Listen, you may think you understand what trouble is. You think trouble is when you’re late to work after being stuck in rush-hour traffic. You think trouble is what happens when you pass a cop on the right. In a school zone. Going 55 miles per hour. With a burnt-out tail light. But you’re wrong. Those are just your ordinary, everyday, garden-variety sorts of trouble. These pale in comparison to, say, a meteor on a direct collision course with the biotech research facility on Dinosaur Island. Yeah, suddenly the whole planet’s in danger, and the job of saving everybody’s bacon has fallen right into your lap. You must be playing Blue Stinger, a launch title for the Sega Dreamcast back in 1999.

Well, technically a pre-launch title since you could buy most of the launch titles anywhere from a week to a few days before the system itself went on sale on September 9th, 1999. There’s no definitive date for the game’s launch in North America (our research uncovered dates ranging from August 31st to September 9th), so we settled on the 7th as a compromise. Most stores should have had Dreamcast games out on the sales floor at least two days before the hardware release here in the US just to grab customer attention if nothing else.

But is Blue Stinger a good game? Well…depends on who you ask. As benefits a system launch title, opinion is divided to say the least. EGM’s review crew found it less than stellar, delivering two 4/10 ratings and two 4.5/10 ratings. GamePro rated it a must-play with a 4/5 score. Next Generation thought it looked pretty but didn’t do much to break new ground in the Survival Horror genre, giving it an average 3/5 score before moving on. Game Fan on the other hand found it a worthy upgrade to its spiritual predecessors and had no problem awarding it a nice 79 on their 100-point scale.

Consensus around here is that Blue Stinger is worth playing, as long as you keep your expectations firmly in check. There are certainly better games in this genre for the Dreamcast, so if you’re picking between it and Resident Evil Code: Veronica, you’ll choose the latter every time.

Happy anniversary, Blue Stinger! Today, your GD-ROM is fifteen years old.

And as always, enjoy your two-page retro ad goodie:

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