HG101 Presents Arcade Cult Classics
Author: Kurt Kalata
Date: 2024-11-05T05:00:00+00:00
Publisher: HG101

Hardcore Gaming 101 Presents: Arcade Cult Classics

Digital Edition

First Printing: April 2024

The images reproduced in this book are printed under the banner of fair use as supplemental visuals to support critical and historical writing. All images contained herein are copyright of their respective rights holder(s). This book is not affiliated with any video game developers or publishers in any official capacity.

Introduction

When I was about 10 years old, I went on a family vacation to Conneaut Lake Park in Pennsylvania. In one of the restaurants, there was an arcade machine of a game called Psycho-Nics Oscar, an unusual title for a game starring a robot. It looked neat, but my parents wouldn't give me any money to play it, so I left and never saw it again. That was until more than 20 years later, when I rediscovered it in MAME, allowing me to finally give it a shot.

There are tons of games like this, relatively obscure titles that came and went, or in many cases, were only released in specific territories. The power of emulation, thanks to the hardworking folks on the MAME team, has rescued these titles from oblivion, allowing us to experience and perhaps reevaluate most of these forgotten titles. Additionally, a selection of these games have been published by Hamster as part of their Arcade Archives series on the PS4 and Switch, with some on the Evercade retro console too, so this book will help guide you through some of the more unusual titles. For anything else, you can use this tome as a reference to wade through MAME's extensive library in search of something new and interesting.

This book is the second in the HG101 "Cult Classics" series — it appears the YouTube community has termed these games "Hidden Gems", a title which would've been better for SEO, but it's too late now! Since we devote other volumes to specific publishers or certain genres, these books include basically everything else we couldn't fit in those works. Many of the publishers featured here include Irem, Jaleco, Technos, UPL, ADK, TAD, NMK, and others. We included a few lesser-known games from more popular publishers and developers as well, like Westone (Aurail, Clockwork Aquario), Data East (the aforementioned Psycho-Nics Oscar, Edward Randy), and Namco (The Outfoxies) since we felt they deserved more exposure. Most of the genres cover side-scrolling platformers, overhead run-and-guns, and plenty of over-the-shoulder gallery shooters, molded after TAD's Cabal. In a few cases we've also covered associated console sequels. Most everything here is from the mid-90s through 2000 or so, focusing on primarily Japanese developers, as well as a few interesting European titles from developers like Gaelco.

Someday we'll do a book on 16-bit Cult Classics too, if only so we have an excuse to ramble about Telenet games, and maybe some American arcade developers too!

-Kurt Kalata

April 2024

The Astyanax

AKA: The Lord of King (JP)

Original Release: 1988

Platforms: ARC, NES, PS4, NSW, EVR

Released in 1988, The Legendary Axe was one of the first decent action-platformers for the TurboGrafx-16, starring a determined caveman who hacked through prehistoric environments with his trusty axe. While published by Victor Musical Industries, it was actually developed by a small company called Aicom, and directed by a man named Tokuhiro Takemori, who had previously worked on the NES game Amagon. Victor Music commissioned their own sequel of sorts, called The Legendary Axe II in North America, but it was actually made by an entirely separate team at Atlus, and looked and played completely differently. Instead, Takemori and Aicom made The Astyanax, also known as The Lord of King in Japan, published by Jaleco and released in arcades in 1989.

While the setting has changed to a Greek mythological fantasy, and Roche the hero (and his palette-swapped co-op partner) looks like a fair-maned warrior dude, it plays a whole lot like The Legendary Axe, right down to the rhythm of your axe attacks and how enemies bounce and explode when they’re killed. They also share the same charge mechanics, where you have a power gauge that charges automatically and is expended whenever you swing your weapon, determining the strength of your attack. For example, the flying demon guys take three hits to kill normally, but if you wait a few seconds for a full charge, which gives your axe a flaming effect, you’ll then slay them in a single blow. Power-ups are also obtained by totems, which can grant you single-use magic spells to wipe out several enemies at once.

The game really could’ve used more of those crowd control spells though, because it throws tons of enemies at you, from all sides, constantly. Plus, while the stages occasionally offer some traps or platforming challenges, most of them just feature gauntlets upon gauntlets of enemies, at least until you stumble onto the boss fight. The sheer number of foes ends up undermining its core mechanics, because your axe takes far too long to charge, and blindly hacking at opponents is the only way to keep them at bay. It’s unfortunate that the difficulty ends up overwhelming the game, especially considering that The Legendary Axe was a more thoughtfully designed game in comparison, but perhaps the income-driven nature of arcade gameplay forced an experience that’s more brutal than rewarding.

If nothing else, the game is worth trudging through to see the insane twist of a final level. The opening stages of The Astyanax may feel like Golden Axe or Rastan, complete with Harryhausen-style animated skeletons and multi-headed dragons. However, the finale ends up being 100% pure H. R. Giger, and the end boss is literally just the large Xenomorph from Alien.

This is made even more ludicrous by the fact that there’s no story whatsoever — you charge into the castle and all of a sudden you’re in the middle of a sci-fi film, then you beat the final boss and get a generic Castlevania-style ending, complete with an unrelated castle crumbling into the sea. Was there an actual plot that we, the gamers, weren’t privy to? Did the development team get sick of doing a generic fantasy game and just decided to let loose on the final stage? Also, one of the enemies in the last area is a female creature who can have her clothes knocked off when you hit her, after which she covers her shame before disappearing. While this is right before the Alien sequence, it seems like the folks at Aicom were content to hide things like this near the end, where only the most devoted players would see them.

The Astyanax was also ported to the NES by C-Lab, also known for Jaleco’s Totally Rad, though it’s fair to say that this is a completely different game that just happens to use some of the same base mechanics. The story has changed from a straight fantasy to an isekai, complete with Ninja Gaiden-esque cutscenes, as you control a high school student who’s summoned to the realm of Remlia by a fairy named Cutie. In the Japanese version, he shares the name of Roche with his arcade counterpart, while in the English version, he’s just named Astyanax. The NES version also drops the definite article in the title.

You’re equipped with an axe by default here and it uses the auto-charge strength mechanic, but otherwise little else remains of the original arcade game. The levels are completely different, opting to include many more jumping challenges, as well as a few sections that scroll straight upward. Beyond the axe, you can also change your weapon to a sword or a spear. The size of your attack power bar is also fairly short at the beginning, but can be expanded through power-ups. Your life bar is enormous too, allowing you to take much more damage than the meager four hits of the arcade game. You wield three different magic spells now, too: a lightning blast that attacks everything on the screen, a fireball spell, and a time freeze ability. Each of these consume different amounts of magic points, rather than being single-use spells.

The NES lacks the technical capabilities to flood the screen with enemies like the arcade game did, so this version is mercifully a little less busy. It’s still hard as hell though, as enemies are still tough and numerous, particularly the skeletons you’ll regularly need to duel, and it’s very easy to get knocked into one of the many, many pits. For all of the improvements elsewhere, the core action just doesn’t feel as snappy or satisfying as in the arcade game, one of the many areas where a little bit of polish could’ve gone a long way.

The H. R. Giger stuff at the end is gone as well, but so is the generic fantasy theme, replaced with a much darker and wilder medieval universe. While there are the usual castles and caves, some levels get freaky, especially the swamps that have eyes built into its stones. Props also go out to the graphic designer on the fifth level, with its insane orange, green, and light-blue color scheme. Astyanax’s sprite is also huge for an NES game, although it comes with slowdown and flicker.

The NES port is too rough to really run with the 8-bit greats, but there’s enough interesting stuff to make it worth at least a look. It’s also far more well-known than the arcade original, though that has seen a re-release on modern consoles as part of the Arcade Archives.

The devs attempted to cap off their “axe” trilogy with an action-RPG for the Genesis called Dando, which unfortunately never saw release. While it included map screens à la Dragon Quest, the action sequences look just like The Legendary Axe and Astyanax.

Ninja Kazan

Original Release: 1988

Platforms: ARC, PS4, NSW

Fans of 80s arcade games are no doubt familiar with ninjas like Joe Musashi from Sega’s Shinobi and Ryu Hayabusa from Tecmo’s Ninja Gaiden. One of the lesser ninja dudes is Kazan, star of Jaleco's titular action game Ninja Kazan, known in Japan as Iga Ninjutsuden: Goshin no Sho ("Iga Ninjutsu Story: Books of the Five Gods"). Here our hero travels the world (or the "universe", as the map screen puts it for some reason) in order to find five "letters" that have been stolen, then returns to his home country of Japan for a final confrontation.

Kazan comes equipped with a basic sword to mow down foes. Throughout each stage are elderly men who will grant him a new, upgraded weapon, beginning from shurikens to kusarigamas (a chain and sickle) to knives. These allow you to attack at a greater distance, but you'll lose them if you die. (You can always backtrack during levels and revisit one of these if you want to re-obtain a lost weapon.)

However, Kazan's own magic powers are much more powerful, which are cast by holding down the attack button for a certain amount of time. You can shoot a fireball at the beginning, which takes about two seconds to charge and mows down multiple enemies at once. Each level grants you a new magic spell, which in turn takes two more seconds of charging to use. These include the Blizzard Wave, which actually looks more like a cloud of sparkles. This one is larger and travels farther than the Fireball. There’s also the Lava Beam, which shoots flames in a cross-shaped pattern, horizontally and vertically. Meanwhile, the Electric Bomb causes an explosion around Kazan, and the Dragon Quake attacks everything on the screen, even enemies that are flying. There's no limit on how often you can cast these spells either, as long as you can charge them up for long enough. The Dragon Quake is, of course, super powerful, but it also takes 12 excruciating seconds of charging, during which you can't attack at all.

Enemies attack quickly here, but most can be cut down with a single attack. Even the ones with stronger defenses have a tendency to jump over you, allowing you to score the second killing blow if you can dodge them. Even many aerial foes will politely soar right over your head if you duck.

The levels in Ninja Kazan are relatively open, allowing you to explore for additional treasure chests or find where the kindly weapon-providing man is hiding. However, while they're constructed well enough, with a large number of platforms to jump across and enemies to fight, they certainly feel long. Most stages give you a time limit of five minutes, and if you spend too much time exploring or fall too many times and need to backtrack, it's very likely that you'll bump up against the clock and end up losing a life.

Kazan can take three hits before dying, which is actually more generous than games like Shinobi or Ninja Spirit. Losing a life also means getting sent back to either the beginning of the stage or a mid-level checkpoint though, and continuing from a game over means restarting the whole stage. Due to their sizes, trudging through them repeatedly can become a bit tiresome.

The pacing does move pretty quickly, as Kazan can use his weapon while walking, allowing you to mow down enemies without ever needing to stop. However, the action does stop for a split-second every time you cast a spell, undoubtedly used for dramatic effect but something that grows a bit annoying if you're constantly throwing fireballs.

The boss battles can be tough, particularly since most of the later foes have multiple forms, and with them, additional life bars. Thankfully, the game is at least generous enough to let you respawn right before them, even when continuing. Furthermore, while you might be stuck with a crappy sword, at least you always have your magic, so you still have a fighting chance when you retry.

The world-traveling theme gives Ninja Kazan a unique identity, though it's handled in a pretty questionable manner. The first level takes place in the American desert, where you'll spend the entire stage murdering Natives. The second level sends you to Africa, where you invade some sacred ruins and kill plenty of indigenous soldiers.

Reality breaks down by the third level, which takes place in Greece and is filled with armored centurions, winged creatures, and half-horse monsters straight out of mythology. Perhaps you’ve warped to the past? The fourth area takes place in India, where you'll fight miniature armored elephants and scantily clad swordswomen, who jiggle their bosoms as they saunter forward. The fifth and sixth stages return to some semblance of normalcy, where you'll encounter ninjas and other foes that at least make it seem like they're from the modern era. It seems that Jaleco didn't put much stake in realism with this project. For some, that might make its cultural insensitivity a little more tolerable.

Visually, the game looks fairly average, with large sprites that lack distinctive features. The huge, sprawling layouts combined with the small tileset, is undoubtedly the reason why the levels feel as long as they do. At least some of the music tracks manage to be pretty catchy.

Ninja Kazan doesn't quite size up to the better ninja arcade games, or action arcade games in general, as it really needed some tighter design. Conversely, it's also not nearly as frustrating as many games of the era either. It's challenging but fair for the most part, making for an agreeable if not outstanding experience. Jaleco never brought the game to the Famicom, even though it's a better title than The Astyanax, released around the same time, which did get a home port. Perhaps there were already too many ninja games, especially Jaleco's own Ninja Jajamaru series, which was far cuter and also cast across different genres. It did eventually get a home release as part of Hamster's Arcade Archives in 2021.

Jaleco didn't entirely forget about Kazan though, as a ninja with the same name was featured in the SNES beat-em-up Brawl Brothers. His design is completely different here, though it's not like his arcade game aesthetic was particularly unique. Chances are good that he’s meant to be the same character.

Momoko 120%

AKA: Urusei Yatsura: Lum no

Wedding Bell (FC)

Original Release: 1986

Platforms: ARC, FC, MOB, NSW

Momoko 120% from Jaleco is an oddball run-and-gun platformer that has the player controlling the titular girl as she escapes from burning buildings. Oddly, the source of the perpetual blazes is never really explained. Conjecture states that somehow the strange alien, blob-like enemies that impede her path have caused them. The game also doesn't explain where she got her phaser pistol to blast foes away with, either. Momoko must traverse up flights of escalators, ladders, trampolines, and floating platforms to reach the roof of the building and grab hold of a small blimp that floats by before she's engulfed in the rising flames. Any contact with enemies, their projectiles, or falling too far spells doom for our heroine.

Part of the game's gimmick and loose plot line is that every stage represents a part of Momoko's young life. The five main stages have her at age 4, 6, 12, 15, and 18 running through looping stories of a building to find her way up to the next, adding more floors to climb with each new stage. Many levels also have pits to leap across or monkey bars to shimmy on. Any open doors (or at least ones wide enough) further serve as a means of teleportation, as Momoko steps into a room and appears elsewhere on the floor, usually popping in from the wall.

Each stage adds more and more alien blob monsters to blast away as they fly, walk, or drip from the ceiling. At the end of each area after fleeing on the blimp, the game shows Momoko's sprite flashing as she grows up to her new age, with a new outfit to boot.

Now all of that is unusual enough, but it’s made even stranger by the settings of the stages. The first four levels take place in educational buildings, from preschool to high school, with the fifth area being a studio with Momoko as an idol singer. That’s a lot of arson centered around one unlucky schoolgirl growing up, stuck with the misfortune of having five buildings burn under her and shooting alien creatures to bits from such a young age. That’s all without any mention of where the aliens come from, who pilots the escape blimp, or why a preschool would be five stories tall with tons of escalators. It's just bizarre playing as a four year-old, mowing down colorful blobbies as she tries to prevent her fiery doom. Even stranger are the bonus rooms hidden behind certain doorways, leading Momoko into hallways like a pink, fleshy bio realm with hurdles to jump, or a starry background with barrels to leap over, Mario style — both with rising flames to contend with.

Should Momoko survive five levels of flames and aliens, the game ends with a quick, final area with her at 20 years old in a chapel with a wedding dress, leaping to collect various items and trinkets for bonus points within 30 seconds. After this she runs to a door to marry a groom unseen beforehand, where hearts float above them and it ends with a newborn baby and loops to the first stage again. Is this a repeat of Momoko's exploits, or does her daughter face a similar hellish journey? It’s your call.

The graphics are very colorful and bright, but mostly flat, with big, black outlines over Momoko and enemy sprites. Background doors and hallways copy and paste the same designs for each level too, giving the appearance of a cartoon background looping as you run by. Momoko also has a slow, jerky two-frame run cycle as she glides over the ground.

At least her gun fires fast and usually clears foes with one shot. They begin appearing in droves by the third level though, making it easy to die as you share the same one-hit weakness. The gun itself can be boosted from collecting a power-up from one green monster with antennae that spawns mini baddies with each shot and takes multiple hits, or from clearing the bonus rooms. Unfortunately, the power progression switches from wide shots to a pea shooter, then back to wider shots and again until it ends with one mega beam. Then one death sends you back down to regular pea shooter level. There’s no means of continuing after you lose all your lives either, which makes it tough if you run into a badly placed swarm or fall off from a bad jump late in the game. As an aside, any lethal fall has Momoko flashing an upskirt.

For the Famicom port, Jaleco developed the game as a licensed title based on Rumiko Takahashi's Urusei Yatsura series. The deal didn't go through for the arcade version, but an FM synth recreation of the anime's first theme, "Lum's Love Song", plays throughout the majority of the game. They were able to obtain the rights for the Famicom port, rechristening the game as Urusei Yatsura: Lum no Wedding Bell.

The gameplay is pretty much the same as the arcade original, though the story's changed. The plot tells about an earthquake hitting Tomobiki-cho, causing a rip in the space-time continuum and hurtling Lum into the past where she must run through burning buildings to safety. The enemies she can zap with her lightning powers are shifted to match the series more properly, with octopi, tengu crow demons, hired bodyguards from Mendou, falling Kotatsu-Nekos, and more.

Aside from a blimp, Lum also hops onto a UFO from the rooftops. With no gun to power up, she can collect secret items that appear from jumping in the right place to allow her to take more damage, or calling in helpers such as her little cousin Ten or her former fiancée Rei to deal with baddies. The bonus rooms here are changed to a one-screen "Kill All Enemies" type for points.

With so much detail poured into the conversion, it’s a shame then that this port is a big step down from the arcade original, and not just in graphics and sound. Icons now have to be collected to get platforms to move in the first place, and Lum has no control over her jumps once she leaves the ground. The game also slows down and flickers regularly. At least there are a few nice touches, such as having a perfect rendition of Lum's flying sound effect when she hops from a trampoline, along with Ataru's signature bow-legged walk in the wedding scene, complete with him falling down comically from Lum's hearts.

After the turn of the century, a series of mobile games were released under the "Momoko 1200%" moniker. The first pair were two halves of a remake of the arcade version, including more detailed graphics and a redesign for Momoko. The next was Momoko 1200% in Machigai Sagashi ("Spot the Difference"), where you must locate and remove the discrepancies within a picture under a time limit. The final title is a simple bowling affair, Momoko no Kasei Bowling ~La Mars Cup~ ("Kasei" meaning "Mars"). Here Momoko competes with her classmate Taka-chan, and the goofy-looking Mars Prince, who has a pink octopus on his head. These have been re-released on the Nintendo Switch by G-Mode. Momoko also appears with other Jaleco characters in the cute-em-up The Game Tengoku.

Ginga Ninkyouden

Original Release: 1987

Platforms: ARC

Jaleco’s 1987 arcade action game Ginga Ninkyouden (“Legend of the Galactic Yakuza”) tells the story of Yatchan, a young gangster who’s won the heart of his boss, Clis. Their peaceful days come to a sudden end when King Cobra, being the jerk that he is, whisks away his beloved to the other side of the galaxy. So begins Yatchan’s quest to rescue her, as he fights his way through Cobra’s army assembled across time and space.

However, a closer inspection of the game will reveal a twist: the whole thing is one big movie production, with both Yatchan and his girlfriend being actors in it. That tongue-in-cheek premise alone is enough to tell you that this is a decidedly silly game poking fun at itself, although in doing so it ends up prioritizing the gag over everything else. It’s also rather infamous for the rampant use of copyrighted materials, so much so that Jaleco should be thankful nobody sued them over it.

Outwardly, Ginga Ninkyouden plays mostly like Irem’s Kung Fu Master. Enemies come in a constant stream from both sides, and Yatchan has to combat them with his bare fists. Power-ups give you a katana that has better reach, but taking any damage will downgrade it each time until you're left with nothing. The level design found here is more complex than its ancestor, ditching the long stretch of a flat platform in favor of stages with great vertical range and paths that must be traversed multi-directionally. For instance, one level loops infinitely until you find a correct way to pass it. Each area is completed by defeating the boss at the end of it, after which King Cobra flees off with Clis and Yatchan hops onto a giant turtle to chase him. (It’s possible to miss your step in this part and die instantly!) Sometimes this takes him to a shoot-em-up level, where the turtle transforms into a humanoid mecha and provides its own arsenal. These segments are rudimentary but brief, serving as an appetizer between a total of five stages the game offers.

The graphics are crafted with a distinct art style that emulates anime and manga of its era. The game treats itself like an episode of an anime, breaking up the stages with title cards and “eyecatch” intermissions, supplemented with illustrations by Masaharu Shimizu (some may recognize his work in similarly offbeat titles like Kendo Rage and Battle Golfer Yui). Characters in the game have exaggerated proportions with oversized heads, having various expressions on their face when they get beaten up. The levels are equally full of bizarre details too, like the bathing ladies Yatchan likes to peep on. There’re a surprising number of voice clips as well, usually from Yatchan reacting to his surroundings, the most notable being a painfully amusing groan every time he bumps his head on a ceiling. These are let down by a grainy color palette and stiff animation, but it’s a fun way to inject personality into the cast.

What’s not so fun is playing the game itself. Like most other single-plane beat-em-ups, Ginga Ninkyouden revolves around learning the timing to fend off each foe, but things go off the rails quickly when the game sends out opponents who can throw you off of your rhythm with little effort. It is already tough enough when, even with your trusty katana, enemies have generally better reach than you, but it becomes overwhelming the moment they show up with weapons that shower you with projectiles, or fly and make a beeline toward you.

The problem is that you walk a lot more slowly than his opponents, and the controls simply aren’t designed to handle this sort of challenge. You can duck for evasion, but it’s not effective when lots of projectiles travel in an arc or drop straight on you from above. You can try jumping out of their way, but you can’t adjust your trajectory, nor attack below. Given that the game endlessly spawns foes from all possible angles, you’ll likely end up landing on one of them and get yourself killed in no time.

Ginga Ninkyouden seems aware of its mean-spirited difficulty though, as every defeated enemy generously drops both power-ups and health restoratives, and occasionally hands out a nutrient drink that enchants your katana with the ability to fire an aura. If you figure out how to grind these within the time limit and make the best use of them (no mean feat, as they disappear as soon as they pop up), then the game does become doable. Still, it’s not so much a meticulous insight on the developer’s part as a band aid to make the game more tolerable. Almost all of the game is marred by balance issues like this, from slipshod boss fights to sketchy hit detection, and the player has no choice but to abuse all of the loopholes available to cushion whatever the game throws at you.

To say that Ginga Ninkyouden was “inspired” by contemporary pop culture would be an understatement. Right off the bat, even before putting in a coin, the game’s own attract mode proudly discloses the fact that the designs of King Cobra’s army are based upon various celebrities, using thinly veiled pseudonyms. Throughout the game you’ll encounter familiar faces like Godzilla, Kenshiro (Fist of the North Star), wrestler Antonio Inoki, a Gundam Zaku mecha, Joe Yabuki (Ashita no Joe), Jigen (Lupin III), Saki Asamiya (Sukeban Deka), Rambo, and Jason Voorhees.

Other areas are just as amazing: there’s an entire section in the first level recreating the boarding house from Maison Ikkoku, a hit manga by Rumiko Takahashi (better known in the west as the author of Ranma ½ and Inuyasha), and the music for one stage rips off the theme song from baseball anime Kyojin no Hoshi. The icing on the cake is in the ending credits, where the developers felt so bad about the whole affair that they left an apology note to every copyright holder concerned. It’s shocking that Jaleco managed to get away with all of this. One can only assume the game’s sparse distribution, as well as its release exclusivity to Japan, helped it slip under the radar.

At any rate, Ginga Ninkyouden is mediocre. While some bits are chuckle-worthy, the messy design and brutal difficulty overshadow any positives. Still, it’s hard not to be fascinated by the very existence of such a brazen game, one that makes you think the people behind it must’ve had a blast, and for better or worse, it’s truly one-of-a-kind. On emulators, there’s a DIP switch option that disables the health meter and renders Yatchan invincible, making for an ideal way to experience this time capsule.

Avenging Spirit

AKA: Phantasm (JP)

Original Release: 1991

Platforms: ARC, GB, IOS, 3DS, PS4, NSW, XBO, EVR

One of Jaleco’s more interesting games, Avenging Spirit is a traditional platformer that stands out from the crowd with its unique core mechanic — the ability to possess enemies and harness their unique abilities. Tokuhiro Takemori was the main planner, and had previously done work on Amagon, The Astyanax, and RoboWarrior.

As the story goes, our protagonist and his girlfriend, Miss Darling, have just finished up some grocery shopping when suddenly the two of them are ambushed by two trench coat wearing gangsters. One of them quickly snatches her, and before he can even begin to fight them off, the other pulls out a pistol and fires, killing the hero instantly. The scene cuts to the laboratory of his girlfriend’s father, an experienced spectral scientist, who explains that the two kidnappers were members of an evil secret organization intent on holding her for ransom in exchange for the details on his research. Our protagonist, reduced to nothing but a small wisp, must now resort to desperate (and not to mention highly invasive) measures in order to bring the criminals down and rescue his beloved with the time he has left on this earth.

Avenging Spirit has a very simple two-button control scheme. Although you’re invincible as a ghost, you’re also completely defenseless, and you have a bar of spirit energy that constantly drains and takes a credit when it fully depletes. Pressing either button while above the head of an enemy is where the game’s shining mechanic comes into play — possession. While in a host’s body, A attacks and B jumps. Each host has their own attributes, from agility, max health, and attack power, to things like falling speed and projectile speed (if they have one), providing many different options to get you through the stages. Being in a host is also the only way to get the various pick-ups scattered around, which can give back health, restore spirit energy, or just provide points. Taking damage while in a host takes equally from both their health and your spirit energy, and when your host gets killed, you’re ejected from their corpse and forced to quickly find a new living body to do your bidding. The exception to this is the bosses, where you’re permanently attached to your host and your spirit energy serves as your health, giving you much more room for error.

There are roughly 23 different hosts you can possess in the game. This mainly comes from the fact that a good amount are palette swaps, but their varying stats make this rather easy to overlook. The two female fighters both run fast and jump high, but they only have melee attacks and very little health. The three dragon enemies are very slow, but they have lots of health and their melee attack is extremely powerful. Some are more mechanically unique than others, like the guru, who can levitate by repeatedly pressing the jump button, or the baseball player, who can reflect projectiles back at enemies for extra damage.

Avenging Spirit is only six stages long, but the game raises the stakes in that the secrets are directly tied to which ending you get. The cell where your lost love is being held captive is in the final stage, and it requires three colored keys to open. None are particularly well-hidden as to not drag out a playthrough (heck, the first one is on the main path of the stage it’s in), and the challenge comes more from additional enemy encounters in order to acquire them. The reward for finding all three is a rather satisfying finale that’s quite novel for the time, but failing nets you about as much of a downer of a resolution as you can get.

Although Avenging Spirit is a basic platformer, it can still be quite difficult. There’s no way to ditch your current host without killing it, but that’s no problem, as it’s quite common that the screen will get flooded with deadly enemies or their even deadlier projectiles. This is particularly an issue on the game’s harder difficulty settings. Getting hit by the wrong attack can both spell instant death for your current host and take a hefty hit to your spirit energy. This makes it nearly impossible to just pick a host you like and go through the whole game with them.

Presentation-wise, Avenging Spirit really shines due to running on Jaleco’s in-house developed Mega System 1-B hardware. The heavily shaded anime style may not appeal to some, but the effort doesn’t go to waste. The cutscene art is vibrant and detailed, the stages are aesthetically pleasing to look at, and the detail on the various sprites is highly apparent at every moment, which can range from the amusing, like the sprites for when enemies are burned by dragon fire or the vampire enemy flashing his underwear during his attack, to the downright disturbing, like the hopping thugs frothing at the mouth upon death.

Avenging Spirit is perhaps more well known for its Game Boy release from the following year. The game plays virtually identically, but it received a global difficulty decrease due to both technical limitations and the nature of being a home port. You have infinite continues, your spirit energy drains much more slowly, there are less enemies in the stages, both enemies and bosses do less damage, and the Select button lets you kill your host instantly, though your spirit energy will still be appropriately reduced. The developers even added a new host, the invisible man, who can’t attack, but is completely invincible and lasts for a limited time. The score system has been completely removed here, but there’s also a new hard mode activated by inputting a secret code, which changes the enemy placements to be more challenging.

The Game Boy port was done by an entirely different team, and it certainly shows, given both the amusingly unrepresentative American box art and the substantially different art style in-game. Naoyuki Watanabe’s art takes a much more cartoonish, playful approach in the sprites, but the cutscene art is extremely impressive, and even adds animations in contrast to the still images that the arcade version uses, managing to squeeze in about the same amount of detail, despite it being on less powerful hardware. There are even two neat little art pieces that are exclusive to Phantasm depending on which difficulty you finish the game on. Takahiro Ogata provided several new music tracks as well, added in places where the arcade version either was silent or reused previous music, which makes for a big improvement.

Overall, though the arcade version of Avenging Spirit is still quite fun, the Game Boy port is far more enjoyable. These days, the original arcade game is available on the PS4, Xbox, and Switch.

Castle of Dragon

AKA: Dragon Unit (JP)

Original Release: 1989

Platforms: ARC, NES

Published by Seta, another game company approximately as obscure as Athena, Castle of Dragon involves a dragon, Zuriv, who invades the kingdom of Wenlary and captures its princess. The kings Duke and Narda take up their sword, shield, and armor to slay Zuriv and rescue the princess. That's as grade-school of a plot as you can get, but almost no arcade games have enough of a story to fill a 50-page novella. The important thing is that you can take up to two knights on your six-stage journey. By default, you're decked out in an impressive set of blue (red if player two) armor which makes you resemble a prototypical form of SoulCalibur's Nightmare. However, if you take about a third of your total damage, part of your armor gets knocked off to reveal a somewhat dorky head beneath. Lose about two-thirds’ health and you're stripped down to nearly nothing, and you in fact resemble a poor man's Conan the Barbarian.

Appropriately enough for your hero's unmasked appearance, your expanded arsenal actually bears a lot of parity to the weapons you could grab in Taito's Rastan: a mace, axe, and flaming sword. In Castle of Dragon, you have a sword by default that has very little attack range. You also get a shield by which you can block enemy projectiles, though for some reason, you press a separate button to crouch and block instead of just holding Down. Thankfully, the mace extends your range in exactly the same way as in Rastan, and the axe allows you to strike from a distance, being tossed at foes instead of swinging it. You can also pick up a red orb that shoots out flaming crescent projectiles, along with a green crystal that endows your blade with powerful, semi-ranged lightning blasts.

There's also an armor pick-up to entirely restore your life, if you survive long enough to see one while nigh-naked. Hourglasses refill your time, red gauntlets make you temporarily invincible, and the coveted blue boots increase your heroes' walking speed. You can stack three boots' worth of speed upon each other until you lose a life too. If only you could have that for longer though, as your default gait is painfully sluggish. Each stage only takes a few minutes to clear, though with cheap bosses like tall Medusas and agile bug-beasts, you'll likely be plunking in a few credits to beat a whole game.

Two of the levels (2 and 5) don't have end-bosses and merely require you to pick up a key. These stages tend to focus more on platforming than on combat, though the fifth level (and the penultimate one in the game) is surprisingly easier than most others, even compared to the second one. Stage two throws out more than enough spike crushers and pitfalls to make Castlevania blush, but all that level five offers is a vertical climb filled with somewhat annoying demon trees. While it feels kind of limp, it's also nice to have a bit of a breather before the final stage eats a quarter buffet with your wallet as the platter. It's as short as any other area, but also has the gall to bring back the bug jerks from the end of stage 4, followed by a brutal fight against a pair of large purple dragons who have multiple types of breath and can easily crush you by leaping into the air. The final boss, a gigantic green dragon who takes up nearly half of the screen, is no slouch either. Even so, he somehow sucks less than the prior duo you just fought.

All told, Castle of Dragon feels incomplete, mostly since it can be beaten in under 10 minutes. There's also something a bit sketchy about its overall design, as if they decided to compensate for its brevity by hiking the difficulty up to insane degrees. You're much slower than most enemies too, and your default attack range is terrible, making for a rocky playthrough without your power-ups.

Furthermore, the music is some of the oddest mishmash ever encoded onto an arcade board, full of digitized guitar riffs that would be awesome if they weren't so repetitive, and with atrocious sound quality. At least the graphics are competent, though there are some jerky animations with the enemies. Your main hero's trudging sprite actually looks decent, though.

There’s also a neat little gimmick where you get to fight against your rival if you're on a two-player game, and the winner gets the girl at the end à la Double Dragon; there's even a bad ending if nobody wins before time runs out. Overall, there are far better action games out there than what’s on offer here, but it's at least playable and worth trying.

Castle of Dragon somehow managed to receive an NES port. It's barely the same game as the original, as its level structure is entirely different, the way power-ups work are changed, and there are several new bosses. It's also a complete mess, arguably sloppier than the arcade version, and that's saying something. It’s considerably longer than the arcade original, but more length doesn’t always equate to more fun. The movement is just a tad choppy and suffers massive slowdown if too many sprites clog the screen. Your sword does mediocre damage too, and you can’t obtain power-ups regularly. You can only get new weapons by beating certain bosses, and though you get throwing knives which are permanent until you pick up the mace (also permanent), the really cool fire and thunder swords are only temporary. You can also only get armor from killing bosses, though you can boost your health meter by killing enemies and maxing out the experience bar to the right of your lifebar.

Regardless of any enhancements, combat here is a chore. Most midbosses can only be beaten by hitting them once, jumping over them, getting some distance before they can hit you, turning around, hitting them again, and repeating the process ad infinitum. And if you die, that's it. One life, no continues, game over. It's even worse than the arcade game in terms of cheapness too, and really is just an overall bad game. The only positive thing that can be said is that it laid the foundations for its NES-exclusive sequel, Sword Master.

Sword Master

Original Release: 1990

Platforms: NES

Sword Master is the spiritual successor to Castle of Dragon (moreso the NES port than the arcade original), as it features a similar setting, protagonist, enemies, and general gameplay. Thankfully, whereas Castle of Dragon wasn’t very good, Sword Master is a more respectable product and quite fun, if not rough around the edges.

In action, the game looks pretty dang good. Your protagonist, a knight in shining golden armor, is reasonably well-animated as he saunters along at a decent clip, almost with a Belmont-esque sort of gait. The sprites are of a decent size and quite detailed, often toned in one or two colors that are dark and subtle. In fact, the backgrounds are all quite murky in a way that makes the world feel clad in a perpetual darkness. This lends Sword Master a unique feel that looks badass without belaboring it. It also features some good music that sounds as if it was composed for a lost Castlevania

game, with the tracks for the first, fourth, and seventh levels serving as high-energy standouts.

As you may expect from the title, you are a Sword Master

whose blade is your best friend and your shield a close second. Your goal is to hack and slash your way through any and all adversaries that may stand in your path. Standing and crouching stabs work to deal damage, as well as a useful overhead slash by holding Up while attacking. Front-facing attacks can be blocked by crouching too, and aerial attacks by holding Up, though jumping away is sometimes preferable to outright defense. Your jump moves quickly and drops fast, but there isn’t much platforming to speak of.

Nope, the focal point of Sword Master is the incredibly high number of boss fights, of which most stages have about three major fights on average. Only a few steps into the first area, you get accosted by a skeleton with a sword of his own, and he knows how to swing AND block. Just right past him is a tall, blue ogre whose club swings pain, even though he's arguably easier than the skeleton due to being slow and unable to block. Too bad there's another skeleton right after him, and right past that is a blue wizard who can rain down dark fire and warp around à la Dracula. They only get more malevolent from there on out, like the black knight at the end of the second stage. He’s a smart fighter and can really only be beaten by jumping in with overhead strikes, then jumping back out before he can hit you.

With other such neat fights as jump-kicking lizardmen, flying gargoyles that bombard you with blue fireballs, and the obligatory battles against bipedal, fire-spouting dragons, one may wonder why they didn't just cut out all the fodder and pitfalls and just get to the duels. The game does indeed feature other enemies like bats and zombie torsos, but they're often extinguished with a single, well-timed strike.

One of the very few games to which Sword Master can be compared is Taito's Gladiator, which has essentially the same premise of tossing filler enemies at you before bringing you to a boss battle in about 30 seconds' time. Of course Gladiator didn’t allow jumping and had your hero trot along at an automatic pace, and if you were struck on a body part where your armor was sheared off, you instantly lost a life. Sword Master at least gives you a proper life bar and motivation to slay the enemies by adding experience points. Further, if you level up with enough minion blood, your life bar gets extended for the rest of the game. They might also drop jars full of red stuff that boosts your life by a point, so it's in your best interest to cut down all of your opponents.

Despite being called Sword Master, you actually get an alternate form of attack that is considerably un-swordlike. After you beat the second stage boss, you get a magical cane which then allows you to completely change form. With a push of the Select button, you morph from your conventional gold armored knight into a white-robed mage, somewhat akin to Sypha from Castlevania III. At first, you can only fire a short-range projectile that’s weaker and slower than your default sword swings, but beating other levels gives you the ability to shoot fireballs, exploding arc shots, and electric bolts that do considerable damage to adversaries.

Considering how you don't have to get close with these extra powers, it would seem like magic is the way to go for the rest of the game. Sadly, using any other magic attack besides the default one drains a bit from your experience bar with each casting, so you really have to consider the risk of better attack power against a lesser life bar.

So why isn't Sword Master a better remembered game? It's a fast-paced action game that offers great variety in its boss battles, and it looks and sounds good enough to stand alongside most other 90s NES titles. This might have to do with the fact that it's really difficult. It's not always easy to evade or block enemy attacks, some of which do quite a bit of damage if they connect. That being said, the fights can be won with enough practice and a bit of luck, but on one of the stages, some designer thought it would be ideal to focus on platforming for a change and put in an abnormally high amount of instant death falls. This game is clearly not designed for platforming, considering how much gravity your jumps contain. At several points, you even have to exploit a bizarre glitch where you can double-jump if you fall onto the edge of a platform, and for a few such leaps, there’s literally no other way to reach the next platform.

The sixth level tosses a bunch of spears, spiked balls, and falling blocks at you, along with a few pits, with the only enemies being slimes and the giant axe-guy at the end. This part feels a bit less aggravating compared to the fourth stage, if only just because they don't do too much damage despite being hard to avoid. Stage four is the worst it gets for unfairness, but the last area, despite being a straight-up brawlfest, is ruthless with half-a-dozen bosses back-to-back, expecting you to beat most of them on one life. The bloody wizard at the end of this gauntlet has a lightning attack which is basically impossible to avoid and forces you to kill him ASAP, but your health is likely low at this point, and getting slain sends you back to the beginning of the level. The game mercifully gives you a checkpoint before the (surprisingly easy) penultimate boss and the finale against Vishok, the latter of which comes down to a frustrating battle of attrition that essentially requires you to just be faster than you are skilled.

Compounding things is that you're only given five continues to last you an entire run. Somewhat counterbalancing this meager ration is the game’s surprising brevity, wherein you can actually beat it in less than half an hour if you’re diligent enough. Sword Master is thus the sort of game that relies on the three Ps of practice, patience, and perseverance. It may not exactly be a landmark classic, mostly due to its concise nature and punishing difficulty, combined with the lack of any sort of passwords to maintain your progress. This is as "old-school" as an action game can get, and considering that it was released late during the NES's lifespan, it went under the radar for most people.

Activision published the U.S. version, curiously enough, as they had long since fallen out of favor after their heyday during the Atari years, with many of their games being licensed junk. Sword Master just may be the finest title they released for the NES, yet it received no advertising budget, save for a fairly detailed guide in Volume #23 of Nintendo Power. Despite its lack of notoriety, it's actually a fine and fast action game for those willing to put up with its viciousness.

Psychic 5

AKA: Psychic 5 Eternal (NSW)

Original Release: 1987

Platforms: ARC, NSW

Nihon Micom Kaihatsu (NMK) is a relatively unknown developer that produced semi-obscure titles, such as Arkista's Ring and Ninja Crusaders on the NES, and the Rolan's Curse games for Game Boy. While none of their games are revolutionary, many of them have an interesting hook or unusual structure. They developed two games in 1987 — the arcade cabinet Psychic 5 and the Famicom game Esper Boukentai — starring a team of espers, and these follow suit with that philosophy.

There are two elements that make each of these titles stand out. In either one you control a team of five espers with individual strengths and weaknesses. Also, your characters can jump extremely high. NMK was formed by former staff members of Tehkan (later Tecmo), who previously worked on Bomb Jack, so this game has some elements from that title.

As soon as you start Psychic 5, you're taken to a screen that shows five characters, each with their own parameters — some jump higher, some hover longer, some are stronger, etc. — but you are only able to select from two of them. To acquire the others, you have to smash a small glass jar emblazoned with a frog.

You select your esper before each stage, then navigate the small labyrinth, breaking things with a hammer in order to progress to the center where you fight the stage's boss. There are pots with food along the way, which provide points, and chests with items. Doors also are placed across the scenery, and require pushing on them for a few seconds to open. Also of note are the phone booths sprinkled throughout each stage, which allow you to cycle through the playable characters that you've unlocked thus far. Colliding with an enemy or flames will kill you instantly, and if the clock reaches zero, a gigantic demon's foot comes down to squash you.

The characters have different names across regional variations and the Famicom port. (These are listed with the Japanese name / English name / Esper Boukentei name). Naoki / Tommy / Akio is the average, well-rounded character who doesn’t excel at anything but also isn’t especially lacking. Akiko / Linda / Mako is the "girl" character, who unsurprisingly, is a slight variation of Akio, though she’s slightly weaker and can hover a little longer. Bunta / Poward / Genta is the bruiser, who can take down doors quickly but is a poor jumper and even worse at hovering. Makoto / Steve / Naoyuki is tall, slender, and Luigi-like with tremendous jumping powers. Finally, Genzoh / Richard / Bunzoh has incredible strength, but is painfully slow.

The stages are fairly tall, with a main path that winds back and forth, often having small detours for power-ups. It’s also unusually wacky in its presentation. The backgrounds are fairly realistic in tone, but they have a strong dichotomy with the cartoonish enemies. A strong visual characteristic of Psychic 5 and its successor is that your enemies are, by and large, usually inanimate objects with exaggerated facial features.

The first thing that sets the gameplay apart is the high jumping. It almost seems a little out of place, and to make it even more ridiculous, you can hold Up as you jump to ascend even higher, and continue to hold it to greatly slow your descent. This works extremely well with the platforming elements, especially since you can hold Down to jump lower than usual. Aerial combat can become a bit awkward though, especially if you're using someone with a lower hover parameter, because you just seem to keep passing by your target both on the way up and on the trip back down. The boss of each stage, Satan, is always in the air, but he’s at least stationary, so it becomes less of a problem with him, though avoiding his fireballs is still pretty tricky.

The level design also complements both of the stand-out elements quite nicely. For one thing, it does a good job of dropping hints about which character you should use next; if you see a bunch of doors, you know to use Bunta, or if you see a long vertical stretch, you know that Makoto is the best pick. It even lets you know which character to use against Satan. In general, it's best to go with a strong character, but they're not very good jumpers. Most boss chambers are placed in such a way that you can see a fair amount of what's inside as you progress throughout the level, so you'll know whether you need a high jumper, a long floater, or if pure strength will suffice.

The level design also has its share of oddities. There are obstacles like hidden trap doors, invisible platforms that come into existence when you touch them, breakable walls, and little structures that slow you and prevent you from jumping — they look like fast food restaurants, but are apparently supposed to be roach motels — but in execution, these elements are nothing out of the ordinary. A bit stranger are the light switches, which temporarily make everything but the sprite layer go black, but also extinguish the fires, so rather than being just a straight trap, this one offers a bit of a trade-off.

Stranger still is the system by which power-ups are acquired and used. In most any game of this sort, you pick up an item and its effect is immediately activated. Some items still do this, such as extra lives, timer boosts, and anything that gives you points. The invincibility is instant, too: clobber Zara, the witch that's constantly hounding you, and you'll begin flying on a broom, swinging your hammer Donkey Kong-style, until the jingle ends and you're sent back to the realm of gravity again.

All other items are known as icons, and include score multipliers, power-ups that greatly boost all of your parameters, a time freeze for all enemies, and even letters that spell EXTRA to net you another life, not unlike spelling EXTEND in Bubble Bobble. When you grab icons, they just appear in one of the five boxes at the top of the screen. One of these crates is always highlighted, with said highlight constantly cycling through them. In order to use an icon, you must smash a chest or breakable wall when the box containing it is highlighted. This skill needs to be mastered in order to do well at the game, since icons are generally the most useful power-ups.

Though Psychic 5 is an extremely short game, learning how it works is a gradual process, and this is where the majority of its replay value is derived from. Your first run will likely be spent learning strategies for getting past enemies and obstacles efficiently to keep the dreaded timer from ending your game. If all you set out to do is beat the game, then the timer isn’t too much of an issue; you have more than enough time to make your way through all of the hazards, perhaps even grabbing a fair number of goodies as you go. This provides the player with an opportunity to get accustomed to the basics.

