Low G Man

Thanks to a few trades on a couple of forums I have managed to pickup several bundles of games which may include lots of good or even bad games. One game I received was Low G Man, neither a title I had ever heard of or even had a clue as to what it was about. Published by a company called Taxan in 1991 I literally had my fingers crossed when I turned the game on.

Faced with probably the greatest game opening line I’ve ever seen in 25 years of gaming experience “It was a robot producing exploration planet like any other, large cities, and beautiful sunsets. But then they came. We’ll send in the Low G Man”. That’s it in all its glory, a faultless delivery of the plot, nothing more and it left me wondering if the manual had as much imagination in its opening pages.


The G in the main characters name stands for gravity and when you first start to play you can understand why. Holding down A lets you jump to extreme heights with the chance to upgrade this to even sillier heights thanks to a handy pickup and a quick tap of the B button fires off the currently selected weapon several of which can usually be found after killing an enemy. What we have here is the usual run and gun side on scroller, similar to Contra (these type of games must have been ridiculously popular back in the day, it’s the only explanation I have for there being so many) the only difference it offers is the chance to actually steal an enemy vehicle. Jumping onto an enemy and attacking downwards lets you scramble inside a choice of 3 vehicles Robot suit, Hover craft and Spider...legs. Each has its own weapon from a spray of missiles to a flung curve bomb yet none of them seem to be required and I often find myself hitting Select just to abandon the vehicle and carry on foot.

The first few levels are hard paced and can be quite difficult but strangely the further I went the easier the game seemed to be. Mainly thanks to the numerous weapons like the spear, freeze gun, fireball etc. Not even the bosses remain much of a challenge once you have a decent roster of weapons.

Its fun sometimes to just have a mindless game that doesn’t require much concentration and I found myself able to complete it on the same night I started playing but it doesn’t end there. The game difficulty actually increases after each completion creating a whole new challenge for those of you willing to go all the way. Though it has the dreaded password save system (I hate those things with a vengeance) it does mean you can return at any chapter without starting everything from scratch and with 5.3 chapters on offer there’s plenty of need to keep a note of passwords.

Not a game I would have gone out of my way to play had I known anything about it beforehand and once I begun I simply had to see the end. Overall a bit average but enjoyable enough to pass the time of day and a quick glance on eBay shows the game tends to sell for a couple of quid so you could easily pick up a copy.