Vectorman

Classic side-scrolling shooter released on the Sega Genesis. Outclassed any of the SNES' action games.

1) A green robot composed of orbs bound by some invisible energy field. He was left in charge of a sludge barge that delivers radioactive sludge to the sun, when humanity left Earth, hoping to return after robots (or in this case, Orbots) cleaned up all the pollution they left behind. Being the only orbot in space when a nuclear warhead was attached to the orbot leader, Vectorman was unaffected by WarHead's mind-control and returned to find a world of orbots serving their new evil master, WarHead, who planned to doom humanity upon their return. Vectorman did not rest until he had defeated all the evil orbots produced by WarHead, and in the end, WarHead himself. Vectorman's second great exploit was freeing earth of an evil race of insectoid creatures that had invaded during another barge delivery trip.

2) A video game for the Sega Genisis featuring the orbot, followed by vectorman 2. Created by Blue Sky, this was a brilliant new shooter-style platformer that combined several game play types and creative enemies and stages to make a masterpeice that will not soon be forgotten. A more recent attempt to make a remake of vectorman for the PS2 was done by Pseudo Interactive, but it was not well received by fans of the original style of the first vecorman games, and was cancelled before hitting the shelves. Personally, the game looked pretty awesome to me, and it probably wouldn't have bothered fans of the original if they had called it something other than vectorman and made a new game of it. The thing that was dissapointing about it was the unnoriginal level and enemy styles (and that of the new and "improved" Vectorman, himself), which I beleive would have soon been remedied as the preview seen by most fans was of an early version of the game, not necesarrily including all the artwork and fine touches of a finished game.