Learning when to use each character is a very important lesson. Utilizing each person’s strengths is essential, whether it’s Bunta's incredible strength to push down doors, Makoto's absurd jump height to reach otherwise inaccessible areas, Bunta and Genzoh's high damage output to crush legions of enemies, Akiko and Genzoh's lengthy hover to cross long stretches of fire, or Naoki and Akiko's small size to fit through otherwise inaccessible passages. In much the same respect, you must also be mindful of each character's weaknesses. Genzoh, for example, has the strongest attack and the longest hover, but is abysmally slow in everything that he does and unable to jump very high. Since you can’t switch people on the fly, weighing everyone’s traits is essential to bridging the gap between phone booths.

The game hammers this sense of teamwork home with the music. Interesting, it’s not the stage that determines the track, but the character used. Each has their own theme, which helps to define the characters, whether it be Naoki's adventurous tune, Bunta's heavy music, or Genzoh's silly melody. Once you get to the boss of the stage, the music changes to his theme, thereby uniting the heroes against their common enemy. The songs, composed by Shinichi Sakamoto, who would later go on to compose music for the Wonder Boy games, have a deep, bass-filled FM sound to them that possesses a great deal of impact. This style is often relegated to a more typical 8-bit style of chiptune.

Psychic 5 derives most of its complexity from the scoring. You have more than enough time to just blaze through each stage, but getting a high score requires grabbing every single food pot in a very specific way, and doing so makes the race against the clock a great deal more frantic. Each food item is inherently worth only 100 points, but increases by another 100 each time you grab the same food item consecutively. Every time you swing your hammer without hitting a food pot though, this changes the contents. The food will cycle through all of the different types with each swing, so the idea is to either use the hammer only on food pots or to keep count of your "misses" and how many of each alternate type remain.

It doesn't end there, either: There's a Magical Bonus that sometimes hides in jars instead of espers, but there’s a way to manipulate where they show up by meeting certain conditions to make the espers appear early, netting you a consecutive boost for the Magical Bonuses, as well. Beyond even that are the large enemies, which generate smaller foes; killing the large one provides an extra bonus for each remaining small type that it generated.

There are so many different kinds of bonuses to find here, but the beauty of it is that they all have the common element of consecutive acquisition, so they're not so obtuse that the player will never figure them out if they pay attention. The Secret Bonus is the only notable exception to this; it always appears in the same chest in each stage, but doesn’t always spawn. In order to acquire it, the thousands digit in your score has to be the number of secret bonuses you've gotten thus far, so if it happens to be your first, the thousands should be zero. This one is pretty difficult to figure out without help, but it’s called the “Secret Bonus” after all, so it was probably meant to be that way.

With all of that in mind, while Psychic 5 seems like a pretty standard arcade action title with a few quirks, it possesses a surprising level of depth for those who choose to pursue a high score run. There’s a strong sense of layered gameplay here that isn't commonly found in games; the more you play it, the more mysteries begin to form and unravel. This is also a fantastic way to add replay value to the game. Those who just want to get through the game can do so without being punished by missing out on content, but people who really enjoy the game and want more out of it can find just that.

A remake dubbed Psychic 5 Eternal was released in 2023, coming courtesy of CRT Games, the Korean developer who also made an HD update of Snow Bros. At the core of this is a reasonably accurate replication of the arcade version, with a number of quality of life improvements. The original release used a vertical monitor for a rather narrow view, while this port provides an option for a widescreen aspect ratio, expanding the borders on both sides to give a much larger look at the level. You can switch between the original low resolution visuals and the redone HD look as well, which don’t look great but fit the eccentric aesthetic of Psychic 5. Much like the graphics, you can also switch between the original OST and a revamped version, arranged by Sakamoto himself. Also new to this release is a two-player split-screen mode, which allows players to independently explore the stage.

Several difficulty levels have been added as well. In the arcade game, one hit was all it took to kill you, while the Easy and Normal modes found here let you take four and three hits, respectively. Meanwhile, Hard mode is the same as that found in the arcade. On all difficulty levels, the witch’s broom is significantly easier to catch, which makes the game quite a bit easier overall. A little power bar has also been added to each door to show how long it’ll take to open. Finally, you can also resume your progress at any level you’ve previously beaten.

Beyond merely replicating the arcade game, which had a mere eight levels, Eternal offers eight additional stages. As the new story scenes show, the portals of Hell have opened, incapacitating most of the original Psychic 5 team and outright killing Genzoh. Five new heroes — Jin-Woo, Jong-Nam, Ppu-Kku, Soo-Yeon, and Sung-Gil, all Korean — show up on the scene to delve into the underworld to fight the demons and rescue Genzoh’s soul. Despite technically being different people, most of them are functionally identical. Each gets a new projectile move, activated by holding down the attack button, while the lanky Makoto is replaced by the dog Ppu-Kku, who can squeeze into tight passages. Oddly, the new themes here are tied to each individual level instead of the character you’ve selected.

Since you’re adventuring through the afterlife here, these stages are themed around dungeons, castles, caves, and other spooky imagery. The new enemies are just as ridiculous as before too, like the computers and floppy disks, as well as typewriters that have the note “I am in hell. Help Me.” There are four new bosses that replace Satan as well, with each one based on various demons and featuring different attack patterns. For the finale, you fight an enormous Lucifer, which takes up several screens. After the ending, you’re treated to a bonus stage that introduces all of the heroes and enemies, along with a brief, often goofy backstory.

Along with this are Time Attack and Survival modes, which just add a timer or limits you to a single life, respectively. These aren’t particularly exciting, but the Towering mode is pretty interesting, as it gives you a randomly generated level where you climb upwards while being chased by a burning inferno as you aim to climb as far as possible. You can also play mirrored versions of the levels in certain modes.

Psychic 5 is an unusual candidate for this type of remake, but it’s clear the developers were pretty big fans of the original. It respects the source material while adding some tweaks that make it substantially less frustrating, particularly for those who never played the arcade game. It’s still an oddball 1987 arcade game that doesn’t fundamentally change much, but there’s certainly enough here to justify it as a brand new product rather than a straight Arcade Archives emulation.

Esper Boukentai: Maou no Toride

Original Release: 1987

Platforms: FC

Psychic 5 didn’t technically receive any contemporary home ports. However, it did get a radically different Famicom game published by Jaleco. Much like the 8-bit versions of Rygar, Strider, and Bionic Commando, Esper Boukentai takes the basic gameplay elements of Psychic 5 — the team of high-jumping espers — and puts them into an open world with some light RPG elements.

The main gimmick of the game is, of course, the moon jumping, which gives characters an interesting mechanic to explore the game world. So how well does this actually work? Well, it's so simultaneously good and bad that it's hard to say for sure. The castle in which the entire game takes place is, at the very least, competently designed around your jump height. Pits are here, but placed in such a way that you can't just leap immediately back to where you were, thereby making them actual hazards that still warrant inclusion. The other neat thing about the level design in relation to your jump is that certain areas require impossibly high leaps until you find a higher jumper — now hidden behind crystal blocks, rather than in jars — or increase your character’s level.

While it is great for exploring, the moon jumping causes a new problem that can end the game very quickly. Forget how awkward combat is in Psychic 5, because Esper Boukentai makes it excruciating with any normal kind of strategy. Your jump is much higher, making it easier than ever to overshoot your enemy. On top of that, this time, the cartoony inanimate objects with googly eyes not only fly upward out of your way as you jump toward them, but also spawn mass amounts of rapidly homing projectiles that can stop your heart in half a beat. You can dispel them en masse with a swing of your hammer, but getting it to connect isn't so easy. It’s possible to become competent and even good at combat, but it takes a lot of practice; the best strategy is to engage enemies in enclosed spaces, where you can pin them against the ceiling. That way when you jump toward them, they have nowhere to go vertically, and once you meet them, you can keep yourself in the air by repeatedly wailing away with your weapon, just like in Psychic 5. It's by no means perfect, of course, but with enough practice, you can fairly easily defeat most foes without taking a single hit.

This time though, you may not want to fight every enemy; some of them are actually quite friendly. In fact, the denizens of the castle come in three varieties: helpful, aggressive, and jerks. By pressing Start, you can engage any being in conversation, which will sometimes give you choices. Some will help you by giving hints, money, or items. Others will attack you afterwards, but since they'd have done that anyway, it's no big loss. The ones you really have to mind are the third variety; they seem nice at first, but all they want is to scam you out of your money, which is of particular importance in this title.

Money is used to buy items that are necessary to finish the game, as well as restoring your life and esper power. That's pretty standard, of course, but what isn't so conventional is that there’s a virtually finite quantity of cash in Esper Boukentai. For the most part, you can only find currency in treasure chests. There are also two entities, a spoon and a candy jar, who will give you a very small sum of money whenever you talk to them, but the amount is so negligible that it's best to hope that you don't have to resort to that. Worse yet is the fact that you lose two-thirds of your total balance every time you die.

On top of all of this, the varying temperaments of the sentient furniture provides another dilemma. You can speak to or attack each and every single one of them, so unlike in most games, your course of action is less than crystal clear. This decision is made all the more difficult by the fact that even some of the friendly enemies move in a way that suggests aggression, so you never really know what's going to come out of each encounter. You’re certainly free to smash everything to death, just to be sure, and while the game doesn't punish you for doing so, it also doesn't reward you; killing a friendly creature won’t bring you any experience points.

It’s also rather easy to bring them back; like in Psychic 5, each room is broken into several different spawn zones. All you need to do is move in any direction until you hear the audio cue, telling you that you're in a different zone, and then move right back into it again. This can also be exploited when grinding. There's a spot in the Ice Room where you can just edge off of a platform and get right back on before falling, spawning two new enemies. With this, you can reach your maximum level in a very short amount of time.

Leveling up raises your stats, but this brings a lot more to the table than usual for this kind of game. Of course it governs your maximum Life (hit points), Esper (magic points), attack power, defense, and movement speed, but it also influences your jump height, the speed of descent when hovering, and "Boost". Boost is a stat that determines which doors you can or cannot open. Oddly, doors don’t open just by touching them; you must first touch the corresponding idol in the room to unlock the exit. You'll get an audio cue telling you whether or not you can open the corresponding door, and that’s determined by your Boost value, which is shared among all characters, like Life and Esper. It may seem like a bad decision to require the player to grind in order to open certain doors, but this ensures that you are of an adequate level to tackle the baddies in the ensuing area.

Keeping to the theme of bizarre design choices, even leveling has its share of oddities. Your hammer is a different color at each level, so that you can always tell what it is without entering the menu. Despite that, your level will never increase after reaching the required number of experience points unless you enter the menu, whereupon you will be treated to a fanfare and a message telling you that you've done so.

Strangest of all is the Esper stat. Magic points are a very familiar concept in video games, but in Esper Boukentai there only seems to be one single, special power in the entire game to use them: Stormball. Despite its impressive name, this is nothing more than a rotating shield that drains your Esper with time. Given that there is no knock back in this game and that the hit detection is especially sketchy with this power, it’s effectively useless, and with it, the entire Esper stat.

Even the audiovisual department is a mixed bag. The music is pretty hit or miss, but if you listen closely, you can recognize some of the characters' themes from Psychic 5. What makes it so strange is that talking to a denizen or even sometimes moving between zones will change the music completely, giving you the "wrong" music for the area.

The visuals are difficult to assess as well. The bright colors are quite lovely when contrasted with a pitch black background, but it seems that the Devil's interior decorator forged some of the backdrops and their textures from the very fabric of chaos; there are blank spaces, zigzags, bricks, and some of the most unusually patterned wallpaper this side of the 1970s, all in the same screen.

The story is clever for what it is, and the conversations are entertaining. “Save your friends and a mysterious prisoner from the Devil's castle” was all that this game needed, and the ending is enough to elicit a chuckle. You open the final door and discover that the mysterious prisoner is you. That's right: you saved yourself from imprisonment by the evil overlord! It’s an amusing twist to a flawed, but interesting game.

Esper Boukentai was never released in English, but there is a fan translation patch that makes the dialogue accessible.

Charlie Ninja

Original Release: 1994

Platforms: ARC

Charlie Ninja, developed by Mitchell Corp, is about two...well, ninjas, who work as bounty hunters bringing in criminal leaders of various sorts. Despite the title, the two characters are actually called Roy (player 1) and Lon (player 2). How exactly "Charlie" factors into all of this is left up for debate. This deceit is the first of many screwy elements that give the game a wacky sense of humor, primarily wrought through its rather unlikely art style.

A first glance makes it seem like a Western-made game with its Tex Avery-esque character depictions and impossibly colorful backgrounds. This goes a step further when it appears that most stages are exaggerated parodies of United States history and/or culture. The first area takes place on a Wild West street, making the game at first feel like Sunset Riders, with old-timey saloons and general stores. Here, diminutive cowboys shoot at you while lanky natives lob their tomahawks. Yeah, there's a slight bit of racial insensitivity in this Japan-only game, though it's far from the worst example of this sort of thing. The native enemies even look like Caucasians pretending to be indigenous people, which...may actually be even worse, depending on your point of view.

At any rate, after this initial bit of controversy, you move on to a trap-ridden field with bad army soldiers and tanks (now making the game feel more like Metal Slug than Sunset Riders), a seedy junkyard down by the docks of a big city where portly gangster types throw crap at you, and most egregiously, a giant stadium full of football players and cheerleaders who turn out to be dudes in drag. Each stage throws a generous buffet of enemies at you, and it can be a bit tough to stay alive for long, but hearts and weapon power-ups help you to persevere. You carry a not-too-powerful shuriken by default, but you can grab alternate weapons in the form of homing sai, spiked orbs, kunai which are thrown at angles, and some sort of neat, spiked, triple-bladed-boomerang thingy.

Of course, a good old melee-range sword slash makes short work of foes if you can get close enough, and you even have some Street Fighter-style special moves in your skill set. For example, pressing both the attack and jump buttons makes your ninja hide in the background and remain invincible for several seconds, but this is the only move the attract mode shows you. You also have a Ryu-esque hurricane kick (Down, Forward+jump), a tumbling spin (Up, Forward+attack), and a rushing blade attack (Forward, Down, Forward+hold attack). These aren’t mandatory for victory, but they're neat options that add a bit more dimension to just running around and shooting everything. Plus they help with the bosses.

Each boss fits with the respective theme of the stereotypically, hyper-American levels. Your bounties include Blues, a rugged outlaw who jumps like a Contra protagonist and sprays bullets, Sanders, a beefy corporal armed with what can best be described as a hula-hoop cannon, Freddie, a rather...flamboyant biker with toxic breath, and Bear, a burly quarterback who attempts to squish you with his beer gut. Their increasingly large life bars can be brought down quickly if you get in close and slash these foes up, but some will run away and force you to pursue them through an auto-scrolling stretch of mooks. The bosses themselves may take a credit or two to beat too, as Charlie Ninja isn't exactly the most forgiving game, but practice and judicious use of an invincibility trick may keep your high score tally in check. It's only five levels to boot, and won't even take half an hour to beat.

Unfortunately, for such a short game, it feels like it's overstaying its welcome in the uninspired last level, which throws out the "fauxmerican" wackiness of the first four areas and just depicts a boring, dingy laboratory/factory. Here you're attacked by an endless stream of robot ninjas whom you already fought in a prior level anyway, and the final boss, Dr. Mac, retreats in his robot walker mech after dealing some damage…only it's a long, auto-scrolling section where you can't immediately kill him like prior bosses. Keep in mind that this is already the longest stage in the game when you get to Dr. Mac, but this obnoxious segment pads out the length even further without adding anything you haven't seen before. It honestly feels like it could have been made half as long, with another level employing some kind of goofy American stereotype added on instead. Why not a zany ‘50s diner full of swing dancers and pompadour bikers, and the boss is an evil Elvis? Or maybe the White House, where Secret Service agents and angry senators try to keep you from reaching the President, who turns out to be Theodore Roosevelt ready to box you in the Oval Office?

All told, while the overflow of enemies can be cheap and the last stage runs out of steam, Charlie Ninja is still a fun and zany game overall, and one that deserves a playthrough for action-platformer junkies. Not too many other titles share its uniquely odd style of play, with Spinmaster on the Neo Geo being the only other thing that comes close from this period.

For the most part, what you see is what you get: Ninjas clobbering American stereotypes just because they can. Even after the ending, you’re left with no idea why the game is called Charlie Ninja, but nothing really needs to make sense when you're trying to not get blown up by exploding footballs.

J. J. Squawkers

Original Release: 1993

Platforms: ARC

Athena is a company that fits the definition of "middle-in-the-line". It was founded in July 1987 and stayed in the industry for more than two-and-a-half decades, until eventually succumbing to bankruptcy around December of 2013. Despite this, it's not surprising you haven't heard of their name, as their efforts were rarely great, even compared to the likes of Data East and Jaleco.

Their best-known title would be a make-your-shoot-em-up tool Dezaemon series, released for an assortment of consoles, which encouraged players to create their own levels and send their samples to the publisher; these were later bundled into standalone discs. Other notable works include things like Castle of Dragon and Super Bowling, and while these games aren't terrible, time proved they weren't exactly classics. Athena also released a few interesting arthouse titles during its lifespan though, one of which is the 1993 arcade game J. J. Squawkers, a somewhat respectable platformer that also happens to be very colorful and strange.

The game's synopsis, told in the attract mode through extraordinarily funny Engrish, implies people fell into spells of some sort and went crazy. Right after putting in a coin, you see they ambush a house in a tree and wreck it into pieces. It's time for survivors, Ani and Ototo Karasukun (“karasu” means “crow”, “ani” and “ototo” mean “big brother” and “little brother” respectively in Japanese) to get payback, and maybe find the culprit behind this rampage. Although the in-game sprites resemble parrots, they're actually a pair of ravens according to their Japanese names.

The first stage of the game is a typical start for most platformers, taking you through forest, village outskirts, and a short bridge, before it ends up with a fight against a giant insect. Even so, you'll notice a few weird bits straight from the jump. For starters, there's a guy right at the beginning in a white Mickey Mouse suit, who does nothing but passionately hump a tree. This stage also has a mid-boss, which is some sort of eldritch flower-chicken thing. There's a way to get around it if you pay attention to the surroundings, but nonetheless, the monster looks completely out of place next to the other denizens in the stage.

The subsequent levels get only more confusing from there. The second area takes place in a nightmarish wonderland, composed of still-life setpieces and some impressive artwork heavily inspired by Salvador Dalí paintings. The highlight of this stage is the stairs made of toy boxes, which wake up midway and proceed to toss you up to its boss fight. The third level is a vaguely futuristic place, featuring loads of aggressive robots, perplexingly abstract landscapes, and absolutely garish color. At one point it even locks you into an auto-scroller where round-eyed blocks come together and try to crush you, making for a very tricky platforming segment.

It becomes slightly less bewildering in the fourth stage, which has you run through a cosmos where constellations occasionally come to life and ambush you, forcing you to take care to not fall off of meteorites. It does end with a battle against a ridiculously chirping, three-headed dragon on a pirate ship, however. Sadly, after all of these amazing spectacles, the last stage is a boss rush contained in a single room, serving as a dismal conclusion to such a cheerful game.

All of these wow-factors come together as a game that is stunningly attractive and well-paced, especially because of how incredibly detailed the graphics are. Honestly, the only nitpick would be some rather garish color choices. It's a technical marvel too, like the first level dynamically changing its brightness as the player advances, showing off the cycle between day and night. The Karasukun brothers themselves are fluidly animated and lively too, and other enemies look unique and gorgeous as well. Conversely, the music is too muted to register any particular impression. It can be rather annoying too, most notably with the short, repetitive boss battle theme that you'll have to tolerate in the boss rush level.

If you take out the prevailing craziness, J. J. Squawkers sticks to the usual platforming formula, which on its own isn't necessarily a bad thing. The game has an unusual collection of weapons such as beans or pumpkins, all of which are generally powerful enough to defend yourself with as long as you keep a power-up for it. On the default setting, you can take two hits before it sends you back to checkpoints, but the game never gets too pressing for the most part. Most enemies take only one hit to defeat, and even bosses don't put up much of a fight, at least until you'll have to beat them all in a row in the last stage. The game does ramp up the challenge when you start a second playthrough, but that ends up being frustrating, as it merely speeds up the enemies to a ridiculous extent.

When you get down to it,

J. J. Squawkers is a strictly by-the-book arcade platformer that doesn't try to be something monumental or innovative. Even so, it does a decent job for what it is, and looks fantastic too. It's still worth a try even if you're not a fan of its trippy visuals — the levels are well-designed, the controls are tight, and it isn't particularly long or difficult. For those who don't mind diving into MAME oddities, this can be a joyful ride from start to end. It may as well be considered one of Athena's best, even though as a game, it's pretty average.

Ganryu

AKA: Musashi Ganryuuki (JP)

Original Release: 1999

Platforms: ARC, DC

Visco was a company that developed arcade games for nearly 20 years, with a roster that was typically based on other more popular products, like the cute-em-up Captain Tomaday or the fighting game Breakers. While the quality of the output is mixed to say the least, Ganryu is representative of their work, as a side-scrolling action game melded from bits of titles like Shinobi and Strider.

The Japanese name is Musashi Ganryuuki, or "The Chronicle of Musashi and Ganryu". Musashi, of course, refers to the legendary swordsman Musashi Miyamoto, while Ganryu is another name for his rival, Kojirou Sasaki. (Haohmaru and Ukyo from Samurai Shodown are based on Musashi and Kojiro, respectively.) Musashi here is, of course, the good guy, while Kojiro summons demonic powers to strike down his longtime opponent. The historical hero is also joined by a lady named Suzume, who doesn't appear to be based on anyone, but is there for variety's sake. Unfortunately, simultaneous two-player action isn’t available, only alternating.

Ganryu takes a well-worn path, as you saunter forward and hack up ninja dudes and other enemies with your sword. It's paced well, though it feels like it could use a run or dash maneuver à la Shinobi III to speed things up. Occasionally you'll run across civilians who are tied up and can be rescued, and they grant a bonus item if you free them. There are also some instances where you'll see another character fleeing alongside you, though they're only there for flavor, and humorously, can be seen careening blindly off of cliffs. Power-ups include three alternative weapons, including shurikens, dynamite, and spell orbs. While the character selection screen has star ratings indicating the differences between Musashi and Suzume, their major distinctions are how they handle their arsenal. With shurikens, Musashi throws a single one forward, while Suzume tosses two, one slightly at an angle. With dynamite, Musashi simply lobs them at an arc, while Suzume sends a fire wave across the ground. The stages aren't entirely linear either, with a number of side passages and alternate branches, giving you some agency in how you'd like to approach the level.

The characters can grab onto ledges and bounce off walls too, and also wield a grappling hook. Alas, these elements are the weakest aspect of the game, just because they're so janky. For example, it's not initially clear where and when you're supposed to use the hook, as unlike other games, there are no clear grapple points. Instead, somewhere in the middle of the second stage, there's simply a sign with an arrow that points upwards, which implies you're supposed to use the tree in the background to swing back and forth until you get high enough to proceed. Frustratingly, you can't fire the hook at an upwards angle, which is how most of the best video game grappling hooks work. As a result, this just feels clumsy. Even worse are the few sections where you're supposed to scale walls by jumping back and forth between them. The timing feels weird, and you don't get enough altitude or push when you bounce off of something. Accordingly, this implementation recalls the hugely troublesome triangle jump from the NES version of Strider. The NES Ninja Gaiden implemented this almost perfectly though, and that predates Ganryu by a whole decade! Luckily, the stage designers seemed to have realized this, so the situations where you need to use these acrobatics are sparse. Even so, it still feels like a wasted opportunity.

The visuals feel like a mid-tier SNES game — not really ugly but nothing special — and recall a sort of boring version of Shinrei Jusatsushi Taroumaru. The only time where it excels is during a few boss fights, with the first foe being an anachronistic doll-faced robot, and the third being the demonic equivalent of a Venus fly trap. Otherwise, it looks insanely dated for a Neo Geo game from 1999 — Magician Lord, from (again!) nearly 10 years before, made for the same platform, looks remarkably better.

Ultimately, Ganryu seems like one of those low budget titles released primarily so arcade owners would have something new and cheap to stick into their well-worn Neo Geo MVS cabinets. The best that can be said about it is that it's exceedingly okay — outside of a few clumsy platforming elements, the design is mostly solid enough, and it's balanced so that it's challenging but not overwhelmingly so. Its five stages make for a brief experience too, especially considering the final area is a short upwards climb and then the final boss fight, but it also knows when to end before wearing out its welcome.

Ganryu didn't make much of a splash in its initial release. In 2017 though, French publisher JoshProd picked up the licenses to Visco's library and released an aftermarket port for the Sega Dreamcast. It's a pretty no-frills affair, being a Neo Geo emulator with a ROM, but it runs fairly well, and is a substantial improvement over the company's previous Neo Geo-to-Dreamcast conversion, Breakers. It's nice to have a proper port, even if the game itself isn't really worth celebrating.

Ganryu 2: Hakuma Kojirou

Original Release: 2022

Platforms: PS4, NSW, WIN, XBO

Who was asking for a sequel to Ganryu, Visco's middling, late 90s Neo Geo ninja action game? It's probably not something most people were clamoring for, but the entity that holds Visco's IP have been keeping them in circulation, both in the form of emulated ports and brand-new sequels. Along with the shoot-em-up Andro Dunos, Ganryu received a brand new entry in 2022. This wasn’t developed by any of the original team though, but instead helmed by StoryBird Studio, the French developer behind retro indie titles like Golden Force. The hero here is once again Musashi Miyamoto, as he treks across Japan to take down the evil Kojirou Sasaki.

Ganryu 2 takes very little from the original game other than the basic ninja theme, and instead feels more like a sequel to Shinobi III for the Genesis. Here Musashi can run with blazing speed, jump and double-jump with ease, and comes armed with both shurikens and a sword. You can get four types of ninja magic (called "kami" here) that you can switch between, though usage is dictated by a power meter that charges up as you kill enemies. There's even a shoot-em-up sequence early on, as you hop in a ship powered by dragonfly-like wings. Like Shinobi, this often seems like a game that takes place in medieval Japan, but also has plenty of futuristic technology. Weirdly, the sole distinguishing factor of the first Ganryu, the grappling hook, is nowhere to be seen.

However, it doesn't really matter that this is more of a Shinobi fan game than a Ganryu sequel, as Shinobi was always much, much better than Ganryu anyway. The developers also really nail the fast action and tight controls that make hacking up dudes and dashing between platforms feel incredibly satisfying.

Unfortunately, while the developers got the basic controls and movement down, they couldn't quite get the level designs to fit. The stages are lengthy, giving you lots of space to zoom around in and chump enemies that you can dispose of quickly. Further, while the main route through a level is straightforward, there are lots of nooks and crannies that you can explore to find health restoratives, HP extensions, extra lives, and shuriken replenishments.

Like the early Sonic the Hedgehog games, any time the game forces you to slow down and fight enemies, like the large foes that block your moves and require careful counterattacks, the pacing hits a figurative brick wall. In many cases, you can just jump over them, or even just take a hit to run straight through them, because they're really just no fun to engage with. Plus, while regular sized enemies are simple to kill, the game likes to throw lots of smaller foes that follow your character, which are often difficult to hit, and feel more like nuisances than legitimate challenges.

There are also several spots throughout the game, like a couple of mine cart rides and several boss battles, where using shurikens is almost required. They're limited in quantity though, and replenishments during these segments are scarce. Some of the Shinobi games had this issue too, but they were also kind enough to offer the option for unlimited ammo, while Ganryu 2 is not quite as forgiving. Bottomless pits aren’t always clearly marked either, and you won't know until you fall in them and die.

It's also a tough game. Not overwhelmingly so, as you could name dozens of titles from the 8 and 16-bit eras that are harder, but it requires quite a bit of patience, trial and error, and skill-building to make your way through. Though mid-level checkpoints are generous, running out of lives requires you to start the whole stage over again. This is where the expansive levels come to bite the game in its butt. These areas are quite fun the first time around, but become overly long and exhausting when you need to replay them ad nauseam. Thankfully the game saves your progress after each stage, and you can also return to them after you leave, a luxury that the original Ganryu and most of the original Shinobi games didn't have.

The high difficulty level is expected for a game like this, which can be forgiven by certain types of gamers, but it's hard to be tolerant of technical issues. The PlayStation versions run fine, with a bit of slowdown, but the Switch port has substantial performance issues, and the Windows release is quite buggy. All versions are plagued with a nasty glitch which will cause the game to ignore jump inputs, which is surely an enormous problem in a game that requires tight reflexes! This is a straightforward 2D action game with nothing fancy going on, at least visually, so the fact that it seems to be so poorly optimized is rather unfortunate.

Visually, the pixel work is crisper than the 16-bit titles it's inspired by, though it's not quite on the level of what you'd see on the Saturn. It's got some excellent music though, with a blend of modern rock and traditional Japanese instruments. It's not quite the style you'd find in the older Shinobi games, but it would fit along nicely.

Ganryu 2 nails most of the fundamentals, and in the heat of the moment, is fun to play. There's also a distinct lack of polish though, as it really needed some more playtesting to iron out both the design and technical issues. Nonetheless, fans of Shinobi or other retro ninja action games like Strider will get some enjoyment out of it, and it's a fair improvement over the original.

Legend of Makai

AKA: Makai Densetsu (JP)

Original Release: 1988

Platforms: ARC, PS4, NSW

In 1987, British company Rare developed Wizards & Warriors, a fantasy action game starring a knight who ventured through forests and caves to save his kingdom. It was a success in North America, and was then licensed to Jaleco for release in Japan the next year under the name Densetsu no Kishi Elrond. The game required some changes to make it more suitable for that market, so these were outsourced to NMK, a company that worked closely with Jaleco on a number of titles.

It's hard to definitively say if this Famicom version was successful, but given that the Wizards & Warriors series saw two more NES games (and one Game Boy spin-off) and none of them were released in Japan, it's safe to assume it probably didn’t do too well. However, someone in either Jaleco or NMK must've found some value in it, because it acted as the inspiration for their 1988 arcade game, Legend of Makai.

The setup is similar, and is typical for these types of games — a knight has to adventure across a kingdom to defeat an evil sorcerer and save the land. Right from the outset, the similarities to Wizards & Warriors are easy to see. The unnamed hero also holds his sword out in front of him, which can do damage to any enemy that bumbles into it, even without pressing the attack button. Both games feature throwing weapons that act as boomerangs, both games require exploring areas to find colored keys to open treasure chests and doors, and both games have extra equipment to find, ranging from different types of shields and boots. Both titles even have a feather item that allows you to float after a jump.

Still, Legend of Makai isn't quite a rip-off, nor can it be called a port of Wizards & Warriors either, because it's still very much its own thing. This is mostly because it replaces the typically awkward 8-bit British game design with low budget Japanese arcade game design, for better and for worse.

To start with, the controls found in Legend of Makai are a little tighter, and the levels are completely different. While you still need to explore them to hunt for keys and other required items, they're a little bit more straightforward — you can always run forward, try to open a door, and then get a short message dictating whatever item you're supposed to be looking for, whereas Wizards & Warriors requires a little more exploration. You can also take three hits before you die in Legend of Makai, with the usual limited number of lives, while Wizards & Warriors lets you absorb much more damage. Owing to its arcade nature, Legend of Makai also has a timer, granting three minutes in most stages to figure everything out, before you're harassed by an eyeball monster that will probably kill you.

Legend of Makai also takes some pages out of some other arcade/RPG hybrids of the time, like Capcom's Black Tiger, and spreads shops throughout each stage. This addition made sense, considering Wizards & Warriors had you collecting gems in each area even though they were only used to bribe enemy guards rather than to purchase anything. Beyond potions, weapons, or other items, you can also buy hints to reveal the locations of hidden items. Sometimes the game itself will let you know important clues (like when you're near a hidden entrance), but otherwise, purchasing these is basically essential without foreknowledge of where certain things are stashed, as you'd just be left to wander around in circles.

Incidentally, this also explains one comical element of Wizards & Warriors — the doors in that game were just slightly too small for the main character, and they're the same here, but it's revealed that most of the denizens of the kingdoms are dwarves, so their diminutive size here is justified.

Like Wonder Boy in Monster Land, there's also a secondary quest running throughout most of the levels, tasking you to uncover all of the letters of a magic spell. Right when you meet the final boss, you need to spell it out — if you have all of the letters, then you can fight the final boss and get the good ending. Miss even a single one, and you'll get stuck with the bad ending. It's definitely one of those games that expects you to play through multiple times and explore everything to truly master it, providing you can even bother to make it to the finale.

The only truly remarkable thing about Legend of Makai is how incredibly cheap it looks. A few of the stages take place in a forest, and there isn’t even any real background, just darkness. The rest of the game is a little more detailed, but stages are about as generic as they can get in a fantasy game. Despite the higher color depth, even the more mediocre NES titles of the era had better artistic merit. About the only nice thing that could be said about it is the main character's distinctive design, which sort of resembles Conan the Barbarian with light-blue anime hair.

A few interesting, weird moments are spread throughout. For example, there's a room filled with 100 tiny, creepy faces, some of which fly out and attack as you run past them. One of the bosses is also a gigantic, feminine face for some reason. Another boss is a dwarf too, who pales in comparison to the hero’s stature. However, as you deal more damage, it starts to grow into a monstrous skeleton-being. One of the stages also involves dealing with a slightly rude unicorn.

These moments sort of justify Legend of Makai, but it still lacks any truly remarkable traits, except perhaps for being one the lesser examples of this branch of arcade-RPG hybrids.

The Japanese version, Makai Densetsu (which means the same thing as the English title) has quite a few extra tricks that were removed from the English release, mostly involving fake items that are either just a waste of gold, or can actually strip you of your equipment. Some text was left out too, mostly in the form of location names or extra clues.

Psycho-Nics Oscar

Original Release: 1987

Platforms: ARC

Ever wonder how the Gradius power-up bar would work outside of a side-scrolling shooter? Konami eventually stuck it into the NES game Contra Force, but Data East beat them to the punch, and the result was Psycho-Nics Oscar, an action-platformer starring a little gun-wielding robot. The title, to an American, sounds patently ridiculous — it suggests a deranged horde of New York basketball players teaming up with a cranky, green, garbage-loving Muppet. For this reason, the marquee in American arcades usually just shortened the name to Oscar, although it's not like that did much to explain the situation.

Oscar is actually the name of your mecha, which apparently can transform. It really can't, outside of the ending cinema anyway, but it can be upgraded in a variety of ways. Data East didn't change the Gradius power bar much here, although they did refine it a bit. For the uninitiated, the bar displays five-power-ups in a linear form. Every time you pick up an "N" capsule, it highlights the next power-up in the line. When it's highlighted the power you want, you hit a button to get equipped with it, and the power bar resets.

Rather than a "Speed" option, Oscar has a "Jump" power-up ability, which obviously enhances the height of his leaping ability. The next two are subweapons, which act in conjunction with your main gun attack. "Missile" works, again, like Gradius, with a small projectile that travels along the ground, and even up across vertical surfaces, handily enough. "Bombs" toss small grenades on a short arc. You can have both Bombs and Missiles activated at the same time, and both can be further upgraded several levels.

There are also three types of rotating things called PCUs, which provide extra firepower. The last icon is the "Gun" power-up, which improves the firepower of your main weapon. This is perhaps the most important one, because the default gun is not only incredibly weak, but very short ranged. If you make one full rotation through the power bar without picking anything, the last block changes to "Armor", which will let your Oscar take some extra damage. If you make it through two full rotations, the last spot changes to "Quick", which activates a rapid fire mode. In conjunction with the most powerful Gun, this makes you into a total killing machine.

In copying this system so closely, it is, of course, susceptible to the same flaws. Yes, it's absolutely fun to upgrade your Oscar to the highest level, tossing out a steady stream of missiles and bombs and explosive laser blasts, steamrolling through everything in your way. In your default state though, or perhaps with only a power-up or two, the game becomes unnecessarily difficult. The stages themselves are balanced and designed well, for the most part, but the bosses often scatter far too many projectiles to be properly dodged without taking some damage. As a result, the best way to succeed in Oscar is to power up completely, and try not to die at all. While you can cause a lot of destruction at the highest level, it's also just as easy to take a few stray hits and end your streak. Your health doesn't recharge after each stage either, requiring you to subsist off of the meager energy power-ups occasionally dropped by enemies.

To its credit, Oscar can take three hits by default — more if you've grabbed additional capsules, and a fairly large margin of error compared to other single-hit arcade games — although getting killed sends him back to a checkpoint. Also, while Gradius was stingy with its power-up capsules, practically every enemy (except for the infinitely spawning ones) will drop something, allowing you to quickly rearm yourself upon death. While you lose all of your weapons when you die, the power bar stays at the same position, which can also give you a leg-up if you plan correctly. Collecting 20 “K” icons will also grant you an extra life.

In all other areas, Psycho-Nics Oscar is only a few steps above competent. The level themes are hardly ambitious, taking you through the standard forests, caves, mechanical factories, and so forth, but the robot designs are cool enough for a game developed in the mid-80s, when such things were standard. The later stages unfortunately fall into the trap of reusing bosses as standard foes, and some obstacles, like enemy generators, are expectedly ripped straight from Gradius. The controls are solid though, and outside of the bosses, the difficulty level is stiff, but remains manageable.

While Psycho-Nics Oscar technically blends into the murky miasma of similar arcade titles from its era, it's still a fun little game. However, it’s the kind that, like many, probably would've obtained more popularity had it been ported to a console. Despite that fact, Oscar reportedly influenced the look and feel of Turrican, which was released approximately two years later in 1989. They both share a similar aesthetic, although Turrican has a more European feel, having been developed in Germany and all.

The Cliffhanger: Edward Randy

Original Release: 1990

Platforms: ARC, EVR

Since the early days of the medium, video games have been trying desperately to mimic movies. It probably began with full motion video laserdisc games like Dragon's Lair, although that was a fad that rose and fell rather quickly. Ninja Gaiden added cutscenes between levels to tell a story, but the game itself wasn't any different from other platformers. Modern games like Uncharted and God of War try their damnedest to meld traditional gameplay with a cinematic experience, to fully give the experience of "playing" a movie. Long before any of these, though, somewhere back in 1990, Data East developed The Cliffhanger: Edward Randy, a 2D action game that tries to do the same thing on much more limited hardware, with some fairly impressive results.

Edward Randy doesn't really bother to hide its inspiration from Indiana Jones. The eponymous character looks like an American action hero, and while he doesn't wear a fedora, he does carry a whip. The first stage, a boat chase through the waters of a European city, may well have been ripped straight from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, which was released the year prior. (There's nothing particularly wrong with that though, considering Lucasfilm's own action games based off the film were pretty bad.) There's a vague plot about a kidnapped girl and a magical prism, which Edward surrenders to save his lady friend, and the whole game is spent getting it back. Given its cinematic ambitions, some more cutscenes would've been nice — there are short intro and ending sequences, and brief in-game bits — but the fast-paced action more than makes up for it.

Although the game looks like a standard early 90s arcade game, it ditches the usual concept of side-scrolling stages in favor of auto-scrolling setpieces. Edward doesn’t move through the levels but rather the areas move around him, as the first zone is spent jumping from boat to boat before latching onto the side of a speeding train. After this scene, the next level is a car chase, with your hero speeding through desert canyons while fighting off tanks, and eventually a gigantic bulldozer. Later areas involve scaling a half-built tower, and fending off the arms of a gigantic living statue. The final stages are based totally in the sky too, as you jump from the wings of one plane to another amidst frightening, stormy weather.

Graphically, it's all pretty amazing. Although the action takes place strictly along a 2D plane, there are tons of 3D effects, as enemies leap from the foreground into action, or Edward tosses them into the screen, vaguely like a similar effect in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time, although not quite as flashy. Many of the stages flip and change direction too, using sprite scaling effects à la Sega's After Burner and OutRun. When flying in the sky, the biplanes tilt, rotate, and do everything possible to fling you to the ground. During the car chase scenes, the trucks will run off of cliffs and fly into the sky before thudding into the ground, and, keeping with tradition, things explode quite spectacularly. In many ways, this game really does give the experience of playing through the action scenes of a Hollywood blockbuster.

And yet, there's something that just doesn't feel right about it. Part of this has to do with the game flinging more enemies at you than you can possibly handle, and part of it is due to the chaotic, screen-shifting backgrounds. The controls are a huge burden as well, being sluggish and unnecessarily confusing. Edward can only use his whip, which has great range but is very slow to snap. You can use it to latch onto certain objects — girders, planes, etc. — and swing back and forth, which can plow through enemies. All too often however, it's easy to grapple onto something when you just want to attack, or attack when you want to grapple. The context sensitive jumping is a bit awkward, too. If you're on the edge of a vehicle, it's easy to leap back and forth, but if you're on a long surface and press jump while holding a direction, you'll roll instead. Instead, in order to jump, you have to stand perfectly still and then press the jump button.

Having said that, Edward Randy does utilize a unique health system, where your energy is tied to your score. If you kill enemies, it goes up, but take damage and it'll go down. It's quite generous, especially since you can fall off of your boat/car/plane and leap back into play with only a bit of damage. Still, it seems like a clumsy solution for the somewhat sloppy action. Amusingly, when you fight a boss, his energy appears at the bottom of the screen. The final boss starts with something like 82,000,000 hit points, although each attack shaves off roughly a million of those. Like the rest of the game, it really is something that revels in excess, that most enduring hallmark of Hollywood.

As unpolished as the action is, Edward Randy is still a must play for anyone infatuated with 2D graphics. It's clearly a title ahead of its time, and it feels a bit like a Treasure game before Treasure truly existed. Indeed, the final battle atop the biplane feels very much like the fight against Orange in Gunstar Heroes. The connections don't stop there — Treasure character artist HAN was such a big fan of the game that he named two characters in Guardian Heroes, Edward and Randy, in homage. (Randy is the magic user, and Edward is the little familiar animal, whose name was changed to Nando for the English release.) Unfortunately, due to the horsepower behind the special effects, the title fell into obscurity along with similarly impressive titles like Konami's Xexex and Sega's Arabian Fight, as none of the home consoles at the time could remotely do them justice.

Edward Randy was scheduled to be ported to the Saturn by Xing, whose Arcade Gears series included several ports of older arcade games, like Taito's Pu·Li·Ru·La and Irem's X-Multiply, although plans fell through and nothing came of it. It was also announced for ports to European computers like the ZX Spectrum, although no solid evidence of their existence was ever released. Although an English language ROM of the arcade version exists, it seems to have only been released in Japan.

Cannon Dancer - Osman

Original Release: 1996

Platforms: ARC, PS4, NSW, XBO

After his tenure at Capcom, Strider director Kouichi Yotsui (usually credited as Isuke) moved on to Mitchell Corporation, where he developed Cannon Dancer (known in English as Osman), basically a spiritual sequel to his most famous game. This centers around a strong young man known as Kirin. Not unlike Strider Hiryu, he presumably works for some organization that destroys criminals for the protection of the world.

The plot is so ridiculous that it's hard to tell what's going on. Kirin's boss, Jack Layzon (who only wears shorts to show off his muscular form in the opening cutscene for no reason), assigns Kirin to assassinate Abdullah the Slaver, an evil female sorceress who wants to take control of the world. Kirin does a pretty good job of kicking enemy ass for a while, until Jack betrays him for reasons unknown, and then he has to fight his way through all sorts of soldiers and beasts, as well as a creepy goddess statue. Kirin seems to have some connection with her, who apparently commands him to kill and…yeah. The whole thing is rather confusing.

Canon Dancer is even more colorful than Strider, with vibrant shades of various hues. The visual design is excellent too, ranging from a fortified cityscape to a harsh desert, from the high seas to a mysterious forest, and even the city of Prague, all ending with a fierce battle across ominous, crimson skies. The character designers were no slouches either, as Kirin is very well animated, and the enemies look beautiful, too. Early in the game, there's one soldier trapped between Kirin and a pit, and the wuss puts his arms up as he cowardly winces away from the wrath the hero is about to bring forth. Besides soldiers, Kirin also has to deal with tigers, statues, robots, and sandworms.

The music is less than spectacular, though. It's not bad, but it just doesn't seem quite adequate enough for this kind of game. The main reason for that is because the background music is rather subdued. Compare this to the tunes of Strider, which are practically booming out through the speakers. The instrumentation is pretty weird too, with one of them sounding like there's a chainsaw going off in the recording studio every few seconds. There's one truly bizarre piece of music as well, which involves Gregorian Monk-style chanting whenever a giant statue appears.

The fast-paced gameplay is the primary subject of comparison between Cannon Dancer and Strider, as the way Kirin moves could cause anybody to mistake him for Hiryu's long lost brother. He's able to run down steep slopes extremely quickly, and climb walls with the greatest of ease. Holding Down while pressing the jump button causes him to slide too, just like Hiryu. Kirin's jump does one thing better than Strider at least, as he can control himself in mid-air, whereas Hiryu suffers from jumping inertia and can’t fly backwards once he jumps forth.

