from the other side-scrolling space shooters for the Dreamcast.

The game includes a Shop Mode, in which players can use points accrued through hours of fruitless gaming to buy different modes, modifications for their ships and various other goodies like extra lives. And they will need those extra lives, because Mars Matrix puts more bullets onscreen then we have ever seen (or hoped we would). Dare we ask whether this is a good thing? It simply makes the time one must spend playing this game to receive any of the extras excruciatingly long. And that is something nobody wants.