Bad Omen (aka Devilish: The Next Possession in the USA) is a very interesting take on the Breakout Clone genre, released for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis in 1992. It's the sequel to Devilish for the Game Gear (no relation to the 2006 book of the same name), which released one year earlier. The player controls two different paddles (or each player controls one paddle), one of which can change height and orientation.
Many years later, the game would receive a (somewhat) Lighter and Softer sequel in 2005's Devilish: Ball Bounder for the Nintendo DS, which would come stateside two years after as Classic Action: Devilish.
Bad Omen provides examples of:
- Battle Couple: As stone paddles, the prince and princess work together to smash the blue ball into their enemies.
- Big Damn Heroes: Just when it seems like all hope is lost for the prince and princess to have a happy life, the blue sphere comes to their rescue.
- Breaking Out
- Cue the Sun: The ending.
- Darker and Edgier: Most Breakout clones don't have a dark evil/gothic/horror theme... or much of any concrete theme at all.
- Deus ex Machina: A mysterious blue sphere, which the prince and princess can use to fight back against evil, just happens to fall from the sky.
- Evil Counterpart: Gamma shoots out blue spheres similar to your own in an attempt to confuse you about where your own sphere is going to wind up.
- Evil Is Visceral: Gamma's weak point is its beating heart situated in the midst of its bodies.
- Excuse Plot: The introduction text is absolutely hilarious.
- Green-Eyed Monster: The evil demon Gamma is jealous about the fact that a prince and princess can be happy.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Gamma should have thought of something else to turn the prince and princess into.
- Lethal Lava Land: The volcano stage, complete with volcanoes shooting out fireballs.
- Lucky Charms Title: Gamma's name is rendered in-game with the actual Greek letter, γ.
- Mysterious Protector: Nothing is ever explained about the mysterious blue sphere.
- No Ontological Inertia: Defeating Gamma results in the prince and princess reverting to their original human forms once they get back to their kingdom.
- Oddly Named Sequel 2: Electric Boogaloo: In Japan, this is the only game in the Devilish series to not use the word "Devilish" in the title. Averted by the North American release.
- Taken for Granite: The prince and princess are cursed to be stone paddles. The cover art indicates that they are actually statues who are stuck onto the bottoms of the gigantic stone paddles.
- Turns Red: All of the bosses of the "defeat" type.
- Womb Level: The final boss battle takes place in one of these, complete with a big beating demon heart that Gamma's bodies circle around.