Comix Zone

Comix Zone is one of the most inventive action games of the 1990s and its central idea takes one sentence to explain: you play inside a comic book. The screen is a page divided into panels, your character moves from one frame to the next, enemies are drawn into the panels in front of you, and the paper itself can sometimes be torn and used. Visually it is the sharpest-looking game of its kind from that period.

Mechanically it is a side-scrolling brawler, but one constrained by the structure a comic page imposes. That has consequences: space is tighter than in a conventional beat-em-up, panels force fights into small arenas, and getting past obstacles is often closer to a puzzle than a fight. It is also known for being demanding — there is little room for mistakes, and the length follows arcade tradition, meaning short and intense rather than sprawling.

The original came from Sega in 1995, and this record is catalogued under Game Boy Advance, where the game arrived as a conversion at a point when the handheld could carry sixteen-bit titles without heavy compromise. The smaller screen matters more here than it would elsewhere, since the whole design rests on visual detail. It is a single-player title and our catalogue keeps a profile with the release information. Comix Zone is worth loading chiefly for how completely it follows one unusual idea through to the end.