When you think shooter for the most part you think of a plane or spaceship but Granada was one of the first shooters I can remember playing involving a tank (of sorts.)
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What made Granada so interesting to me was the fact that it was the first shooter i had ever played that was multi-directional. All the others up to that point were either sidescrollers or top down shooters where sometimes things that came from behind were just things you simply couldn't shoot at until they "passed" you. Keep in mind that this was on the Genesis so this was all done with one D-pad which meant that it was a bit tricky to fire in all direction. Basically, you had to travel in the the direction you wanted to shoot in, which could be problematic in certain situations.
Granada's maps also progressed in all directions and the player controlled the progress in any particular direction and could (and would have to) backtrack to previously visited locations.
All this sounds pretty mundane by today's standards but it was kind of a big deal in 1990 when this game was released.
While the graphics were pretty standard for the time, the gameplay was innovative and fresh
As usual for a shooter, it featured giant bosses, most of which were airplanes of some sort or stationary huge bases with many different turrets. There was a wide array of weaponry that could be acquired but for the most part the absence of those upgrades didn't make the game impossible like other shooters I'm familiar with. It was completely possible to complete the game without ever obtaining a power-up at all.
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The graphics were nothing to flip-out over as there were relatively standard for the time period. The same can be said for the music, but Genesis wasn't really known for it's fantastic audio hardware anyway.
The thing that made this game great was the fact that it was innovative and different, yet still managed to be awesome. It took some getting used to, but after you got it, it was really addictive and just the perfect amount of difficult.
Thanks to Gaming the Systems for making this video, they have A LOT of amazing videos with not so easy to find retro clips
Overall, this was one of those games that most people never played and I honestly don't remember how it is that we stumbled upon it because back then you basically just bought a game based on the box art and hoped it didn't suck. I think it was because one of my friends was a "rich kid" and his parents got him just about anything he wanted.
One of my favorite games from my teenage years, Granada is a special title that was relatively unknown at the time and it wasn't until years later that it was honored for being one of the "Greatest underrated games on the Sega Genesis."