Kirin isn't a total rip-off though, as he doesn’t carry any weapons. Instead, he’s sculpted his body to be a weapon itself. He mainly uses wind-fast kicks (and mixes a few punches in now and then) to crush his opposition, and can cause robots to explode with his bare legs alone. There's even a slam attack that he can perform on some enemies by pressing the jump button again while he's already in midair.

When all else fails, there's a special attack performed by tapping forward twice and pressing the attack button (Cannon Dancer has a third button devoted to the special). This creates multiple clones to obliterate everything on screen à la the original Shinobi.

Kirin can take a maximum of four hits before losing a life, and he receives three special attacks per life. There are power-up containers as well (gray capsules with a P on them) that contain either a red, green, yellow, or blue item. Most of these will restore hit points, but red ones will change the color of Kirin’s pants and create a shadow duplicate. These doubles stay in place when the attack button is pressed, and they remain in that location for approximately three seconds before returning to Kirin. Additional red capsules grant a second duplicate, and then increase your strength.

Unfortunately, despite all of these power boosts, the difficulty can be punishing at times. Sometimes the amount of regular enemies can be overwhelming, which especially becomes apparent in the forest level, where jet pack guards swoop about erratically while letting loose with their machine guns. What's worse is that Kirin loses a power level each time he’s hit.

The most incredible parts though are the bosses. There's Gamran, a huge robot armed with a buzzsaw and flamethrowers. Speaking of flame, there's Herio, a man made entirely out of fire who floats about while dumping flames, and has green hands floating about looking to grab you.

The next three bosses are fought in random order over the third, fourth, and fifth stages. There's Tianon, the bombshell who can kick as fiercely as Kirin and throw him about, not to mention the ability to create explosions. The ridiculously-named Willf looks a bit like Zamza from Streets of Rage 2 and utilizes his sharp claws to shred Kirin, and if that fails, he can always toss the floating platform he rides on. The most dishonorable of the three is Cannons, who just teleports around the arena while his gigantic helper mech in the background sends various body parts flying to smash the hero.

The difficulty can be really rough at times, but that's essentially nullified by the ability to resurrect right in the same spot. As a matter of fact, this game suffers from the same difficulty balance issues as the official Strider sequel released a few years later, where the challenge doesn't matter much to those who just want to finish the game, while those who want to beat it on one continue will find it very hard.

There are actually a few points in the game that require you to go back to a certain area after dying, and the last level actually disallows continuing on the spot, but Kirin's extremely strong special attack is the one thing that ruins the challenge of the boss battles. Just one use can slap off 80% of a big baddie's health, and Kirin gets three of them per life. He almost becomes dependent on them to get through the final level, which makes the last battles seem anticlimactic.

The broken challenge curve shouldn't put anyone off, though. Cannon Dancer definitely deserves more recognition than it’s ever received, which isn't much, considering that the arcade machine is incredibly rare. It finally received a home port by ININ Games and Ratalaika in 2023, which emulates both regional variations. Along with save state and rewind functionalities, it also includes a few optional enhancements to make the game a bit easier, like a double jump, rapid attacks, and the ability to become invincible when attacking, jumping, or sliding.

Cosmo Police Galivan

AKA: Galivan

Original Release: 1985

Platforms: ARC, FC, C64, CPC, ZX, PS4, NSW

Cosmo Police Galivan pays homage to early 80s Japanese tokusatsu shows like Space Sheriff Gavan and Space Sheriff Sharivan, featuring a guy who can transform with the power of a super suit. As the hero of the title, you're sent into the depths of the planet Cynep to take on the Aku crime syndicate. The game was directed by Shigeki Fujiwara, who worked on several early games with Nichibutsu like Terra Cresta, before moving on to a prolific career at Hudson working on the Bomberman series.

In his default state, Galivan can only punch and kick, and takes only a few hits before being killed by enemies. Grab a power-up though and he'll don his special suit, which not only grants stronger defenses but also gives him a ray gun, greatly evening the odds against the many, many enemies. Additional weapons include a laser sword that shoots out energy waves, and a three-way beam, which isn't as powerful but is more versatile. However, take too many hits and you'll lose your armor, and thus your extra weapons.

While most arcade games at the time scrolled horizontally, Cosmo Police Galivan is more ambitious in that it moves in all directions. To prevent you from getting lost, an arrow also points you in the right direction. Granted, the stages aren't terribly large anyway so it's unlikely that you'll ever get disoriented. In fact, the game is hilariously short, with only two stages, each capped off with identical boss battles. Once you've beaten the second one, it wraps right back around to the first, continuing until you've run out of lives. While this wasn't uncommon in games of the era, the fact that it's so brief gives it a very unfinished feel.

It's also pretty unbalanced, especially since you're so underpowered in your human form. Granted, you'll find armor power-ups pretty quickly, but you can just as easily get wiped out, since your punches and kicks are next to useless. The cabinet also only has two buttons to punch (or shoot) and kick, requiring you to press Up on the joystick to jump. You can also shoot diagonally, which is hugely useful for boss fights, but also difficult to aim without accidentally jumping.

Galivan saw a few ports to European home computers. The Commodore 64 version looks very basic, and only uses a single sound channel in an attempt to replicate the arcade soundtrack. The Amstrad CPC and ZX Spectrum releases look much nicer, though they pillarbox the screen in order to replicate the vertically oriented monitor found in the arcade original, giving it a very narrow feel. All versions are also missing the arrow. They're pretty basic ports for a pretty basic game.

A Famicom version came in 1988, though the developers must've realized that a straight conversion would've felt dated, so instead they remade it as a side-scrolling action-platformer RPG, roughly similar to Metroid. (Pictured above.) It's a sensible evolution, considering the vaguely open-ended nature of the original.

In each of the game's six areas, you explore various caverns to find items, fight enemies, and earn experience points to gain levels. Rather than the karate moves of his arcade forebear, the hero of the Famicom game wields various blades, along with guns that chew up crystal power energy. Once you've accumulated eight power capsules, you also don your power suit, though this just increases your defense.

Compared to other 8-bit exploratory platformers like Castlevania II and Legacy of the Wizard, Galivan is far less complicated, just because the zones are smaller, and therefore you're less likely to get lost. Once you've beaten an area, you also have no need to revisit old ones, keeping the game focused. Dying also just restarts you in the same area with all your equipment, and you only really lose some experience points, with progress being saved via battery backup. There are even NPCs you can find that give hints!

Even so, that still doesn't mean the game is easy, as enemies take way too many hits, at least you gain some strength. You'll need to do a whole lot of grinding, too. Grinding to get experience points, grinding to replenish your health and energy, grinding to get power capsules to equip your power suit. Each of the blades you find also has their own strength that needs to be leveled up individually, just adding to the repetitive nature. Combined with the ropey combat and jumping controls, it grows wearisome.

All of this puts Galivan on the lower tier of 8-bit Metroidvanias. It still has some neat ideas and cool visuals, though. Fans of these types of games will find it worth a shot after they’ve already exhausted other more notable entries like The Goonies II, Blaster Master, and Rygar.

Cosmo Police Galivan II: Arrow of Justice

Original Release: 1993

Platforms: SFC

Cosmo Police Galivan saw a sequel several years later on the Super Famicom. However, it has almost nothing to do with the original game beyond re-using the same character, as it's changed genres to a beat-em-up. You can also pick from one of three characters, including the Arrow of Justice himself, Galivan; Queen Bee; and Metal Hawk.

On the plus side, you can customize your character’s stats, giving it a pseudo-RPG feel. Further, while some environments are the typical beat-em-up levels like decayed city streets and parks, it also has some truly unique sci-fi designs as you get further in, particularly when you fight through a living cave with teeth borders.

On the negative side, everything else is terrible. The beat-em-up action feels ropey, bad guys are frustrating to hit, and you never fight more than two nearly identical enemies at the same time. While there's a competitive mode, there's no two player co-op either. Truly, this has no real relation to its predecessors, other than Nichibutsu wanting to feature a similar tokusatsu-inspired setting and to use a nostalgic character.

Xain’d Sleena

AKA: Solar Warrior (US) / Soldier of Light (Ports)

Original Release: 1986

Platforms: ARC, AMI, AST, C64, ZX, MSX, CPC

Technos was primarily known for beat-em-ups like Renegade and Double Dragon, along with a roster of assorted wrestling games. Before they developed this reputation, they had Xain'd Sleena, a sci-fi-themed run-and-gun. Pronounced "zayned sleena", it means "soldier of light" within the game's fictional language.

When the game begins, you pilot your spaceship around one of five planets, effectively serving as a level select. Within this genre, Xain’d Sleena’s closest equivalent is Contra, though it actually predates Konami's classic by about a year. You can't aim upwards or downwards here, but this restriction is mitigated by the fact that you can double-jump, which was pretty novel back in 1986.

There are several additional weapons, though the equipment system is a little odd. Certain enemies drop “P” capsules, which randomly grant new armaments. Some of these seem inspired by Gradius, like the grenades, which are tossed at an arc in tandem with your regular laser, or the double shot, which fires bullets at both 45 and 90 degree angles. The others are an assortment of lasers, one of which shoots more slowly but has greater strength, and the other fires triple beams.

Also rather unusual for this type of game is the presence of a life meter. Bullets don't actually do all that much damage, although since there's no invincibility period, you can find yourself losing a lot of energy very quickly. Running into enemies hurts you a lot though, and close encounters with many foes will kill you outright. There are plenty of bad guys that leap around with lightsaber-type weapons or heavily armored types that take several hits to take down. If you die, you respawn at a checkpoint.

Of the five initial stages, there's a rock planet, a jungle, an underwater level, a desert, and a volcano. The jungle and desert are the most interesting of these since they have unique mid-boss battles, the former against a giant dinosaur, the latter where you fight a mysterious mask that emerges from a series of ruins. The regular bosses are just larger enemies that emerge from the base at the end of each stage. Their patterns are actually pretty simple, but the single-hit collision kills, combined with numerous smaller enemies, make these pretty challenging.

Once you've beaten one of these bosses, you attach a bomb to the enemy base and summon your spaceship. You then have 10 seconds to hop into your cockpit and escape, though this is trivial, to the point where if you get yourself killed here, you probably weren't paying attention. The level doesn't end here, though. Before the base is demolished, it sends out several smaller enemy fighters to try to take you down as you leave the planet. The game then switches to a brief side-scrolling shooter escape segment that lasts about a minute. This certainly feels exciting the first time it happens, and these kinds of multi-genre interludes are cool in a "you got a shoot-em-up in my run-and-gun!" kind of way. Even so, most of these sections are pretty similar, to the point where they feel redundant. Halfway through the game, though, it mixes things up with a boss encounter with a mothership, and one stage changes up things a bit by making you maneuver through a minefield.

Once you've beaten all five of the planets, you're ready to take on the empire's primary base, which totally looks like the Death Star. This section tosses almost everything at you simultaneously, including some previously defeated bosses. Once you reach the center, you plant an explosive on its core…at which point you have 60 seconds to escape, or go down in flames along with it. Dying resets the clock though, so you don't really have to stress yourself out too much.

Xain'd Sleena has almost all of the makings of a classic. It's certainly very typical of many later run-and-guns, but it has unusual mechanics. The only thing it really lacks is a two-player mode. The sprites are a little on the small side too, but the backgrounds are generally all high quality, and the indigenous life on the planets, like the giant insects in the jungle or the sandworms in the desert, allow for some variety beyond the brigades of imperial soldiers. True, it’s extremely difficult, though that's par for the course for an 80s arcade game. It only really suffers due to the massive amounts of slowdown.

Xain’d Sleena received an alternate release for America, where it was distributed by Memetron with the more pronounceable but less exotic title Solar Warrior. This version removes the name of the hero in the opening text, plus is also takes away the ability to select your stages. The original release had unique names for the planets like "Cleemalt Soa" and "Kworal Soa", while this version just changes them to planets in our solar system. This doesn't entirely make sense either, since Jupiter is a gas giant and therefore you can't actually land on it.

The game was later ported to several European home computers, now retitled Soldier of Light. The ZX Spectrum and MSX versions run sluggishly and are displayed in monochrome, while the Amstrad CPC version is more colorful, but runs so slowly as to be completely unplayable. The Commodore 64 port runs at a decent speed, though it's displayed in a half-sized window and has some decent new music courtesy of Maniacs of Noise. The Amiga and Atari ST versions look decent, but all three of these releases suffer from sloppy level construction where you just get overwhelmed with enemies, making it even more difficult than it originally was.

In all of the computer ports, you can pick your levels and they're given all new names. However, the biggest drawback to these versions is that there are only three stages, just half the length of the arcade game. None of these versions are ideal, which is unfortunate since the arcade game was never ported elsewhere.

Toki

AKA: JuJu Densetsu (JP)

Original Release: 1989

Platforms: ARC, AMI, AST, C64, NES, GEN, LYN, IOS, PS4, NSW, XBO, WIN, MAC

Japanese developer TAD Corp was formed by a handful of former Data East employees in the late 80s. Aside from Cabal, one of their other notable titles is Toki, an action game featuring a projectile-spitting monkey. This carries on Data East's propensity for bizarre themes, such as in Karnov. This was programmed by Akira Sakuma, also previously of Data East.

The eponymous Toki (Juju in Japan) is a former human who’s been cursed with the form of a monkey by the evil Bashtar and the sorcerer Vookimedlo. To make matters worse, they've also kidnapped Toki’s girlfriend, Miho. In journeying across the land, each stage is introduced with a Ghosts ‘n Goblins style map, along with a brief bit of dramatic text describing the hero's upcoming trials.

Toki attacks by spitting… something. Let's just say they're video game bullets. Various power-ups improve his abilities temporarily, including three-way shots, more powerful wave beams, charge attacks, and the ability to breathe fire. These attacks are also quite versatile, as you can shoot upwards and diagonally (though not directly below). In a curious control quirk, this only works when you're on the ground, and Toki can only shoot left and right when jumping. He can also harm enemies by jumping on their heads, a standard platformer convention, which not only gives him an extra method of attack but can also be used to obtain otherwise out-of-reach items. Grabbing 50 coins, mostly dropped by enemies, will also yield an additional life.

The game itself resembles some of Irem's side-scrolling action games like Legend of Hero Tonma, in that the main character dies in a single hit and resurrects at a nearby checkpoint. Luckily, these checkpoints are placed regularly, so even though you might find yourself getting killed often, at least you're not punished too harshly. It does become more of an issue with boss fights though, at least until you've discovered their pattern. Toki's relatively large size combined with some huge enemy projectiles can make navigating between them difficult.

There were plenty of primordial-themed side-scrollers in the late 80s/early 90s — Hudson's Bonk's Adventure, Titus' Prehistorik, Data East's Joe & Mac — but none of these are quite as delightfully deranged as Toki. The hero himself strolls along with an unusual saunter, head drooped below his shoulders, with exaggerated facial features at every spit. One of the power-ups is an American football helmet (to shield from damage) while another is a pair of white sneakers (to walk faster), both of which look ridiculous when worn. The enemies are far stranger than the unlikely hero, too. Sure, there are other apes to face, but there are also things like flying sting rays. Right in the first stage, there's a gigantic floating contraption, with faces that spit out steam and gloves punching downward. As you destroy each piece and climb upwards, you see that it's powered by two monkeys tugging on a lever like a seesaw. It's just so bizarre that it sets the stage for the adventure ahead.

The most memorable boss is a gigantic, wrinkled raisin-thing who attacks by yelling the letters "BURP". The second most memorable boss is a disembodied pair of hands and feet, with a heart floating somewhere about its midpoint. Oddly, in spite of the quasi-prehistoric setting, there aren't any actual dinosaurs to fight against, though there are plenty of strange ruins to explore, the final one decorated with statues of what appears to be some kind of goat god. Each of the game's six stages has a boss at the end and most have at least one mid-boss, so there's a good variety of oddball on offer.

The graphics are colorful and the designs are consistently amusing, thanks to the excellently weird spritework. The main theme music is catchy as well, though the loop is a little simple and quite short. It's also repeated far too often, so it wears out its welcome by the end. The sound effects are digitized samples, many sounding like they came out of a Looney Tunes episode. This is something more commonly found in Western PC games than Japanese arcade titles, but nevertheless adds to Toki's eccentric charms.

The game over prompt challenges the arcade Ninja Gaiden's famous screen by showing a video monitor (which exist in this world, apparently) with Miho desperately crying at you to keep playing or else she'll be killed.

Toki was ported widely at the time, and some of the game's enduring cult popularity (especially in Europe) can be traced to the generally high quality of these releases. The Amiga version is excellent, with visuals taken straight from the arcade that only slightly suffer due to the lower color palette. The scrolling is a little choppy too, but it still plays quite well. The Atari ST version is similar, though with even further decreased colors and the removal of parallax backgrounds. The scrolling is smoother here, but the game runs slightly faster than it should. The audio is weaker too, owing to the hardware, though it still sounds decent.

The Commodore 64 version is expectedly simplified, with much of the visual charm gone. It's also completely missing the final stage. However, it's still quite playable. The only major sticking point with these computer ports is that they only have a single button and use Up to jump, so in order to aim your shots — which you'll need to do often! — you need to hold the fire button and then push in a direction. All of these ports were published by Ocean. Amstrad CPC and ZX Spectrum ports were planned, but never released.

The NES version was ported and published by Taito. Like the Commodore 64 game, the visuals are significantly stripped back, with sparse, black backgrounds (in the early stages) and smaller sprites. However, there's more character put into them, so it still preserves some of the arcade’s goofiness. However, the levels are sparsely populated, making it much easier than it should be. The American NES version adds a life meter with two hits by default, further decreasing the difficulty. Overall though, it's still an alright port. It does have a hilarious new message in the ending, which inspires you to make "the best of the valuable experiences you acquired in the game", which is somewhat overselling itself.

The Lynx version, handled by Atari, suffers visually due to the lower resolution, but the system does it what can, and it's still quite detailed and colorful. Some miniaturized ports have problems where they fail to scale the player character down to an appropriate size, resulting in a cramped playing field, but this one avoids this problem, and the game plays pretty well as a result.

The Sega Genesis version was developed by Santos, who worked closely with Sega before being acquired by them. While the system was known for its excellent arcade ports in the early days (Strider, Ghouls ‘n Ghosts, Altered Beast), Toki doesn’t fall into that category.

The entire game has been remade here, with completely new backgrounds and brand new levels. There's even an expanded introduction showing the villains' fortress rising out of the land. There are also nine levels now rather than six, though the themes will seem familiar as you explore volcanoes, jungles, and ice caverns. With these are some new bosses, and again, some are familiar faces from the arcade game, but some are new, like the submarine that shoots torpedoes with ape faces.

Altogether, despite being broken up into small sections, the level layouts are less interesting than the arcade game, being a slog to get through due to Toki's slower walking speed. Dying will also send you to the beginning of an area, rather than respawning nearby. Plus, the muted color palette means it loses much of the arcade's brightness, feeling like a launch-era Genesis game. There are a few new features at least, like new weapons (bouncing energy balls), and the reworked music sounds excellent.

It's not very exciting, but since Toki never got a true sequel, this is as best as anyone is going to get. The American version adds the subtitle Going Ape Spit, plus it renames Miho to Wanda and Vookimedlo to Dr. Stark, along with the names for some others.

Toki was resurrected by Golgoth Studios in 2009, who presented a remake with completely new, redrawn graphics, eventually seeing release in 2018. The visuals here are presented in a beautiful, comic book-style and look absolutely spectacular. While the colors are a little muted, the game otherwise matches up perfectly with the strange personality of the arcade original. A lot of detail has been put into this project, and it's clear that the artists and developers really loved Toki to go so above and beyond for a remake. The music has been redone too, with the original FM OST included as well. There's also a brief comic book that illustrates the story.

As for the game itself, it's almost identical to the arcade release. The designs have changed slightly to accommodate a 16:9 layout, and there are some lower difficulty levels that make the game more manageable. Easier settings grant you up to nine lives, which is useful, as you need to start the level over if you restart, compared to picking up at the same place in the arcade version. Altogether, it’s a great remake, but if Golgoth went through all of the trouble to redraw the visuals here, maybe a whole new game would've been better?

Guardian

AKA: Get Star (JP)

Original Release: 1986

Platforms: ARC, PS4, NSW, EVR

Guardian (Get Star in Japan) is a side-scrolling brawler, an unusual title alongside developer Toaplan's expansive shoot-em-up library. Here you control a robot sent from Earth to punch, kick, and smash their way through six planets, freeing them from the tyranny of the evil Big Demol.

There are two separate buttons to punch and kick, while you can jump by pressing Up on the joystick and duck by holding Down. Unusually, your robot marches forward through the stages automatically, and can only be stopped by crouching. Beyond the bipedal enemy monsters, you'll also have to deal with other unusual creatures that pop out of the environments, like gigantic worms sprouting out of trees or enormous, eye-stalked creatures that live underwater.

Various power-ups will appear as you progress through each stage. Red bubbles enhance your attack power, first speeding up your punches, then lighting your fists aflame, before finally granting you super punch strength. (Strangely, there's nothing to upgrade your kick attacks.) Other power-ups grant you temporary invincibility, or give you an arm-mounted laser beam, though this is also limited in energy.

At the end of each stage, the screen stops scrolling and you're given free movement for a duel against the boss. These are more than a little one-sided, as these foes often have various moves that attack from a distance. Plus, while your robot can only takes four hits, most bosses require roughly 20, at least at your default power level. The key to beating them mostly relies on being powered up to the max and hitting them with a quick barrage before they can even fight back. The game loops around after beating the sixth stage, and there's no actual ending to be had.

Even though its most obvious contemporary would be Kung Fu Master, the enemies here are far more varied and creative, and the backgrounds are filled with details. The first stage, on a Mars-like planet, has you fighting multi-eyed dinosaur creatures that also happen to wield swords for some reason. The second level is a frigid world with dinosaurs frozen in ice, while the desert planet that makes up the third area includes a horned, Sphinx-like statue in the background. The fourth setting, a jungle planet, contains tiny, blue, evil, Ewok-like creatures. One stage also has advertisements for a game called “Redrum”, which was Guardian's original title before Taito, its distributor, forced the devs to change it.

Guardian was a flop upon release, but it's a fairly advanced brawler for 1986, and is both creative and approachable. Though it didn't have any home ports at the time, it's included on the first Toaplan Arcade Garage release, Kyuukyoku Tiger Heli.

Wardner

AKA: Wardner no Mori (JP), Pyros (ENG ARC)

Original Release: 1987

Platforms: ARC, FDS, GEN, PS4, NSW, EVR

Toaplan is mostly known for their shoot-em-up output, but they had plenty of games in other genres, even if they weren’t quite as prolific. One of these was 1987’s Wardner (known as Wardner no Mori ("The Forest of Wardner") in Japan, and Pyros in North American arcades. It's a side-scrolling, dark fantasy action title, similar to Ghosts ‘n Goblins (which preceded it by two years). The premise is that a young boy and his lady friend have found themselves in the dangerous forest of the fearsome warlock Wardner. The girl gets kidnapped and it’s up to the guy to save her. It's likely that the name "Wardner" came from "Werdna", the antagonist of the first Wizardry, as they're spelled the same in Japanese.

Luckily, the hero has some simple magical powers in the form of a fireball, which flies a brief range before floating towards the ground. Also spread throughout the stages are glowing orbs, which can be used to power-up your magic, so you can toss more than one fireball at a time. The stages are further littered with money bags, with shops in between levels where various goods can be purchased. These include three types of swords — Star, Moon, and Sun — which grant different types of firepower. The Sun sword fires out a laser, and is basically a requirement in order to beat the final stage. Also found are fairies, which surround your character and absorb any hits. They’re extremely powerful if used correctly, since they can also inflict damage on tough opponents, but they disappear when you die, so you need to be very, very careful.

Alas, you can only take a single blow before dying, sending you back to an earlier checkpoint. You can find a cape that will absorb one hit — it will actually appear on your character, which is a nice touch — and extra threads can be purchased so you can take a little more damage. This makes it a tough game though, particularly due to a number of insta-kill traps.

As a result, careful play and memorization is a must, but the game is still a little more lenient than others of its type. For one thing, you keep your firepower and weapon upon death, and even after continuing. The respawning is also a little glitchy, sometimes working in your favor to put you a little past the obstacle that killed you, or ridding the screen of enemies to make your new life a little easier. It’s not until the end of the game, which is just a gauntlet of tough enemy encounters, that the difficulty becomes unreasonable, but that’s par for the course.

The game has an unusual art style, with most of the forests being filled with all manners of horrific monsters. However, both the hero and the heroine are cute, squat little humans who look like they wandered out from a completely different game. Among the five stages, the exterior levels in the forest are straightforward, while the interior castle zones are more open-ended for exploration.

While the levels have the usual challenges like floating fire platforms and precarious vines, there are plenty of unique gimmicks too. An early section in the first level has you avoid lightning clouds from a storm, while the second stage is filled with conveyor belts where you need to dodge under swirling blades. The third area has a unique ocarina item that can be used to call a phoenix to fly over some dangerous lava, and there are a few sections where you ride zip lines over spikes, requiring you to let go at the right moment lest you get skewered. Moments like these help make Wardner stand out and provide a worthwhile experience for fans of challenging, dark fantasy arcade games.

Wardner received two home console conversions. The Famicom Disk System port is a visual downgrade, but still retains the same basic style. The difficulty balance has changed too, because while you now have a life meter, you only have a single life, and dying means restarting the stage. Health isn’t replenished between stages either, so you need to spend money at the shop to buy healing potions. At least you can save and continue your game.

A Genesis port, called Wardner no Mori Special in Japan, is visually closer to the arcade version, though the color palette is brighter and some details are missing. A new intro is added with close-ups of the characters, as well as a slightly different ending. The key additions to this version are boss battles — the arcade game had a few, but they were mostly just fights against the same dragon over and over. The Genesis port adds plenty of extra ones, though. For example in the second stage, you can see your girlfriend trapped in a prison and must find a key to free her. It’s pretty obviously a trap — you’ve basically just started the game after all — and in the arcade version, she just turns into a standard monster. However, in the Genesis game, she grows extra legs out of her back and turns into a monstrous spider demon. In addition to some other boss battles added throughout, the upper castle stage, originally the fourth level in the arcade game, has been broken into two separate levels and expanded. The final stage is also longer, since it adds in all of the new bosses

However, the Genesis version has one big flaw — each level has a short time limit, usually a few minutes long, and they didn’t bother to extend the timer to take into account the extra bosses. As a result, you either really need to hustle through the stages, waste some money to purchase time extensions at the shop, or just deal with the fact that you’re going to die due to time running out a few times.

The main characters all have different names depending on the version. In the Japanese arcade game, the hero is unnamed (since you can input your initials), as is the girlfriend. Other names for the hero and heroine, respectively, are Pyros and Erika (Pyros arcade), Prince Alamode and Princess Pudding (Famicom Disk System), Raitos and Pitty (Mega Drive), and Dover and Mia (Genesis).

A few other ports of Wardner were in development, but remain unreleased. An NES version named Pyross, separate from the Famicom Disk System, was at one point advertised by American Sammy. A PC Engine port was also planned from NEC Avenue, but this was eventually canceled due to quality reasons. An arcade perfect port, along with the FDS version, is included in the Hishou Same! Same! Same! package, released in 2022 for the PlayStation 4 and Switch. This version also features new artwork by fantasy artist Jun Suemi.

Demon’s World

AKA: Horror Story (JP)

Original Release: 1989

Platforms: ARC, PCECD, PS4, NSW, EVR

Toaplan was best known for their vertical shoot-em-ups in the vein of Fire Shark and Batsugun, but they were capable of making other types of games over their 10-year life span. Demon's World falls into the unconventional zone for the studio, being an auto-scrolling run-and-gun that aims to capture as much of the spirit of Halloween as possible, mashing together all sorts of monsters and ghouls into one of their quirkiest arcade adventures.

This is an odd duck of a game, but it can at least be called a "shooter." It's one of those rare sidescrollers where, despite being on foot, your character keeps moving forward automatically because demon slaying is serious business. The Player One character has shades and a mustache (both of which the lamer Player Two lack), so he demands respect. He's also lugging around what looks like a Ghostbusters proton pack, but it shoots missiles by default and is light enough to allow for a high-reaching double jump.

Floating power-up icons change your weapon to bombs, three-way shots, pink lasers, and a "V", which gives you an actual Ghostbusters-esque energy stream, albeit with average range. All weapons work best for different situations, but the three-way shot generally provides you with the most security to compensate for the inability to aim upward. The pink laser becomes useful in later areas where you're forced through narrow corridors and power matters more than coverage, and the blue proton stream helps to clear a few segments that barrage you with weaker enemies. There's not much reason to stick with the missiles though, and the bombs are almost worthless like the Ghosts 'n Goblins torch, but weapon icons float over the screen frequently.

In contrast to Toaplan's usually serious and futuristic designs, Demon's World takes a more cartoony appearance with its characters. It's not Contra in any sense except you're holding a gun, instead having more in common with Ghosts 'n Goblins, but again, the choice of weapon indicates a somewhat more modern era. However, it never gets more advanced than the first area town, and even the buildings there look somewhat outmoded, as if it were based on the Old West. After you clear it, you're mostly wandering through forests, islands, Japanese villages, Chinese fantasy lands, and even a full-on castle as the final setpiece. You start with pink ghosts wearing nice hats, and soon encounter the likes of gargoyles and Frankenstein's creatures, but eventually take on possessed Japanese lanterns, jiangshis (Chinese hopping vampires), possessed suits of armor, and whatever other Scooby-Doo costumes you can imagine.

It all makes for a bizarre anachronism gumbo that defies the usually futuristic designs of Toaplan's catalog, and some of the enemies rank among the cartooniest sprites they've ever created. This lends an interesting touch of personality to the proceedings, though it's somewhat countered with fairly straightforward backgrounds and the occasional creepy skeleton boss fight. You're avoiding boulders pushed by goblins one minute, and fighting a floating corpse in Native American regalia the next. You also battle a samurai skeleton after dealing with a wave of kasa-obake (Japanese umbrella demons). The tone can be a little uneven, to say the least.

At least the difficulty remains consistent. Death sends you to a checkpoint, but usually not much farther than three screens back. Your weapons don't have any additional power levels either, so you're not any worse off in firepower if you have to continue. You can collect P-icons that allow you to take a hit if you grab three of them, but nothing more complex beyond that. As long as you're persistent, Demon's World feels beatable up until around when you fight the Chinese dragon boss (the first of three dragons, strangely enough).

After that, it cranks up the heat around the last quarter of the game, when invincible blue fire starts jetting out while you attempt to jump over water gaps. Then along comes a giant Metroid rip-off spawning smaller versions of itself, all of whom take too much punishment and need to be goomba-stomped to efficiently destroy. Further, the castle at the end forces you to jump over large blocks pushed by winged goblins and contains two dragon boss fights, the former of which breathes fire in a painfully narrow hallway, and the latter spitting out a difficult rain of projectiles. The final boss is easier than the last dragon, although its appearance as a lumpy zombie encased in some sort of pulsating flesh-cage is a ghoulish contrast to most of the generally lighthearted enemies.

Demon's World makes no bones about its subject matter: Shooting monsters and little else. No dodge mechanics or scoring system, just a one-or-two player romp through an improbably diverse stretch of geography, blasting baddies to the beyond. It's not Toaplan's most exciting game or their craziest, and it seems to be lesser remembered among their fans. Nonetheless, it's something different from what they normally did, and it's worth looking into this one.

Demon’s World received just one Japan-only console port for the PC Engine CD (under its original name, Horror Story), and the graphics are spot-on similar. It also has an enhanced soundtrack which, while good, might make one wonder why this game wasn’t just released to the normal PC Engine when its assets could have done just as well on the normal HuCard. It also jumbles up the order of the stages, as it’s based on a revised arcade board that didn’t see much distribution, starting out with the Chinese segment before the Japanese one, and ending up at the Western town as the third level. It adds a skeletal cowboy boss (shown below) who floats in a figure-eight, firing bullets and summoning scorpions, and it adds a cavernous final level in between the last dragon and the final boss.

Despite the level shuffling, the extra boss and stage make this the definitive edition. That being said, there’s a good chance that whatever price you find for this version would be more frightening than cowboy skeletons covered with scorpions.

Both the arcade and PCE Demon’s World were included as part of the third Toaplan Arcade Garage release for the PS4 and Switch, along with the shoot-em-ups Zero Wing and Hellfire.

Atomic Robo-Kid

Original Release: 1988

Platforms: ARC, PCE, GEN, X68, PCE, AMI, AST, C64, PS4, NSW

Atomic Robo-Kid straddles the line between a side-scrolling shoot-em-up and a platformer. The hero, a tin can-shaped robot with an appetite for destruction, can fly freely around the multi-directional scrolling levels, allowing you to advance at your own pace. Bumping into enemies won't actually hurt you either, which is handy considering the large sprites, but getting hit by a projectile will cause your poor little robo buddy to explode and get sent back to an earlier checkpoint.

Beyond your default weapon, your arsenal includes a three-way shot, an explosive missile, and a five-way shot that fires a wave of lasers. You can switch between multiple shot styles if you have them, and whenever you get killed, only your equipped method is lost. At the least this means you can stockpile them for a semblance of a fighting chance when you respawn. While most power-ups are found throughout the stages, you may also find a little dragon who will sell you some items. However, since there's no currency in Atomic Robo-Kid, you instead pay for these power-ups with your extra life, which feels awfully grim.

Some levels are straightforward, while others are a little more labyrinthine, in a few cases holding secret passages. A few levels have multiple exits too, sending you down different branching paths. In many areas, you'll find a miniboss guarding the exit, though you can fly past them if you can maneuver through the tight spaces. You'll need to fight a larger boss every few stages though. These are so enormous that they inhabit an entire level and take up the entire size of the screen. Since these battles are fought in a tight room, you'll need to lure them around the stage, getting them to expose their many weakpoints while you try to avoid getting crushed in the process. A few areas are also competitions between a robo opponent, set in a small arena with a barrier down the middle, which you need to dismantle before your shots will penetrate the other side. While the 20+ levels vary in length, it's still a meaty experience and you can actually bring up a password screen when you run out of lives to resume your progress, something unusual for an arcade game. (It won't work past level 16, though.)

Design-wise, the levels are quite diverse, beginning with typical sci-fi, robotic environments but quickly changing over to jungles, oceans, caves, ruins, some place that looks like a futuristic beehive, and even a few somewhat surreal settings like Mutant Night, this game's predecessor. This helps keep things fresh, especially considering the core gameplay doesn't really change a whole lot, and most of the enemies you encounter are similar throughout.

Robo-Kid is also a distinctively designed hero, who with his beady red eyes and elephant trunk-shaped nose, walks the line between being ugly and cute. Whenever he dies, he turns and looks at the player for a moment before exploding, as if to say "Look, your incompetence just got me killed". Whenever you beat a boss, you're treated with a close-up of this same expression, which makes that little guy seem like that much more of a badass. Certain big explosions (and even one enemy's attacks) also use balls that leave trails behind them in a trick to make them look like one solid stream, a unique effect borrowed from Mutant Night.

Atomic Robo-Kid best represents the work of Tsutomu Fuzisawa, whose games were often known for their eccentric mechanics and unusual sense of humor. (See also: Mutant Night, Bio-Ship Paladin, and Gomola Speed). Indeed, it also seems to have been one of UPL's most successful works, having been ported to several different platforms. The Genesis version, developed by Micronics and published by Treco, was released internationally, and outside of the large, ugly status bar at the top of the screen, it’s a decent port. This also adds a new intro and ending scene. The PC Engine version, dubbed Atomic Robo-Kid Special, rebalances the difficulty by giving you a life bar, and along with it, life restoration items. As a compromise, bumping into enemies now damages you, though not by much. The branching paths were also removed, but some stages have been deleted completely, including the very first area. Visually it's a downgrade too, simplifying many of the backgrounds and removing some parallax scrolling. The X68000 version is more or less arcade-perfect.

Among the computer ports, published by Activision, the Atari ST and Amiga versions look relatively faithful, though there's some obvious dithering due to the low color palettes. However, the action is not only slower but also significantly choppier, running at a fraction of the framerate as it should. The Commodore 64 version runs better in general, but slows down and flickers quite a bit when there are too many enemies on screen. The view is pretty small as well and some backgrounds are gone in favor of pure blackness, but otherwise the gameplay is fairly accurate. A ZX Spectrum port was planned too, with a demo of the first level even being released, but was canceled.

The storyline changes between the versions. While the arcade game has no plot text in-game, it takes place in a world where humans have lost their ability to reproduce, and Atomic Robo-Kid is delivering a cure to save the species. In the Genesis version, the space station Terra-12 is under attack by alien "Governors", who’ve mutated the colonists and Robo-Kid must save the biodroid Eve in order to cure them. In the European computer versions, Robo-Kid has just graduated from the Universal University of Space Combat and sets off into enemy territory to destroy as much as he can.

Mutant Night

Original Release: 1987

Platforms: ARC, PS4, NSW

UPL’s Mutant Night gives off the aura of a fever dream, like it’s a fictional game that you’d see being played in a movie. This is definitely real though, and it’s a weirdo. You play as a bizarre little alien named Mutron-kun, who has a cute little white body and an off-putting, mushroom-like head with a huge, azure eye. Mutron-kun runs through many stages, shooting robotic enemies with his eye powers for reasons completely unknown. His goal is a small blue door in the floor that causes an explosion of colorful balls to fill the screen like a Windows screensaver. Your vibrant eye projectiles evaporate most small enemies in one shot, and the metal marauders come in various forms like bouncing monoliths, weird skeleton monkeys, and annoying fish that somehow jump up through the floor like water. You can only take one hit before dying, where you ricochet around the screen before deflating like a bounce house.

You can also only shoot left and right, but you can jump almost infinitely. Conversely, some stages give your jumps diminishing returns like Kirby’s floats. Levels where you would die if you ran out of jump power give you infinite air time, although Mutron-kun tires out when he hits safe ground. The multiple leaps are tough to control and have you float around under severe inertia as well, making turning a pain and doubly causing mostly airborne stages to feel downright evil. Mutron-kun can grab several orbs from eggs to power him up, though the pink ones are just for points. Yellow orbs give him a neat spread shot, and green orbs allow him to shoot invincible clones of himself at enemies. The best type is blue though, which super-sizes your sprite and allows you to plow over everything just by running over it.

Anything that keeps you invincible from your opponents long enough to reach the goal is very helpful, because after the first few levels, the enemy amounts and patterns get vicious rather quickly. There are also a total of 61 stages in the game, most of them being potentially short if you can make it to the end without dying. Some are bonus areas where you just have to collect as many colorful globs as you can until time runs out. Others are more complicated than just a straight line running from left to right, and some require you to destroy large enemies that spit out tons of projectiles and require multiple hits.

There’s not much else to Mutant Night besides reaching the goal, shooting various aberrations, and trying not to die within 10 seconds. Its difficulty spikes high early on and never really lets up, and it does get fairly monotonous after playing for long enough. The game is quirky enough to warrant a look, but in truth not many are likely to play past the first dozen or so levels.

Vandyke

Original Release: 1990

Platforms: ARC, PS4, NSW

UPL's Vandyke is an overhead action game, that would be classified as a run-and-gun, except without the gunning, since you're restricted to melee weapons. In the pantheon of other similar games, it's akin to Capcom's Avengers and Namco's Legend of Valkyrie.

Here the hero's default weapon is a short-ranged sword. When you find crystals, a little roulette wheel pops up that can potentially give you some new equipment. Some of these include swirling, blue-flamed boomerangs and explosive cannonballs, which don't feel entirely appropriate for the setting but are effective in killing foes. By far the best is a ball-and-chain though, which not only has a fairly long reach, but can be swung around, taking out enemies in a sweeping pattern.

You have a life meter of six hearts, plus picking up muscle icons will increase your attack strength. Other power-ups include a bomb that sets everything on the screen ablaze, along with a little fairy companion who seems to want to attack enemies, but moves too erratically to be of much use. You can jump, though other than dodging enemy attacks, there's not much use for it, aside from hopping onto small hills or leaping over rolling logs or boulders. Oddly the fourth stage, a cave filled with molten lava, is largely devoted to platforming, something that never really feels right considering the game’s overhead perspective.

At the outset, Vandyke seems like a normal Conan the Barbarian ripoff à la Rastan, as you take down hordes of Neanderthals and giant scorpions. Halfway through the first stage though, it gets kinda weird, when half-naked guys attached to gigantic wheels start rolling around the level. The boss is a green, three-eyed elephant with a genie-like being on the end of its trunk. There are Harryhausen skeletons, and then there are claw-wielding Japanese gay stereotypes. The second level boss is Medusa, while the next one follows up with a cloaked wizard who shoots worms out of his arms; his cape occasionally drops to reveal a shriveled human-like creature beneath. Plus, whenever the hero grabs a power-up, he stops dead in his tracks, leaving himself vulnerable in order to do one of several bodybuilder poses. It feels like someone's Dungeons & Dragons campaign that got crashed by a goofball who just wanted to mess with everyone else.

The stages in Vandyke are enjoyable to play through, and the arsenal makes it fairly easy to cut through the hordes of eager prey. The skewed perspective makes hit detection a little difficult, especially with the short-range weapons, and continuing is disallowed, which takes a moderately challenging title and makes it exponentially more difficult. Altogether, the weirdness makes it just remarkable enough to be worth a laugh, though.

Dyna Gear

Original Release: 1994

Platforms: ARC

It's the future year 2993, and time patroller Roger has followed space criminal Gustaf through a chronal warp, sending them both crash landing on a prehistoric planet. It turns out that Gustaf has also angered the local indigenous people, who are something like werewolves, and lend their aid to adventure across the wilderness and take him down.

Dyna Gear is a co-op arcade run-and-gun, with a heavy emphasis on the "run" part. The game is almost always in forward motion as the heroes, Roger and Wolf, slice up evil dinosaurs and whatever other troubles they happen upon. There are lots of hills and slopes, walls to climb, and branches to grapple under; it's like that one section in Strider where you careen down an exploding hill, but extrapolated out into an entire game. Roger is slightly faster while Wolf jumps higher, though they still play similarly. The title is actually quite clever, too. The "Dyna" part suggests explosives like "dynamite" while also sounding like the first half of the word "dinosaur". The title screen also charmingly refers to itself as "An Action Adventure On The Era Of Dinosaur".

Most enemies explode in coins, large and small, which are collected with loud, satisfying chimes; get enough and you'll earn an extra life. Some of the larger dino foes will also perish and politely yield a ready-to-eat steak, which will replenish some of your health. The levels have quite a bit of vertical range too, offering treetops to run across or alternate paths to take. You can't move backwards though, so you also can't explore, requiring you to maintain constant forward motion.

There are four main weapons, and each one has a special attack which is executed when you've jammed down the attack button enough times. There are swords, which also have a limited range flurry special attack, as well as powerful axes, which are thrown out in a wide, upward spread. Less visually impressive (though still useful) are homing arrows. The coolest though is the flail, which spins around in a circle and provides a barrier of destruction around your hero. This is easily the most fun method of attack in the game, except the short range makes it problematic to use in boss fights, where getting too close makes you liable to get hit.

Not every dinosaur is out to get you, though, and occasionally one will join your side, running next to you while you dash through the level. After certain areas, you'll also visit villages of the wolf folk, who offer power-ups and assorted, questionably translated dialogue in an attempt to provide aid.

Dyna Gear's strength lies in its kinetic energy; it's fast and busy, fully animated, and has delightful character designs. Roger's look is ridiculous, with long, blond hair and a square jaw, and armor that looks like an American football uniform. Meanwhile, Wolf is also extremely top-heavy despite not wearing any clothes, looking like a werewolf that's devoted his entire life to hanging out at the gym. The dinosaurs also have comical (though not quite cartoony) appearances, and many are often gigantic, with longer-necked creatures crafted out of multiple sprites. The temple areas even feature contraptions like robots, and a brief bit where you fight through swirling monoliths à la Xevious. It's vibrant and things explode with comic book-style balloons, making for a wild and boisterous experience.

The only real sore spots come when the game loses its forward momentum. The fourth stage, the Labyrinth, takes place in a trap-filled temple, which forces you to climb through narrow corridors and enclosed spaces while dodging spears in the walls, and it's just not much fun. The boss and mini-boss fights similarly causes the pace to come to a halt; they're resolved fairly quickly, so it's generally not much of a problem…except the very last area has a boss rush against previously defeated baddies before facing off against Gustaf, which grows very tiresome. Most of the game isn't hugely difficult before this point, as you get a life bar and a number of lives, though continuing sends you back to an earlier checkpoint.

There are two endings, one where Wolf's tribe is able to repair Roger's ship and he can return home, while in the other, Roger gets stranded and needs to wait for a rescue vessel. It's not entirely clear how these are triggered, but it seems to be based on which character was chosen and if they used continues.

