Baryon

STORY / GAMEPLAY
The game's scenario is pretty shoot 'em up basic. You navigate your space fighter through relentless squadrons of alien crafts, shooting your way to survive. There are two different types of fighters to select, each with its own unique main and secondary weapon systems and can both be manned by two players simultaneously. Apart from the smart bombs, needed to destroy enemies at a blast radius, there is also a variety of other power-ups to collect.
The stages are rather long but there's always so much going on that they hardly ever become boring. At the end of each stage there's a usual big boss waiting to stop you. The game turns to be a "bullet-hell" style shooter, in which the entire screen is often almost completely swarmed by enemy fire, a very-very common detail of the East Asian games of the 90s.
Baryon is definitely a good looking and fun to play game, even excelling the contemporary genre reference Raptor: Call of the Shadows that shares similar aesthetics!

GRAPHICS / SOUND
The game requires a minimum 386SX+ with 4MB of RAM and supports VGA only, running in an "obscure" 256x200 pixels resolution. The overall presentation is good, with nice graphics, super smooth scrolling and fast action while the backdrops are detailed with 165 simultaneous colors.
Baryon's sound and music are similarly good and effective, offering well matched to the game's atmosphere sampled sound effects along with some nicely composed stereophonic tunes.