OverKill - The Six Planet Mega-Blast

1992, the Sound Blaster speaker crackles to life, and waves of enemy ships flood the screen. OverKill from Epic MegaGames wasn't the kind of title that made headlines, but if you were digging through shareware disks back then, stumbling onto it was no surprise.

It's a vertical scrolling shooter set in space — a genre that was absolutely overcrowded on PC in the first half of the nineties. You fly, you shoot, you survive waves of enemies, you grab weapon upgrades, and you repeat across several planets. None of it breaks new ground. The name OverKill, though, isn't an empty threat — the game hits you from the start with enemy spam that really doesn't hold back.

The controls are straightforward, the ship responds snappily, and the enemy variety is enough to keep you entertained for the first hour. The power-up system does what it's supposed to — you find wider spread, heavier fire, occasionally something that looks promising for a bit. The problem is, the game never stops being exactly what it is from minute one. No new mechanics open up, no boss surprises you in a way you'd want to retell. It's solid, and somehow a little flat.

What OverKill did well back then was technical execution. Epic MegaGames had a knack for making their titles look and sound acceptable on an average home PC — and that wasn't a given. Smooth scrolling and sound effects that didn't screech like a tin can tumbling down stairs were enough in 1992 to earn the game a spot on your hard drive. Today, it's a different story, of course. None of it will impress you if you've played anything else in the last thirty years.

OverKill today appeals mainly to those with a specific fondness for the shareware ecosystem of the nineties — not for this game in particular, but for that feeling of stumbling onto an unexpected gem on a floppy from a friend. As a pure genre representative, it's functional and hassle-free, but next to its contemporary competitors, it was hardly exceptional even back then. If you want a vertical shooter from that era with something extra, look elsewhere. If a quarter hour of nostalgia about how simple things used to be is enough for you, OverKill does the job.