Dyna Gear has never been ported to a console, but its madcap liveliness and goofy sensibilities turn it into a good time. While the game is credited to Sammy, it was actually developed by Scarab, a company founded by Tsutomu Fujisawa in the wake of UPL's bankruptcy. One of his last games for them was Vandyke, an overhead action game that shares some elements with Dyna Gear, like the prehistoric enemies, the spinning ball-and-chain weapon, and its oddball sense of humor. However, they play very differently, so they can't really be said to be related.

The Outfoxies

Original Release: 1995

Platforms: ARC

The Outfoxies might rank up there as one of the most ridiculously awesome games ever made. The idea is that a group of seven hitmen/women/monkeys are coerced by a mysterious Mr. Acme to fight each other to the death in one-on-one combat. Instead of the usual Capcom or SNK-styled 2D fighter, this game is an arena fighting game vastly predating Super Smash Bros. or Jump Super Stars. Playing as one of these characters, you use anything at your disposal — both weapons and the environments themselves — to "kill your enemy by any means", as the game instructs.

The characters are totally crazy. John Smith is a man with a cool leather jacket (and a somewhat dorky t-shirt) and is the most normal of the bunch, with no special attributes. Betty Doe is a businesswoman who turned to the life of a hitwoman to fund her several enterprises. Like John, she has no special features. Meanwhile, Professor Ching is a brilliant scientist confined to a wheelchair. He's loaded it with gadgets, and although he's disabled, he's also a famous martial arts master. He can even block bullets with the back of his wheelchair.

Bernard White is a bio-engineer who lost his hand in an experiment, so he replaced it with a metal prosthetic. He's the tallest fighter in the game, which unfortunately makes him a bigger target. Danny & Demi are two conjoined twins (separated by a train crash) who are constantly holding onto each other’s hand. Though they're young, they're just as deadly as the rest of the cast. Then you have Dweeb who’s just a chimpanzee, but that doesn't mean he’s any less lethal. Dressed up in a top hat and tux, he’s the most acrobatic fighter, able to jump higher and run faster than the others. He's also the smallest target. Eve, meanwhile, is a has-been film starlet who turned to a life of crime. Her pet iguana follows her everywhere she goes, even if it gets separated from her.

The game itself feels sort of like a cross between Rolling Thunder and Elevator Action Returns. The Outfoxies uses a lot of scaling and rotation effects, with the screen panning out as the fighters get farther away from each other, and zooming back in when they meet up again. It looks great, although it's quite pixelated when pulled all the way back. There are only two buttons — Attack and Jump. Holding the joystick Up or Down when jumping allows you to climb through platforms to reach higher or lower levels, and different directions let you aim your weapons and close-quarter attacks. You can also double tap to run. It's a little hard to get a hold of at first, especially since climbing obstacles and picking up weapons can be awkward, but you get used to it.

In terms of offense, you can run forward and try to beat your enemy senseless if you'd like. Close-quarter attacks only do minor damage though, so if you want to cause some real pain, you'll need weapons. These range from standard things like pistols, machine guns, rocket launchers, and flamethrowers, to more creative weaponry like swords, hot soup, and even pie. Since it's hard to pick out the arsenal amidst the chaos, there are little flashing indicators that appear on-screen to show you where they're hidden. The guns have limited ammunition, but you'll chuck your firearm in true action movie style whenever you run out of bullets. You can also find crates and barrels to toss around, some of which can get stuck on your opponent's head, causing them to blindly fumble for a few moments. Any weapon will also be knocked out of your hand if you get hit.

Just as deadly as the weapons are the environments themselves. One is a huge cargo plane mid-flight, which can nosedive or shake violently if you toss a grenade. Similarly, there's a boat out in the middle of the sea during a storm, which will occasionally submerge underwater. One level takes place aboard a moving train, which will enter into a tunnel every once in awhile, damaging anyone who's standing on the roof. You can toss your opponent off of the edge in these stages (or fall off yourself), although your character will automatically be returned onto the playing field at the expense of some health.

One of the most creative levels is an aquarium that begins exploding around you. Water constantly floods from the broken tanks, and loose sharks chomp anybody who gets too close. When the timer reaches a certain point, the stage changes somehow, opening up more sections or making things tougher for you. One cool example is an exploding skyscraper. You start out at the top, and as it collapses, you can fall into the lower levels, like a fancy dining room where you can toss food at your enemies. The whole game feels like a ridiculously over-the-top action movie, the kind that throws in pretty much everything except the kitchen sink. The fact that you can do such tremendous damage to your foe, and they basically shake it off and get back into the fight, is endlessly amusing.

The final stage is just as cinematic as the rest of the game. Mr. Acme makes you chase him across his mansion, avoiding the traps he's set for you. When you corner him, the "twist" is that the man actually isn't Mr. Acme…it's really his wife who's been giving you instructions all along. The pair reveal their plans to betray you, before you chase them to the mansion's rooftop where they try to escape in a chopper. You blow them out of the sky with a rocket launcher with unlimited ammo, and, in a humorous ending, the servant is crushed by "Mr." Acme before the helicopter crashes on top of them both. Each of the individual characters also has a signature way of defacing their opponent's image on the TV screens between stages — John writes "DONE" on a piece of paper and slaps it on them, Danny & Demi scribble them out with a marker, Dweeb replaces their image with a children's TV show, and Bernard simply punches and shatters the screen. Each also has their own unique (and rather silly) pictures as the end credits roll. Arguably, the best one features the monkey at a strip club.

The sound here is pretty entertaining, as well. Most of the music is rather jazzy, with a lot of synth saxophones and pianos. The sound effects are just as loud and clear as they should be too, although none of the playable characters speak, aside from grunts and screams. Mr. Acme provides plenty of voiceovers in the cutscenes, though.

The Outfoxies received little attention after its initial release in arcades, not even enough to garner a console port, and was soon forgotten afterwards. It's clearly a game that was ahead of its time, especially with the proliferation of the genre after Nintendo's mascot fighter hit the streets. Even then, it's so radically different from more popular arena fighters like Super Smash Bros., that it's still worth checking out, as it’s truly a one-of-a-kind game.

China Gate

AKA: Saiyuu Goumaroku: Ryuubouyougi no Shou (JP)

Original Release: 1988

Platforms: ARC

Technos created the foundations of the beat-em-up genre with the Kunio-kun and Double Dragon games, but before those series really took off, they released the arcade-only China Gate. The Japanese title is Saiyuu Goumaroku: Ryuubouyougi no Shou (“Journey to the West Exorcism Record: Chapter of Flowing Stick Magic”).

Taking on the role of Gocoo (Son Goku) the monkey king, Hakai (Cho Hakkai) the pig, and Gojoe (Sa Gojo) the kappa, each of the game's five stages takes place in a tower, several stories high. (Sanzo is shown on the top of the character select screen, but isn't actually playable.) There are three buttons here — attack, jump, and a special magic technique, which are obtained in limited quantities by defeated enemies. All three characters share the same basic movement, but employ their own unique weapons. Even though it doesn't use an isometric perspective as in belt-scrolling games like Double Dragon, it unquestionably plays like a beat-em-up, right down to the hit stuns and combo attacks.

In addition to a standard combo, you can also hold a direction to jab an enemy with your weapon and fling them over your shoulder, knocking down any foe from the other side. You can also execute spinning moves by jumping and holding Up while attacking, or jumping attacks by holding downwards and attacking in the air. These jumping attacks prove to be some of the most useful, as they’re tough for enemies to counterattack, even if they don't do a whole lot of damage. Opponents attack with their own weapons too, including axes and flaming arrows.

Defeated enemies can also drop two types of magic spell orbs, weak and strong. This is where the characters differ, as each has their own unique magic spells. Gocoo unleashes a mini duplicate of himself in his weak attack, while shooting out four-way projectiles for his strong spell; Hakai can toss fireballs or summon enormous weights to drop on enemies; and Gojoe has an electric ball as well as a lightning attack.

Even though each stage has a tower, you actually don't need to climb it at all. In fact, you can stay on the bottom floor until you've disposed of enough enemies for the boss to arrive. You can use the floors to your advantage however, dropping above or below foes to avoid their attacks and then surprise them from behind. Proper positioning is quite important! While you can scale up or down by jumping, if you're knocked off of a high floor, you'll automatically ride onto a floating cloud and can fly to any point on the screen, and without any additional life penalty. This is certainly a welcome technique, as it lets you reposition yourself easily.

You'll need to use every option at your disposal too, as China Gate is pretty tough, even in two-player simultaneous mode. The basic enemies on the first two stages aren't too bad, but the bosses prove to be quite troublesome. Directly attacking them leaves you open to counters, so you'll need to figure out their patterns and weak spots to keep them at bay.

This is particularly tough on the third boss, Ravana, based on the multi-armed Hindu god, who will electrocute you upon making contact and shoots lightning bolts whenever you're far away. An even harder variation, Neo Ravana, appears as the final boss, and this iteration even shoots out his arms. It also refuses to die, as its brain will emerge from its decapitated head to torment you one last time before you're able to see the ending.

Outside of the bosses, the enemies attack more ferociously in the later stages too, and it can become exhausting. That's one of the biggest issues with China Gate — since you're fighting in arenas rather than proper levels, it never feels like you're really advancing, even though the backgrounds technically do change. It just gets harder and harder, until eventually your stamina (or your wallet) wears out, or you finally make it to the end.

The game still has an appeal to it though, one that marks it as a distinctly Technos game. All of the sprites are rendered as diminutive, squat figures, similar to the Bikkuriman stickers that were popular in Japan at the time. The difference here is that instead of cute characters, everyone looks like ugly demons, even the heroes.

Despite the added verticality found here, it still feels remarkably like Double Dragon, right down to the sound effects. Even the enemies look pretty similar to some of the bad guys, despite their shrunken stature. It also has some cool touches though, like the way that the weak foes scramble off of the screen in panic when the arena turns dark and lightning strikes, heralding the arrival of the boss.

China Gate was never ported anywhere, as Technos clearly found more success with their other beat-em-up properties, especially in the international scene. Its cabinet, however, can be spotted in a few scenes in the 1989 movie The Wizard. Still, it's interesting since it predates many genre conventions, and thereby is free to play by its own rules. Plus, since it never received any sequels, or even any games similar to it, this makes for a brawling experience unlike anything else.

Blue’s Journey

AKA: Raguy (JP)

Original Release: 1990

Platforms: ARC, NGEO, NGCD, PS2, WII, AND, IOS, PS4, NSW

Respectively, the Neo Geo is known for a few key qualities – its large library of fighting games, and its high caliber graphics, that mopped the floor with what home consoles were doing in the 1990s. Blue’s Journey, developed by Alpha Denshi (later known as ADK), is a weird outlier in the system’s library, since it was a launch title, when the platform was still finding its personality. As a bright and cuddly 2D platformer, it did not culminate into any form of long-term success, but it’s entertaining regardless of whether it's experienced as a game or as a time capsule.

Blue's Journey takes place on the planet of Raguy (pronounced “ra-ghee”, based on the Japanese title). Originally teeming with flora, the Daruma tribe invaded Raguy in order to pollute it, in an attempt to bring forth its people's demise. Blue, seemingly otherwise unfazed by the prospect of an impending mass planetary genocide, was asked by Princess Fa to expunge the threat of the Daruma tribe. (The Daruma here are based on Japanese Daruma dolls, the red, round-shaped figures with white faces, based on a Buddhist figure.) Via an impromptu decision fueled by gratuitous masculinity and love, Blue sets out to save his planet. Despite its resemblance to an episode of 1990s environmentalist cartoon Captain Planet, the story exists mainly to justify the vivacious artwork. The vibe of the game is also a whole lot like Namco’s Marvel Land, also released in 1990.

While it's easy for 2D platformers to seem, at a glance, derivative of one another, Blue's Journey adequately differentiates itself. It can be played with two players but both function and look identical barring color variations. Blue's main form of offense, the "leaf dump", allows him to drop a leaf onto enemies, temporarily stunning them. After lifting his foes onto his head during their paralysis, he can throw them, eradicating whichever pest he throws as well the ones in its path of flight. Blue can also jump on an enemy's head and propel them as he would normally, but if the enemy ricochets and hits him, he will take damage. His attacks can be altered or improved through pickups scattered in each of the game's boards, swapping his trademark leaf into either a bomb or a boomerang. Blue also has the ability to shrink, allowing him to enter small passages, although he's still susceptible to damage from enemies and his offense is nullified while miniature. This mechanic is not pertinent to gameplay and is primarily used to find secrets.

Throughout the various levels, Blue encounters shops with scantily clad fairies able to exchange the in-game currency of flowers for items, and other non-playable characters who Blue can barter with, talk to, or at one stage even fight. In order to maximize replayability, there are level branches, providing diversity between playthroughs.

Presentation is the most powerful facet of Blue's Journey, though this is also a big sticking point. On one hand, the sprites are tiny, even compared to some 8-bit games. Upon first glance, it only seems like a more colorful Genesis game, and not a particularly imposing one at that.

But in spite of the small characters, Blue’s Journey nevertheless has an extremely attractive visual design. The initial board, Jungle Zone 1, is filled with lush vegetation and possesses a tropical aura akin to that of an equatorial forest. Vines hang from the ceiling, while the layered background gives the illusion of an enormous village, displaying the state of Raguy prior to the invasion. The saccharine nature of the first Jungle Zone however allows for effective subsequent juxtaposition. Jungle Zone's second board has a matching floor, implying a geographical connection, however, the forest which was once so dense that it blocked out the sky is replaced by a dark atmosphere and vehement clouds. As Blue ventures toward the mountain at the board's end, the few remaining trees are forced to bend backward by the tempestuous gust of the blizzard, a wind so ferocious it even impedes upon him physically during his ascent to the first boss.

Aesthetically the art is cartoony, jovial, and charming but the truly impressive aspect of the presentation is the utilization of design to propel and add profundity to a story without the use of exposition. The game needn't tell the players the vast effects of the Daruma Tribe's pollution, as the art provides compelling evidence. Toward the conclusion, in the aptly titled Mechanical City, whole sections of Raguy have been invaded by the Daruma tribe and in wake of an abundantly green woodland, they've constructed a lifeless, computerized metropolis. The increasingly melancholic visual implications of Daruma's reign, contrasted with the otherwise colorful and cheerful artstyle, adds credence and gravity to Blue's escapade across Raguy. It should be noted that while the quality of the art is excellent, the sprites are rather small, a rather noticeable departure from other Neo Geo games, which often prided itself on its gigantic characters.

Blue’s Journey is a “love it or hate it” game among the Neo Geo community. At a time when the big strength of the Neo Geo was pushing in-your-face visuals with tons of fancy effects, Blue’s Journey is much more quaint in its design, more aimed at kids than the teenagers and adults that the system eventually targeted. It might not be as immediately impressive as Magician Lord or Ninja Combat, ADK’s other launch-era Neo Geo titles, but it certainly has its hidden charms. It’s also a console-style platformer on a system that feels out of place compared to the more difficult action games, beat-em-ups and (later) fighting games that would populate the Neo Geo’s library.

As revealed in an interview with the main designer Takashi Hatono, SNK’s early plans for the Neo Geo included the ability to rent the system for home use, a reasonable business plan considering how expensive it was. Blue’s Journey was originally created as a home exclusive explicitly for this purpose, which is why it feels more like a console game. However, those plans ended up falling through, and Blue’s Journey also ended up in the arcades, where it felt pretty out of place even for the time.

Despite the superficiality of some of the mechanics, there's still enough quality to suggest this game to people seeking a Neo Geo classic. What Blue's Journey lacks in technical prowess or ingenuity, it makes up for in personality. From the initial nonchalant stroll through the Jungle Zone, to the sterile, metallic uniformity of the Mechanical City, it presents a likeable odyssey which is well worth the half hour it will take to save Raguy.

Clockwork Aquario

Original Release: 2021

Platforms: PS4, NSW, XBO

Clockwork Aquario was the final arcade game developed by Westone, the folks behind the Wonder Boy / Monster World games. Originally developed in 1992 and 1993 for the Sega System 18 arcade board, the game failed location tests and was canceled before release, resulting in the data lying in the company's archives for a few decades. Thankfully, publisher ININ Games stepped in to fund a restoration project, allowing for the world of Aquario to finally shine.

The evil Dr. Hangyo (half-fish) has ambitions to take over the world, and only a brave trio — steampunk gunslinger Huck Londo, magical girl Elle Moon, and lumbering robot Gush — can stop him. Taking place over five levels, it's a run-and-jump platformer with two-player co-op play. Enemies are stunned by jumping on their heads, hitting them from below, or simply by slapping them with a melee attack. A second hit will kill them, but they can also be picked up and lobbed at other foes. Stages are also filled with balloons, which are harmless but a joy to bounce around on, and also grant scoring bonuses if you pop them in a row.

The heroes can take two hits worth of damage — a single injury will tatter their clothes (or in Gush's case, cause his head to comically pop off), while a second one will cause them to lose a life, but there are also regular health potions that restore characters to their regular state. Other power-ups include colored jewels, which slowly fill the "ONE UP" bar at the top of the screen that grants an extra life when filled, and stars, which will provide temporary invincibility and allow the heroes to shoot three-way star attacks.

Co-op play adds in some additional mechanics too, as players can jump on each other's heads for extra boosts, or grab their partner and toss them across the screen. Colored jewels are attuned to specific characters — Huck can only grab green, Elle's are pink, and Gush's are yellow. You can jump on your partner's head repeatedly to cause them to drop your jewels too, giving you an extra helping hand; alternatively, you can be a jerk, pick up their jewels, and throw them off of the screen where they can't get them. There's also a bonus stage exclusive to two-player mode, where you try to pop your opponent's balloons by tossing balls across the field, all while defending your own.

The action here is full of energy, but it's the visuals where Clockwork Aquario impresses the most. Westone games were typically known for their wide-eyed, brightly colored characters and comical enemies, and this game might be one of the best they ever produced on that front. The protagonists are full of personality, with details like their facial portraits changing when attacking or getting hit. On the character select screen, you see them idling unaware, with Huck examining his gun, Elle posing in her camisole, and Gush tuning himself up with a wrench; when you select Elle she acts surprised, then politely asks that you hold on for a second as she hurriedly puts on her dress. Their running animation cycle is hilariously fast too, making it look like they're chugging through the stages, and they look even sillier when they're stumbling around in their damaged state. The madcap action is further accompanied by a catchy soundtrack from Westone regular Shinichi Sakamoto.

True to the game’s title, all of the enemies are clockwork robots, mostly based on fish or other aquatic animals. Dr. Hangyo can be seen piloting the bosses, and is unceremoniously tossed out of the cockpit upon defeat, leaving him dazed for a moment before he scampers off of the screen. Like the Wonder Boy games, when a character runs out of health, they fly up the screen dressed as an angel, allowing you to reposition them and then tossing off their robe as they re-enter the fray. The robe is too small for Gush though, who instead wears it as a long skirt. The game is filled with little touches like these, along with lively, animated backdrops. Every frame is simply a joy to look at.

It is, however, an arcade game from 1992, and that means that it's pretty short. With only five stages, including a brief auto-scrolling area where you ride a boat through a storm, this can be beaten in under 20 minutes. The Easy mode limits you to nine credits, which is enough to get to the end without too much of a problem, with other difficulties just restricting you further. Beating the game will unlock an Arcade mode that lets you tinker with the board settings and also insert credits as you please. The game really isn't a quarter muncher, though it may require a bit of practice to get used to enemy placements and boss patterns. Further, health restoratives are regular and there are plenty of opportunities to gain extra lives, so even beating the game on Hard mode is reasonable.

Outside of this, the only real criticism that can be leveled against Clockwork Aquario is that its mechanics are enjoyable, but it never really finds anything to do with them. It's a lot of fun to bounce along the balloons, and there's always a torrent of them that appear before each boss room, but these are optional and don't really grant much other than minor score bonuses. Additionally, even though there are scoring mechanics, they're not particularly complex, and the differences are minute anyway. This broader issue manifests itself in the boss fights, as well. It might seem like you should use the secondary enemies to toss them back at the boss, but it's usually easier to just wait for a pattern where they're vulnerable and then slap them to death.

Owing to the iterations that came from location test feedback, it seems like there were some cool elements that ended up on the cutting room floor. For example, Huck looks like a steampunk gunslinger, but he never actually uses his weapon; similarly, concept artwork shows Elle using magic, and Gush having extendable limbs, which don't really show up in the game either. One of the original design iterations (not included here) included an "invincibility" button that allowed the characters to boost themselves up after gaining enough power-ups, presumably the same as the star power found in the final game. The original title of the game was also "Ghost Hunter", which still shows up in the background tiles on the character select screen. The game was initially planned for three players, but was apparently scaled back to two due to the lack of suitable arcade cabinets.

In general, unreleased projects are typically canceled for a reason, especially if they're completed. That's not really the issue with Clockwork Aquario, though. It's a highly amusing, absolutely gorgeous game whose only failure was that it was planned for the wrong platform. Given the arcade game landscape in 1992, it simply came out at a time when the type of gamer it was aiming for was no longer visiting arcades, and probably would've been better if it was expanded into a console game.

Biomechanical Toy

Original Release: 1995

Platforms: ARC, EVR

Biomechanical Toy is a run-and-gun arcade game developed by a company from Spain known as Zeus Software. They’re the developers of a handful of games for various home computers, the most well known being Risky Woods, a co-production with Dinamic Software.

The story involves a criminal toy named Scrubby, whose stolen a magic pendulum that causes toys to come to life. An action hero toy named Inguz — who looks sort of like Steven Seagal with a black muscle shirt and dark sunglasses — is called upon to get the pendulum back from Scrubby and save the toy world before it disappears. It's a very strange game, one that certainly separates itself visually from other run-and-guns.

Upon starting the game, you begin blasting your way through hordes of enemies with a semi-automatic pistol, which has infinite ammo. However, you can collect ammo to turn it into an automatic pistol, which does more damage. There are also screen-clearing bombs and a power-up that turns the player's firearm into a shotgun, which has greater range and does more damage, but has less ammo. You can jump onto enemies too, and this is essential to get some of the power-ups in the game.

At certain points in the level, the player can rescue a captured toy who then helps them out for a section of an area. These include a Robin Williams-esque genie, a dragon, a fairy, a tiny mecha, and a few others. The player can also collect fruit to restore health, with the ability to even go above the default health amount, as well as various items to gain points.

Inguz goes through several levels, including the Wild West, a chess-themed zone, a train, a clockwork forest, and a prehistoric themed stage. The bosses aren’t always thematically related to their own level, such as a virus boss being placed after a train stage, but they generally get the job done. The colorful, trippy graphics are reminiscent of many Amiga games, owing to Zeus' pedigree. The sound effects are quite comical too, while the music is mostly downsampled tracks stolen from other sources, including various Hollywood movies (the music from the third stage is from To Live and Die in L.A.).

Design-wise, this is a bit sloppy. Usually with Japanese run-and-guns where the player dies in one hit, there's a clear method to avoid enemies. However, the designers of this game seem to have felt that because the players have health, there needed to be parts where taking hits is unavoidable. Despite shortcomings like this, Biomechanical Toy is still a decently fun game, with a weird setting and tons of explosions. All told, it channels the bizarre stylings from the era of computer shareware games.

Big Karnak

Original Release: 1991

Platforms: ARC, EVR

At the start of the 90s in Barcelona, a company named Gaelco came into existence and would go on to enjoy years of making bizarre games, including their early title Big Karnak. Here the unnamed main character's girlfriend gets captured by Osiris, god of the dead, and the hero has to fight his way through many monsters to get her back. The game earns some points for authenticity, as while a lot of video games around this time were adding Egyptian-themed levels into their designs (like Sonic & Knuckles and Sparkster), Big Karnak 100% commits to being fully set in Egypt.

Playing out akin to an action-platformer (with some comparisons being drawn to Capcom's Trojan), Big Karnak takes the unnamed prince through four levels of carnage, starting out in the desert before moving into (what else but) a pyramid and along the Nile before reaching Osiris' lair. You begin with a sword that provides some decent power and range, then stage two adds a magic scepter whose bolts cause damage up close and generate shields to ward off enemy attacks. The third level then adds on a boomerang with much more range. Some parts of stage two also see you unarmed, severely limiting your range, but you'll have to make do for at least one midboss fight.

Things start fair enough, with the first level throwing out easy enemies and only one boss, but the second area dials up the pain with more annoying enemies and a couple of really awkward sections where you have to try and fight on a rope, with one hit plunging you into death. The third stage is just evil too, with several midbosses that take way too long to kill and can also easily kill you in one hit, making one wonder why they even have a life bar in the first place. The octopus is an especially terrible fight, as it takes ages to kill but the tentacles that roll off it can crush you instantly. The finale against Osiris arguably isn't as bad as that accursed crustacean, but he has two forms and also takes a while to whittle down.

All told, Big Karnak takes about 20 minutes to beat, but the later stages somehow feel drawn out, perhaps due to how quarter-munchingly cheap they get. The overall quality also feels low-rent, with at least two sound effects having been ripped off from Double Dragon. It might be harsh to criticize a game that was only made by seven people, but it still isn’t one for the ages. Even so, it’s worth at least one playthrough, since few games go full Egyptian, and the first level is at least pretty fun before the difficulty spikes up.

Every company has to start somewhere, and Gaelco would go on to do bigger and better throughout the 90s. Big Karnak may not be one of Tutankhamun's treasures, but it's still better than being bitten by a cobra.

Thunder Hoop

Original Release: 1992

Platforms: ARC, EVR

Thunder Hoop puts you in the role of a humanoid super soldier fighting through legions of genetic mutations, as you hunt down the evil Professor Daniel Genbreak. Developed by Spanish company Gaelco, it's modeled after Japanese arcade games and media in general, seeing how the hero, also referred to as Thunder Hoop, is a karate dude who looks a bit like Dragon Ball's Son Goku and fires energy blasts out of his fists. Each stage ends with a manga-style illustration of the hero facing down the boss he just defeated.

That said, given the developer's history with European home computers, it also looks a bit like an Amiga game, just one that happened to end up in the arcades. Even so, it still feels tight and snappy, unlike some European action games of the era. Your attacks are also quite versatile, allowing you to shoot in several directions, which is particularly useful since you're often jumping up platforms or climbing ladders.

It's all fairly standard early 90s arcade stuff — you run, you jump, you shoot. Your hero dies in a single hit but gets resurrected close by. Various collectibles increase your score or give you new energy blasts, but they all work the same, they're just more powerful. The five levels run a bit on the long side too, even though the whole game is still about the same length as other releases from the era. While the game offers a two-player mode, it's unfortunately only alternating, with the second character being another Thunder Hoop wearing a blue gi instead of a red outfit.

The main appeal here is the weird cast of foes. Most of them are also various breeds of genetic mutations, some rather creepy, others quite goofy. One of them is a bean-shaped creature named Peth that jogs on conveyor belts and farts on you. Others include a gigantic turtle with a cannon on its rock shell, a hamburger-shaped monster with sharp teeth, and a flesh-colored tank with a buzz saw called Madmachine. Plenty of Japanese shooters have sperm-shaped enemies that could justifiably be called tadpoles or something similar, but they're literally called Spermats here. Oh, and then there are literally just dinosaurs puttering about. The music is solid too, consisting of lots of digitized guitar riffs, giving it the sensation of a totally wild, early 90s action flick.

Thunder Hoop is a pretty weird game. Its design could've been tighter and its mechanics a bit more inspired, but it's a good blend of Japanese and European design styles. While it wasn’t ported to consoles at the time, it found its way onto the first Gaelco arcade pack for the Evercade released in 2021, along with Biomechanical Toy. It also sets the stage for its much improved sequel, released a few years later.

TH Strikes Back

Original Release: 1994

Platforms: ARC, EVR

Thunder Hoop returns with this juiced up sequel, which improves basically everything from its sequel. The character sprites are much larger, so it less resembles an Amiga platformer and looks more like the Japanese classics it's emulating. Two-player simultaneous play is offered as well, with the second person now having a blond ponytail instead of just wearing a re-colored gi.

The graphics here have received a significant upgrade. Plus, it seems that Gaelco felt that this title really needed more sexiness, and TH Strikes Back sure brings it in that respect. Professor Genbreak is back, and with him is an army of Amazons and their queen, who wear metal bikinis that explicitly highlight their nipples while wearing thongs in combat. When defeated, for some reason their entire body, including their chest, inflates to enormous proportions before they explode. Other foes also burst in a mess of blood when defeated, amping up the gore to ridiculous levels. One mutated foe is an obese creature with large, floppy breasts and a demon head, surely the sort of thing game developers wouldn't be able to get away with on consoles.

The action has been juiced up to feel more like a run-and-gun — if the original was something like Mega Man, then this is more like Contra. There aren’t any ladders to climb and little in the way of platforming challenges either, just running forward and annihilating stuff with your flame fists. Checkpoints are gone too, except for a few brief sections where you ride on rails and need to jump over various obstacles. It's no shock that these are also the weakest parts of the game, because they bring the pace to a screeching halt. Still, these aggravations are almost made up for by the level where you ride on the outside of a jet taking off into outer space, beating up enemies as you exit the atmosphere, then summoning the might of pure manliness to take flight yourself in a shoot-em-up sequence. At the end, you beat up Professor Genbreak and kill him for real this time. After the credits, your character picks up his gravestone and throws it right into the monitor, cracking the screen.

TH Strikes Back is one wild, wild experience, and one that exemplifies Gaelco at their best. It has the same ridiculous, over-the-top cheese to put it near Data East's best and ridiculous titles. It's unfortunate then that the company never entered the console market, leaving it as a favorite in European countries but unknown to basically everywhere else. The Evercade retro console has seen many of their titles revived, with TH Strikes Back (along with Big Karnak) appearing on the Gaelco Arcade 2 pack. There are references to a third Thunder Hoop game, but it doesn’t appear to have been released or even exist.

Magician Lord

Original Release: 1990

Platforms: ARC, NGEO, NGCD, WII, PS3, PSP, XBO, PS4, NSW, IOS, AND

Magician Lord, released in the freshman year of the Neo Geo, was one of the showpieces for the system and remains the hallmark of the system’s pre-fighter era. It also stands as one of the more notable contributions from Alpha Denshi/ADK, a second-party developer under SNK who later made Twinkle Star Sprites and the World Heroes series.

The plot is typical of a fantasy action setting: Elta, one of the last magician lords, must take on the unholy army of dark wizard Gal Agiese. Gal intends to revive the god of destruction, Az Atorse, using eight mystical tomes of power. As Elta, you must collect these eight tomes and send Gal and Az back into the dark void from whence they came. Expectedly, the premise comes with the territory of any good dark medieval setting: Fields, caves, castles, aqueducts, and bizarre alien architecture that may or may not be alive.

This game looks really dang good for the time, serving as a fine demonstration of the Neo Geo's awesome “100 Mega Shock” power. Even today, it still appears rather impressive with its large, smoothly animated sprites and rich-color backgrounds. From the multi-armed, vaguely Hindu statues in the first level, all the way to the ornate palace hallways of the sixth, the experience remains tough enough to keep your jaw closed for an entire playthrough while still marveling at its diverse visuals.

The bold graphics are met with an equally ace soundtrack, one that’s loud and dynamic while keeping up a sense of urgency as demonstrated in the gripping first stage music. The second level has this sort of weird electronic synth warble to it that sounds oddly cool, and the fearsome boss track leaps up and tells you "this is a boss" point-blank to your face. Even if the aesthetics aren't up to the level of later Neo Geo games, they still hold up quite well for being an early release on the system.

The game itself is relatively simple but quite punishing. There are only two buttons here: Jump and shoot. Elta moves at a decent pace and can easily control his leaps. He tosses out small, blue crescent projectiles that move pretty quickly and are fired as rapidly as you can press the button, though only two shots can be on-screen at once. You can only fire in the four cardinal directions too (down in mid-air), and your default blasts aren’t very strong, but treasure chests sometimes appear. Most of the items you find within are trinkets and baubles that merely boost your score. You can occasionally find a glowing orb with a P on it though, which increases the power and size of your shots. You can further enhance this to a third level if you're lucky. Sadly, getting hit once drops your power level by one, so get used to having your default magic peashooter, unless you invoke the other method of powering up. If you find a red, green, or blue orb, Elta will morph into a being of considerably higher power. What you become is judged by a somewhat odd combination system, wherein you have a red orb by default, and the next orb you pick up determines your new form. The second orb gets booted to the first orb slot if you pick up another one before you die. There are six different forms, including a fire-breathing dragon, a magical ninja, a knight who attacks with liquid orbs, a samurai who shoots wave blasts, a lightning-wielding thunder god, and an icy water esper.

While most of these forms have slightly harder-to-use attacks than your default magic blast, it's always a good idea to pick these orbs up, as they completely restore your life meter and boost it beyond the maximum. Elta can only take a meager two hits at base, though any transformation doubles his endurance. Getting hit twice reverts Elta back to his human form.

Each level is structured with a main area, with doors leading to several sub-areas; while some of these contain power orbs, your main goal is to find the door that leads to the boss fight. Levels are often filled with traps like fire, spikes, and pitfalls, and while they start out relatively straightforward, later areas are a bit more complex.

These parts are also chock-full of impressive baddies, with designs ranging from fantasy to the eldritch. The first level alone has Cthulhu-esque squid spawn and stout demons with extending claws. Veiny, winged electro-birds, weird skeletons that barf eyeballs, and viciously agile catgirls are among the rogues you must face in your quest. The bosses are especially impressive too, with each level having a sub-boss to fight first. Some of these include an odd fish beast who takes diagonal dives at you, and a warlock who conjures up horrid, eyeless creatures. The first big bad starts out as a creepy stone face that crumbles to reveal an egg, which then hatches to reveal an ugly purple head that spits out fire shots. Other such wretched abominations include a sphere made of tree roots that fires off energy daggers, and a frightening hell-hound with spikes where its eyes should be.

Magician Lord has a lot of style to spare, but the cherry on top is its terrible butchering of the English language. A fondly remembered aspect of SNK (and ADK by extension) was its failure to properly translate Japanese to English. In this case, central villain Gal Agiese takes the liberty of taunting you before fighting each stage boss with a severely nonsensical phrase. Such gems of eloquent poetry include: "What imprudence, you human being! Face your trial by God!" "You, persistent guy. But your life ends right now." "Your are very dangerous. Be dead down here." These bits are even voiced in English by a massively bored actor who channels Lorenzo Music's deadpan portrayal of Garfield. It really has to be heard to believe, but the most infamous phrase is what you get when you run out of lives. With the continue counter ticking away, Gal's stern countenance stares you down as the proclamation of doom rings above his neatly cropped coif: "Again changes to Hell."

With all these high points considered, Magician Lord isn’t bereft of frustrations. If anything, the main aspect that drags the game down as a whole is how incredibly brutal it is. It's not particularly forgiving for one thing, with Elta only being able to take two hits and enemies being tossed at you left or right. On top of that, you barely get any degree of invincibility time after being hit. A prime example of this is when the early stages toss these winged jerks at you who fly like Medusa Heads from Castlevania, but with the unfair addition of being able to fire small shots at you.

If you want a real challenge, the home console version of Magician Lord kicks you back to the start of a level every time you continue, making the latter half of the game completely agonizing to try and beat. As something of a compromise, Elta can take three hits instead of two here, and six rather than four if he finds a transformation orb.

And that's Magician Lord in a nutshell; cool and stylish, if not decidedly infuriating, but still an essential Neo Geo title that’s well worth checking out for action game fans.

Ninja Combat

Original Release: 1990

Platforms: ARC, NGEO, NGCD, PS2, PSP, WII, PS4, NSW, XBO

Ninja Combat is an early beat-em-up for the Neo Geo from ADK, a developer that made some fun games in the 80s and would later go on to create the hit World Heroes series. They also became an exclusive developer for SNK hardware with titles like Crossed Swords and Ninja Commando. However, outside of the World Heroes series, their games are generally unknown to all but the most ardent of Neo Geo fans.

Ninja Combat was one of the first games released for the platform, and while the visuals are impressive compared to other console games from 1990, they don’t hold up that well when compared to later Genesis and SNES titles. In other words, it looks alright, but not nearly as much of a system seller as ADK’s other Neo Geo title at the time, Magician Lord. Backgrounds are colorful and varied, with some fun scaling effects as characters run into or out of the stage regularly. The sprites and characters, however, are pretty ugly. There's an inconsistency to the character designs where the bosses, main characters (red and blue ninjas named Joe and Hayabusa), and some enemies are drawn in one style, but many others have cartoonishly large heads or other stylistic differences that clash with the rest of the game. It actually appears as if some may have been copied from an older ADK title called Gang Wars. Company regulars Tsutomu Maruyama and Hatsue Honbe directed and did character design work for both games respectively, but it still seems like an awkward decision. ADK was instrumental in designing the Neo Geo's hardware, so you'd think their own projects would take better advantage of the platform's power, instead of recycling assorted clunky designs.

Where the game really falls apart though, is with the controls. Instead of having multiple attacks that you can level up individually between stages, like in Gang Wars, Ninja Combat takes things in a rather bizarre direction. Here you press the A button to fire a spread of shuriken. No combination attacks, no way to grab or throw an enemy. You just mash the attack button and it does the same move over and over again. You can, however, perform a super move by holding the button down for a few seconds. These are different for each character, but since you lose some energy each time you do it, and so many enemies confront you at once, it can be easy to lose a life from new foes entering the area just as the move's animation finishes.

You can also jump, but your aerial attack is exactly the same as your standing one, so there's really no reason to perform it throughout the game. Your final trick is an evasive somersault performed with the C button. Brilliantly, your character isn’t invulnerable while doing this, so trying to dodge usually means you'll take additional damage instead of actually avoiding anything. The real trick is that if you hit the A button right after doing this, you'll dramatically fling yourself across the screen with a diving attack. Enemies can still hit you during this move, but at least it damages anyone you fly across in the process. Finally, Joe and Hayabusa can pick up some weapons which, while lacking in range, let them attack very quickly compared to their shuriken spread.

In general, the best thing to do is just mash that A button as quickly as possible. Enemies are very resilient, and the larger ones take so many hits that it's only a matter of time before they’ll close the gap and get a hit in. Even more frustrating is the fact that many enemy attacks can actually lock you into an infinite loop, where you're unable to do anything until you run out of energy and have to feed the arcade cabinet another quarter.

The most brazen way the game shows its desire for your quarters, however, is with its power-up system. You can pick up scrolls here that increase your speed and your attack power. These are pretty cool, as with increased movement speed you can actually evade those rapid enemy attacks and your dive move becomes more useful. You can also defeat opponents noticeably faster. The problem is that you lose all of your enhancements every time you lose a life.

On the plus side, similar to the NES version of Double Dragon III, three of the game's bosses are actually more than happy to join you after you beat them. First you get Musashi, a samurai conspicuously overdressed for the amusement park you fight him in. He's actually much better to use than Joe or Hayabusa, as his default attack is faster. He also has a nice dive attack, which is useful for hitting enemies multiple times while still getting you out of harm’s way.

Later on you recruit a heavyset brawler named Gembu. This guy's gimmick is that instead of a dive attack, you just tap the C button and he charges forward, damaging anyone he hits. This seems awesome, except that he runs such a short distance and the damage is so low that it's a great way to get hit by the same enemies you were trying to defeat. His regular attacks are also too slow to really be effective.

Finally, there's Kagerow, an awesome woman with a broadsword who commands a group of amazons who ride in on a modified 18-wheeler out of a Mad Max movie. Her default attack range is huge, shooting out small tornados from her sword with every tap of the button, and her super move has the widest coverage of the four characters. In addition, instead of diving across the screen she can perform a spinning sword attack that’s extremely useful. She's also notable for the game's translation depicting her as ambivalent about everything. At one point you fight a bunch of guys who can shoot gas out of the "mouth" part of their elaborate gas masks. This culminates in a battle with a giant wearing two Noh theater masks and wielding a missile as a club. Her reaction to this afterwards is, "Yeah, we had trouble with that weird guy." On top of that, she's not even possessed or deceived by the game's villain, Genyousai, like Musashi and Gembu are before you beat the brainwashing out of them. Instead, she attacks you because she's "testing your power" to see if you're worth teaming with while she fights to take him down anyway. This character definitely should have been reused in a better game than Ninja Combat.

The game’s music was composed by Hideki Yamamoto and Hiroaki Shimizu, two members of a trio responsible for some of ADK's best soundtracks, though it fails to really stand out compared to World Heroes or Magician Lord.

Ninja Combat would unfortunately be ADK's final beat-em-up, as they devoted themselves to 2D fighters on the Neo Geo and sports games on the Neo Geo Pocket Color afterwards. The game has appeared on the Wii Virtual Console, when it was active, and is available via the ADK Damashii compilation for the PlayStation 2, which was also released on the PSN as a PS2 Classic for the PS4. It also appears on the PS4 and Switch as an Arcade Archives title.

Kid Niki: Radical Ninja

AKA: Kaiketsu Yanchamaru (JP) / Ganso!! Yanchamaru (GB)

Original Release: 1986

Platforms: ARC, NES, C64, AP2, GB, PS4, NSW

Ninjas were everywhere in the 80s, including Irem’s action game Kaiketsu Yanchamaru ("The Fantastic Yanchamaru"), starring a young ninja kid. However, Irem’s American division had an an interesting idea — what if they very slightly localized the game and filled it with that crazy slang those youngsters use? The result was Kid Niki: Radical Ninja.

“WILL HELP YOU!” These words are emblazoned across the screen as Niki bursts into action. Truly, this mangled phrase encapsulates the madcap silliness of the arcade game. There were plenty of side-scrolling action platformers in the mid-80s, but there's a fascinating exuberance to it here, with a momentum that barely lets up. At its core, it's not much different from similar games, except for Kid Niki's signature weapon, a sword that's twirled out in front of him like a saw blade. What this attack lacks in range, it makes up for with versatility. Compared to normal sword swings, which have little vertical range, the blade is circular, allowing you to hit enemies slightly above or below you. Enemies are also comically flung off of the screen when attacked, adding to the goofiness.

The game is also relentlessly paced. You can only take a single hit before dying and getting tossed back to an earlier checkpoint, requiring not only exacting reflexes but precise memorization. The timer counts down quickly, enemies come from all sides, and stages are filled with traps and fake-outs, designed to make gamers yell aloud with frustration. Once you've found a fire breathing frog and think you've found the best way to defeat them, you come across a frog facing backwards. This will be easy, you think, until the frog bends itself backwards and burns you to a crisp.

The stages are tough, but it's really the bosses who pose the most trouble. Each of them have specific weak points, otherwise your attacks will bounce off harmlessly. Furthermore, you'll be stunned momentarily and your sword will be flung across the screen, sometimes even when your attacks are successful. As a result, not only are you trying to figure out when the enemy is vulnerable, but also a way to re-equip yourself without getting killed.

The enemies get tough really quickly too, and rather bizarre. There's a mini Buddha with a spiked Yo-yo, and a mad monk who yells and attacks with gigantic kanji. The final boss, the "Stone Wizard" in the English translation, is a gigantic kabuki actor. The last stage is a chase along the rooftops, as you try to dodge fire pillars and strike the boss without falling to your death. It's more difficult than even the most grueling Dracula fights in any Castlevania game, which says a lot.

Visually, the game looks decent for 1986. It runs on the same hardware as Spartan X / Kung Fu Master and looks much better, with more detailed sprites and more varied backgrounds. Kid Niki has a cartoonish way of running, with his legs and arms scrambling forward as his head slowly tilts back and forth. The theme music is catchy too, except it's only about 10 seconds before it loops, and gets used in multiple stages.

The somewhat silly North American title was influenced by the fads of the 80s, complete with Kid Niki dressed as a bad dude and the Stone Wizard looking like a pig with a mohawk. The original Japanese version wasn’t quite so over-the-top, as the hero has a traditional Japanese ponytail as opposed to the spiky hair look of his American counterpart. Also in the Japanese version, the enemies’ masks have slanted eyes, looking like a fox, while they’re more round overseas.

The English names are also different for the entire cast. Beyond Kid Niki/Yanchamaru, Princess Margo's original name was Princess Kurumi. The American version also introduces each stage with a picture of the boss and a bit of text. ("Stage 1: Land of the Trees. Kill Death Breath".) The Japanese version just has a bit of text that says "VS. BOSS NAME" ("Stage 1: Vs. Otafuku Tarou.") There's also some wacky introductory text in the English version — "You are a totally rad ninja swordsman. Princess Margo is being held captive by the Stone Wizard. Save her! Good luck dude!" This displays upon depositing a credit, where it's an entirely blank screen in the Japanese version. The North American version also has two checkpoints throughout each stage, while the Japanese game will send you back to the beginning of a level if you die.

