If you’re a fan of old-school side-scrolling action like from the NES and SNES days, the Switch generally has your hookup. What you’ll absolutely find is that there are those titles that simply emulate the look of games from those days, and then those that work a bit harder to nail down the classic feel as well, whether for better or worse. I’d say Deathchron errs more on the side of fully honoring the style of classic NES games than feeling contemporary, though it does have some visual flair that’s more modern. Whether you’ll enjoy it or not though is really all about what you’re looking for.

The best starting place I can think of to help give you an idea of whether this will be a game for you or not would be the classic Blaster Master and its modern sequels, which feature a mix of gameplay inside and outside your craft. While in this case it won’t be a nimble battle tank, and instead some mech armor, you’ll need to jump out and be a bit more vulnerable at times as you move to flip switches and perform other actions your suit simply can’t get to. Aside from being less capable I swear in situations like this your character always moves just a little more sluggish than I’d like, but that does up the suspense. As you’d expect for this sort of title, the boss battles can also pack a wallop as you try to figure out what sorts of attacks you’ll be dealing with and how best to survive them.

What’s tricky here for me is though I really like its more elevated overall look, I wish it dealt with some aspects of play with more modern sensibilities. Among the  elements I found most annoying is how and when the screen can scroll in places, waiting until you get to the edge so when you then jump or move further it finally scrolls in that direction. While most of the time it may not be that big a deal, just a bit annoying, there are other times where it can be irksome. Another more old-school style it has in play is how its checkpoints are placed, in some cases pushing a bit too far apart so if you die you’ll need to do a fair amount of rework to get back to where you died. Again, these are all valid choices, especially if you’re looking for a more authentic retro feel, but a little more modern focus on minimizing player time wasted, repeating the same sections quite a bit, would have been appreciated.

In the end I think this game boils down most to how much you love those games from an earlier era and thirst for that same sort of challenge now. If you don’t mind some frustrations along the way, and are down for gritting your teeth as you try to push through the pain, this could absolutely work well for you. However, if you may appreciate the visual and gameplay styles to a degree, but aren’t quite up to the task of fighting tooth and nail in places to keep moving on, it may not be a great fit.