9's Beck, offering a rough sample of that game's play style for those who don't have access to the Kickstarter backer beta, and as Galgun's Ekoro. You don't have to play as Gunvolt, though. This is based on the 'real' game but ironically often feels more playable and fun than the creation from which it's derived. When playing as Gunvolt, for example, his electrical field attack mechanics manifests as a medium-range stream of electricity that hits enemies repeatedly, and his gun works as a proper weapon rather than simply a device to tag enemies as prospective targets.

Likewise, the play mechanics have been considerably slimmed down as well. The bulk of it consists of 8-bit renditions of Azure Striker stages, all the way down to bosses whose designs and patterns have been neatly replicated in four-color sprites. Mighty Gunvolt offers an interesting dose of perspective on the games it draws material from. And it's bizarrely good - in fact, I've enjoyed playing it considerably more than the ambitious but uneven Azure Striker Gunvolt. Said mix consists of a linear, NES-style platform action game with faithful 8-bit graphics. Also, weirdly enough, it throws the Japan-only Galgun (an Xbox 360 shooter where you shot people with pheromones to get them all hot and bothered) into the mix as well. Mighty Gunvolt, as the name would suggest, combines Mighty No. Case in point being Mighty Gunvolt, a free bonus download that came attached to Azure Striker Gunvolt last week. 9 is still months from release, yet they're already leaning hard on it. You have to hand it to IntiCreates: Their flagship crowd-funded release Mighty No. Some content, such as this article, has been migrated to VG247 for posterity after USgamer's closure - but it has not been edited or further vetted by the VG247 team.

This article first appeared on USgamer, a partner publication of VG247.

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