The NES version is quite an excellent port, and was published by Data East in North America. Despite the graphical downgrade, it's quite faithful. The hit detection is a bit dodgy during boss fights, but it occasionally works in your favor. It also keeps most of the voice samples. This version uses midlevel checkpoints in both the Japanese and American versions, too. The change in hairstyles remains, although if you squint at the status bar, you can see that the "lives" indicator still uses the original Japanese hairstyle in both versions. A few graphical details, like the backwards frog and Kid Niki's silly run, have unfortunately been sacrificed. Each level is also broken up into 15 substages as opposed to 10. There are also rare power-up bells that provide a temporary bonus, too. These cause a ball to rotate around you, spinning faster if you hold down the button. Sadly, this disappears after a short period of time.

Data East also ported Kid Niki to the Commodore 64 and Apple II home computers. Both versions are dreadful, with ugly, blocky graphics, slow action, no music, and irritating sound effects.

Irem also released a Game Boy title, though like many portable conversions, it’s technically a whole new game with different levels and bosses. The level designs feel more like Super Mario Bros., complete with breakable blocks which occasionally drop items. Most of the time you’ll simply get coins (which will grant you an extra life), but you can also get a limited supply of throwing shurikens, as well as scrolls which grant invincibility. This is also much more faithful to the arcade game than its two Famicom sequels.

Kaiketsu Yanchamaru 2: Karakuri Land

Original Release: 1991

Platforms: FC

Although Kid Niki/Yanchamaru was born in the arcades, Irem decided to move the franchise to home consoles with the second entry. The basics are essentially the same — as the little hero Yanchamaru, you use his spinning blade to save the princess once again. However, you can now take three hits before getting killed. Each stage is also littered with bells which grant a number of power-ups. Most of these drop coins, but health restoratives are also quite common, making it easier to stay alive.

Your sword is more versatile now too, and can be used both upward and downward, and there are also a number of extra abilities. Once you've obtained them, you can access the pause menu to surround yourself with lightning, or bestow yourself with powerful energy waves. You can also turn yourself into a variety of pink animals, including an elephant, a bird, and a frog. Despite their trippiness, these aren't very useful, except for a few times where you might need the bird for a power-up.

The graphical style here has been given a total makeover, with Yanchamaru shrunken into a super-deformed midget, and the rest of the enemies amplifying bits of the weirdness found in the last game. Instead of adventuring through Japanese forests and castles, you're exploring a demonic theme park named Karakuri Land, with each level having its own gimmick. One takes place on a train, another is a spoof on the Japanese underworld, and yet another is set in a world of food. Here you find evil strawberries, along with platforms made of Hershey bars that cut off just enough of the logo to not blatantly infringe on copyright. The enemies are equally as silly, with one boss being a gigantic newborn chick, fresh out of the egg, and the final stage contains several revisions of bosses from the first game.

Yanchamaru 2 is a colorful game, but it just doesn't feel much like its predecessor. Irem realized that the difficulty of the original was too punishing, but rather than properly balancing it, they went in the other direction and made it far too easy. It lacks the first game’s frantic action and tightly designed stages, and the game's eight levels go by far too quickly.

Kaiketsu Yanchamaru 3: Taiketsu! Zouringen

Original Release: 1993

Platforms: FC

While the second Yanchamaru  game only contained the barest essentials from the original arcade game, the third entry, also released solely on the Famicom, may as well be part of an entirely different series. This game was outsourced to Micronics, rather than being developed by Irem.

The art style has changed once again, looking less like a typical wide-eyed manga and more like a comic strip, a look that's actually quite unique. The enemies keep up with the weirdness from the previous game, though. One level features little boy statues that fire water out of their man bits. Another is filled with flowers that wield revolvers. There’s also a funny little man wearing what appears to be a long coat, who then "flashes" you with a missile. The boss battles here feel like Mega Man, with a similar room design and enemy patterns. Even the final boss, the Stone Wizard once again, pilots a machine that may as well belong to Dr. Wily.

Yanchamaru no longer wields a spinning blade, but instead has a bo staff. It can shoot (fairly weak) projectiles, but you can also use the pole to catch onto walls and platforms, and then somersault in the opposite direction. The staff can also be employed to hit switches, and serve as a paddle in the underwater segments. Most of the special power-ups from the second game are gone, although there are still plenty of bonus coins to collect. As opposed to the straightforward left-to-right stages of the first two games, the levels in Yanchamaru 3 are divided into short sections guarded by gates. You need to find a key before you can proceed through these, which are usually easy to find.

Yanchamaru 3 has a lot of good things going for it, especially with the unique ways to use the staff. It's still easy, although not as insubstantial as the second game — but the big problem is that it's programmed terribly. Even though the graphics look decent in still photos, the animation and scrolling is choppy, and the action is floatier than it should be. It's not enough to ruin the game, but it does make the final product feel cheap and shoddy.

Hammerin’ Harry

AKA: Daiku no Gen-san: Beranme-chou Soudouki (JP)

Original Release: 1990

Platforms: ARC, NES

Ah, the days of mascot platformers. Hammerin' Harry — known in its Japanese homeland as Daiku no Gen-san, or" Gen the Carpenter" — began as an arcade game by Irem that soon spun off into several different incarnations. The real star of the game, of course, is the hero's gigantic hammer, which, in addition to pounding enemies into submission, also has a number of various uses, which differ from game to game.

In many ways, Hammerin' Harry is sort of like a modern day version of Mystical Ninja / Goemon. Both involve slightly absurd renditions of Japanese society, although Harry has a bit less mysticism. It's no wonder then that the series rarely saw releases in the US, perhaps coming off as "too foreign". Although the first games in the series keep to fairly realistic settings, later games go crazy and have Harry fighting ghosts or sending him into outer space. After retiring from the world of video games, he began starring in a number of pachinko titles, before leading to his resurgence as the star of a 2008 PSP game.

Hammerin' Harry begins with the Rusty Nail Construction Company demolishing Harry's home. (Why, exactly? Well... hmmm.) He sets off to exact retribution with his sole remaining possession — a gigantic hammer. In addition to whacking things, you can use the hammer as a shield by ducking, or smash the ground with it, causing a minor earthquake which can stun most enemies on the screen. Each stage is also usually littered with objects — boxes, bricks, etc. — which can be whacked and sent flying across the screen, damaging enemies in the process. There's one part where you can hit a mountain of pipes, which then roll forward, fall into the water, and act as platforms to continue. None of this is scripted either — it's a very cool early implementation of physics.

Like many arcade games of old, particularly ones from Irem, Harry can only take a single hit before dying, sending him back to the most recent checkpoint. It's tough, but not as hard as earlier Irem titles like Ninja Spirit or Legend of Hero Tonma. And thankfully, unlike say, R-Type, the checkpoints are reasonably close together, so you're rarely sent back more than a few screens.

You'll occasionally find power-ups, like helmets, which can absorb a single hit; chili peppers, which allow you to swing your hammer in a circle; and POW icons, which grant you an extra big-ass hammer. The game's only six stages long though, and while there are plenty of cheap hits, it manages to be challenging without being extraordinarily frustrating. The final boss is against a greedy little businessman who flies around in a hovering wheelchair and attacks by throwing deadly dollar bills. There's some kind of message in here somewhere about the evils of greed, but damned if anyone can figure it out.

The graphics are vintage Irem at least, with excellent spritework, large, expressive characters, and detailed environments. The theme song is catchy too, if not quite a classic. The sound features a number of voice samples as well, which are simultaneously hilarious and annoying. At the beginning of each new life, a disembodied voice yells "IKUZE!" in Japanese, or "LET'S GET BUSY!" in English. Harry shouts "Teyandei!" whenever he gets hit, or more simply, "OUCH!" in English. There's even a "Hammer Time!" quote of dubious legality. These goofy little yells have since become a trademark of the series. The stages also have silly names like "Needless Markup Maul", and some of the cinema scene text is equally nutty.

Hammerin' Harry was also released for the Famicom, and for the NES in Europe. On the surface, it's a pretty good translation — the action is fast, the controls are right, the graphics are decent, and it even manages to keep the voice samples. You can also take three hits now before getting killed, making it significantly easier. However, apparently the old 8-bit system couldn't handle the simple physics of the arcade game. There are still a few boxes lying around which hold power-ups, but you can't fling them across the screen anymore. As a result, the stages seem a little bit barren in comparison. Many of the levels have been changed around too, as have most of the boss fights. You can still hit enemy projectiles back at the bosses, at least. There are also whack-a-mole style bonus games after each level.

There are only five levels here rather than six, and many segments from the arcade game have been cut out, replaced, or rearranged. The second construction site stage and underground area (fourth and fifth in the arcade) have been entirely removed, but there's a brand new level at the end that takes place in a mansion, and an additional segment where you're on a boat out at sea. There's also a cool new segment where you're about to confront the final boss when his seemingly innocuous secretary jumps into the room, transforms herself into some kind of 80s music video star, and proceeds to karate kick your sorry butt.

The European NES version is best remembered for the cover design. It would seem that the artist seemingly tried to draw the hero with an exaggerated angry face, but instead ended up with something that looked like Sloth from The Goonies. This version also removes some of the Japanese symbols and replaces them with other logos. Like many of these Euro-exclusive NES games, it's become quite expensive on the aftermarket, though the Famicom version isn’t all that pricey.

Hammerin’ Harry Console / Portable Games

Hammerin' Harry: Ghost Building Company / Daiku no Gen-san: Ghost Building Company

Original Release: 1992

Platforms: GB

It’s Hammerin’ Harry versus the undead! The first of many portable sequels, this Game Boy title implements a life meter just like its NES cousin, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. The pacing is a bit slower to compensate for the immensely blurry screen of the Game Boy, but surprisingly, it actually works pretty well.

The levels are well-designed and more interesting than the Famicom game Daiku no Gen-san 2, and are still very difficult, taking you through haunted houses, airships, jungles and caverns, all while fighting ghosts, skeletons, and other creatures of the night. There are a few side-scrolling shooter segments, as well as one boss battle where the camera “zooms out”, so Harry is just a tiny little sprite fighting against something huge. This one was released in both Japan and Europe.

Daiku no Gen-san: Robot Teikoku no Yabou

Original Release: 1994

Platforms: GB

The second Game Boy Daiku no Gen-san game — subtitled “Ambitions of the Robot Empire” — takes our hammerin’ hero to the final frontier: outer space. The basic gameplay is much the same as its predecessor, although it’s a bit more difficult. You’ll be accompanied at a few points by some robot helpers, who show up in each stage to spring you over walls or supply extra firepower. It also has a particularly cool final battle where the roles are reversed — instead of being a lone character against a huge machine, you control a huge machine against a single character, a wily ninja who blinks in and out of existence. This one was only released in Japan.

Kizuchida Quiz da Gen-san Da!

Original Release: 1992

Platforms: GB

This is a fairly simplistic board/quiz game. As Gen moves forward across the board, he needs to answer questions within a brief time limit, or risk losing HP. As you progress, you can play quick mini-games to gain extra money and use that cash for items, which can allow you to recharge health, stop time, or pass a question you don’t know. It’s obviously all in Japanese, but since the game is meant for kids, the questions themselves are pretty easy, providing you can read them.

Daiku no Gen-san: Kachikachi no Tonkachi ga Kachi

Original Release: 2000

Platforms: GBC

A notable departure from the arcade-style action of its predecessors, the sole Game Boy Color installment is more of a puzzle platformer and was developed by a company called Biox. (It’s also remarkably similar to Samurai Kid, another title by the same developer.)

Each stage is fairly large and filled with enemies and minor obstacles, as well as keys to find. Gen has three different types of attacks here — one will kill enemies, one will turn them into blocks, and one will anger them so they’ll follow him around the screen. With that in mind, you use these tools to turn enemies into blocks and utilize them to hit switches or springs. Gen can also use his hammer to climb onto platforms, hop like a pogo stick, or use as an umbrella to control his falls. Even though it’s pretty ugly, it’s actually a nice little diversion.

Daiku no Gen-san 2: Akage no Dan no Gyakushuu

Original Release: 1993

Platforms: FC

This Famicom-only Gen-san sequel, whose subtitle translates to “Red-Headed Dan’s Counterattack”, doesn’t really add much to the mix. It’s essentially just like the first game but with new levels, except the scrolling is actually choppier. This entry was outsourced to Micronics, who also developed Kaiketsu Yanchamaru 3 (the third Kid Niki game) for Irem in the Famicom’s twilight years.

You fight through the usual construction scenery, before adventuring to an underwater fortress and eventually through a jungle. The last few levels consist of a few fairly boring side-scrolling shooter segments, with Gen riding on a flying hammer (?!). Nearly all of the boss battles are against one particular rival — this red haired fellow named Dan mentioned in the subtitle — who rides on different vehicles and usually attacks with dynamite. One of the only other notable fights is when you’re paired off against a rather demented looking robot, and need to use your ground smash to knock him back into a press, which pounds him into the ground. Otherwise, it’s a fairly simplistic and rather average game.

Ganbare! Daiku no Gen-san

Original Release: 1993

Platforms: SFC

On the surface, the Super Famicom Gen-san game (“Go For It! Carpenter Gen-San”) might be the closest you can get to the arcade version, but that’s really not the case. The graphics, while decent, are more colorful and cartoony than the arcade original, but they’re lacking the high quality pixel art that Irem was known for back in the day. The background graphics are banal, and yet some of the bosses consist of bizarre characters, like a chainsaw-wielding housewife, a bearded skater, and a Japanese businessman who wears a robotic suit. The levels have been expanded to add more vertical space, but the designs are simple.

Part of this is because the game’s just too easy. Gen has a huge life meter — much larger than the Famicom or Game Boy games — so most of the game feels like an insignificant breeze. There are at least a couple of stages where you ride on a motorcycle, although these are also short and simple. There are some new power-ups too, like different colored vests to absorb more damage, and pants to make Gen jump higher. You can also find “muscle” icons, which allow you to use a special attack which somehow causes the hammer to shoot sparks. Unfortunately, you can no longer block enemies by ducking.

Technically Ganbare! Daiku no Gen-san plays well, but its setting is dull compared to the more inspired Game Boy games, and it ultimately comes off as middling.

Hammerin’ Hero

AKA: Ikuze! Gen-San: Yuuyake Daiku Monogatari (JP), GenSan (EU)

Original Release: 2008

Platforms: PSP

After spending the better part of a decade moonlighting as a pachinko mascot, Irem resurrected their old friend for a new outing on the PlayStation Portable. It’s also one of the first games in the series officially released in America, published by Atlus under the name Hammerin’ Hero. This time it’s a 2.5D side-scroller with a more cutesy, cartoony feel than the previous games. Here you play as Gen through 12 stages, which include the usual Japanese suburbs, a carnival, a TV station, a haunted hospital, a beach, and an office building, before finally jumping into a ship that looks suspiciously like an R-9 from R-Type (and can also transform into a mecha wielding a giant hammer) for a climactic battle in space.

The levels are generally pretty short, but each one is loaded with character. The game keeps a running tally of all of the different items, people, and bonuses you find throughout each stage, unlocking their description in the menu, and advises you of your progress. Since it’s a relatively short action game — it can be beaten within an hour or two — this helps to add a bit of replay value by ensuring that you’ve combed every bit of every area. You can only take a single hit by default, as in the original arcade game, but you can also play each stage in Easy mode, which lets you take three hits. Further, anything that can damage you is outlined in red, making it easier to pick out dangerous projectiles.

Throughout each stage, you can find various citizens with little “anger” balloons floating above them. If you knock these out of the way, they’ll come out of their stupor and begin helping you. Gen’s arsenal has also been vastly expanded. He wields his trusty hammer in his default uniform, with two types of swings with various powers, and a special move executed by jumping and hitting Down and Triangle.

As you progress through the game, you can unlock different “jobs”, each of which gives Gen a different set of weapons and skills. As a baseball player, you’re obviously armed with a baseball bat. As a DJ, you can toss records and swipe at foes with a gigantic boom box. In one stage, you’re required to don a bathing suit to swim underwater. In the second-to-last-stage, you can disguise yourself as a businessman (thug?) in a dark suit and sunglasses to infiltrate the enemy’s headquarters.

Additionally, your lady pal Kanna will offer to cook a meal for you at the beginning of each stage. This can be used at any time during the level, and depending on what you’ve unlocked, they can restore your health or even let you change into another job on-the-fly.

With all of these new features, this is by far the most ambitious and inspired entry in the series. There’s one major problem, though. The action itself is surprisingly tepid. Compared to the blazing fast pace of the arcade game — or even the more methodical Game Boy titles — Hammerin’ Hero feels remarkably sluggish, as you just kinda dawdle along. It also doesn’t help that it’s filled with tons of slowdown. This doesn’t ruin the game, but it does keep it from resting alongside other high-quality PSP side-scrollers like Dracula X Chronicles, Mega Man: Maverick Hunter X, and Prinny: CIRBTH.

Anime: Ikuze! Gen-san

Around the time of the PSP game’s release in 2008, an anime based on the series, simply titled Ikuze! Gen-san, was broadcast on the online site GyaO. The whole series consists of 12 episodes, each nine minutes in length, and focusing on many of the characters in the PSP game. These include Gen, Kanna, the red-haired guy Dan (who originated in the second Famicom game), and various other members of the Kuromaku Industries folk. A DVD compiling the series was released in Japan in April 2009, but was never officially released in English.

Pachinko

For those not in the know, pachinko is kind of a mixture of pinball, except there aren’t any flippers to use, so you just shoot tons of tiny little balls through a board and see where they land. In truth though, this is more about luck than actual skill. As a result it’s much closer to gambling, except it’s actually legal in Japan, and it’s wildly popular! With that in mind, Gen has gained quite a bit of popularity over the years as a pachinko mascot for Sanyo Bussan Co.

There are several different releases, including some on home platforms like Pachinko CR Daiku no Gen-San GB for the Game Boy (pictured here), Sanyo Pachinko Paradise 4 for the PlayStation, and Sanyo Pachinko Paradise 7 and 10 for the PlayStation 2.

Legend of Hero Tonma

Original Release: 1989

Platforms: ARC, TG16, WII, WIIU

Legend of Hero Tonma is one of those ridiculously difficult arcade side-scrollers from Irem, continuing their tradition of previous games like Kid Niki: Radical Ninja and Ninja Spirit. This one stars a magician named Tonma (Tommy in the English version) as he travels through seven stages and adventures into the demon world to rescue a kidnapped princess.

The game itself somewhat resembles previous Irem games, right down to its fast pacing and relentless flood of enemies, which give it a run-and-gun feel. Not only do mooks regularly flood the screen from both directions, but there are also numerous other enemies that take several hits to destroy, so you constantly have to juggle dealing with both of them while jamming on the fire button. You do have a fairly high (and rather floaty) jump that helps you take to the air for some breathing room, at least, plus you can bounce on their heads. This won't damage foes, but at least helps you avoid them.

Tonma attacks by throwing fireballs literally with his fingers. By default, this isn't too powerful, but by gathering power-up orbs, you can equip a fairly large number of magic spells, some of which work in tandem. Many of these are the type you'd typically find in shoot-em-ups, including homing attacks, fireballs that travel along the ground, or bombs tossed in a parabola. There's also a fire shield that rotates around the hero, each flame of which individually absorbs a projectile. Conversely, this also leaves an opening for successive shots to penetrate through.

This wide variety of magic is pretty much the only thing that helps mitigate the otherwise overwhelming challenge. The hero can only take a single hit before dying (he literally just flashes out of existence while his cape falls to the ground), and is sent back to an earlier checkpoint upon respawn. These typically aren't too far away, though that's mostly because the levels really aren't all that long, and it still makes even the early boss battles a test of one’s tenacity.

The levels are generally straightforward, though occasionally you may be tasked with grabbing a key in order to unlock a door that's blocking your progress. Some of the stages scroll vertically too, which prove to be even more of a pain than normal, considering there are all sorts of enemies lurking right off-screen that you can leap into.

Irem tends to be known for their brilliant pixel artwork, but Tonma isn't one of their better efforts. It's not bad looking for the most part, but there's something distinctly off about the protagonist's design. He looks like a chibi, super-deformed character, but his face more closely resembles Western artwork than typical cutesy Japanese features, which kind of makes him look like a weenie. The enemy designs aren't that interesting either (save for some of the anachronistic foes that seem to be wielding rifles), and none of the boss designs are all that striking. The music has a classical feel, doing its best to replicate an orchestra with FM synth, and it generally sounds pretty decent.

Each stage is introduced by a map screen, which hammers home the fact that this is supposed to be a light fantasy alternative take on the darkly comical horror of Ghosts 'n Goblins. The bits of halfway English text that preclude these are amusing, but the map screens sort of highlight one of the main issues of this game. Ghosts 'n Goblins presented these screens as a way to tease you for later areas, which portrayed a fascinating view of the hellish landscape, and oh-so-out-of-reach final stages for all but the most skilled gamers. In contrast, the world of Tonma is just a castle on top of a foggy mountain — there's hardly anything exciting about it, or enough to be worth all of the practice to reach the end.

This game was ported to the TurboGrafx-16, and even managed to be released in both Japan and North America. Like most of Irem's other ports for the platform, it's fairly well done, even utilizing the system's high resolution mode to look close to the arcade version. The color palette doesn't quite match though, plus some background detail is lost, leaving the whole thing looking slightly off despite otherwise importing many of the sprites and tiles directly. Still, it plays almost perfectly and is actually the better version, if only because the brigade of enemies isn't quite as overwhelming and the time limit has been abolished, making for a more manageable experience. The built-in turbo fire functionality helps a lot, too. Interestingly, in the Japanese arcade version, all of the stage names are in English, but in the Japanese PC Engine port, these have been changed into puns (the first stage, otherwise called "Ruins", here is "Chotto Omachi", a play on the word for "village" and the phrase for "wait a moment").

A Famicom port was planned, with numerous pictures published in magazines, and even had some video footage shown, implying that it was pretty far along in development, if not completed. However, this was canceled for unknown reasons, and as of this writing, the prototype ROM hasn’t leaked. Going by the video footage, it looks somewhat like the FDS port of Toaplan's Wardner, with smaller sprites, but basically maintaining the core of the arcade game. It actually removes the status bar and just shifts everything to the corner of the screen, giving a wider view. This section also seems to have both a "remaining lives" and a "heart" counter, implying that maybe they added a life meter, like the TG16 port of Ninja Spirit.

Ninja Spirit

AKA: Saigou no Nindou (JP)

Original Release: 1988

Platforms: ARC, AMI, AST, C64, TG16, ZX, CPC, GB, WII, WIIU, NSW, PS4

Ninja games were all over the video game landscape in late 80s and early 90s, but it's interesting to note how few of them really feel "Japanese". The most popular series like Shinobi and Ninja Gaiden tended to take place in international locales, probably owing to the popularity of the "ninja" in overseas markets. Irem's Ninja Spirit is a bit different, one that features Japanese settings and monsters more than most. The Japanese characters in the title are Saigou no Nindou, or "The Last Way of the Ninja".

The hero, a ninja named Moonlight, can use four weapons, which you can switch between at any time. The sword is wielded rather unusually, as it's swung at an upwards arc but is handy for blocking projectiles. The shurikens are much weaker, but can be tossed in almost any direction. Bombs work similarly to shurikens, but while they're more powerful, they have a slow firing rate. The kusarigama (sickle) has a long reach and can be bent in different directions, though ultimately it's rather difficult to wield. It can also be used to block projectiles. Each can be powered up individually.

The gameplay is a mesh of different attributes from other action games. The most obvious inspiration is probably Taito's The Legend of Kage from a few years prior in 1984. Like that game, the hero of Ninja Spirit can jump really high, most of the length of the screen, in fact. The fast-paced action mostly closely resembles a run-and-gun like Contra, especially when wielding a projectile weapon. The stages tend to be flat plains (with a few exceptions), with enemies popping up from all sides (and in the case of the flying wolves, from the sky), which recalls Irem's earlier titles like Kung Fu Master and Vigilante. You can also get power-ups which create "shadows" of the main character, which mimic his every move. This is identical to Ninja Gaiden II, though Ninja Spirit was released a couple years earlier, so it's actually the true innovator of this concept.

In keeping with the Irem arcade tradition, Ninja Spirit is extremely difficult. You can only take a single hit before dying, which will send you back to an earlier checkpoint. From the third stage onwards, the screen gets cluttered with foes and projectiles, both from your character and the enemies, especially when wielding your explosives. Many times you won't even see who or what dealt the blow that killed you.

A few of the stages change things up a little bit, though. The fourth one is the only level that consists of a few different areas, all of which let you run and attack on the ceiling. (The enemies can also do the same, of course.) You need to climb one part vertically, though the game doesn't exactly tell you this, as it lets you run forward infinitely until the timer runs out. The final stage has an absolutely brutal section where you need to dodge flying ninjas as you fall down a pit. They pop up so quickly though that it's nearly impossible to avoid them without prior knowledge, which requires a lot of trial and error.

Ninja Spirit is probably most well-known to American audiences due to its TurboGrafx-16 port. The biggest change here is the "PC Engine Mode", which gives your character a life meter. This lets you absorb five hits from standard enemies before dying, though some of the stronger opponents do more damage or can still kill you in a single hit. The bad guys aren't quite as frequent either, and in general, the game is much less overwhelming. If that feels too simple, there's still an "Arcade Mode" that removes the life bar, though even then it's easier than the original arcade game.

The visuals are arguably a little bit better than the arcade version, benefiting greatly from the bright TurboGrafx-16 color palette. The removal of the status bar at the bottom of the screen also makes it look cleaner. The sound is a bit worse, though. All of the levels have been faithfully translated at least, and each chapter now has a title, though they remain in Japanese. (These are thankfully translated in the English manual.) There's also a brief cinema of Moonlight's father being attacked by a wolf at the beginning of the game. Overall, it's a fantastic port, and not only one of the better action games on the TurboGrafx-16, but it's better than the frustrating arcade original thanks to its balance tweaks.

The Game Boy port was handled by UK-based developer Bits Studio, despite not being released officially outside of Japan. This company also worked with Irem to port R-Type to portable platforms. In spite of the much smaller sprites, the game looks and plays reasonably well for a Game Boy game, and even includes a "Game Boy Mode" similar to the TurboGrafx version, which lets you take a few hits before dying. However, the bosses take many more hits to kill. As a compromise, whenever you die in boss battles, you’re resurrected on the spot rather than being sent back to a checkpoint.

There were also ports to European home computers, which were published by Activision. The Amstrad CPC version is the worst, with poor graphics and choppy, unbearable gameplay. The ZX Spectrum version is slightly faster, though still slow, and while the sprites look nicer, they have a tendency to blend into the background. In both of these versions, both the player character (and his shadows) and the enemies use the same sprite, so it's hard to tell them apart.

The Commodore 64 port looks poor, with tiny sprites, but it's still the best-playing of the bunch, with fast, smooth action, and fantastic music courtesy of Martin Walker. The Atari ST and Amiga versions are mostly identical, with the Amiga game having better sound. The sprites look decent, but there are some background planes missing. It’s also a bit slow, and the controls are quite sluggish.

Lightning Swords

AKA: Ken-Go (JP)

Original Release: 1991

Platforms: ARC, EVR

In the intro to Lightning Swords (known as Ken-Go in Japan, no connection to the later Lightweight-developed series for the PS2/3), a fleeing woman collapses in front of a lone, dead tree, before men with swords and pikes catch up and cut her down. The hero, Blue Dragon, arrives just in time to deflect a few shuriken coming his way before the killers flee in turn. He kneels briefly next to the woman — Princess Orchid according to the flyer — and gives chase.

The story, then, is not about rescuing a princess, but rather avenging her. As with any other arcade title, it mostly exists to justify the setting; in this case, a dark, slightly fantastical Japan in the year 1600. What the game is really about, though, is holding the action button to both block enemy attacks and charge up your own, before releasing them at the right moment. The longer you do so, the further they go, and the more damage they do. That is the central mechanic the game is built around.

This is one of a few games bearing the Irem name that can be attributed to Nanao's internal software development team, rather than Irem itself. That story is a complicated one, but it can be summarized as such: in the late 70s, when Irem decided to get into game development, it partnered up with a company called Nanao Denki, which specialized in manufacturing CRT screens. This arrangement was both financial and practical, as Nanao would build the screens used in Irem's arcade cabinets. After a few years, however, Nanao took over Irem, eventually ousting its founder, Kenzo Tsujimoto, who'd go on to find much greater success with his next company, Capcom.

From that point in the early 80s up until about a decade later, Nanao owned three game studios: Irem proper, which specialized in arcade games, particularly shoot-em-ups; Tamtex, which developed most of their NES and Game Boy games; and their own internal software team, which also made arcade games, though at a far less prolific rate. All games were published and marketed by Irem, and while the Tamtex name managed to get out a bit, Nanao's only ever did so in a select few interviews with game magazines. Thankfully, the pseudonyms used in ending credits and score entry screens tell us that they were responsible for games like Kickle Cubicle, Lightning Swords, and, more famously, R-Type Leo.

Nanao’s games were noticeably more colorful than Irem's, though not necessarily lighthearted or cute. Lightning Swords is probably the darkest thing they've done, but the rich reds and blues of its color palette are light years away from the gritty, rusty grays and browns of R-Type, In the Hunt, or even GunForce II. Most impressive are their skies, which layer clouds and sun rays to set the mood, while making use of dithering to create a foggy effect when filtered through the scanlines of CRT screens.

This studio’s design philosophy was also much more forgiving and player-friendly. The controls found in Lightning Swords may require some time to adapt to, but it's no quarter-muncher. You can take four standard hits before you die too, and there are power-ups that increase your maximum health (though just for that one life). Some parts are tricky, especially in single-player, but the game can be beaten with just a few credits with a bit of practice. It's got a two-player mode too, and as is often the case, two skilled players can really dominate this game.

Because you ordinarily move around while holding the block/charge button, jumping is done by pressing Up, as in fighting games. This is awkward, but luckily there really isn’t much platforming, apart from the ledges you can get on and off of to reach enemies, or win a bit of time to charge up a more powerful attack. There’s also a clumsy moment later on where the game expects you to hop onto a galloping horse to get past a section of burning ground, but thankfully, that's about it for the really bad parts.

Most of the time, jumping is used in combat, both as an evasive maneuver and to throw projectiles high up into some boss's face. You can also bounce off the left side of the screen for a super jump, but it's pretty difficult to pull off, and hardly necessary. Finally, you can press Down while airborne for a landing attack, which does come in handy. Standard sword strikes are possible too, but here they serve a secondary function — clearing the screen of a few weaker foes, or getting a few quick hits in.

While the flow of the gameplay is more defensive and methodical than in the usual arcade side-scroller, this is still a quick game, as the levels are short and there are only five in total. Thematically, they stick to creepy landscapes and Japanese castles, with the exception of one stage where you briefly board a ship before going through a cave. The enemies are mostly human, but a majority of the bosses use some kind of magic. Those battles are typically straightforward, revolving around finding the right timing to release a blast in between blocking or dodging everything they throw at you.

Mid-bosses usually drop sword power-ups that increase your attack power. There are also healing items, and others that increase your score or the time limit for the current level. Said restrictions aren’t so tight that you need to rush, but still enough that you should keep a steady pace.

Along with the aforementioned traits, there’s a slightly unpolished feeling that comes up during certain moments of the game. For instance, bumping into another sprite only produces a knockback effect when you're blocking, and things can get a little messy when you're not. Likewise, there are two mid-bosses that are hard to get through without taking some cheap damage. Nonetheless, it remains quite playable overall.

Outside of its original Japanese arcade release, this game's history is quite obscure. There exists an overseas version, Lightning Swords, for which the ROM and operator's manual have been archived. It seems that it was released in the United Kingdom, where at least two quick reviews appeared in magazines at the time, but there’s no evidence of any North American release. The game's text is already in English in the original too, so the only difference between the versions is the name and the title screen.

Lightning Swords didn’t get any home ports at the time, and even managed to dodge most retro compilations, but can be found on the Irem Arcade 1 cartridge for the Evercade. It deserves to be played too. This is a fun, short, no-nonsense game that aims to do its own thing and does it well.

The original Irem Corp. left the video game business in 1994. A new company called Irem Software Engineering was formed around ‘97, regrouping former employees from both the old Irem and Nanao. Hiroya Kita (better known as Hirogon), the main game designer behind the known Nanao titles, would go on to direct the PlayStation-exclusive R-Type Delta there, before moving on to a producer position.

Mr. Heli

AKA: Mr. Heli no Daibouken (JP), Battle Chopper (EN ARC)

Original Release: 1987

Platforms: ARC, PCE, AMI, C64, CPC, ZX, AST, WII, WIIU, NSW, PS4, XBO, EVR

Mr. Heli (the Japanese title translates to “Mr. Heli’s Great Adventure”) inhabits an odd genre midpoint, where it's not really a shoot-em-up, but it's definitely not a typical platformer either. Here you pilot an anthropomorphic helicopter, though the screen doesn't scroll automatically as in most shooters. Instead, you can fly around freely and have direct control of your movement. In addition to a basic straightforward shot, you also have a secondary attack — when in the air, you fire a missile straight upwards, but when you're on the ground, you toss little rolling bombs. The stages are filled with destructible blocks, as well. These typically hold either crystals or power-up boxes, and in turn you can use those crystals in order to purchase items.

The screen will begin to vertically scroll automatically at a certain point in each stage, before stopping and allow you free horizontal movement once again. After defeating a mini-boss, you're then tossed into a dark chamber, forced to find the door that will turn on the lights. These sections act as brief areas where you can grab more money and purchase additional weapons before fighting the level boss.

Mr. Heli seems gentler than typical Irem shooters, at least at the outset. After all, you have a life bar! This drains really quickly though especially since there's no real invulnerability time after taking damage, and many attacks can kill you in a single hit anyway. When you die, you're sent back to an earlier checkpoint, which is a genre standard especially for Irem games. However, this element conflicts with all of the block mining you'll need to do to upgrade your weapons. It's already annoying to get sent back to an earlier area, but having to stop and destroy the same set of blocks and get the same weapons, every single time you respawn, quickly becomes tedious. The early stages aren't too difficult, but by the third level, the screens are flooded with enemies and their tiny bullets, requiring you to try and take out as much as you can so you don't get overwhelmed.

The premise here sure seems inspired by Sega's Fantasy Zone — like Opa-Opa from that game, Mr. Heli has the same cute appearance, even growing legs when walking on the ground, and the shop system feels like it was borrowed as well, even if the implementation is different. This is no cute-em-up, though. The color palette leans on the darker side, seemingly due to Irem's M72 arcade board. None of the enemies are particularly adorable either, though. Some of the boss creatures have anthropomorphic features like eyes and mouths, but they look more terrifying than precious. Even so, this is part of the game's unique sensibilities, something that marks it as a uniquely Irem title, a company known for their brilliant spritework and generally oppressive visual designs.

Sadly, the lackadaisical pace is what puts Mr. Heli below other Irem shooters like R-Type, Dragon Breed, or Mystic Riders. Then again, was it really meant to compete with these games? It's such a unique title that it's hard to compare it to much of anything. The closest is Irem's In the Hunt, a submarine-based arcade game released several years later in 1993, which has the same arbitrary scrolling but ditches the checkpoint deaths and currency system, which are the main elements that drag Mr. Heli down.

The European computer ports all came from Firebird. The Commodore 64 version is the best of these, as it looks fairly decent and plays well too. All of the other ports are slower, choppier, and stuck inside a smaller gameplay window, while this version takes up almost the whole screen. Visually, the Amstrad CPC version is more detailed, and still plays relatively well despite being slower. The ZX Spectrum release is monochrome and plays similar to the Amstrad CPC version. The Atari ST and Amiga versions are almost identical, with sprites and backgrounds very similar to the arcade original, but still exhibit choppy gameplay.

All of these versions look a bit dark, since they used a black space background instead of the blue sky for early areas. Perhaps more crucially though, all of these ports are missing half the game! There are only three levels here, with the third stage boss being replaced with the final boss, and then the game is over.

The PC Engine port, like most of Irem's conversions for the system, is pretty spot-on. It's missing parallax scrolling and a few visual effects, though the palette is a bit brighter. The screen needs to scroll up and down slightly in the horizontal sections due to the resolution difference, but otherwise it's an excellent port. It even offers an easier mode to help make things smoother.

In the Hunt

AKA: Kaitei Daisensou (JP)

Original Release: 1993

Platforms: ARC, PS1, SAT, WIN, PS4, NSW, EVR

The 90s weren’t very kind to Japanese company Irem, best known for classics such as Moon Patrol, Kung-Fu Master, and the R-Type series. The once-prolific arcade and console game developer was in a slump due to a lack of major hits compared to their golden years, and were nearly on the verge of collapse. This led to many of their games being confined to Japan or in other cases, such as the critically-acclaimed Ninja Baseball Bat Man, being exported in extremely-limited numbers. Even in this dark age though, the studio was still committed to producing quality games that continue to have a lasting legacy on its audience, even today. One such game in this vein is In the Hunt.

Known as Kaitei Daisensou in Japan (“Undersea War”), In the Hunt debuted in April 1993 and ran on the Irem M-92 arcade system. It’s noteworthy for being created by the same group of developers who later went on to form Nazca Corporation, best known as the creators of the Metal Slug series. Truly, the similarities between Metal Slug and In the Hunt are uncanny, from the overwhelmingly detailed graphics to the brisk, action-packed soundtrack. Japanese audiences rank it among the very best games by Irem and see it as a cult classic, while internationally it’s mainly known through message boards and collector’s circles. This is a shame, because it’s actually a really fun shooter with some unique mechanics that help make it stand out from the pack.

In the Hunt can be best-described as a cross between R-Type and the aforementioned Metal Slug. Assuming control of the “Granvia” submarine, the player is tasked with eliminating a top-secret organization known as the Dark Anarchy Society (DAS) before they launch a powerful super-weapon to destroy a now-desolated planet Earth (which has become flooded due to the melting of the polar ice caps). These same bad guys are found in all of Irem’s “Destroy and Satsujin” series, consisting of a few loosely related titles like Air Duel, Undercover Cops, and both GunForce games. However, outside of these vague storyline links, they’re otherwise not related other than having a similar visual style owing to the shared staff.

In terms of your arsenal, the Granvia can fire torpedoes both forwards and upwards. Vertical shots will also launch slow-moving but powerful depth charges that explode upon contact with anything beneath it, which can be useful for taking out enemies or other obstacles below you.

Unique to In the Hunt is that the player can control the scrolling of the screen, and can either make it move faster or slower by moving forward or backward respectively. This allows the player to proceed at their own pace, an idea almost unheard of in shooters at the time. Don’t take too long though, as there’s a nasty time limit ticking down as the game progresses. The Granvia can also find power-ups that greatly resemble those in R-Type, such as a powerful machine gun, wave-like shots, and “cracker” shots that launch a barrage of bullets towards enemies. There’s a two-player mode as well, which is nice.

Graphically, In the Hunt is incredible. Anybody who’s played Metal Slug will immediately notice the similar visual style and superbly animated sprites. Combine that with detailed backdrops and vibrant colors, and you’ve got yourself an absolutely gorgeous 2D shooter. Sadly the same can’t be said for the soundtrack, as it’s a bit more of a mixed bag compared to the rest of the game. Some tracks are really well done and catchy, namely the song for the first stage (“South Pole”), while others feel pretty generic and don’t do a great job at capturing the essence of an underwater battle. Interestingly enough, Metal Slug composer “HIYA!” was set to do the music for this game, before being pulled from the project at the last minute to work on Image Fight II.

In the Hunt definitely has a lot going for it, but it does have its flaws. The biggest gripe is the difficulty, which can easily drive a person absolutely nuts. Some of the stage designs feel deliberately cruel at points, such as vertically scrolling areas having gigantic corridors that drag on for too long, only for the player to get ambushed by an onslaught of enemies they couldn’t see beforehand. With lightning-quick projectiles and massive waves of enemies, it definitely gives the R-Type games a run for their money in terms of their brutal difficulty. The game is rather short too at only six stages, although each one is pretty long and takes some time to finish.

Some players might also be put off by the slowness of the sub as well (which a lot of video game magazines at the time were), but it’s not too bad. With these faults in mind though, In the Hunt still manages to be an entertaining shooter with some unique ideas, and a hidden gem that has sadly gone mostly unnoticed by arcade game fanatics. Players who love the Metal Slug series will likely love this one as well. Irem closed down its video game divisions in 1994 to focus on restructuring itself, a year after this game was released, making In the Hunt one of the company’s very last arcade titles. While not one of the best shooters in the world, it was definitely a good place for the powerhouse behind R-Type and Ninja Spirit to end on.

In the Hunt was ported to the PlayStation and Saturn in 1995, courtesy of THQ (under their Kokopeli brand) and Xing Entertainment respectively. In most cases with shooters, the Saturn version would easily topple any other port. However with In the Hunt, the PlayStation release is actually superior to the one on Sega’s 32-bit machine, featuring little to no slowdown and still keeping intact the gameplay that made the original so great.

The Saturn version, meanwhile, has plenty of slowdown in places alongside the addition of a lackluster cutscene. Xing also made a Windows 95 version in 1997 exclusively for Japan, which while still having slowdown (and some annoying sprite flicker), is a major improvement over the Saturn port, even including a rapid-fire option. All three of these contain new soundtracks, as well — the Saturn version excels at this and is pretty good, while the other two have generic music in place of the original compositions, lacking any real personality. Hamster Corporation also released In the Hunt for the Switch and PlayStation 4 as part of their Arcade Archives series. With plenty of bonus features and online leaderboards, it’s the best way to play the game.

Interestingly, an SNES port was in development at one point, even being shown in a playable form at the 1994 Consumer Electronics Show. This was ultimately never released, although when you take into account the number of cuts that would be required, and that Irem was notoriously awful at programming for the SNES, it’s likely for the best that it never saw the light of day.

GunForce: Battle Fire Engulfed Terror Island

Original Release: 1991

Platforms: ARC, SNES, PS4, PS5, NSW

While most fans of run-and-gun video games know Metal Slug, they might not be aware that its lineage can be traced all the way back to 1991’s GunForce, an arcade game published by Irem in North America and Japan. Upon playing the game, the reasons for its obscurity become clear — this is a decidedly wonky start to the series that is best left as a curio.

The game offers no backstory, but both the US and Japanese arcade flyers fill in the blanks with two entirely different tales. The American version is straight to the point — the GunForce is a multi-national army assembled to stop an alien invasion. Japanese fans get a more intricate narrative — it’s the year 2000, and the nefarious R State has finished building a fortified base in the sea that’s controlled by a highly intelligent military computer.  The maniacal machine breaks into other countries’ networks, allowing R State to invade. You (and a friend, if you choose to take the game on in two-player) are sent by the rebellion in a last-ditch effort to bring down the rogue CPU and restore liberty to the world.

Visually, this brings to mind Turrican, as well as Contra’s robotic European port, Probotector. The graphics are poor for 1991, with small, charmless sprites and backgrounds that veer from gray to brown and back again with little variation. Add scant animation to the mix, and GunForce would feel entirely lifeless if it wasn’t for some satisfyingly chunky explosions.

Here, the A button shoots in one of eight directions, with button B allowing you to jump, mount a vehicle (or hang on a rope if pressed with Up on the joystick), and dismount the same if pressed with Down. Down on its own allows you to crouch, key for avoiding enemy projectiles, and you can also lock your gun in one direction while you move in another. It’s an intuitive setup, albeit marred by a floaty jump. Enemies pass straight through you, but eat a bullet or let the timer tick down to zero and it’s instant death. You get three lives per continue, gain an extra life every 100,000 points, and helpfully spawn where you fall.

As well as your standard pea shooter, downing enemies or breaking open crates sometimes reveals power-ups. These include an automatic gun, bazooka, flamethrower, laser gun, or bonus points. All but your default weapon have limited ammo too, although it’s possible to pick up more shells.

All that said, you can catch a glimpse of Metal Slug’s primordial gestation in the vehicular combat with the USP. Within seconds of parachuting into the first level you hijack a military jeep, take to the skies in a helicopter, and have everything from gun turrets to motorcycles for the taking. It’s a shame, then, that the gimmick is largely ignored in the second and third stages, only returning in the fourth (the game’s highlight), before being forgotten entirely.

You battle across six stages, first dropping into the jungle to break into the enemies’ front base, hitting their supply depot second, and the vertically scrolling communication tower in the third level. The aforementioned fourth stage places you astride a tank as you storm the command base, mowing down enemies left and right in a fun sprint. After breaking into the enemies’ fortress in the penultimate level, the finale sees you square up against the last boss in their underground lair. Complete the game and you’re greeted with text thanking you for saving the world, as the island crumbles in the background. It’s not entirely satisfying, but you’re at least able to add your name to the high score table.

