Red Zone

In (American) football, when a team reaches their opponent's twenty yard line, they are in the red zone. This is the point at which they are expected to score at least a field goal. Broadcasters will talk about a team's red zone offense - this is how well the team does when it is inside the twenty.

At least half of a team's possessions in the red zone should result in touchdowns.

Red Zone is a rather unusual game for the Sega Mega Drive developed rather late in the machine's life cycle by demo-scene veterans Zyrinx. The game is comprised of two modes: the first is a top-down helicopter sim (with gameplay similar to Desert Strike, except now with rotating 3D graphics and a seemingly gouraud-shaded landscape), the second is a top-down shooter in the style of Gauntlet (which comes into play when you land the helicopter and enter buildings).

Both sections of the game utilised cunning effects that gave the impression of polygonal 'depth'. Another technical achievement of the game was the use of cleverly compressed FMV (used in the intro and explosions in the game), similar to the rotoscoped animation in the intro of Another World.

Red Zone is worth checking out on emulator just for the graphical effects, and is quite fun to play (if rather hard going). The game is sometimes referred to as Hard Wired, which was its in-house name during development.