Earthion

Written by Jeremy Duff on 9/5/2025 for PC  

It has been more than 15 years since I wrote my first review for Gaming Nexus. In that time, I have taken deep dives into games for nearly every console and handheld that has been viable. Now, we’re entering the final quarter of 2025, and I find myself reviewing a game that was designed for a console that predates my time here. The system in question is the Sega Genesis…the 16-bit console that was released back in 1989. The funny thing is that isn’t the weirdest part: this happens to also be one of the best games that I have played this year.

From the outset, Earthion doesn’t make any attempts to hide what it is: a side-scrolling, 16-bit shmup that is meant to take you back to a forgotten era of gaming. It helps that the development team happens to have a ton of credibility when it comes to that era too, seeing as how they were responsible for some major games from the Genesis’s heyday, such as the original Sonic the Hedgehog, Streets of Rage 2, and Beyond Oasis. Whether you’re playing Earthion on the PC, as I was for this review, on one of the other modern consoles, or even on the actual Genesis (an option that is coming in 2026), every aspect of the experience feels like it belongs on Sega’s 16-bit platform.

These devs know how to get the most out of Sega’s hardware, so you will see things in the game that just screams “Genesis.” This includes extremely detailed sprite-based visuals, although they’re used here in manners I don’t recall seeing back in the '90s. You will see a lot of movement in and out of the visual space, not just left to right. This simple scaling of the image sizes is used to give the feeling of items coming into view or emerging/disappearing into the background. It is a simple concept that makes a world of difference in the experience. This also goes for the game’s absolutely rocking score. The head of Ancient (the dev team) is Yuzo Koshiro, who is a composer first and foremost. It is high-octane and drives the action every step of the way. 

Although you will undoubtedly see the influence and similarities to other classic arcade shmups such as Gradius, Soldier Blade, or Thunder Force, Earthion quickly shows that it is ready to set its own standard. The biggest and best thing it does is introduce a unique and effective weapon and shielding system.

Unlike most shooters where a single shot will take a life and send you back to a checkpoint or beginning of a level, Earthion gives players a flexible shielding and advancement system. Your ship is equipped with several levels of shielding, which refill over time as you avoid taking damage. When you do get hit, assuming you have managed to back some power in your shield meters, it will deplete by a proportionate amount. This means you don’t have to be perfect in moments of absolute bullet hell—you just have to be consistent; take a hit or two when you must, just don’t become a bullet sponge and you’ll be just fine.

Your shields aren’t the only thing that take a hit when you take damage though, so does your ship’s power/strength. In addition to building up your shields, you also build up the power of both your primary cannon as well as your various sub-weapons. Defeating enemies causes them to drop green gems of different sizes that are called Solrium, which build up the power bars of these weapons. Your goal is to fill them and always keep them at max to get the best benefit, but that isn’t always realistic. There is nothing worse than heading into a big boss fight and taking a slew of hits just beforehand which weakens your arsenal.

There is also a unique advancement feature for expanding and tuning your ship(s) to your play style. Your ship has seven “slots” across the top of the screen. From the start, four of them are already in use with two given to your weapon power/shields and two designated for sub-weapons. There are a ton of sub-weapons that you can pick up along the way, as well as a special one that is an “adaptation pod.” Focused builds and finishing a level with a pod in one of your available sub-weapon slots will allow you to upgrade your ship in a variety of ways between levels. Some of the options are just increases to the max power of the weapons themselves, giving you extra lives, and even converting one of the unused “slots” to house either additional weapon/shield gauges or sub-weapons. It is entirely up to you where you choose to focus your growth; if you want to have a ton of shields and weapon strength, you can pour all of your upgrades into adding additional shield gauges, On the other hand, maybe you like to keep a variety of sub-weapons equipped for all of the different situations that you may run into. The choices are all yours!

All of this comes together across eight diverse stages, forcing you to put your shooting and dodging skills to the test. It is an extremely nice change of pace for the genre to be able to tailor the advancement of your ship to your individual play style. You can build a ship to fit your needs and that can change as you go. I started off focusing solely on giving myself as many shields as possible, but as I found myself progressing (skill-wise) with the game, subsequent runs saw me experimenting with weapon-focused builds. It really adds a nice change to the genre.

In addition to the eight-mission story, there are a handful of challenge modes available as well to test your abilities with different weapons and in different situations. Some are point-based and others are time-based, but the goal is to climb to the top of the leaderboard(s) on each and cement your legacy. This is what old-school shooters are really about, and Earthion does a great job of bringing that experience to the forefront with their modern twist.

If I were to complain about anything, it is the design decision to utilize passwords to store your save states. Sure, that is the old-school way of doing it and it fits in with the design, but even the Genesis had battery-save options on their later carts and you could truly just save your progress. It doesn’t feel like anything more than an annoyance here and the purpose is ultimately lost on the player. I am really hoping that this is something that gets patched down the line, at least for the console versions.

So, what makes Earthion such a great game? It is the combination of everything that I have mentioned. It takes a classic gaming genre, and tweaks it just enough to feel more modern, while maintaining all of the aspects that made fans love them in the '80s and '90s. You’re undoubtedly going to fly through the game, at least on the easy difficulty level, in a little over an hour. When you pump up that difficulty, that time will slowly increase a bit, but it is the draw back again and again to set better scores and meet the various challenges that will expand experience to who knows how many hours in the end.

There is a “fun” element here that is just lost most of the time in modern gaming. Earthion delivers that classic fun experience in a way that few games do. Even if you are just a casual fan of classic shooters, this is one that you need to check out. The experience truly feels like getting into a time machine and going back to my teenage years sitting on the floor in front of a 13-inch television screen playing the Genesis. Hell, I might even find myself doing just that when the actual Genesis cartridge is released (which is happening in 2026). Until then, I guess I will make do playing it on modern, large displays—not even being slightly sarcastic. Earthion is up there as one of my absolute favorite games of 2025; it isn’t just a love letter to the Genesis era, it is a masterclass of how retro designs can still thrive in gaming.