GunForce is plagued by repetitive enemy design, featuring troops with guns, or the same guys with flamethrowers, or similar cannon fodder with lasers, and so on. Occasionally you’re confronted by a vehicle to take down, and the game does mix in flying opponents from time to time. The final stage adds fast little robots and mutants, but it’s not enough to make up for the monotonous minions beforehand. The bosses are extremely simple, as well. Each one is a static structure that fills the screen and has no animation apart from its turrets and bullets. They just require you to avoid projectiles and shoot the big thing in the middle of the screen too, with no urgency to do so. They just don’t feel like a proper stage conclusion.

At least the music is adequate, with some upbeat electro-funk jams to accompany the action in the first few stages, and some sterner stuff in the later ones. The final level even has an eerie theme that fits the alien atmosphere well. Unfortunately, all of the boss fights have the same grating piece of music playing throughout. The sound effects pass muster at least, even if they’re a little tinny. There’s the odd gun sound that only serves to annoy, too. Endearingly, a sampled gasp of agony sounds when you die that’s very similar to the famous Wilhelm Scream.

Bits Studios released an SNES version in 1992. It’s a miserable port, adding only a few minor changes to enemies and level design, new music and sound effects, and a ton of slowdown. The sluggish pace, coupled with five lives and three continues per play, means most players will reach the end of the game easily. Receiving very average reviews at the time, the arcade iteration is the way to go if you’d like to play the game today.

GunForce, in spite of its shortcomings, has some neat ideas tucked away, the vehicular combat especially. Unfortunately, almost all of them are executed poorly. It’s only worth playing if you’re a Metal Slug uber fan and are dead set on seeing where the series began. Things would improve exponentially (and how!) in the vastly improved sequel, GunForce II (known as Geo Storm in Japan) in 1994.

GunForce II

AKA: Geo Storm (JP)

Original Release: 1994

Platforms: ARC, WIN, PS4, PS4, NSW

If you played GunForce, a thoroughly below-average run-and-gun with the occasional neat idea, you’d be forgiven if you skipped the follow-up. You’d be missing out though, as GunForce II is exponentially better and improves on the original in every way.

Released in 1994, GunForce II (known as Geo Storm in Japan) was Irem’s last arcade game. Some of the same staff had previously developed Armed Police Unit Gallop, Superior Soldiers, Undercover Cops, and In the Hunt, all games which shared a similarly detailed art style. Irem began facing financial problems in 1994 though, shuttering its arcade division and leading to some of this team to form Nazca Corporation. This new company subsequently went on to develop Neo Turf Masters and Metal Slug: Super Vehicle-001 for the Neo-Geo, before they were bought by SNK to make the rest of the Metal Slug franchise.

Taking control of either Max or Lei, you fight across five stages, taking down enemy soldiers, mutants, aliens, vehicles, and more, for reasons too vague to mention. The best thing that can be said about GunForce II’s story is that the game is too entertaining to suffer for not having one. Along with its predecessor, it’s also part of Irem’s “Destroy and Satsujin” series, which includes Air Duel, Undercover Cops and In the Hunt. All three games have you fighting the same enemy organization, though they’re different genres, so aren’t related outside of this and the visual similarities.

Anyone familiar with Contra or the original GunForce will take to the controls right away — there’s a button to shoot in one of eight directions in combination with the joystick, another button to jump, and you can enter vehicles by hopping into them. Everything is faster, tighter, and more responsive, with leaps being far less moon-jumpy than the original.

A neat twist to the gunplay is that you can now dual-wield your standard issue blaster with any special weapon you collect, and they will often shoot at different angles, providing some strategy. The special weapons span the run-and-gun gamut from lasers to flamethrowers, all with satisfying kicks and kabooms. The vehicle-hijacking mechanic also returns from the first GunForce, again much improved. There are now 11 different variations to commandeer, including motorbikes, tanks, hovercraft, and several types of mechas. Your aim is to defeat foes, save female POWs, and collect medals for points. That last part is important, as GunForce II is also a score-attack game. Complete the last level, and rather than being greeted with a game over screen, you’re sent back to the first stage.

That first level sees you fight your way forward on the back of a runaway locomotive, before taking down the insectoid, minigun-toting robotic boss. Blasting your way through mechas as you push ahead into an enemy base in level two, you’re faced with a steampunk tower on tank treads. Stage three takes the game vertical, asking you to climb chains while taking on hordes of foes. You then hop onto a motorcycle while being pursued by a crab-like robot, in a real highlight of the game. A post-apocalyptic ruined city forms the base of the penultimate level, before taking you skyward in an elevator for a face-off with a reptilian, bomb-spitting machine. Jumping into a ship at the start of the final stage, the game briefly turns into a shoot-em-up as you avoid missiles and blast a spacecraft to gain entrance. You’re instantly beset by a raft of extra-terrestrials, clearly influenced by H. R. Giger’s work on the Alien movies, which in turn are reminiscent of Irem’s designs in the R-Type games. The final boss is an unsettling centipede-like robot that dives at you as you work your way up a missile shaft.

The visuals have been massively overhauled here, skewing more towards the first Metal Slug than the original GunForce. While not quite hitting the heights of the former, the graphics feature some wonderfully chunky and detailed pixel art, with punchy and expressive animation. Best of all are the bosses, from truly impressive steampunk behemoths that fill the screen to more alien creations in the second half. GunForce II is a busy game, as well. Between the enemies, pick-ups, explosions, and projectiles, there’s a lot to keep track of. You’ll be thankful, then, that the use of color and design means you’re rarely confused as to what’s going on, with most deaths feeling fair rather than cheap. The backgrounds really help to capture the post-apocalyptic setting too, with enough detail and variety to keep things interesting. It’s a shame there’s little in the way of parallax scrolling, but what is here looks great, albeit with occasional slowdown in busy moments.

Heavy metal synth tracks complement the action perfectly, though you’ll be hard-pressed to hear them over the din of the mayhem on-screen. A particular highlight is the repeating boss theme, an eerie and foreboding tune that gets the pulse pounding during the game’s tougher tests. Several of the tracks are also remixed or reworked versions of tunes from Irem’s earlier title, Air Duel. The sound effects are much better and more varied than the original GunForce, with some (notably the Wilhelm Scream) being used in the first Metal Slug.

It’s believed that Nazca Corporation disbanded when SNK went bankrupt in 2001. It’s difficult to pin down who was who from this mysterious collective, as most worked under pseudonyms. It’s since been revealed that PlatinumGames producers Atsushi Kurooka and Atsushi Inaba were part of the unit, and that composer HIYA/HIYA-UNIT was Takushi Hiyamuta. KIRE-NAG was Kazuma Kujo, who later formed Granzella.

GunForce II is an excellent game, a must play for Metal Slug and run-and-gun enthusiasts, and a damn fun time for everyone else. With wonderful presentation and action-packed gameplay, it even outshines some parts of that famous franchise, while not quite hitting the heights of the series’ very best installments.

Ninja Emaki

Original Release: 1986

Platforms: ARC

Capcom's 1985 release Commando basically defined the overhead run-and-gun arcade genre, with many other similar games (particularly Ikari Warriors) also re-using its military jungle theme. Yet before this stereotype was codified, some of its competitors opted for different themes, like Sega's Ninja Princess and Taito's KiKi KaiKai. Nichibutsu (of Terra Cresta fame) made a few attempts at the genre, including Soldier Girl Amazon (which is a more typical clone, though starring a sword-wielding female warrior), the goofily named (but otherwise pretty standard) Mighty Guy, and the slightly more ambitious Ninja Emaki, a game that features a ninja warrior fighting demons in a feudal Japanese setting. (An "emaki" is a picture scroll.)

The Japanese title, Youma Ninpou Chou, means "Demon Ninja Power Book". Like Ninja Gaiden/Ninja Ryuukenden, this seems like a case of replacing a Japanese title with a very slightly more pronounceable one, though still halfway inscrutable to English speakers. The fantasy setting employed here was loosely inspired by the 1983 Japanese film Legend of the Eight Samurai.

The first level is actually a vertically scrolling shooter, as the hero takes to the skies on a cloud to hunt down the main villain, who has taken the form of a flying snake. However, once this segment is over, he spends most of the rest of the game on foot as he scrambles to hunt down his foe and save the kidnapped princess. (There's also another brief scrolling sequence midway through the game that takes place on a raft.) Though it uses a vertically oriented monitor, the levels do scroll left and right, occasionally requiring some obstacle navigation to find a path through the level, though it's still ultimately pretty linear. Stages include graveyards, castles, and shrines, the kind typical of games with the "magic ninja warrior in feudal Japan" setting. Your foes include a variety of demons like giant frogs and skeletons, with the final boss taking the form of an enormous woman's head. The visuals are colorful if not exactly distinctive, and the music is quite catchy too.

By default, your ninja guy shoots enemies with a crossbow, though the game uses an extremely generous power-up subsystem. When you grab a scroll, you have access to eight different ninja powers, with unlimited use, for 20 seconds. These are all fairly powerful, including multi-directional shurikens, smoke bombs, arrows that can attack at much more versatile angles than your main weapon, plus spells that summon tsunami waves, rotating fireballs, or little tornadoes. There's also a shadow duplicate ability, plus the chance to arm yourself with a powerful cannon that sits at your side and rolls along with you. While enemies spawn and attack constantly, these powers make it much easier to stand up against them. The fact that they're so immediately accessible, instead of having to climb up through a chain of power-ups, makes the hero much more powerful than a typical arcade action game.

There are some substantial difficulty changes between the regions. For instance, you die in a single hit in the Japanese release, unless you have a power scroll, in which case you absorb it and lose its abilities. The American/World release is much easier — this gives you a life bar that lets you take three hits, while granting an extension whenever you pick up a ninja scroll, plus it lets you keep using them even while taking damage. Dying sends you back to a checkpoint, but you rarely lose too much ground, and scrolls are generously found lying around anyway. The American version also gets the benefit of a much cooler-looking title screen.

The stages are all fairly short and lead directly into the next one without any type of pause. Some levels have bosses, some don't, as they're distributed unevenly. These are the only legitimately tough parts of the game, considering that they require focusing attacks on a singular spot while avoiding all of the enemies and their projectiles. Otherwise, the onslaught of foes during the levels is rarely too overwhelming, especially given the generous supply of special weapons.

The only real sore spot of Ninja Emaki is that it's way too short. The fast pace is one of the game's biggest strengths, but all of the levels can be seen in maybe 15 minutes, especially given the moderate difficulty of the English release. After the final encounter, the enemy just escapes and continues on to the next loop without so much as a simple congratulations for our intrepid hero. In spite of that, the game is an exciting, well-constructed run-and-gun. Its unfortunate level of obscurity lies mostly with its smaller developer and lack of any home conversion.

Kyros

AKA: Kyros no Yakata (JP) / Desolator (computer ports)

Original Release: 1986

Platforms: ARC, AST, C64, ZX, CPC

Kyros is a brilliant distillation of authentic 80s cheese. Developed by Alpha Denshi Corp., otherwise known as ADK, its concept is something like Big Trouble in Little China, but ditches the Chinese underworld setting in favor of a haunted mansion. The hero is a regular dude rocking a rad pair of shades, who makes it his mission to stroll forward and pummel everything in his path. Here, "everything" means enemies up to and including, standard street punks, Japanese onis, knights in shining armor, vampires, bikini-clad girls, and even the occasional Marilyn Monroe impersonator.

The game itself is one of the rare overhead beat-em-ups, like Capcom’s Avengers, that looks like Ikari Warriors but plays like Double Dragon. The hero, identified as Mac, only has a standard punch attack, which is strong enough to send anything and everything flying right off of the screen. He can also obtain power-ups to wield fireballs, boomerangs, and bombs, or turn into the hulking, shirtless karate master known as Machoman. He can jump too, which is useful for escaping from mobs of enemies, and also for leaping over the numerous land mines peppered throughout. Said explosives equal instant death, but the infinitely respawning enemies can also flood your hero and take him down with ease. At some points it's just easier to jump ahead quickly and deal with enemies only as they become a pressing concern.

Beyond merely scrolling forward, the environment offers some handy aids, if you know how to exploit them. Barrels and vases can be pushed to roll over enemies, and opening doors can be used to slam anything on the other side. (The bad guys can do the same to you, of course.) There are many fire-breathing statues attached to the walls as well, but assuming you can dodge their projectiles and destroy them, they’ll also kill everything on the screen. More puzzling are the glowing paintings, which, when attacked, will cause a slew of babies to come crawling through a nearby mirror, who then grant points or power-ups when collected. Certain items can also transform all of your opponents into various forms, including piles of gold, chickens, and, if your luck is bad, even more powerful foes.

While the game looks and controls well, Mac still feels slightly underpowered. He walks too slowly by default, and his projectile attacks are too few in number. His short range attacks work out okay during the levels, but the boss battles prove somewhat frustrating, as the squadrons of enemies on the screen are simply too quick and powerful to fight effectively.

Still, Kyros is fantastic because there's a beautiful "what the hell, why not?" sentiment throughout the whole experience, a hallmark of an area where video games didn't have to be so damn serious all of the time. Plus, one of the music tracks also rips off Frank Stallone's song "Far From Over", most famous for its use in the 1983 disco film Staying Alive.

Although Kyros has since fallen into the depths of obscurity, LucasArts developer Mike Ebert has cited the game as being an inspiration for the Genesis/SNES cult hit Zombies Ate My Neighbors. The games play entirely differently, but both titles share a tongue-in-cheek horror setting, along with a slightly skewed overhead perspective.

Kyros was ported to a handful of home computers, although the name was changed for these to Desolator. This version was published by Sega, who distributed many of ADK’s pre-Neo-Geo arcade games. The Atari ST version is the best looking of the bunch, but plays very slowly. It has its own unique title theme, but no music is played during the actual game. The Commodore 64 version has a pace similar to the arcade version, though it feels sloppy and the hit detection doesn't quite work. It too has its own original music, both on the title screen and in-game. The Amstrad and Spectrum versions have sidebars on the left side of the screen, to more closely replicate the display ratio of the arcade version. The Amstrad port looks better than the Commodore 64 version, though the Spectrum game is addled with bad coloring. Unfortunately, none of these ports truly replicate the aspects that make the arcade release notable.

The Japanese title is Kyros no Yakata, which means "Halls of Kyros". Kyros is the name of the vampire who happens to own the mansion you're infiltrating. Interestingly, the ads for the computer version refer to it as a port of "The Halls of Kairos", even though in-game text refers to it as "The Halls of Kyros".

Time Soldiers

Original Release: 1987

Platforms: ARC, AMI, AST, SMS, C64, PSP, PS3

SNK helped to popularize the run-and-gun subgenre of shooters with Ikari Warriors, but they would later improve on their blueprint with Guerrilla War. Aside from that, Alpha Denshi (later ADK) became a second-party developer for SNK and took a few notes from the Ikari formula, making their own similar game but with a cool time-traveling twist.

Time Soldiers involves a malevolent AI named Gylend banishing members of an unnamed future defense force to various epochs. Either solo or with a friend, two remaining soldiers named Yohan and Ben get to blast their way through five eras of history to rescue the other soldiers before returning to kick Gylend's big mechanical butt. Said eras are "The Prehistoric Age," "The Age of Rome," "The World Wars" (specifically WW2), the non-indicatively named "The Age of Wars" (Feudal Japan), and "The Future World."

Like Ikari, Time Soldiers operates on a rotary joystick that allows you to move in one direction and fire in another. The screen scrolls somewhat slowly as you advance, meaning you shouldn't run too far ahead or risk getting cut down. There are times when it moves horizontally too, which is unorthodox for this genre. The stages technically loop over if you stay in them, but after each mid-boss is a time machine that whisks you away to another period. You need to keep jumping through these until you end up in the era where a captured soldier is located, wherein a giant boss must be destroyed before their rescue. The game's structure mostly equates to "keep using the machines until you're in the right level", but it still adds a pinch more variety than the average Commando-type shooter.

Enemies are appropriate to their period, like cavemen in prehistory and ninjas in the Japanese era. They usually don't have many tactics beyond "run and shoot at you", but this is still usually effective enough to kill you. Not helping is that most enemies take more than one bullet, and some of them have the nerve to hide atop cliffs where your normal shots can't reach. You can get to most of them with your subweapons, which hold a decent amount of ammo and include lasers, rockets, and spread-shots. These can grow more powerful if you collect more than one, too.

Unfortunately, you lose all ammo if you die, and you’ll likely die a lot, so get used to your normal peashooter. You can occasionally find a "P" crystal to buff up your soldier à la Altered Beast, which makes his primary gun full-auto and allows him to take several hits. However, he shares a life bar with the subweapon ammo bar, so you’ll be down a life once that runs out. Mid-bosses and big bosses can also be spongy if you just have the default gun, even though nearly all of them work the same (move up and down while firing spreads of projectiles). The exception is the big boss in Rome, who swings around a giant ball-and-chain and is somehow easier than the more "normal" bosses.

It's bad enough that Time Soldier keeps you weak if you keep losing, but it saves its trump card for the end. After rescuing the last soldier from "The Future World", it's off to the finale, a creepy-looking techno-organic fortress. Unfortunately, the last area is frustrating, since you face a bunch of eyeball-tentacle aliens who are as strong as mid-bosses, but there are like 20 of them. Oh, and you can't continue. Yes, Time Soldiers commits the old-school "Finale F-You" that Shinobi and Rastan also pulled, where after being able to try again when you ran out of lives, the final level suddenly enforces a "one shot or bust" rule at the worst possible time. If you die before or at Gylend (who isn't much different from other bosses, despite being the largest sprite in the game), you'll be looking at the title screen, no doubt through eyes rimmed with crimson rage.

Time Soldiers has some decent ideas, like the teleporters and the super-crystals, but at the end of the day, it's a pretty punishing game that only the most skilled players will beat. Get used to that rather loud digitized scream too, as the sound will drive you madder than “John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt”.

Despite its unnecessary roughness and Metal Slug-esque conundrum of having to stick with your default gun if you keep getting shot (albeit several years earlier), this remains one of the better pre-Neo Geo ADK games, if not the best. It's arguably better than Gang Wars, at any rate. It even drew in enough attention to earn several ports, the Sega Master System version being the best known among them. Of course it's not quite up to the polish of the arcade original and the rotary function is obviously missing, but it's a pretty good port at the end of the day. It moves fast, mostly captures the intensity of the original, and while the sound is what you’d expect for the SMS, the graphics are on point, with the large sprites of the main bosses intact at the cost of the background going black.

If nothing else, the SMS port trounces the NES hack jobs of Ikari Warriors and Victory Road by Micronics, and it’s certainly better than the abysmal Commodore 64 version. There, your character moves way too fast compared to the slow scrolling of your environment. There’s no music either, and the sprites are primitive even for C64 standards. Worse still, the in-stage time machine gimmick seems to have been entirely ditched. The Amiga version plays and looks better than the C64 port, but something about the general flow of gameplay still feels off. It does have a kicking original soundtrack by Allister Brimble, so it might be worth a look at least for that. The Atari ST version looks identical to the Amiga game, but it plays slower and less smoothly. Time Soldiers also never received a sequel by name, but ADK’s Ninja Commando for the Neo Geo is more or less its successor, albeit more intense and hard rock-driven.

Aurail

Original Release: 1990

Platforms: ARC

Aurail is a tough game to get used to. It's an overhead run-and-gun, much like Ikari Warriors and Commando, except instead of a soldier, you control a walking tank called a Transom. You can drive forward and fire as normally, but you can also stay in place and rotate, allowing you to shoot in eight directions. There aren’t any strafing controls, however. It's one of those design quirks that seems like it might have been an oversight, but in practice this works in the game's favor. Like the original Castlevania titles, whose stilted jumping controls and limited attack movements defined those games, Aurail's controls are essential to both the tempo and strategy required to beat it.

Conquering this game is a masterful feat, too. Aurail starts off rather challenging, at least for the first stage. By the fourth level, it gets to be reasonably difficult. It really means business by the seventh stage, and that's not even the halfway point. This game utilizes a punishing checkpoint system, where a single death will set you back only a small distance, but an immediate second death will put you back even farther, potentially to the beginning of the stage. Every inch of ground is a hard-fought victory, which can be easily snatched away.

While often frustrating, being able to learn and relearn the terrain is essential. Like R-Type and its ilk, memorizing when and where enemies appear is one of the major keys to victory. While the goal of the screen is to move upward, you can also scroll to the left and right a bit, but off-screen enemies won’t attack. More important is being able to identify opponents’ weakpoints. Missile launchers, for example, will usually overshoot you, while their homing capabilities will track you from behind, giving you an opportunity to shoot them down. Laser turrets are limited to the same eight-way directional limitations as you are, so it's just a matter of finding their blind spot and firing until they die. This is obviously much harder than it sounds, because there are usually plenty of bad guys attacking at once. You can try to take it slowly, but destroyed turrets will regenerate and smaller enemies respawn constantly, so there's always a balance between knowing when to advance carefully or charge forward at full speed.

There’s also a unique power-up system at work. Many fallen enemies will drop "P" orbs, which grant three charges on a power meter. There’s a "D" icon too, which gives you command of an orbiting satellite called a Kite. At any moment, you can sacrifice 12 charges to create a shield (which stack up to three times). Alternatively, you can order the Kite to attack, which will quickly drain the power charges but allows you to attack while remaining safely under cover, or at least lets you deal with multiple foes at once. Again, there's a careful interplay of prioritizing offense over defense, or vice versa.

The game is generous enough to start off each new life with enough power charges to generate a single shield, but assuming you die a lot — and until you spend hours practicing, you will die a lot — it's hard to keep the meter charged high enough to be all that useful. Granting a few more charges per P orb wouldn't have hurt in evening up the odds a little.

Aurail's stages are broken up into three sections — the first and third are 2D overhead areas, culminating in mid-boss and large boss battles respectively, while the second stage is a 3D tunnel area. You move forward automatically in these corridors, and can shift left and right between three columns, while collecting P icons and dodging mines. Enemies attack at several points, causing you to stop and engage them. Here, you're free to move up and down the tunnels in order to destroy everything. While the shield generation works the same as in the overhead levels, there’s no Kite here, so instead this button is used to turn your mech 180 degrees so you can defend yourself from behind. There are small indicators that show the location of attacking foes too, as well as onscreen text to keep track of the remaining enemies.

The 3D sections take a while to get used to, perhaps even longer than the 2D portions. While some knowledge of overhead shooters will help you get through those levels, the 3D areas are entirely unlike anything else. The trick is to pay close attention to the indicators, which are the only way to grasp where everything is located. These sections are also overly tough because your tank is just as weak as in the 2D parts. Thankfully, only bullets actually damage you, and enemies can collide into you harmlessly.

Aurail was designed by Westone, which is generally known for its fairly cute and cuddly Wonder Boy / Monster World series. In keeping with the science fiction war theme however, the visuals here are much darker. The sprite work is decent, though it really shines in the 3D segments, where it's easier to see the details. The boss fights are likewise impressive, consisting of gigantic, segmented machines of pure destruction. Amidst the futuristic imagery though, you occasionally encounter some ancient-looking ruins, which, along with the fantasy-styled woman featured on the title screen, give the game a sort of mythological feel. There's even a made up language that kind-of-sort-of looks like English, and a cryptic robot voice who says assorted, vaguely intelligible things. The music by Westone mainstay Shinichi Sakamoto is heavy metal played through the System 16's FM synth — harsh, catchy, and thematically appropriate.

Despite its quality from both a design and an aesthetic standpoint, Aurail didn't receive much exposure, nor any ports outside of the arcade. The game is difficult to learn and even harder to master, but with persistence comes the reward of victory, and Aurail is as good as any.

FixEight

Original Release: 1992

Platforms: ARC, WIN, EVR

While Toaplan often made sequels to their games, they usually changed their titles rather than appending a number to their name. FixEight has thus never been clarified to be a direct sequel to Out Zone, instead earning the designation of "spiritual successor" to Toaplan's excellent run-and-gun from two years prior. Regardless, it almost feels like a sequel to what little plot Out Zone had, as instead of warding off an alien invasion, you're taking the fight to their home planet of Fortuna.

The "Eight" part of the title comes from there now being eight playable characters, a huge expansion from just the one of Out Zone. Each of them have their own weapon types, toting both a free-fire weapon "A" and a forward-fixed weapon "B." It's exactly like Out Zone's two main weapons, only now they’re changed via floor panels with the same function as the "C" icons, but they look cooler and can be used multiple times in case you accidentally cross over one. Everyone has bombs too, and they can find a less common “Special” weapon that can be picked up from question marks, which may also give points or shields.

Interestingly, all characters were jailed for murderous or rebellious crimes, making this a great, unlicensed adaptation of Suicide Squad. Their backstories range from the mundane to crazy. For example, Cull was imprisoned for an attempted coup to liberate Africa, which is a big deal but he sounded altruistically motivated. However, GX was convicted for DESTROYING 23 PLANETS IN ONE YEAR. It doesn't feel as if the would-be revolutionary deserves to be lumped in with an omnicidal robot responsible for trillions of snuffed lives, but such is the reality of FixEight.

Some of the cast also have surprisingly tragic endings. Without spoiling anything, Agatha gets the worst conclusion by far. As for how they actually play, some characters focus more on power, like Hayate sacrificing horizontal spread for sheer damage on his B-weapon, while others opt for more versatility, like L’Angelo’s bouncing laser A-weapon. The third and sixth stages have segments leading into boss fights that take place on aerial speeders armed with a strong-but-narrow vulcan cannon that fires the same across all characters. It’s a bit of a shame that everyone shares the same weapon during these parts, but it's at least a quite powerful one.

FixEight plays just as smoothly as Out Zone but the graphics are brighter, the difficulty is generally less punishing, and you’re allowed to continue on the spot. Pain junkies might argue this makes the game feel too easy compared to its predecessor, but considering how frustrating Out Zone could get, the majority of players are likely to appreciate a title where they’re guaranteed to reach the end after some quarters here-and-there. There's also no energy bar to worry about anymore, although spiked balls will attempt to kill you if you dawdle too long. The stage designs are also better balanced overall instead of having those long stretches of compressed mazes where you're screwed if you're using the spreadshot. There are still some tricky enemies to deal with though, like some giant serpents in the second stage that attempt to block your movement. The fifth level also has robots that pop out of the water and even ride in on gunboats. However, while you'll definitely be challenged, the overall ferocity of the enemies feels just a little less evil than in Out Zone, making for a less nerve-wracking experience that still packs a punch.

Perhaps the only minus here is that the bosses feel a little less fresh than Out Zone's did. Two of these feel familiar to the third one in that game (with the latter even having a similar pitfall gimmick), while the fifth boss is remarkably similar to Out Zone's second boss. Even so, none of these encounters are quite as creative as Out Zone's fourth or sixth bosses. At least the final boss looks pretty cool with its skull-like build.

With all of that aside, it feels a bit like Out Zone walked so that FixEight could run. With its sizable character variety, better design flow, and much less punishing difficulty, this is arguably a much better product than its predecessor, and stands as one of the best games Toaplan has ever done. Sadly, the company would dissolve two years later, but between this, Dogyuun, and Batsugun, it's safe to say they went out on a high note.

Out Zone

Original Release: 1990

Platforms: ARC, WIN, EVR

Ever the masters of their craft, Toaplan delivered another shooter in 1990 named Out Zone. Here, instead of piloting a space fighter or 20th century air vehicle, it’s a Commando-style run-and-gun which they somehow had never attempted before then.

Released the same year as Mercs, Out Zone proves to be a faster and more vicious game than its fantastic contemporary by Capcom. The plot is barebones (alien invasion, you're a mercenary, go kill 'em), but it’s a Toaplan game, so nuts to the plot. Your unnamed cyborg mercenary tears through seven levels of extraterrestrial carnage armed with nothing but a shoulder-mounted laser cannon, three bombs, and considerable agility. Of course you can bring along a friend as well, because an arcade shooter that doesn't allow for two-players was unheard of in 1990. It looks and sounds like a fantastic game on the surface, but there’s one caveat that might scare off potential players once they dig deeper.

The laser cannon the mercs carry is a versatile weapon, firing out unlimited projectiles quickly and automatically, spitting out even more while turning to face another direction. While you can’t lock your fire direction, you can pick up one of the fairly common "C" icons on any given stage to change your free-fire laser into a spread shot that not only blasts projectiles three at a time, but always shoots forward no matter where you move. It's not as eminently versatile as the free-fire laser, but the spread has its uses, particularly in areas where you want to focus more on dodging. However, there are several areas throughout the game that are "maze-like," for lack of a better word, and the free-fire is much preferable in these enclosed gauntlets.

You can pick up another "C" to change back to the laser, and be sure to watch out for "P" icons that make your guns beefier, as several enemies can be damage sponges. As an unfair double standard, you can only take one hit but you also have a "lifebar," much like Adventure Island, that you need to keep replenishing with "E" icons lest your time runs out. At least you can also get shields to protect you from a hit, although these are rare. More common are screen-wiping bombs that appear more frequently if your power-ups are maxed out. Finally, there are two “Super” weapons you can potentially find if your power is maxed-out: The Super Burner that deals immense damage and shreds bosses but has a bit of a short range, and the Super Ball which swings around in a circle and smashes enemies through walls. Ideally, you get more power-ups if you do really well, but that’s only if you have reflexes like the Flash.

Out Zone is relentlessly ruthless, starting with the basic robot enemies that can ruin your day with their quick shots. They tend to march in groups and/or approach at various angles, and are almost as deadly as the basic goons from Gun.Smoke. Enemies small and large just don’t let up with their projectiles, and you have to watch out for pitfalls too while trying to squeak through restrictive curtains of bullets. Those claustrophobic stretches that force you to fight through maze-like pathways work very much to the enemy’s advantage, especially if you’re stuck with the spread shot throughout these parts. If you have it, the Super Ball trivializes most of these areas, but good luck holding onto that for any decent amount of time. One especially heinous part in stage 5 requires you to cross moving platforms over gaps while dodging enemies. It's asking a lot from the player to avoid bullets and pitfalls at the same time.

As you might expect, these evil stages are topped off with some equally wicked bosses. The first two, a quartet of bizarre machines (that seem to be unicycular) and a gigantic tank, are nothing too flashy, but they spit out a lot of projectiles for being early bosses. The third stage boss is heinous though, being a mechanical evil eye that keeps summoning enemies and can also command lasers which slice off parts of the floor to minimize your dodging room, lest you fall into the lava below. Later bosses include a large, shielded machine which splits apart to reveal a smaller unit surrounded by circling blades, a flying mecha that spits out homing missiles once damaged, or a huge, defensive robot that can only be harmed when it attempts to extendo-punch you. The big, yellow, floating final boss has its weak spot less guarded than the one before it, but its laser sword can still be very hard to avoid.

All of Out Zone is thoroughly uncompromising in its difficulty. It flies out from the get-go with a hail of bullets, and there's really no point that offers a breather. Unfortunately, you get sent back to a checkpoint if you die and lose all of your power-ups. That was standard for several shooters at the time, but it's felt especially hard here since the game tends to reward you with a good supply of power-ups and a lot of bombs once you're maxed out. If you keep dying, expect a cycle of being stuck in weak laser hell until you get lucky enough to reach the next checkpoint. Several shoot-em-ups run on a "rich get richer or die trying" ethos. However, even though it takes less time to max out here than in Gradius, the lightning pace makes it feel a lot harder to even grab one power-up before dying.

Out Zone is definitely one of the more polished games of the overhead run-and-gun subgenre, and is recommended for enthusiasts to check out. Even so, only pros are likely to stick around long enough to see the end.

Ninja Commando

Original Release: 1992

Platforms: ARC, NGEO, NGCD, PS2, WII, PS4, NSW, XBO, IOS, AND

A mad man hell-bent on world domination seeks to rewrite history using a time machine, and only a trio of ninja commandos can stop him. The ninjas must battle against Chinese warlords, cavemen, robot dinosaurs, and more to overcome his evil plans. While this description may sound like a direct-to-VHS movie that would have flown off video store shelves in the 80s and 90s, it's actually the premise for Alpha Denshi Corp's Ninja Commando, a 1992 run-and-gun game for the Neo Geo.

Following in the gameplay style that SNK's Ikari Warriors established, Ninja Commando is a vertically scrolling run-and-gun where the player selects a ninja to lead the defense against villain Spider and the Mars Corporation's nefarious plans. Alpha Denshi had previously created Time Soldiers, which was more transparent about its Ikari influence, down to the eight-way rotary joystick that controlled the angle of the player's shot. For Ninja Commando, the Neo Geo hardware didn't allow for unique joystick options, so the selectable characters have different attack abilities to help them feel a lot more individual and less like palette swaps.

As far as controls, the A button is the primary shot — which rapidly increases the power and amount of projectiles launched when pressed rapidly. The B button is used as a somersault evasion that sadly doesn't grant invincibility during use. However, when rolling the player can hit the shot button and fire off a large throwing knife in the opposite direction. This function is handy for all other directions that the primary attack might not connect with. Finally, "Ninja Tricks" are assigned to the C button for each player's unique special attack, which sacrifices a bit of health for an attack that deals large amounts of damage to the field. These ninjutsu are executed with an animation of the hero vertically leaping, with some impressive scaling effects as they rain their super attack downward.

While these functions are enough for standard gameplay, Ninja Commando ups the ante by borrowing controls from the fighting game craze of the early 90s. Each ninja has attacks that can be used by inputting special commands. For example, moving the joystick in a down-to-right (or "hadouken" motion) and hitting the shot button as Joe Tiger releases his special tornado attack fires off an arc of energy orbs.

The three players also have a move where holding back on the lever for two seconds and hitting forward and attack as the player glows. This fires a wide-angle forward attack. The command attacks range from basic inputs, such as Rayar Dragon's Flaming Multiplying Trick (which can be achieved by rapidly pressing the primary attack button), to Ryu Eagle's Triple Wave Blast (which requires a complex input motion worthy of later entries in The King of Fighters series).

The attempt at individual character design doesn't stop there, either. The characters all have a unique transformation power-up that can be achieved by collecting three hidden scrolls during a stage. Upon obtaining them, the character shifts into a super-powered version of their namesake (Joe Tiger morphs into a tiger, for example) and for a few seconds they can wreak havoc on their foes.

At the bottom of the screen, the three ninjas all have a running commentary on the assorted actions taking place, which varies from typical anime-style attack narration to acknowledging the effects of health pick-ups. During the game's attract or demonstration mode, they also have short blurbs detailing their ninja credentials. This reveals that Ryu Eagle is known as the "32nd Kotaro Fuma." Fuuma Kotarou was the name used by the real life leader of the Fuuma ninja clan, Kazama Kotarou. Alpha Denshi also used him as a character in their World Heroes series of fighting games, thereby linking the two franchises by way of Japanese folklore.

While the characters may have a surprising amount of gameplay depth for a run-and-gun of its time, unfortunately the rest of the game doesn't have many more tricks up its sleeve. All of the levels are fairly straightforward and offer little enemy or gameplay variety. Dispatching generic foes or environmental objects results in health pick-ups, collectible transformation scrolls, or coins that are used for post-level health restoration. On the plus side, each stage has solid mid-boss fights, as well as end boss battles against massive foes. These are capped off with a satisfying, screen-filling wall of flame and a shower of coins to snatch up.

After the initial stage where the ninja commandos burst into the Mars Corporation to stop Spider's time machine, it malfunctions and sends them to four stages in history at random. One of these is the Era of Three Countries (more commonly known as "The Three Kingdoms" period), set in ancient China. The mid-bosses here are the Zhang brothers and Han general Lu Bu. The Egyptian Dynasty stage has a mid-boss fight against a trio of mummies, and ends with a battle against King Tut. The third possible stage is set in the Japanese Sengoku period. A duo of Sumo wrestlers serve as mid-bosses to legendary daimyo Oda Nobunaga. The final random stage is set in the primitive era, where historical characters are traded for the fantastical. Here the mid-boss is a giant caveman, and the end boss is Robosaur, a giant lizard whose mechanical parts are exposed during the conflict.

After the four random time periods, the sixth stage set in World War II ramps up the difficulty and offers up an armored train, as well as an oversized mega tank to destroy for its bosses. The seventh and final area brings it all back to the Mars Corporation (but in the future). Three of the stage bosses, Lu Bu, King Tut, and Robosaur are brought back here for a boss rush, but with lesser health. After a climactic battle against the Central Computer, the game ends as the heroes dash away into the sunset, off to find their next adventure.

Ninja Commando certainly doesn't overstay its welcome, as the whole game doesn’t take tremendously long to conquer. The sugar rush of the premise wears off towards the end and there isn't much to reward the player, aside from comical "engrish" quotes that occur during the various level cutscenes. Alpha Denshi tested the waters of chronal adventures inspired by Ikari Warriors with Time Soldiers in 1987. However, aside from some graphical updates, the fighting game mechanics, and the loopy story, it's hard to say they evolved the formula greatly here in the intervening five years.

This isn't to say that Ninja Commando isn't a satisfying overall package. It just feels more like something worth pulling off of a shelf every once in a while (or loading up the Arcade Archives digital release) for a bit of two-player fun before moving on to games that offer more depth. Even so, this is an enjoyable stop along the way. Beyond the usual digital re-releases, it’s also contained on the ADK Damashii compilation for the PlayStation 2.

Shock Troopers

Original Release: 1997

Platforms: ARC, NGEO, PS2, PS3, WII, LIN, WIN, MAC, PS4, NSW, XBO, IOS, AND

Arriving in arcades in 1997, Shock Troopers takes influence from many of the overhead run-and-gun shooters that came before it, in the vein of Ikari Warriors and Mercs. It executes ideas with a level of variety befitting this heritage, as well as using some of the pre-rendered graphics techniques that would be widely found in its sequel. The game came from Saurus, an SNK second-party developer with a wide variety of titles under their belt, including the shoot-em-up Ironclad and fighting game Ragnagard.

Characters here are moved by operating the eight-way lever, while the first three buttons control the player's other actions, such as shooting, evasive maneuvers, and special weapons. Holding the shot button instead of tapping it also locks the player's angle, so they're able to strafe while moving in any direction. It feels natural, as a sort of simplification of Ikari Warriors’ rotary joystick approach.

If the player chooses to go solo (the "LONLY WOLF" [sic] mode), the fourth button has no function. However if "TEAM BATTLE" mode is chosen, you get to select three out of eight available characters, and can swap between your chosen team members as they go. The primary and secondary weapon variety doesn't drastically alter gameplay or give certain characters an overwhelming advantage, but their individual stage perks give incentive to try out the whole roster for some replayability.

Acquired special weapons replace your primary attack and come with limited ammunition, such as Vulcan cannons and flamethrowers, and are shared between all three characters. Further, there are two versions of the game’s ROM that affect how either mode plays out.

In version A (single-soldier play), the life bar is substantially stronger, but only one life is available per credit. For Team Battle mode, the three characters all share one life bar that doesn't start off completely full — and based upon the character's star rating for a certain level, they may have faster movement or a life bonus. The game is over once the life bar is depleted, regardless of characters remaining. This version isn’t as widespread and seems to be found primarily on the earlier MVS cart releases (this game wasn’t officially released for the AES format), and was used for the PS2/Wii SNK Arcade Classics Volume 1 compilation.

Version B is considered the more common release. Players receive twice the damage of Version A for solo mode, however they have three lives to use as compensation. The star rating isn’t visually provided to players at the start of a mission either, but is present on the back end, and will again affect the character's stage perks. For Team Battle, the three chosen soldiers don't share a life bar, so your credit's three lives are doled out to each character. The soldier roster can be increased to include all eight players via the "HERO" mode in the dip switch settings, and only the soldiers remaining when the game is completed are shown during the ending. The recent Arcade Archives release by Hamster Corporation uses Version B. The differences between either type can’t be accessed in the dip switch settings though, and are based upon the release edition.

In addition to the surprisingly tactical soldier configuration choices, the player is given the option of taking Jungle, Mountain, or Valley routes as they attempt to eliminate a terrorist group known as the Bloody Scorpions. Each of these paths feature unique stages that all end on the same final area. At a certain point, the player can even switch to a different route, greatly increasing the game's replayability factor.

In terms of audio, the game's score is suitably influenced by heavy metal and composed by Masahiko Hataya and Masaki Kase. It's distinctly memorable for its presence during in-between stage cutscenes, and the drum and bass boss battle music track "Dark Matter" as well.

Enemy soldiers have an impressive degree of attack variety and unique death animations here, giving ample reason to wipe out the endless hordes of foes. Your opposition rarely exceeds six enemies on-screen at a time though, and can be managed very easily without fears of a "bullet hell" situation.

Each stage ends with a boss fight that’s generally against a tank or helicopter, though a few have fights against soldier bosses with unique weapons and attack patterns. These don't feel particularly memorable, but the final confrontation against the enemy leader aboard the airship delivers a particularly satisfying resolution to the story. The surviving soldiers also receive a unique image inserted into the game's ending sequence, showing their lives post-combat.

All in all, the reputation of Shock Troopers as being among the genre's finest is certainly well-deserved. Fans of all skill levels should be able to find something to enjoy here.

Shock Troopers: 2nd Squad

Original Release: 1998

Platforms: ARC, NGEO, WII, LIN, WIN, MAC, NSW, PS4, XBO, IOS, AND

Arriving in late 1998, Shock Troopers: 2nd Squad was released as a Neo Geo MVS cart for arcades and the AES home console. Several changes were made from the original release that invite substantial comparisons to the Metal Slug series (which are completely warranted). Many of these may have been contributing factors to the franchise stopping after the second game.

In typical arcade fashion, the story is detailed via the attract mode. The Dio International Corporation (D.I.C.), a weapons manufacturer, is attempting a coup d’état in the recently established nation of Billberk. The armament reduction policies of Billberk’s president, Eddie Axel, runs contrary to D.I.C.'s business model, so their leader Nakatomi floods the nation with hired troops to establish a new government. Subsequently, the U.N. Security Council enlists a team of four elite soldiers who have 72 hours to oust Nakatomi and the D.I.C. corporate army before they unleash their ultimate weapon. According to the game’s soundtrack liner notes, they were gathered by Lieutenant Colonel Anderson who brought together the original game’s Delta Storm team to defeat the Bloody Scorpions.

Similar to the first game, player motion and shooting direction is handled by the joystick, and holding the shot button locks in the angle for strafing. Each character also has a unique melee attack when enemies are at close range. The game now has a shot strength power-up system, as well as limited-use special weapons that can be picked up. These vary from genre staples like missile launchers and flamethrowers, to unique options like a boomerang shot and a chargeable, eight-direction orb shot. The default shot power-ups are plentiful, and upon a player’s death these are left behind for the next soldier to pick up, so the game doesn’t make you labor to recover strength the way many shoot-em-ups would.

Bomb attacks are assigned to the B button here, and the C button serves as your evasive maneuver, which also provides a short window of invulnerability. This can be very handy in later levels, as the game leans more into a “bullet hell” approach during boss encounters. Players once again have a health bar, but can’t endure very much damage before one of their three lives per credit are spent. Additionally, the C button can now be used to enter vehicles, a new feature for this entry.

The vehicle options include a tank, a Jeep, and a mecha, with controls similar to your character. The only difference is holding down the shot button now charges up your vehicle’s special attack, which unleashes a powerful blast. In contrast to the Metal Slug series, there’s no usage of your on-foot stock of bombs, so the charged attack can be used as much as you please. Further, hitting A+B will sacrifice the vehicle as a powerful “Shock Attack”.

The most notable change from the first title is the “Team Battle” mode’s absence. With only four players to choose from (reduced from the original’s eight), the roster doesn’t necessitate switching during play. At the same time, this also removes one of the features that made the original game stand out. On the plus side, the characters are designed well and featured during in-game overlays, which allow them to showcase their personalities. Each person has a codename displayed during their selection too, part of which is shown with their name during play.

Another alteration is the inclusion of plates with an alphabet character within each stage. Collecting a letter that corresponds with your character’s codename gives an end mission bonus. If two players give the mission a go, each combination has their own unique codename, so if Leon & Toy are chosen, the displayed codename will be “STEEL SHARKS”. Lulu and Toy are “NEO STARS”, etc. The game doesn’t give these people much background or develop their personalities in a meaningful way, but the game’s soundtrack and manual provide insight into their history and connections to the first entry.

Graphically, the game is a bit of a mixed bag. Saurus had some experience with using pre-rendered sprites in the prior entry, as well as the fighter Ragnagard — but like the latter, the usage here sticks out like a sore thumb. The contrast of the sharp, pre-rendered explosions with the squat-bodied characters can feel jarring at times and really dates the game’s look. The first title’s minimal use of this technique doesn’t detract from the overall package, and as a result it feels timeless in comparison.

The one advantage the sequel has is that the boss battle sequences feel more memorable, as they focus on large vehicles or building defenses that have multiple segments that must be destroyed to achieve victory. However, this can come at the price of performance, as the action on-screen often overwhelms the hardware, and even modern ports of the game suffer from severe slowdown during the stage boss sequences.

The audio is once again by Masaki Kase, who worked on the original’s soundtrack. In typical era fashion, the sounds are a blend of many genres — never really leaning on one long enough to define it, but working well as a complete package. Similar to the first game, the boss battle tracks truly stand out, “Pale Killer” in particular being a fan favorite.

It’s hard to say if Shock Troopers: 2nd Squad’s changes to the formula were warranted, considering the sacrifices watered down its uniqueness. The game was released in November 1998, nine months after Metal Slug 2 and four months prior to Metal Slug X’s release, so it could have theoretically claimed its piece of the proverbial pie. Nazca’s series was overcoming slowdown issues of its own at the time and improving itself. The game is still worth a look today, but it definitely feels like the decisions to live in Metal Slug’s shadow kept it from earning a third entry in the series. It doesn’t seem as popular as the first, and hasn’t received as many re-releases.

Demon Front

Original Release: 2002

Platforms: ARC, NSW

Taiwan-based developer IGS is primarily known for their PolyGame Master arcade hardware, which was positioned as a Neo Geo MVS competitor in the late 90s/early 2000s in Asia. Some notable titles for this platform include the Oriental Legend and Knights of Valour series of beat-em-ups, the fighting game Martial Masters, and Demon Front, a run-and-gun released in 2002.

One look at Demon Front makes it pretty clear that this is an homage (or rip-off, if you're less generous) of SNK's Metal Slug. It features the same dense pixel artwork, the same elaborate combination of contemporary war machinery with a bit of the supernatural, and the same type of comical enemies who panic and die amusingly as you gun them down. It doesn't seem like IGS actually stole any of Metal Slug's artwork here, but it wouldn’t be surprising if they traced over a lot of it.

The designs here are a little strange, straddling the line between super deformed and merely cartoonish, and the enemies are strangely chubby. The color palette has more saturated colors too, giving it a brighter feel. The PolyGame Master displays at a higher resolution than the Neo Geo, so everything looks a bit crisper. Plus, the game runs at 60 FPS rather than Metal Slug's 30. While superior from a technical standpoint, combined with the "almost-but-not-quite-the-same" graphics, it gives the experience a kind of off-brand, daytime soap opera feel. Still, the pixel art is very well done, and everything is generally animated nicely.

However, while it uses very similar visuals, Demon Front has its own off-kilter personality. Rather than featuring a European war theater, it takes place on a planet called Anders, where humans and monsters cohabit peacefully. That is, until alien invaders move in, and it's up to the squad of plucky resistance fighters to defend their home. You can choose from one of four characters: Jake, a human from Earth; Sara, another human, with purple hair; Dr. J, a cool scientist who looks like a cross between Cyclops from X-Men and Gordon Freeman from Half-Life; and Maya, a humanoid ape. You go through six levels, with three being selectable from the start, two more that are unlocked after, and one that gets revealed at the end.

The controls here are similar to Metal Slug, though the pacing is a little faster. However, rather than grenades, each player has their own unique flying pet, which hovers about their shoulder. Holding down the fire button will then unleash a special attack. Jake's pet is some kind of dragon that unleashes a barrage of flames, while Dr. J's is a one-eyed robot that creates a field of electricity. Sara's has a rabbit that creates homing projectiles that freeze whatever is in their way. Finally, Maya has a pterodactyl that creates wind blasts in a spread formation. Holding the jump button also makes the characters float, as opposed to dropping down like they usually would.

The C button will also turn your pet into a shield, which can protect against various projectiles. However, the pet has its own life bar, and if it runs out, they disappear until the player dies and respawns. Life can be regained for the pet by knifing various enemies up close (done in the same fashion as in Metal Slug). Disposing of enemies with projectile attacks will generate little skulls that strengthen your familiar, all the way up to level 9, increasing its attack capabilities.

There are the usual special weapons with limited ammo too, which include standards like machine guns and shotguns, with some interesting choices like a freeze gun. At least the machine guns are handed out regularly, so you're rarely stuck with the default pistol for too long.

Each stage is plainly announced with gigantic letters and a booming announcer, having been granted such descriptive titles as "Falls," "Snow," and "Temple". The bosses are announced with similar gravitas, and they include several Metal Slug-type foes (e.g., a giant enemy crab, several mecha-looking beings, etc.), along with other offbeat creations (a giant tree). After a boss is defeated, it reverts to a weaker form as a possessed artifact flies out of it. You then have to shoot this artifact in order to get as many bonus points as possible. At the end of a playthrough, a code is given to the player for them to enter on a website and see how they rank against other players.

Demon Front is rather shameless, but it's actually pretty good for a clone. The level designs are a little long and not quite as interesting as in Metal Slug, and it's lacking vehicles or anything similar, though perhaps that would've verged even closer into plagiarism territory. The pets are an interesting addition though, and there are enough weird things about it to show the developers weren’t only fans of SNK's series, but added their own odd sensibilities to it, too.

None of IGS' games received any home ports until the IGS Classic Arcade Collection, released in 2023 for the Switch. This compiles eight of their arcade games together, including Demon Front. However, it's the most barebones emulation possible, and it both runs and sounds fairly poorly. This is far from ideal, and disappointing considering it's the only official way to play the game.

Dolphin Blue

Original Release: 2003

Platforms: ARC

Dolphin Blue is a bit of an oddity. Developed and published by Sammy for their Atomiswave hardware, it's a run-n-gun arcade game released in 2003, at a time when the genre was mostly out of the mainstream. It's also very obviously inspired by Metal Slug, which was the only other franchise in this vein that was still on the marketplace at this point.

Here you play as one of two characters — Eiro, an arms dealer who’s looking for some action, or Ann, a soldier out to protect the local kingdom. Each of them also have their own pet dolphins, which are blue and pink, respectively. The game is set in the future, and a major incident has transformed what used to be a peaceful nation into a troubled land of waste and ruin, damaging the Earth's surface and immersing most everything underwater. The heroes have to protect the Earth's remains from an evil empire that wants to take over the world, and rescue a princess figure in the process.

The premise might sound a lot like Waterworld, but can also be traced back to influential anime and manga like Blue Submarine No. 6 and Future Boy Conan, which also had similar ideas about a future Earth flooded by the ocean.

Dolphin Blue's five stages are divided over three different styles of gameplay — on land, over the water, and underwater. The land sections are the most reminiscent of Metal Slug. The above water areas are auto-scrolling as players ride their dolphin above the waves, and are similar to the vehicle stages in Contra. Finally, the underwater segments are much slower and feel more akin to horizontal shoot-em-ups.

Enemies range from standard ground troops to armored tanks and even battleships and dropships. There are extra weapons too, with limited ammo, including Gatling guns, heavy Gatling guns, two different types of missiles, and something called the "melt gun" that shoots flares like a machine gun. Like Metal Slug, you can also stab enemies at close range.

In addition to your equipped weapon, you can also use a special attack. On land, your character dashes forward, launches up in the air, and shoots a few missiles at the enemy. This is a useful maneuver to attack enemies from behind cover. Over water and below, it makes the dolphin launch straight ahead and boomerang back to your character. This isn't quite as effective though, since it's hard to control the trajectory. This special attack is powered by a meter, which fills up to three levels automatically over time. You can use the move whenever you want, but it’s naturally more effective with more levels stockpiled.

The world of Dolphin Blue takes on the look of a city devastated by war and immersed in water. Once-vibrant Japanese towns are now in shambles, with nary a civilian in sight. Warships roam rampant over new oceans.

This is in addition to the players and enemies being drawn with sprites, while the backgrounds and larger vehicles are modeled with polygons. It's similar to Capcom's Strider 2 from a few years prior, though it looks much cleaner thanks to the arcade board's higher resolution. The style is also reminiscent of Hard Corps: Uprising by Konami, which was released several years later. The characters are drawn in a bright, anime style and are quite well-animated, consisting of many little touches like the diver enemy's suits inflating when you shoot them.

The polygons have that certain classic Naomi charm too, where they're not as shimmering as the PS1 or blurry as the N64, but still simple enough to be considered low-poly (although the water effects do look a bit antiquated). There are a number of cool details throughout as well, like your dolphins appearing far in the background as you fight on land. Further, many of the levels have you chasing foes as they escort the kidnapped princess to their base, lending a sense of urgency to the action. Though several bosses ride assorted vehicles and machinations, they're introduced by portrait at the beginning of the stage, giving the game some extra personality.

The soundtrack does a really good job of building up tension and action as well, consisting of orchestral scores that almost sound like they're lifted directly from Metal Slug. It should be no surprise that the composer, Akihiro Uchida, was a composer for SNK (though he mostly did music for The King of Fighters and never worked on Metal Slug). The sound effects are alright, although the death screams of the player characters can get a bit annoying after a while, especially for how frequently they happen.

As expected for an arcade run-and-gun, Dolphin Blue is extremely difficult, often even more so than the Metal Slug games. You start with three lives, you die in a single hit, and there are no shields or extra lives. Weapon power-ups aren’t prevalent as they should be either, and your main gun is ineffective for anything but the simplest enemies. Additionally, since there’s no automatic fire, you need to hammer the button to get a constant stream of bullets. The special attack that replaces the grenades in Metal Slug isn’t nearly as useful either, since it directly puts you in danger, plus it can't be used as often. As a result, unless you play this game perfectly, you'll be constantly overwhelmed by your opponents.

Despite the unique setting, there's nothing particularly original about Dolphin Blue other than, of course, the dolphins. Pretty much everything it does can be found executed better in the Contra and Metal Slug games. However, even if it's somewhat unpolished, it still has a great visual style and is worth checking out for anyone interested in an off-brand run-and-gun. This was never ported to any consoles either, so it's fair to assume that it was probably a commercial failure. However, like other Atomiswave games, it’s been hacked for use on the Dreamcast, albeit with some technical compromises.

Mad Motor

Original Release: Unreleased

Platforms: ARC

Mad Motor is a game not many people have heard of, which is understandable since it wasn't technically released. Developed by Mitchell, known for puzzle games like the Buster Bros. series and a few arcade entries like Cannon Dancer, it’s a post-apocalyptic motorcycle ride where you fight off legions of other gangs.

This game is fast, with a constant stream of enemies trying to run you off the road, along with a few pitfalls and jumps to navigate at the same time. You control this with a joystick and just two buttons, one for accelerating and one for attacking in whatever direction our hero is facing. Fortunately, the resident Mad Motorist has a pair of metal tonfa strapped to his arms, allowing him to steer while still clubbing enemies at a distance.

Players are only given one life before having to pop in another quarter, but when you’re almost dead, Mad undergoes a painful transformation, screaming "I'm alive...WOLF POWER!" as some close up artwork of his changes and is flashed across the screen. From this point on, a single hit will end the game. Conversely Mad is much stronger, his attacks have a wider range thanks to massive blades mounted on his elbows, and even his bike transforms into a bigger machine. As players become more skilled at the game, it's worth getting to this point intentionally as one can reach a much higher score by using Mad's newfound abilities to their fullest. His giant werewolf form is clearly inspired by the art of Go Nagai and wouldn't look out of place in Devilman or Violence Jack.

After defeating the boss of Central Park, level two has players riding over the Grand Canyon (“The Ravine”), while stages three, four, and five are called City Island, Desert, River Side, and Cony (sic) Island, before returning to Manhattan for the finale.

All of this makes for a focused and manic game, with vehicles constantly skidding out and exploding all over the screen. It's very satisfying to learn as well, since one has to actually hit the center of mass of an enemy vehicle with Mad's tonfa, making mindless button mashing worthless in the face of good timing. This, along with being able to ram enemies by braking at the right time, helps keep up the game's intense pace and makes for the kind of rewarding experience that all great action games work to achieve.

The downside is that it’s incredibly repetitive, and outside of the backgrounds, you’ll see everything that’s on offer by the third stage. Plus, most of the screen is taken up by the road itself, which quickly becomes monotonous. This might be why Mad Motor was never released, but it would’ve been a good aesthetic fit for other gritty arcade games published by Data East in this era, like Two Crude and RoboCop.

Gundhara - Juudan Arashi

Original Release: 1995

Platforms: ARC

Banpresto’s Gundhara (a pun that refers to an ancient Indian civilization, but also translates to “Bullet Storm”) is something of an anomaly — a Commando-style overhead run-and-gun released in 1995, at a time when these types of games were all but dead. Published by Banpresto, it’s believed to have been developed by Moss, a company made by former Seibu Kaihatsu developers who worked on the Raiden games. As either Jerry Scott and/or Jinn Ayakawa, you blast through six stages full of criminal goons and war machines. Whatever scraps of plot exist mention that a private investigator (or "inrestigater" as spelled in-game) named Sarah has uncovered a terrible child trafficking ring, where kids are brainwashed to prepare for the initiation of World War III. This takes the boys through battlefields, a long highway, and various enemy bases before ending up at the looming skyscraper serving as the leader's headquarters. There are also several big bosses to fight, most of which are big vehicles like tanks and helicopters, but the most inexplicable is the third, a large Buddha statue that also contains a serpentine dragon.

Jerry and Jinn can pick up five different weapons: Vulcan, Shotgun, Laser, Bazooka, and Fire, each with their ups and downs. The Shotgun is easily the crappiest weapon, while the Bazooka seems to be the strongest. You can also pick up homing missile side pods that your character dual-wields with their main gun. There are briefcases as well that give you additional bombs when you grab enough of them, a requisite of shooters around this time. The two heroes actually have different bombs, with Jerry launching a massive spread of fiery shots forward, and Jinn doing a sumo stomp while spreading grenades in every direction. Jerry’s is much better in practice, since it’s a lot more focused against bosses, which will probably be your main reason for using bombs. For everything else, you can also perform a spin kick. This destroys most projectiles, and is paramount to making your quarter last longer.

Gundhara isn’t an especially original game, but it is fairly well-polished, even if it can be very tough at times. You’re also booted back to a checkpoint after losing all of your lives and continuing, leading to frustration against some of the bosses. The final stage is especially gratifying though, where the soldiers are switched out for Mafia-esque men in suits who flood out of every corner. The fact that you’re fighting through an opulent high-rise only makes the climax even cooler. The big boss looks at first like he might die without a fight, until lasers pop out of the walls and his armored desk rises to point two big guns at you. That’s Gundhara in a nutshell: Gratuitous coolness and lots of projectiles.

Heroic Episode

AKA: Youjuuden (JP)

Original Release: 1986

Platforms: ARC, PS4, NSW

Ever the deniers of mercy, Irem is best known for their reputation of making soul-crushingly difficult games. This extends to many of their lesser-known works, such as Heroic Episode, a relatively brief title that still offers no quarter to those looking to conquer it. In Japan the game is called Youjuuden, which translates to “Legend of the Wicked Beast”.

This is a run-and-gun in the vein of Commando, but set in prehistoric times. Here you guide a bearded knight looking to fight off enemy forces who’ve stolen a goddess' statue for unknown reasons. The setting appears to be vaguely ancient Greek, though all we know for sure is that your player character represents the Mule people and your enemies are the Gasp Empire.

Your hero has adequate mobility and two projectiles, one of which fires in whatever direction he's facing, and a stronger one that always goes straight up no matter what, an inverse of how Konami's Jackal worked in some versions. The smaller projectile shoots fast and takes care of common riffraff, like the red-eyed humanoid soldiers and the green winged reptiles. There are also larger and/or sturdier targets though, like stone statues and weird, red, quadruped pig demons. The large projectile is also needed to damage bosses, like the cyclops that bursts in with an insanely loud roar, only to repeatedly shout each time it takes a hit. Your projectile becomes stronger and faster with each blue potion you find, which is good since its initial range isn’t excellent.

Some sections have the hero sprout wings and play out like a more traditional shoot-em-up, with patterns of small enemies flying in from the sides and, while you still have both projectiles, the smaller ones can only be shot forward during these segments. You switch between land and air quite a few times before reaching the end, if you ever do reach the end. Remember, this is an Irem game, and they don't want you to win.

While seemingly less brutal than their other works at first, the second big boss (a Medusa-like figure) shoots out these very tricky snake projectiles that are almost guaranteed to ruin any hot streaks up to that point. The enemies only get more numerous and the bosses more evil from that point onward, and any blue potions you’ve found go kaput when you get hit, leaving you underpowered on respawn.

Add the inability to continue on top of all that, and Heroic Episode isn’t going to be a game many people will want to beat. While its somewhat original setting places it apart from other genre entries, it’s not exactly a lost classic and was mostly forgotten. It's worth a try as a curiosity, but it's staggering to look at this game's old-school graphics and compare them to R-Type, which only came out one year after.

Soldier Girl Amazon

AKA: Sei Senshi Amatelass (JP)

Original Release: 1986

Platforms: ARC, PS4, NSW

Soldier Girl Amazon stars a blonde, swimsuit-swearing heroine, armed with a gun and a shield, as she runs forwards and blasts enemies with abandon. One of the early run-and-gun clones of Capcom’s Commando, it plays quite similarly, with the titular Amazon wielding both a forward-firing weapon as well as a limited number of grenade-like bombs, which explode at a set distance. These also freeze any on-screen foes in their place, though they still shoot at you, so this function isn’t too useful. Despite the sword and shield featured on the logo and in the game’s flyer, the heroine doesn’t actually use these, but she can jump on top of a flying bike, which increases both her firepower and lets her take some extra damage. Further power-ups also give the bike covered armor and grant temporary invincibility.

Developer Nichibutsu was at the forefront of the shoot-em-up genre with early titles like Terra Cresta, and that design shows through in Soldier Girl Amazon. Enemies almost always attack together in set patterns, often appearing at the top of the screen and weaving their way downwards. It’s almost like you’re playing Commando mixed with Galaga. The enemies are an odd bunch too. Beyond the usual soldier guys, you’ll contend with devilish fish and maniacal jumping squirrels. Some enemies throw bananas at you, and power-up treasure chests occasionally spawn deadly spiders to trick you.

Still, in spite of some originality, this is also a pretty basic experience. Soldier Girl Amazon technically has 10 levels, but all of them look and feel identical. You’ll fight through some fields and forests, and then some ruins, occasionally mixed up by a few ponds. There’s no ending though, so the game loops after the tenth stage, but the first area looks nearly identical to the last, so it’s hard to tell the difference. The stages only really vary in their boss battles, but even these are recycled throughout the game. Technically you’re supposed to be rescuing captured soldiers, though these pop up when you kill bosses, so you don’t need to hunt for them.

Ninja Emaki, another genre entry developed by Nichibutsu, came out later in the same year as Soldier Girl Amazon. It’s a much more advanced title in design, leaving this feeling a little old fashioned, even by 1986 standards. Still, the run-and-gun action is solid, and both the novel protagonist and the bizarre enemies give it that typically 80s Japanese arcade game charm.

The Japanese title translates to “Holy Warrior Ametelass”, though the Japanese spelling of the name is actually “Amaterasu”, the Japanese sun goddess. It’s an unusual title since it suggests a Japanese mythological setting, which this game doesn’t use.

Heated Barrel

Original Release: 1992

Platforms: ARC

TAD Corp's Heated Barrel is an auto-scrolling run-and-gun where you control one of four heroes in the Wild West, gunning down everything in sight. In fact, it's a lot like Capcom's Gun.Smoke from several years prior, only it scrolls horizontally rather than vertically. Playable characters include cowboys Howdy Partner, who uses a shotgun; Billy Six Guns, who has a revolver; Chi Chi Gringo, a Mexican who wears a sombrero and attacks with boomerangs; and Little Plum, a Native American who throws tomahawks. Despite the different weaponry, each of their attacks are identical, with the only upgrade being a power-up that fires two projectiles at once. You also have a limited-use special power where you hop in a barrel and cause it to explode, damaging everything around it.

There's not much else to Heated Barrel, but for a simple arcade game, that rootin'-tootin' run-and-gun action is all that you really need. It also supports up to four-player simultaneous action, though given how obscure the game is, it's hard to say how many of these full-size units were actually distributed.

You parade through the usual Wild West settings across five stages, including towns, forests, and canyons, along with some more unusual areas, like a literal ghost town where you fight haunted spirits, and a river where you're accosted by an angry native.

In fact, each of the bosses perishes with unique death animations. A Mexican gunslinger accidentally blows himself up with a bomb and scampers off of the screen, a fire-breathing Native American lights himself ablaze and disintegrates into ashes, a ball-and-chain wielding criminal smacks himself in the head and turns into an angel, and a demonic gravedigger gets dragged to the underworld by an enormous hand. It might sound gruesome, but it's all rather cartoony and silly.

However, Heated Barrel comes loaded with unfortunate stereotypes, particularly the Native American shaman who dances around and shoots fire. It's clear that the game was inspired by mid-20th century cartoons and films, and the cultural insensitivities were merely carried over from there. Even so, while the Japanese developers were likely unaware that these were problematic elements, such depictions were pretty dated by the time of the game's release, and feel even worse several decades later. To its credit, at least two of the player characters are minorities. This sidesteps the trope of the white savior taking out restless natives.

Heated Barrel was TAD's last game, with some of its members transferring over to Mitchell Corp. It's hardly the best effort from the company, but it provides some amusement as long as you can tolerate its dated sensibilities.

Funky Jet

Original Release: 1992

Platforms: ARC

Mitchell’s Funky Jet is one of several derivatives of the single-screen "destroy all enemies" formula defined by Bubble Bobble and Snow Bros. The premise has you and/or a friend play as a pair of boxing-glove-armed guys on jet packs who need to bop every enemy off of the screen. The reason why is unknown and absolutely no story is given whatsoever, but all you need to know is "fly" and "punch."

No jumping is necessary here as your joystick does all of the movement, and you have two attack buttons. The primary one quickly punches, with only a few required to defeat basic grunts and more needed for thicker foes. The other attack button has your jet do a spin which does very little damage on its own, but it swaps the position of the enemy in front of you and sets them in front of other potential foes in a line. Defeated enemies fly back so hard that they crash into any other characters right behind them, racking up lots of points and giving you a quantity of items depending on how many you crashed off in a single finishing blow. Some items make you faster, others make you stronger, another extends your range, and collecting five of these small, bullet-looking things makes your character invincible while comically flailing his limbs.

The enemies themselves are pretty basic, but there's a little variety besides the common goons who come in "80s dancer" and "mullet wrench-swinger" flavors. Some bigger mooks have robotic extendo-arms, others swing long iron pipes, and the ones who hide in barrels and jump out like frogs are quite annoying. You'll also face bosses ranging from the amusing (a ninja dressed in hot pink and what might be a football helmet) to the boring (a floating pair of teleporters that only generate more enemies). Every level (each one consisting of five rounds) also forces you to fight the same midboss, a commander of rival jetpack soldiers that keep homing in on your position, head-first. It's a fair challenge the first time, but ends up feeling like padding after the fifth round.

There are six levels that you can choose in any order, along with a seventh, extra-large final stage to play after they're all done, and it's the most tedious part of the game. You need to clear several rounds here filled with only one enemy type, you have to take on the jet pack commander yet again. You even have to fight two recycled bosses before taking on what appears to be the final boss, except there's the actual final boss fight after that too.

Funky Jet is a fairly fun and uncomplicated rush of energy, but it also grows monotonous as it continues. This is very much the virtual equivalent to potato chips in that it won't fill you up, but it can at least hold you over if you don't know what else to consume.

Rod Land

AKA: Yousei Monogatari Rod Land (JP)

Original Release: 1990

Platforms: ARC, AMI, AST, C64, ZX, CPC, NES, GB, IOS, EVR, NSW, PS4

Rod Land is one of those single-screen arcade games like Bubble Bobble or Snow Bros. In these, the goal is to kill all of the enemies on-screen before they kill you. Here, you control one of two fairies (the Japanese title means "Fairy Story") named Rit and Tam, whose goal is to climb a magic tower where their mother has been imprisoned. These cute little pastel buggers dispose of their foes by grabbing them with a magic wand and slamming them into the pavement repeatedly. It’s pretty amusing, all things considered, and much more direct than trapping foes in bubbles or rolling them in snow.

The catch, of course, is that you can only grab one enemy at a time, and it takes a few slams to kill anything. Opponents can be stunned by other ones that you've grabbed but not killed, which also plays an important part in the strategy. You can't jump either, at least in most of the versions, but you can create small ladders (out of rainbows) that let you climb between platforms.

Some of the highest locations can only be reached by riding on top of balloons, which float from the bottom of the screen in certain stages. Later on, you'll also find doors that warp you around the screen. You need to kill the enemies as soon as possible too, before "Meanie Mode" is activated, which floods the screen with tough baddies, spelling your doom.

Beneath all of this cute, yet slightly sadistic gameplay are some interesting scoring mechanics. Any foe, when killed, will randomly drop a weapon, which will automatically be activated when you pick it up. These include bombs, which take out everything in the immediate area; dynamite, which sends waves crashing left and right; tiny little white balls, which bounce around the screen; missiles, which charge straight forward; and "B" balls, which also bounce around a bit. Any enemy that's killed by one of these subweapons will in turn drop a fruit icon, which grants way more points than killing them outright.

The screen is also filled with flowers, which grant increasing score bonuses as you pick them up in succession. If you grab all of the flowers in the stage, the enemies turn into what appear to be peaches. Any enemy you kill after this point will drop a letter. If you manage to spell out “EXTRA”, you'll earn a bonus life. This mode then deactivates and you proceed to the next area.

As you progress through the game, there are a few boss fights, although they don't really utilize any of the more interesting mechanics. They get progressively weirder though, consisting of alligators, whales, and elephants. This culminates in a battle where you need to fight several forms of a Minotaur, who eventually grows to the height of the entire screen while donning wings and armor.

There's also a "hidden" extra mode, which consists of 31 additional stages, complete with new backgrounds, enemies, boss battles, and story scenes. This time around, you need to find your lost father, who went off exploring in a pyramid and promptly disappeared. This means that instead of climbing up a tower, you're delving deep into the Egyptian underground, which is apparently populated by robots and other assorted mecha.

Rod Land is a fun if slightly unremarkable game, but it ended up being quite popular in Europe, where it was ported to several microcomputer platforms. It landed on the NES / Famicom and Game Boy as well, courtesy of Sales Curve and published by Jaleco. (It wasn’t released in North America.)

Like many 8-bit console ports, the NES version takes the template of the arcade game and does its own thing, and this really works out for the best. The basics are much the same here, except the sprites are quite a bit smaller, the action is tighter, and the speed is noticeably faster. Slamming enemies into the ground is actually a lot more satisfying now, and the screen feels less cluttered, even though there are generally even more foes appearing at once. There's also a rather thorough options screen, which lets you enable the ability to jump, alter the color of the characters, or change their names. (Try putting in some vulgar initials like “SHT” to watch their embarrassed expressions.)

The soundtrack is also much, much improved. The arcade game sounded like bootleg circus music, while the NES tunes are bouncy without being annoying. It all feels similar to Commodore 64 SID chip music, giving it a very distinctive, European feel.

The visuals don't change much either — halfway through the game, the background shifts from "sky blue" to "castle wall", and that's about all of the variation you get to see. Some of the boss encounters have been unwisely extended too, with brief side-scrolling action segments that really don't work well with the mechanics. Your credits are limited as well, but at least it keeps the game from getting too easy, and gives you an incentive to try for the bonus modes.

The Amiga and Atari ST versions are the closest to the original arcade release, offering up an even brighter color palette and marginally less irritating music. The difficulty is even toned down a bit. The Commodore 64 port looks somewhat similar to the NES game, minus its extras, but plays a bit slower. By comparison, the Amstrad version moves at a snail's pace. The Game Boy version actually features a background, unlike the NES port, but the levels themselves are a bit larger and the screen needs to scroll to keep up. This hampers the pacing, especially since you can't see all of the enemies on the stage at all times. However, you can now use your wand while climbing, which makes things a bit easier. There's also a mobile remake for Symbian phones, released in 2006. None of the ports appear to have the extra mode, and if any of them do, it sure is hidden. Although Rod Land never got a real sequel, the characters did pop up in the Jaleco puzzle game Soldam.

Snow Bros.: Nick & Tom

AKA: Snow Bros Special

Original Release: 1990

Platforms: ARC, NES, GB, MD, AMI, AND, IOS, NSW, EVR

While Toaplan may have been mostly known for shoot-em-ups, one of their most popular titles was Snow Bros., a Bubble Bubble-style single screen co-op action game. The heroes, Nick and Tom, are snowmen who use their powers to turn enemies into snowballs in order to rescue two kidnapped princesses. Once fully encased in snow, you can push foes and have them roll down the screen, destroying any other enemies they come in contact with. You can also ride the snowball yourself, becoming invincible as it careens downward. As an extra bonus, it even grants you a few seconds of invulnerability once it explodes.

It's a fairly simple premise on its face, but one that's quite enjoyable all the same. Since snow rolls downhill, it's obviously to your advantage to climb the stages as fast as possible, create an enemy snowball, then toss it down to knock out as many opponents as it can. Each stage is filled with platforms and walls that cause the snowballs to ricochet back and forth before it hits the ground, too. Further, enemies like to leap up and down between floors, so it's not quite as easy as it seems. That said, clearing the whole screen of enemies with a single snowball, leading to a huge combo score, is the single greatest joy Snow Bros. can provide.

Your snow beam travels a short distance but also moves at a small arc, making it possible to hit enemies on lower levels if you aim correctly. It also takes a few hits to fully encase someone, so you need to do it quickly before they escape. Defeated enemies drop sushi for point items — an odd item for snowmen to consume — and will also occasionally drop potions to increase your speed, power up your snow beam, or turn you into a large, invincible balloon to float around and dispose of opponents. If you grab a snowman face, four enemies will drop from the screen, and you get extra points if you clear them out before the time limit. Every 10 stages you'll also encounter a boss, which can be damaged with either your snow attacks or by encasing the enemies it tosses and rolling them back.

Snow Bros. was widely overlooked at the time of its release, because it is similar to so many other games, like Don Doko Don and Tumble Pop. Even so, its cute characters and snow-rolling mechanics have turned it into a cult classic, which also means that its home ports are quite expensive on the aftermarket.

Capcom published the 8-bit Nintendo ports in North America, while the Japan-only Mega Drive release came via Tengen. Since it's a simple game, they're all pretty solid ports, despite the visual downgrades in the 8-bit versions. The Game Boy release runs a little slower, plus it's missing the co-op mode. The NES and Mega Drive versions have additional story scenes that show Nick and Tom as humans, before they're turned into snowmen. The Game Boy and Mega Drive versions also have password systems to resume play at certain levels. The Game Boy version adds 10 levels to the arcade game's 50, making for 60 total; meanwhile, the Mega Drive adds 20 new levels of its own. Here, Nick and Tom have been kidnapped and you control the two princesses in order to rescue them. Oddly, despite not being snow people, they still use the same powers. The Mega Drive port is the best overall, and actually sounds a little better than the arcade version due to added percussion. Smartphone ports were also released, although these are just arcade emulations.

Ocean France also planned ports to various home computers, though none were officially released. The Amiga version was leaked in 2006, which shows it to be an excellent port, with nicely translated visuals and an excellent arranged soundtrack.

A remake called Snow Bros. Special was released in 2022 for Switch, published by Korean company Daewon Media and developed by CRT Games. This version redoes the graphics, expanding the levels to widescreen and redrawing the visuals as high resolution sprites. These revamped visuals walk the line between being cute and creepy, which was arguably the case for the original. Even so, it looks like all they did was take the old graphics, resize them with a filter, and perform a little bit of retouching. It’s all just a smudgy mess. You can choose between the arcade soundtrack and a new arranged soundtrack too, which feels a little anemic. However, you can't use the old graphics, so you're stuck with the new mode no matter what.

This version plays pretty faithfully, plus it adds in 30 new stages, with new enemies and bosses. Brand new to this version is the Monster Challenge mode, where you can unlock and play as any of the enemies, each with their own unique powers. This is paid DLC in the digital version, but comes included along with the retail release. It's mildly amusing, plus the various unlock conditions give you an incentive to repeatedly play the main game, but it doesn't drastically change the experience. While you have unlimited continues, there's no way to resume progress, so you always need to start from scratch.

Altogether, it's an okay remake, but it feels like more could've been done to expand on it. The original arcade game should've been included at the very least.

Snow Bros. 2: With New Elves

AKA: Otenki Paradise: Snow Bros 2 Original Release: 1994

Platforms: ARC, EVR

Snow Bros. 2 is pretty similar to the first, with the usual refreshed visuals and new levels. The biggest feature here is the addition of four-player co-op, doubling the option of its predecessor. Tom is out of commission this time, so Nick is the only snowman rep, but the other three all have their own unique powers to mix things up. Bobby attacks with lightning, Roy uses water, and Richard has wind attacks. Enemies encased with these attacks move differently than with standard snowballs.

You can also collect letters, and spelling out the full word "EXTRA" will grant another life and send you to the next stage. You can also jump downwards through platforms, a handy ability to more easily maneuver throughout stages. This is accompanied by a quick cut-in of what appear to be four colored beans in top hats, which celebrate with a little dance. Similarly bizarre cutscenes are also interspersed between the worlds.

Most of the game's six worlds have six stages, so it's quite a bit shorter than its predecessor. Worlds 3 and 6, however, have only a single stage that scrolls upwards, much like Rainbow Islands, where you have a time limit to reach the top.

Even though it doesn't change the core a whole lot, the extra players and added layer of weirdness make Snow Bros. 2 a quality sequel. However, it barely saw much of any distribution, as it was the last game Toaplan put out before their bankruptcy in 1994 and never saw any home ports. The title screen credits a company named Hanafram, which is never credited in any other game.

The Japanese version, subtitled Otenki Paradise ("Weather Paradise"), has a cutesy, cartoonish art style similar to the first game. However for some reason, the international release, christened as “With New Elves”, renders the characters on the selection screen as digitized images of human babies, retouched with a bit of pixelated coloring. It looks fantastically absurd, more like a meme image than something that made it into an actual professional video game. Moreover, it's not even consistent with how the character sprites actually look, which haven't been changed at all.

Nightmare in the Dark

Original Release: 2000

Platforms: ARC, NGEO

Developed by the obscure developer AM Factory and published by Gavaking and Eleven, Nightmare in the Dark was released exclusively for the Neo Geo MVS in 2000. Borrowing very heavily from Toaplan’s Snow Bros., you play as a lone grave keeper (or two grave keepers if playing with a friend) who takes on various monsters like zombies, ghosts, mummies, and hunchbacks, all in an arena platformer environment.

The player hits enemies with flames until they turn into a ball, after which they can be picked up and tossed at others. Take out several foes at once and you’ll unleash power-ups and score items. Most of these are similar to Snow Bros., including items to increase your speed and strength. The grave keeper himself is a little slower than in Toaplan’s game though, not only in his walking speed but also his rate of fire. Further, there are only 25 levels here, compared to that game’s 50.

The gameplay may be highly derivative, but Nightmare in the Dark really shines with its comically ghoulish presentation that makes it perfect for a Halloween game. The cartoonish sprites for the enemies are gorgeous, especially the sludge ghosts that have a lot of moving, gooey parts in their walk animation. The introductions for each stage are enticing as well, with bats that fly across the screen and words bleeding down into nothing. Even the backgrounds have some cool animated elements, such as moving grass or shimmering light.

The best parts, though, are the bosses. The Frankenstein boss in particular looks fantastic, with tons of personality in his movements and actions. The other bosses, such as a giant, armored skeleton knight, also have some visually amazing effects in their animations. The music is quite catchy as well, populated by a loud bass and a mix of jazz and funk.

Nightmare in the Dark came out in 2000, several years after Toaplan’s bankruptcy, so it fills a needed niche for this type of game, and it still has a strong visual identity. Perhaps due to its obscurity, it’s never been ported.

ZuPaPa!

Original Release: 2001

Platforms: ARC, NGEO, XBO, PS4, NSW, IOS

Nightmare in the Dark was already an oddity for a 2000 Neo Geo game, and ZuPaPa! finds itself in a similar situation. Developed by Face, known for the Neo Geo sorta-classic Money Idol Exchanger as well as some odd PC Engine games like Hani on the Road, it was revealed in 1994 but didn't come out until several years later in 2001. It's another game similar to Snow Bros. and Bubble Bobble, where you control one of two little dragon things — ZuPaPa and ZuPiPi — as they clear the screen of enemies. They can punch bad guys, but it's more effective to track down the friendly Zukkos in each stage, who will happily join up with you. By throwing them at foes, you can disable opponents and then knock them off the screen, sending a spiral star explosion that kills nearby enemies. The more Zukkos you toss at them, the larger the explosion, and the more enemies you kill at once, the more points and power-ups you'll receive as a result.

This helps set it apart from Nightmare in the Dark, which mimicked the mechanics in Snow Bros. a little too closely. On the other hand, the spiraling explosions just aren't as satisfying as sending snowballs or hellfire blasts bouncing around the screen.

Everything about ZuPaPa! is super bright and cheery. When you begin the game, you can pick from several stages, including an amusement park, a horror area with movie parodies, a Japanese-themed zone, a toy room filled with stuffed bears, a sci-fi themed room with UFOs and aliens, and several others. The variety of backgrounds and enemies give it a lively variation that keeps it from becoming too repetitive. Similarly, the soundtrack is appropriately themed to each section, though the shrill voices of the characters quickly become aggravating.

Unlike Nightmare in the Dark, which has long been stuck as a Neo Geo arcade exclusive, ZuPaPa! has been released as an Arcade Archives title, probably since it was published by SNK and is easily licensable. It's not at the highest tier of this type of single-screen platformer, but it's adorable in its own particular way.

Cabal

Original Release: 1988

Platforms: ARC, NES, C64, AMI, AST, CPC, ZX, IBM

In the arcades of the 1980s, most such games took place in a two-dimensional side-scrolling environment like Contra, or in top-down perspective like Commando. However, TAD Corporation, a short-lived Japanese developer comprised of former Data East staff, wondered what it would be like to give a third-person point of view to gun-based carnage. They ended up with Cabal, an arcade classic that spawned a short-lived subgenre. It was the first of several 3D third-person shooting galleries in which you had control of both your character and your targeting cursor, including Natsume's futuristic Western Wild Guns, Seibu Kaihatsu's Dynamite Duke, and SNK’s NAM-1975.

Cabal doesn't really have any story to it – you simply wage a one-or-two-man-army war on enemy forces across twenty different screens. You start out firing through ruined fields to reach an airport, blast through swamplands to wreck a private enemy hideout, obliterate one of their harbors, demolish a village under occupation, and end up infiltrating the enemy's desert headquarters. Your goal in each area is to kill all opposing soldiers and cause massive wanton property damage armed with nothing but an infinite-ammo rifle and several grenades. A meter at the bottom of the screen indicates your progress, turning from blue to red as you shoot down enemies and buildings, and you move on to the next level once it becomes entirely red. Whenever you clear a section, it's made apparent that Cabal doesn't take itself at all seriously. Victory causes your soldier to dance goofily across the battlefield and into the horizon set to a ridiculous jingle.

Initial cabinets shipped with a trackball, with two buttons used for shooting and grenades. In this version, you quickly roll the trackball to dodge. Later revisions supported a joystick, which adds a third button for dodging. While shooting, your character stays still as you move the cursor around; when not shooting, you simultaneously control your cursor and commando, who can only move left and right. Grenades do big damage to enemy vehicles and structures, but they are limited. You get ten grenades per life, though destroying special targets can give you extra grenades, and dying with less than ten in tow replenishes them. You can also grab a powerful machine gun that boosts your fire rate and a shotgun that increases your shot width and power. These bigger guns only last for about ten seconds (or until you die), so better deal maximum carnage while they're in your possession. You also have the ability to roll, a useful tactic which makes you temporarily invincible to fire but can be detrimental if you tumble into an errant bullet or cannon shell.

There's a fair variety of enemies in each stage, with common infantry units as the base fodder firing their rifles or tossing grenades at you. Elite soldiers (dressed in white as opposed to the normal green) tumble around and take more than one hit to defeat, though they often reward you with grenades when felled. Somewhat sadistically, two medics can run out on the field to take wounded soldiers away on a stretcher, and you can actually earn power-ups by shooting them as they run off. Aside from foot soldiers, you also have a whole heap of military machines attempting to take you down: Tanks, APCs, transport trucks, motorbikes, helicopters, and bomber planes are what you'll expect to face on your mission. At the end of every fourth sublevel, you face off against a gigantic boss machine, including a cannon-spamming twin helicopter, a well-armed submarine which attacks you in a pond, and a convoy truck which keeps driving by to drop sentry guns. These bosses are certainly manageable, but they're made tougher due to their lifebars resetting if you die against them even once. It's a bit frustrating to be held back if you can't get past a particular boss, albeit this solution is remedied in two-player mode where you continue on so long as your partner stays alive.

For its time, the graphics were quite serviceable, with decent animation quality for all the sprites and fitting backgrounds that resemble actual guerrilla warzones. A few of the areas do look a bit samey, but a nice touch is how the next stage often looms in the background of your current battlefield.

Cabal was popular enough to warrant several computer ports, though the ones for the Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, and IBM PCs are not really worth playing. The Amstrad version is particularly bad with no color in the battlefields and incredibly choppy action, and while the Spectrum version looks slightly better, it plays no less terribly, with both versions lacking in-game music. The PC speaker sound in the DOS version is beyond obnoxious, and the action is incredibly slow, but at least it gives you the victory jig unlike the other computer ports. The Commodore 64 version is a step up in terms of action pace, but this is only for the European version. A separately developed C64 version in the US is a considerably inferior port, with overall slower action and cruddier graphics.

Rare handled the NES port, has pretty competent graphics and retains the music. The best port is the Amiga version, which is a fairly accurate replication of the arcade game with slightly touched-up graphics and music. The Atari ST version also looks nearly identical to the Amiga rendition, even if the action is slower and the sound quality not quite up to par.

Blood Bros.

Original Release: 1990

Platforms: ARC

While Cabal received a modest cabal of fans (apologies for the pun), it also had a follow-up. This was known as Blood Bros., and while not a direct sequel in the strictest sense of the word, it may as well be “Cabal 2” in all but atmosphere. The biggest difference over its predecessor is its old Western theme.

Once again, Blood Bros. foregoes story for action, though based on what you learn in the end credits, it's apparent that an outlaw by the name of Big Bad John is searching for a gigantic treasure. The Blood Bros. hope to stop this nefarious goliath by blasting their way through anyone who stands in their path. Player one is a cowboy and player two is a Native American, giving more cosmetic difference between the two characters than just a mere palette swap. Their journey takes them through waterfalls and train tracks, a big lake leading to a besieged town, a bar fight, a big dry gulch, an oil field, an ominous cavern, and the treasure fortress where Big Bad John awaits them.

There's a lot more level variety here than in Cabal, with no two stages looking quite like each other, and they're a great deal more colorful to boot. The graphics are much brighter and enticing too, demonstrating the improvement that two years can bring to what is essentially the same hardware. The sounds are also beefed up, with the main tune being a catchy Western-style ditty that's more prominent than Cabal's theme.

Despite the fact that player one wields dual pistols while player two carries a rifle, their default fire is exactly the same. As in Cabal, you control both your character and your target cursor when your finger isn't held on the fire button, otherwise only the cursor moves. Grenades return in the form of dynamite sticks, and as before you’re granted 10 per life, with more to be earned from mass property and enemy damage. You also get shotguns that increase your damage and giant machine guns to speed up your fire rate, along with a roll maneuver to evade enemy fire.

Just like Cabal, the heroes engage in a happy dance across the battlefield after each win. On top of this, the goofy factor has been raised significantly higher, with your most likely source of munitions being pigs, of all things. If you shoot these cartoonish hogs as they run across the screen, they'll sprint quickly and drop weapons, with more to give if you can keep hitting them. Red ones give you dynamite, black ones drop shotguns, and pink ones dispense the heavy machine gun. There are even more silly targets like burlesque girls who give off points when shot, and squat Native American chieftains who always drop heavy machine guns.

The enemies are even more vicious here than in Cabal, with outlaws popping up in greater frequency than soldiers. Bomb-heaving convicts, armored wagons, armed blimps, old-timey planes, and horsemen chucking torches are among your adversaries. There are even some enemies who only appear in one stage in the entire game to break up the redundancy of normal foes, like gunmen paddling kayaks, drunken shooters in barrels, and what appear to be trios of Civil War Union soldiers.

Further, Blood Bros. ups the ante of potential collateral damage over Cabal with not only buildings up for wreckage, but also cave walls, stalactites, and other natural edifices. You essentially have a two-man wrecking crew at your potential command, but don't think too much about how a mere duo can obliterate an entire mountain with just guns and limited dynamite in stock.

The bosses are even spicier and more enjoyable than in Cabal too, like the titanic train which gradually drives into the foreground until it's only inches away from you, a massive zeppelin that blasts at you with its cannons, and a trio of giant birds who are somehow able to blast fire from their beaks. These fights tend to be harder than in Cabal, but thankfully you only have to restart them in single-player if you expend a credit, not if you only lose a single life. While the action is more madcap and decidedly harder here, the increased drop rates of dynamite and new guns allow you to end areas faster, provided you can live long enough.

Blood Bros. is bolder, louder, and arguably cooler than Cabal. If not just for the brighter graphics and more varied settings, it serves as everything a sequel should be by upping the ante while keeping the spirit of the original intact. Lamentably, unlike its predecessor, Blood Bros. received absolutely no known ports outside of its initial arcade release. It's also unfortunate that, for such a neat duo of games, TAD folded a few years later.

Pirates

Original Release: 1994

Platforms: ARC

Spanish developer Nix went so far as to completely rip off Cabal and Blood Bros. by making a “new” game, Pirates. As before, this could just as easily be Cabal 3, though with a 17th-century pirate aesthetic to the proceedings. Its controls and power-ups are exactly the same, the players and enemies have similar animations, and you can even cause untold amounts of property damage to clock down your "enemy meter". It does try a few original things at least, like allowing you to pick your starting level and requiring you to target specific parts of the background in order to destroy it. Danged if it isn't a weird game, though. How do pirates get access to automatic pistols in the Renaissance anyway? And what's with the flying witch who sounds like a goat and keeps popping up to give you grenades? Pirates is strange and derivative, but it’s still good, dumb fun like its obvious inspirations.

Hard Times

Original Release: 1994

Platforms: ARC

Blood Bros. received a hacked bootleg version called Hard Times thanks to an Italian company named Playmark. Its graphics were hacked wholesale while its gameplay remained the exact same, only instead of Old West cowboys shooting up outlaws, it was now made to cast the player characters as Prohibition-era gangsters waging a two-man war against other criminals.

It's an interesting new coat of paint, but it's still Blood Bros., albeit the new setting is a bit more ridiculous. Stage 2-1 has pimp-coated thugs scaling high-rise walls as if they were Spider-Man, and the replacement for the bird boss is some sort of flight suit man who looks like a DC Comics reject. The level order is also changed around in an effort to not make it a 100% retread, though stage 5 only includes the final segment and ultimately cuts out the three levels before it. As a result, it’s slightly inferior to the game it rips off.

Riot

Original Release: 1992

Platforms: ARC, PS4, NSW

Originality isn't always defined by how your game plays, but by how far you can take a concept and do absolutely everything possible with it. There are games that try, others that try harder, still others that try too hard, and then there's Riot. Some titles go overboard with their penchant for creativity at the risk of making no sense whatsoever, completely veering off of the road of relative sanity and ending up as amalgamations of confusion. And then, once again, there's Riot, an unassuming, side-scrolling, high-octane action shooter that takes elements from both Contra and Cabal to come up with a particularly memorable product. Rather, it would be noteworthy if it wasn’t so incredibly obscure. This was released by NMK, who put out a bunch of decent shooters and not much else. Still, regardless of clout, Riot may just be NMK's most impressive title ever thanks to the inclusion of some of the most hilariously stupid stages and situations seen in existence.

You play as...well. He's unnamed, but he's the basic blond and beefy Arnold Schwarzenegger-rip-off military type. The hero takes up his gun and fights against the Magic Tigers, a terrorist group laying siege to everything who must be stopped by any means necessary. That's all there is to it, but who cares about the plot in these sorts of things (save for this game's amazing ending, but that comes later). Riot is all shooting guys and backgrounds in a perspective similar to Cabal, where you control both your character and the gun cursor. A twist not seen in other titles of this genre is that you get assaulted from both the background AND foreground, where larger sprites drop down to a plane just in front of the screen and shoot at or toss explosives at you. Some such enemies even spit blow darts. Hence, you have two buttons, where one shoots at the background and the other expands the cursor to hit enemies located in the foreground.

The action gets incredibly hectic when you have to manage multiple sides and dimensions of the screen, and in several cases, you can't move on until you destroy every last enemy. Most stay at a distance and shoot or chuck explosives at you, with some moving up close to assault you personally. You can blow up floating, bullet-shaped packages to gain pills which restore your life bar, or you can get more powerful weapons such as shotguns, machine guns, and flamethrowers. You can take several hits before dying too, but if you have to continue, you do so on the spot. That's literally all there is to say about the game on paper, with three additional points to consider.       Unlike Cabal and its contemporaries, Riot lacks auto-fire, so you need to mash the fire button to generate each shot. This makes movement feel a bit stiff and awkward to manage, and this lack of a genre staple is the game’s primary shortcoming . Also, this game is a brutal quarter-muncher, as were many games of the era, and it's tough to survive for too long before you have to continue. Thankfully there's a two-player option that helps to curb the difficulty somewhat, and Riot is definitely best enjoyed when you have a partner on hand, where one can focus mostly on background enemies and the other concentrates on the foreground.

All things considered, besides the foreground assault gimmick, Riot plays pretty typically and would be relatively unremarkable were it not for the astounding setpieces which constitute the levels. This game is incredibly stream-of-consciousness in its design and gets dumber/awesomer the further in you travel. You start by dropping through the sky and hitting four conveniently placed tree branches on the way down, only to land in a shallow stream and not totally die. Then the rear fan of a hovercraft comes in soon after and blasts you over a waterfall, only for that plunge to send you sailing through four MORE tree branches and land on hard ground. You survive yet again for no good reason, and now find yourself on the set of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, with turban-clad guards trotting in to slash you with sabers, and large, moving spiked walls adorned with skeletons.

That's all pretty screwy enough, but the second level involves yet another preposterous fall, this time onto a moving train, which somehow houses a gorilla with long arms who wears a vest and takes a lot of punishment. The third stage is surprisingly demure in comparison, though it has a pretty fun screen where you get to shoot out a lot of bar bottles.

The fourth area takes place entirely within a helicopter which zooms over a varied landscape going from the country to the city, and if you pay attention, you'll notice the improbable vehicle is somehow able to tilt towards angles it shouldn't be able to reach. All bets are off by the fifth level though, which is in a department store of all things, with enemies popping out from behind cardboard cutouts and your protagonist rolling and smashing through glass panes. That danged fan from the first level even appears to hurtle you down two long neon signs in a brutal stunt that would make Jackie Chan proud. The final level is short but no less insane, where you blow crap up in a zen garden only to slowly move down a hidden elevator infested with giant bugs. Afterwards, spiked ceilings wait just outside of the gate to the enemy leader.

The real crown jewels of Riot's absurdity are the boss fights, naturally. You can already tell you're in for a winner when the first boss, a robed goblin who resembles Yoda crossed with Satan, teleports you to a black-and-red sky with an ominous castle looming in the background as he summons mud golems to attack you. The ensuing fights only get crazier from there, like a weirdo dressed akin to Hermes the messenger god backed up with four mafia-esque men, and a bizarre statue that looks like a giant blob of flesh with human souls trying to escape. Then you get warped to outer space as "Hermes" floats around while winged demons fly in to spit energy bullets at you. Other such battles include the general who morphs into a giant wolf/bear thing and an octet of skydivers who grenade-spam you. The penultimate boss is a duo of sorcerers who bear a faint semblance to Finn the Human from Adventure Time, and they (of course) transport you to a strange void filled with floating stone lions. And the big bad himself? He summons a dragon to zap you with its laser eyes. Oh, and a giant skull floats in the space background because it's evil.

Your reward for killing the final bad guy is a ridiculously drawn-out death where he is skeletonized and evaporates like Donovan at the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. All that's left is a red jeweled medallion which your hero...puts on a memorial cross before walking away? So was the bad guy your former friend or someone who was perverted by darkness, or is this some sort of ritual the hero engages in out of habit? An evil face appears on the medallion and the screen fades to black...only to fade back in and show the cross standing up throughout the four seasons with various animals floating about it. Then the ground moves as to indicate the old cliché of the bad guy's hand popping out to indicate that he's not dead...Oh, but wait, it's just a mole who dives right back into the soil. It all makes absolutely no damn sense.

And that's exactly why Riot deserves to be played. Not just for what it is but how inane and insane it gets. You'll never see a game this balls-to-the-wall today. Riot may place style over substance with ultimately difficult and shallow gameplay, but for what it is, it's also an unforgettable experience for anyone willing to turn their brains off and soak up the lunacy.

Spinal Breakers

Original Release: 1990

Platforms: ARC

1988's Cabal was a relatively simple but enjoyable affair, where your soldier dodges incoming enemy fire and returns his own bullets and grenades. Meeting a fair medium between Contra-style run-and-guns and Hogan's Alley light gun galleries, it seemed like the "Cabal Shooter" was fun enough to catch on, and a few other companies really got in on this style of gameplay. Amidst this brief cluster of imitators, Spinal Breakers was dropped into even greater obscurity. It's too bad it went unknown with a name like that, but it sounds more like a Mortal Kombat rip-off than a gun-centric affair.

Video System was always a relatively mediocre company, but they were briefly acknowledged for the shoot-em-ups Rabbit Punch and the Aero Fighters trilogy, before the core of that staff left and formed Psikyo. One can’t be blamed for missing anything by "V System", but even so, Spinal Breakers is worth a look for its amazing name alone. On top of that, the protagonist is a soldier named Captain Waffle, ranking up alongside "Ferdinand Social" from Master of Darkness and "Wink Baufield" from Phalanx as one of the most hilariously bad hero names ever. (He also appears in Aero Fighters 3.) Waffle is the only man left to fight after the "Hildroids", previously subservient to humanity, take over the world after a nuclear cataclysm. The spotty English of the opening cutscene makes it unsure exactly what the Hildroids are. They could be androids, zombies, or parasites that somehow cause a rift in time and bring back ancient soldiers to fight for them. Or maybe they're imitating the soldiers or somehow possessing them…It's confusing, whatever the case. In truth, it’s just a flimsy premise to gun down warriors from the past over seven Hildroid-infested countries.

The action here doesn't keep you on one screen, but instead moves you slowly to the right across a panoramic landscape, similar to Dynamite Duke and Riot. You move quite slowly too, perhaps a bit too casually for a projectile-ridden hellscape. Waffle's also a much larger sprite than most other Cabal shooters, and the enemies are usually only a few feet away from him, so opposing fire hits him pretty easily.

You start out with 32 life points per credit, but this tends to drain quickly if you're too offensive-minded, so you better make frequent use of the dodge button. You'll likely be spending half of the time in each level rolling out of the way, which can get annoying if you're averse to just feeding credits into the machine. It's a quarter-muncher to be sure, but Spinal Breakers does grant some concessions with power-ups that you obtain through property damage. Said "property" often includes formerly human corpses that explode in a gory splat when shot, making this the bloodiest of all Cabal clones. It's wretchedly humorous to blow open a body and watch a somehow edible waffle fly out. No fooling, you actually get waffles to restore a bit of your health, and considering the hero's name, one has to wonder which V System staff member was so voraciously obsessed with breakfast.

Other bonuses include drugs that make you temporarily invincible, large shells which serve as your area-wrecking bombs, and more powerful machine guns and shotguns which give you a clip or two of stronger ammo. Your normal gun has to reload after about every 20 shots, which seems pretty dumb considering most other Cabal shooters give you an infinite mag, but it deserves points for realism.

There's not much else on how to play except to describe the levels themselves, taking place in "Europe," China, Russia, Greece, Egypt, Japan, and America. Perhaps the developers didn't want to get into trouble by spelling it out, but the "Europe" stage is very clearly Nazi Germany, where you fight MP40-toting soldiers in front of a concentration camp. You see the phrase "Arbeit Macht Frei" (work makes you free) over the gates, a common phrase at the entrance of most slave labor camps, including Auschwitz. The sad thing about this display of poor taste is that it's the most memorable level, with most other stages either being flat, featureless fields or generic buildings. If nothing else, they at least have interesting enemies, like China's tumbling acrobats or Russia's triceratops with pores that open up in their body and fire bullets at you. There are also some interesting bosses, like a semi-skeletal tyrannosaur, a six-armed warrior with a sword in each hand, and a rather grotesque final boss who defies explanation.

While its brazen stupidity is novel, something just feels off about Spinal Breakers as a game. The graphics would be better if more effort was put into the backgrounds, and the music is of low quality. The gameplay feels a bit jerky too, and even less fair than its contemporaries. Further, the well of innovation runs dry in some levels, most accentuated in Egypt where you just fight the same blobby tumors throughout it instead of pharaohs and mummies.

Yet even after all these faults, it's still worth giving the game a shot simply because Cabal shooters themselves are few in quantity. Spinal Breakers may be on the lower end of the spectrum, but its fundamental gameplay is still entertaining in a mindless fashion, and the grotesque title is basically half the reason to play it.

It's the little touches that make this what it is, like Captain Waffle eating waffles to gain waffle…erm, health, and player two is a blue clone of Captain Waffle for no adequately explainable reason. There are even three different endings, one good one and two bad, where either Waffle or his family turns into Hildroids, though the conditions to trigger which one you get is unknown. If you've got 20 minutes to waffle away, why not break some spines?

Empire City: 1931

AKA: Magnum Kiki Ippatsu (Console)

Original Release: 1986

Platforms: ARC, FC, MSX, PS4, NSW

Seibu Kaihatsu’s Empire City: 1931 is a bit like a light gun game, but without the peripheral. The closest comparison is the first-person shooting segments in Golgo 13 for the NES, but this came first and is much better. The premise sees a young FBI agent single-handedly eliminating an entire crime syndicate, likely as a nod to Elliot Ness taking down Al Capone.

Your goal here is simple: Guide your cursor to shoot down all the mobsters in the surrounding area. Each stage is larger than what you immediately see on your screen, so you need to scroll around in all directions to find enemies around corners and behind windows. Thankfully, a directional arrow pops up towards the next goon to be hit, but it only points left and right, so you need to be wary if the enemy you need to hit is at a different elevation. Whether or not you have the thug in sights, a timer counts down in the lower-right as he prepares to shoot you. You gotta hit him before he hits you, but if you can't shoot him in time, you need to instead hit the "Dodge" button right as the counter hits zero. Time it right and an impressively large sprite pops up to indicate your hero hunkering down to avoid the incoming bullet. If you don't blast the enemy in time and your dodge is imprecise, it’s off to the morgue with ya.

The game starts out simple enough in the first stage, as most gunmen don't open fire until you get close. This chivalry flies out the window in the next stage though, where fire countdowns tick off quickly no matter where you are, and the swerve that happens for every dodge makes it tougher to reach the shooter. The second area and several afterward take place at night too, rendering everything in a monochrome blue palette that makes enemies harder to identify. It also becomes trickier with mooks who jump out of windows and run around on the street, machine gunners who give you almost no reaction time, and overweight guys who fire fast and take multiple hits. The meter on the bottom indicates how many bullets you have left, and if you're too trigger-happy, you’ll be sleeping with the fishes. Eventually, you'll get to the "final" stage where you only have one shot and a few seconds to take care of the syndicate's boss. If you blow it, you move on (as the game loops infinitely), minus one life and a big, fat 30,000 point bonus.

Empire City seems somewhat quaint today, but it was original for its time and still manages to be thrilling. It received a Japan-only port for both the Famicom and the MSX, but it's slower-paced, the sprites are much smaller, there's no vertical scrolling, and you're given a laughably massive amount of bullets compared to the arcade version. This mostly eliminates any of the challenge factor found in the original. They're not really worth playing, regardless.

Dead Angle

AKA: Lead Angle (JP), Gang Hunter (UK)

Original Release: 1988

Platforms: ARC, SMS, PS4, NSW

As the successor to Empire City: 1931, Dead Angle is a more intense game than its parent. The former required you to roam around the map and find mobsters to shoot down, but here the mobsters are all out in full force and actively running around on the streets, cover be damned.

Most of Dead Angle's stages cover a decent field of vision. Your character's hitbox is represented by a transparent yellow body that looks very Punch-Out-ish. If you're standing out of an enemy's line of fire, you turn red and better get your butt out of the way before a bullet punches through your collar. You need to find the sweet spot between moving your cursor to hit enemies, but not moving so far over that you shift in front of them. This is easier said than done when enemies remain on the move and can also toss grenades at your position. You have grenades yourself, starting out at three, and they do 20 bullets’ worth of damage to whomever they hit. Your ammo is also unlimited, but red-coated mooks can drop grenade boxes giving you three more, or a shotgun with 20 bullets with more power and spread than your normal gun, or a machine gun with 200 bullets and autofire.

There are eight stages, starting on the streets of Napoli before going to a boat headed towards New York harbor, an NYC hotel, a Kansas bungalow, and the big boss' mansion in Chicago, which is a three-part endeavor. The first stage is easy enough but it heats up quickly, with pinstripe suits requiring multiple bullets to take down, and each level ending with a boss once you've killed the required amount of goons. Most bosses are just tankier gunmen, although one of them leaps around tossing knives with style. Shots don't always seem like they land on enemies, though whether that's deliberate or due to sketchy hit detection is uncertain. The final stage has the big boss hiding behind a super-durable piece of glass that you need to shoot a ridiculous amount of times to break, but if you're too itchy, you'll hit his hostage and lose without being able to continue. Nail the shot right, though, and she's safe.

Dead Angle is a more fervent game than the already tense Empire City, but it arguably gains its faster pace by sacrificing some of its predecessor’s more precise design. It’s still a fun game, but it feels a bit like a desultory middle child, not quite as tight as Empire City nor as polished as Seibu’s later shooter, Dynamite Duke. Still, it was good enough to earn a port to the Sega Master System. This translates the graphics pretty well, but the framerate is choppy and the speed takes a huge hit. The boat and Kansas levels have also been cut out along with the shotgun. It’s a better home port than what Empire City got, but it’s still inferior to the original.

Dynamite Duke

AKA: The Double Dynamites

Original Release: 1989

Platforms: ARC, GEN, SMS, X68

Dynamite Duke certainly owes its existence to Dead Angle due to its behind-the-hero perspective, even if it has zero mobsters and eschews Prohibition-era America for a more industrial/military 20-minutes-into-the-future setting. The eponymous hero, who sports a blond crew cut like a certain other trigger-happy Duke, must blast and smash his way through nine levels of soldiers, machines, and assassins to stop a mad scientist from creating an army of mutants and achieving world domination. It all feels very much influenced by both comic books and animated action series of the time, looking more colorful and vibrant than the deliberately low-key hues of Dead Angle. Duke also has more definition than that game’s hero, with only his torso being see-through while the rest of his body is solid, including his notably cybernetic right arm.

Duke sidles to the right along nine levels, each one filled with soldiers and war machines to pepper with lead. His default machine gun starts with 500 bullets, but more can be obtained from collateral damage. A Full Auto power-up sometimes appears to give Duke infinite ammo that automatically fires strong bullets for several seconds. He may also come across a stronger pistol with 15 shots, or a bazooka with eight. While most mooks shoot you from afar, some bold enemies will come right up to Duke's face to punch or slash at him. The other two attack buttons perform punches and kicks, where the kick's hitbox stays the same but the punch trajectory can differ depending upon the direction held. He can also do useful uppercuts and impractical jump kicks by striking while holding Up. Holding the punch button also charges up a "Dynamite Punch", essentially a smart bomb that purges the screen of enemies or does a chunk of damage to bosses.

Each stage goes by quickly, but you have to continue at a set point if you lose all your lives. This isn't so bad in normal levels, but it's a real bear in boss fights where you have to start over at the beginning. Bosses are also the most frustrating aspect, as they frequently run up to punching range, and the melee combat, while a cool idea, is pretty clunky and greatly favors the bosses, who can block attacks while you can't. You have to settle for ducking by holding Down, but you have to wait for the cursor to reach the bottom of the screen. The delays in ducking and charging up Dynamite Punches are often just enough time to kill you.

Dynamite Duke looks and sounds great, and it's fun shooting up baddies, but the crappy melee combat brings it down as a whole. Duck-dodging also feels like a bear as opposed to Cabal's roll button. It's a fun spectacle, but not exactly an arcade classic, or on the level of what Seibu would release the next year with the shoot-em-up Raiden.

Seibu released an updated version in the arcades called The Double Dynamites, which adds a two player simultaneous mode. Dynamite Duke also received three home conversions. While the Sega Master System version isn't bad, it edits down and fuses some levels together to make for a mere five stages overall. Furthermore, even though the Genesis port (cover shown right) looks nicer than the Master System version, this release is actually worse as it cuts out even more content, going so far as to scrap one of the bosses wholesale. As was common, the X68000 computer port is unsurprisingly nearly arcade-perfect.

Alligator Hunt

Original Release: 1994

Platforms: ARC, EVR

When you think of a game with a title like Alligator Hunt, it's unlikely that you'd imagine an intergalactic gallery shooter, but curiously that's exactly the kind of game Gaelco developed. Rather than taking on the role of a beefy commando, à la Cabal, you play as sassy, adolescent skateboarding boys, ready to take on an army of invading, reptile-like aliens.

In terms of controls, the joystick moves both your character and your targeting cursor. Holding down the fire button will also lock your kid in position, and provides fuller control of the cursor while you unleash a torrent of bullets. Further, a secondary button lets you dodge to either side, a handy maneuver when you're stuck in place shooting stuff. Beyond the larger enemies, you'll occasionally see tiny frog-like creatures who pilot equally minuscule ships. When you shoot them, they'll flip in the sky. If you continue to shoot them, they'll drop little "M" icons, which will increase your missile stash.       Missiles are shot by tapping on the fire button, as opposed to holding it, and inflict extra damage on whatever they hit. These are handy to have since some of the bosses and enemy encampments take quite a bit of damage if you're just pelting them with normal machine gun fire. Certain baddies will also drop score icons, and similarly, you can hit them while they're in mid-air to drastically increase their point value.

While you begin the game on a skateboard, you somehow end up entrusted with a spaceship. After helping guide its launch (in a segment based on one of the developer's earlier arcade games, Ambush!), the rest of the game is played while piloting this vessel, though things functionally play the same, right down to the similar dodge roll. You also receive orders from an attractive female military commander, while your kid replies in broken English that sounds like they're trying to channel 80s Hollywood action flicks. While you have a life meter, a single hit will reduce it to nearly empty, and a second hit will kill you. Since by default you only have one life, this is fairly punishing, especially considering your large hit box.

Visually, Alligator Hunt is Gaelco at some of their best, particularly the incredibly well-animated reptile mechas in the first stage. The second level feels a bit drab in comparison since it's nothing but empty space, with some meteors and spaceships peppered in, while the third takes place on an alien planet filled with enemy encampments. The brief final stage uses a looping FMV background similar to the effect in the Neo Geo shooter Blazing Star.

Outside of the brutal difficulty level, Alligator Hunt remains a compelling game thanks to its fantastic visuals and hard-rocking soundtrack. There's not much to it, but there doesn't need to be.

Gamshara

Original Release: 2002

Platforms: ARC

Gamshara ("Daredevil") meshes Sengoku-era Japan with futuristic technology, much like the shoot-em-ups MUSHA and Sengoku Blade. As the warriors Saika Magoichi and Hotaru, you take up arms against the mechanical army of Nobunaga Oda.

While there were a handful of Cabal-like gallery shooters released in the early-to-mid 90s, the genre petered out with the advent of 3D. However in 2002, Mitchell released Gamshara in arcades, making it seem like a relic out of time. While the company had been releasing a variety of arcade games throughout the 90s, by this point they had mostly transitioned into console puzzle games.

The game controls as expected, allowing you to move and aim a targeting cursor with the joystick, and hold down the fire button to stand in place. You can also jump to avoid enemy attacks, which is extremely handy because the bullet patterns are pretty dense. You can also activate Gamshara mode with the third button, which arms you with a super powerful rapid-fire cannon for a few seconds. Each character has a unique move, as Saika has a strong shot that's fired off automatically after a rapid-fire volley, while Hotaru can double-jump. Killing enemies will drain the meter at the top of the screen; when this becomes empty, you either move into the next area or fight a boss battle.

Gamshara also uses a modernized scoring system. You'll wrack up combos by gunning down enemies, but the counter resets if you jump or take damage. Jumping allows you to dodge almost anything, so it's a risk/reward system that grants you higher points by keeping yourself in danger. Since every destroyed enemy increases your multiplier by one, you can get extremely high scores by playing as a daredevil.

The graphics are displayed at 640x480, making them higher resolution than the genre forebears. Some sections look decent while others are a little sterile. The problem with the higher detail is that it draws attention to the lack of animation in many scenes, making it seem like you're playing on top of a painting. The legions of Nobunaga's tanks look pretty cool, but the best fights are against the human foes. They're microscopic targets, but they'll jump or float around in the distance, tossing flying ships at you or summoning ninja duplicates. The entire final battle is against Nobunaga's enormous castle, which is propped up on mechanical legs.

The mechanical enemies feel like bullet sponges, particularly when you're jumping around to dodge their fire. The final battle is one of pure attrition, too. Still, that's the only sore spot in Gamshara, which adds both unique visuals and interesting mechanics on top of a well-worn formula.

City Connection

AKA: Cruisin’ (US/EU ARC)

Original Release: 1985

Platforms: ARC, MSX, NES, ZX, GBA, WII, WIIU, WIN, 3DS, PS4, NSW, MOB, MD, EVR

Jaleco’s City Connection stars a talented driver named Clarice, who has taken to venturing around the world to find the perfect man. Her quest takes her across 12 stages in her orange car, identified in supplemental materials as a 1981 Honda City AA subcompact hatchback. Most stage locations can be identified by their background’s landmark, such as England's Big Ben, France's Eiffel Tower, and India's Taj Mahal among other international attractions. Each stage consists of several white platforms and a bottom floor, all of which start out white but are "painted" a different color when Clarice drives over them. The goal is to completely paint all platforms and leave absolutely no white spots left.

However, this reckless driving attracts the authorities of whatever country Clarice is in, and she must evade all of the police cars attempting to run into her. Pulling over isn't an option here, so the police opt for ramming the tiny Honda without any due process. This is made to be as goofy as possible for its time, complete with a silly little ditty when you lose as the segments of your car inexplicably turn into hearts as they fly around. The police get more aggressive in later levels, but you usually retain the speed advantage and have to worry less about cops pursuing you than those who try to run into you head-on. You at least get a weapon to ward them off in the form of oil cans that are picked up off the ground. These items are finite, but you can rack up quite a lot of them if you're sparing in their usage. Canning a car causes it to spin, and ramming it while it spins bumps it off of the screen and earns you points, giving bonuses for firing off several cans and bumping off multiple cars. Further, the hatchback can also jump, which it needs to do so it can reach higher platforms. Balloons occasionally float by for bonus points too, and grabbing three nets you a huge bonus while warping you to a later stage.

The basic rules are simple enough, but two factors work against your success. The first is the car's wobbly controls. It moves at a pretty fast automatic speed and is able to turn on a dime, which is fine. The jumping is where it gets iffy though, as it cruises slowly through the air and requires you to hold Up on the directional stick to jump high enough. Normal leaps are able to clear oncoming vehicles and a certain accursed character, but higher vaults are necessary to reach platforms above you. Due to the constant forward momentum of your car, you need to find the right timing so you don't just bump your roof on the above platform instead. Additionally, once you jump, you're committed to it and can't turn around, although you can turn in midair if you're just dropping down from a platform. You also can’t jump for about a second after you make a turn. It takes some practice, but the controls aren't deliberately bad, just calibrated in a somewhat odd fashion that makes more sense the longer you play.

At random, a cat will appear on the road in front of you, and running into it costs you a life. It’s invincible to oil cans too, so your only recourse is to avoid it. This malicious little monster feels like it wants to be hit, appearing at will all over the stage like a slasher movie villain with teleportation powers. Get used to the animation of the darn thing flying off the stage while the tune "Die Flohwalzer / Neko Funjatta" plays to taunt you over your mistake. There are also spikes that pop up, though they only become a problem if you stay on the bottom floor for too long. That darn cat will antagonize you no matter where you are though, and it’s easily the most memorable and infamous element of the game.

One can see why City Connection became Jaleco’s flagship game of the 80s. There’s nothing else that plays quite like it, and while the controls are rough, the experience becomes addicting the more you adapt to it. The bright graphics and catchy tunes, mostly derived from Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1, further help to stand out from anything else in arcades. It left enough of an impact that the company that currently holds the rights to Jaleco’s games is even called City Connection!

Naturally, this received an NES port that’s somewhat close to the arcade version but feels more difficult, since the cat is even more aggressive. Also, the scrolling on the platforms is a bit choppy and it cuts out half of the country backdrops. It also made Clarice into an unnamed blond male for the US release, whom you can see smoking in between rounds. The game received an MSX port too, which plays smoothly but, as per the hardware’s lack of scrolling, each stage takes place over several screens. This makes for jarring transitions, and feels harder to avoid cars that appear on the next screen. The ZX Spectrum port has scrolling, but runs incredibly slowly and doesn’t have any music playing outside of the title screen. This version was created in 1988 but didn’t see release until much later. The smartphone port is basically the arcade game with some niceties, like indicators when something is approaching off-screen as well as showing the percentage of floor you’ve covered, plus an option to play as a convertible, so you can actually see Clarice. A homebrew Mega Drive port developed by Habit Soft was released in 2023, too.

City Connection Rocket

Original Release: 2004

Platforms: MOB, PSV, NSW

City Connection only received one sequel, developed for Japanese mobile phones in 2004. City Connection Rocket has since been preserved by G-Mode, who released emulated ports on the PSN Mobile platform, Vita, and Switch.

Clarice has apparently made peace with the cops in the intervening years despite her insanely reckless driving, and has been recruited as an agent for the United Nations. Her mission? Drive to different locations around the world to retrieve secret documents, preventing them from falling into the hands of the evil Spiritus organization.

As the title suggests, the Clarice car is now equipped with a rocket. You can use this to dash up or down, which also allows you to smash through certain floors and dispose of enemy cars (though the cat is still invincible). The rush lasts for a few seconds too, and recharges automatically.

The oil drums have two configurations — the standard Gatling, which tosses them out straight ahead, and the new Homing, which automatically targets the nearest car. The goal has changed as well, with your task being to retrieve 10 briefcases. One of them also determines the next stage that you'll warp to. Hidden score items include characters from other Jaleco games like Ninja Jajamaru-kun, the pig from Buta-san, and the titular wyrm from Saint Dragon.

The view here is zoomed in quite a bit, with fairly large and detailed sprites, which look much nicer than any version of the original game. The stages also scroll vertically with levels that are quite tall, allowing you to put the rocket power to good use. The downside to this is that you'll spend a lot of time driving in a loop until you find the floors where the documents are located.

Completing each stage will award you with a picture of Clarice dressed in a different outfit. The cutesy artwork was provided by Noumiso Hoehoe, who worked on a few other mobile Jaleco titles. The scrolling is a little choppy, common among early 2000s mobile games, but it still plays fairly well.

City Connection Rocket has a fun gimmick, though the added height makes the levels too large, and the expanded arsenal makes the game too easy compared to the original. Still, it’s a good time.

Clarice also showed up in the crossover Jaleco shoot-em-up series Game Tengoku. In Gun Bare! Game Tengoku 2 she’s a blonde that looks nothing like her original design, but the 2017 Cruisin’ Mix includes a more faithful version.

Pipi & Bibi's

AKA: Whoopee!! (JP), Spy Bros. (Remake)

Original Release: 1991

Platforms: ARC, WIN, NSW

Perhaps the most bizarre game ever made by Toaplan, Pipi & Bibi's has a simple enough premise — place time bombs throughout the level and escape before they detonate. That could have stood well enough on its own, but the game also features nude women as a reward for clearing an entire block of levels. Cheesecake isn't alien to Toaplan (they made the erotic Mahjong Sisters), but one might question why they felt the nudity element was necessary in a non-mahjong game.

Whatever the case, the game plays like a hybrid of Elevator Action and Bonanza Bros. There are six blocks of four levels each, the action taking place on a single screen per level. Pipi and/or Bibi need to reach all of the computer consoles on the screen to plant bombs. They get around via elevators and stairs (and trampolines in later levels), but each area has some enemies to either avoid or subdue as well. You'll usually face normal goons, faster goons, and "twin goons", where one guy has a smaller helper always trailing behind him. In a nice detail, the smaller guy frantically tries to catch up with the bigger one if they get separated. You face more types of foes later, like weird lion-things that never leave the trampolines and waterless swimmers who slide across the floor.

Pipi and Bibi attack with some sort of taser, an extending line that reaches nearly halfway across the screen. When a goon is hit, the attack button needs to be held for several seconds to get them off of your current floor and drop them to the one below. If they're on the bottom floor, they fall right off of the screen, though each stage has doors through which they can return. Not unlike Dig Dug's line, the taser can only focus on one enemy at a time, so another one can run up and kill you unless you let go. This makes the twin goons especially troublesome, and you might decide it's better to just quickly stun a foe rather than drop them, or you might want to avoid dropping them onto a floor that already has enough enemies on it.

When the last bomb is planted, you only have 20 seconds to reach the exit. If you don't make it in time or, more likely, you get hit by an enemy, you have to start the whole stage all over again. But hey, you get to see a naked lady if you clear an entire block (although she isn't fully nude if you don't collect an "H" coin that appears in every stage).

Pipi & Bibi gets more frustrating than fun after the first block of levels, so whether or not the smut makes it worthwhile to play depends on the individual. This got an enhanced re-release on the Switch under the name Spy Bros. that actually does remove the nudity and adds in some bonuses, like playable distaff counterparts Mimi & Gigi, and a turbo mode.

Games have constantly evolved as a medium as the years go on, telling stories in ways that movies and books can't always do. Graphics and storytelling have evolved, making one seriously question if games can truly be art. However, there's been one very important category that games have been truly lacking in, and one that's sadly been never addressed by the developers of the world. You can have the finest graphics, music that drives people to tears from its beauty, and a plot that makes you sit and question your own existence. But you'll never have the feature to tear a shark in half with your bare hands. Final Fantasy VII? It gets a zero in the category of ripping a shark in half. Half-Life 2? Zero. Sonic 3 & Knuckles? Zero. The First Funky Fighter? Ten out of 10.

The First Funky Fighter might just be the manliest game ever made. Especially considering that it's a redemption game at its core, which isn't really something that makes people think "hardcore". And yet somehow, Taito has come up with a title where you're not only encouraged to beat down giant crocodiles with your bare hands, but you can earn actual prizes for it. This is precisely the sort of thing gaming was made for.

You play as Randy, some shirtless guy who may or may not live in prehistoric times. It's not entirely clear. After his girlfriend Chris is captured by some kind of winged crocodile/dragon, Randy goes on a quest to rescue her. You'd think from the description that this will involve some kind of grand quest to get her back. Randy, however, decides to take the much more effective route of beating the crap out of everything until he recovers his lost love. There are four stages before you can save Chris, two of which pit you against a shark, the other two against a crocodile. The crocodile stages take place on land, where you'll beat the hell out of crocs and tribesmen, while the shark stages let you go berserk on fish and turtles with a machete. Besides the aesthetics though, all four stages are basically the exact same, Furthermore, levels 3 and 4 are just palette swaps of 1 and 2.

The game is split into nine squares, each of which corresponds to one of the nine buttons on the cabinet. By tapping one of these, Randy will attack that square, probably utterly liquefying whatever happens to be occupying it at the time. Enemies and items will pop out of one of the squares, and your job, for the most part, is to hit as many of them as you can before time runs out. It's basically Whack-A-Mole meets Fist of the North Star. Really, that should be all you need to know. The entire game is basically just this concept for all four levels, except that you'll use a machete to cut enemies to shreds in the shark areas. There's also power-ups you can punch, like a drum of nuclear waste that vaporizes every enemy on the screen in one huge explosion. It doesn’t affect you though, of course, because you're just too damn awesome for that. There's generally no reason for you to NOT mash every button as hard as you can, because there's nothing you can hit that will penalize you, so feel free to pound away at each of the various inputs like a madman.

One other point to consider is that you're given a score quota to meet at the start of each level. For the most part, the enemies that appear on-screen will never hurt you, and the worst that'll happen is that they'll disappear before you can actually get a hit on them. Some foes will also require multiple hits to defeat, or split into even more opponents whom you'll have to bludgeon.

Once the timer reaches the halfway mark however, a midboss will show up. This will either be the winged reptile from the intro for the crocodile stages, or a giant, fanged fish for the shark stages. Randy's expression of utter terror when they appear should serve as a warning that these guys actually CAN kill you. You beat these guys by getting a certain number of hits on them as they move across the screen. Get these in before time runs out, and you'll blow the boss to pieces, along with getting some bonus points. If time runs out though, they'll take a bite out of Randy, and you'll have to insert another credit to continue the fight.

After one more segment of beating on cheap fodder, you'll reach the boss of the stage, either a giant, bipedal crocodile, or a pissed off shark. These fights are all about mashing, as you'll need to pound the bottom-left and bottom-right buttons as hard as you can to reduce the bosses’ health to zero. Even when you do this though, you're still not done, as the boss will apparently go Super Saiyan and attack you one more time. It's here where your score matters, because the closer you are to your quota, the fewer punches you'll have to get in before you can finish them off. And finish them off you will, oh yes. While all you do to the crocodile is send him plummeting to the ground with a Mortal Kombat-style uppercut, for the shark...Randy grabs the creature’s mouth with both hands and pulls so hard that he rips the animal in half, sending its internal organs flying through the air.

There are also a couple of bonus stages as well, one of which involves mashing a couple of buttons to build up enough power to punch through a pile of rocks. It’s not quite on the "tear a shark in half" level of badass, but not bad. After all four stages, Randy and Chris are reunited, and that's the game. The whole thing really peters out beyond the second level, but the rest of the game goes by so quickly that you'll probably want to go ahead and finish it up anyway.

The visual presentation is pretty decent, although everything happens so fast that you'll hardly see what's going on. Each of the two level types have their own set of enemies to destroy, as well. The crocodile stages, for example, have giant spiders, tribal-looking guys, and, for whatever reason, big-busted crocodile girls who have dresses that explode when you punch them. (Huh?) The game's actually fairly bloody, too. Most of the enemies you punch will only end up falling to the floor, but a certain few will explode into a gory mess. The midbosses show this off especially well, since they'll start to fall apart with every hit you land on them, until they end up missing wings and chunks of flesh. The voice acting is pretty cheesy, as you'd expect for a game of this vintage, with Randy yelling out "OH MY GAH!" every time you end up losing. The music is pretty unremarkable though, especially considering you'll probably never hear it over the sound of punching everything.

Overall, The First Funky Fighter is a game you'll more than likely play only once or twice, as it blows its creative energy halfway through. For that first half though, it's definitely a game that'll make you feel like a man. Plus, any game that lets you rip a shark in half should have at least a few of its issues ignored. Due to its unusual control scheme, the game would never see a port to anything, which means that MAME is probably going to be the only way you'll encounter this piece of pure testosterone.

Kickle Cubicle

AKA: Meikyuujima (JP)

Original Release: 1988

Platforms: ARC, NES

Irem’s Kickle Cubicle is a grid-based action-puzzle game that’s like an iced smoothie blend of Sega’s Pengo and HAL’s The Adventures of Lolo. First released in Japanese arcades in 1988 under the name Meikyuujima ("Maze Island"), you take the role of Kickle, who must navigate a series of frozen islands by utilizing freezing breath and the construction and deconstruction of ice columns. The goal of each level is to retrieve three Dream Bags per island. Each zone consists of a tile-grid area that largely consists of ice and arctic water. Upon said ice are a majority of the puzzle elements that must be contested, including, but not limited to, indestructible blocks, springs, rotating hammers, covered ice, and large-bore floor perforations.

Enemies largely consist of various cute little jerks who wander around and complicate matters in some fashion. Your freezing breath is the basic form of defense against these bag-hogging buffoons. One puff of frost, and most will glaze over, allowing you to walk up and kick the frozen foe, shattering them. However, several opponents are directly involved in actually solving the puzzle on each island. One in particular is key. The Noggle (or Watt in the Japanese versions) is a small blue blob that when hit with your freezing breath will instead turn into an ice cube. When kicked, said cube will slide across the open area along its path until it either comes in contact with a solid obstacle such as a wall, or into the open waters, at which point the tile the block fell into will fill and become a standard ice tile. Keep in mind that you must be cardinally adjacent to a block to kick it on its way. Your ability to construct columns of ice is just one of the many tools that the player must utilize to direct ice blocks and other hazards to achieve success.

A majority of levels revolve around using ice blocks to fill in gaps in order to reach a given destination while looking for the aforementioned Dream Bags. Some maps have them clustered in one location while others have them more spread out, resulting in maps with multiple goals. Should a bag make contact with an enemy or a speeding ice cube, it gets displaced to a randomly adjacent tile.

Joining the Dream Bags are score items that consist of varying kinds of ice cream. The game incentivizes kicking blocks, as an ice cube colliding with ice cream yields double-points. All ice cream does have the odd function of blocking anything that isn’t Kickle or a cube, though. However, the NES port only has one form of ice cream, resulting in bullet-proof popsicles. Occasionally a rare pick-up will spawn mid-level that converts all of the walkable space in the level to tiles with food on them, resorting in many bonus points and a free pass to the next stage. More advanced levels often involve utilizing enemies or objects that manipulate ice blocks from positions that you can’t reach on your own. The arcade version has a total of 40 levels, while the NES port has four ‘lands’ that have around 16 or 17 levels each, in addition to 30 levels after that.

The boss fights are a divergence point between the two releases. In the NES version, each boss occupies a palace which is accessible only once the realm that they preside over has been destroyed, while the arcade original simply has a boss every 10 levels. Most battles consist of extra-large versions of regular enemies, which involve a variation on the pattern of “throw object, object impacts into four smaller objects, smaller objects can be kicked into the boss”.

Graphically, both versions have clean but simple visuals, opting more for visual distinction than artistic flair. Even with that, all of the game entities are cute and pleasant to look at, if a bit simple. Oddly, Kickle’s arcade appearance had golden ear-muffs for some reason, perhaps to match his flying cloud. When the NES version came around they were made red to match his pants and balloon, which replaced the cloud. Audio-wise the tunes are pleasant, but not particularly notable. All levels have the same single track which is catchy and inoffensive, but can suffer from repetition fatigue. Bosses also share just one theme, which serves its purpose well enough. The NES version has more music at least, by virtue of having more situations for there to be tunes, which predominantly consist of short loops.

The arcade version of the game has a tile area of 23x14, while the NES version only has 15x13 to offer. This results in many of the arcade stages needing to be pruned down and simplified. This is a good thing, because the largest strike against the arcade original is that a bit after the halfway point, a majority of islands become more frustrating than fun. The further one progresses, the fact becomes more apparent that puzzles require at least several minutes of deliberation. Further, should one die mid-level, any water filled with ice will remain filled. While this sounds good on paper, in practice it means that otherwise contained enemies can get out and be an immediate, unexpected threat. There’s a timer for all levels too, and if it’s exceeded, an angry jerk of a star flies down and smashes into you, resulting in a lost life.

Meanwhile the NES version has further differences between the Western and Japanese releases. In the Japanese game, Kickle can float about using his balloon to select which level to attempt in one of the four lands in any order. These areas can be thought of as "mini-arcade levels" in difficulty. The Western releases on the other hand have a linear, predetermined level progression where many stages have similar presentations, but easier layouts. On the positive side, this makes learning the game a snap before digging into the meatier islands. The bosses between the two home versions don’t differ as much as in the arcade. One noteworthy change though is that the bosses in the Japanese version have more health and display more aggressive behavior.

The NES version has some subtle but loving touches, too. Upon achieving a game over in the arcade game, Kickle is seen sitting next to a jar waiting to take money. In the console versions, the game over screen will actually change depending on what the last palace you restored was. Kid Niki also pops up on the title screen with a hidden command.

The biggest change, however, is that the NES version has infinite continues and can be paused at any time. This results in a far less stressful experience, as the player can take all of the time they need to figure out a solution. It also sports more simple and fun levels, while keeping the heavier puzzles for the extra stages. This, combined with the larger level variety, make the NES game pretty much the definitive version of the game. A PC Engine port of Kickle Cubicle was also planned at some point, but this unfortunately went unreleased.

Tropical Angel

Original Release: 1983

Platforms: ARC

Irem’s 1983 title Tropical Angel is one of the very few water-skiing arcade games. The titular bathing beauty wears a red bikini, and often has her backside facing you as she holds onto a cable for what turns out to be dear life. The boat drives her through a sea-slalom course where she has to hang tight and pass six pairs of flags to qualify for the next challenge. She has 180 seconds to complete each course, but every stage is also fraught with rocks threatening to bump her off into the briny deep.

It’s a miracle that the heroine doesn’t suffer any major injuries when falling, but she does lose five seconds and gets booted back to the last slalom gate. That might not sound so bad at first, but it very quickly piles up over the course of a run, as you are going to hit a lot of obstacles. Even the first course doesn’t pull too many punches in dotting rocks left and right, and the boat’s sway makes it even harder to dodge as they almost seem to move right in front of you from your perspective. It becomes easier to manage if you know when to cut the speed button, as a few seconds lost in acceleration is worth avoiding even more lost in a crash.

There are a few things you can do for bonus points if you’re nuts enough, like passing between peach spheres that give you a thousand points and hitting jump pads that also give you a thousand along with a gratuitous “rear view”. If you really want to flirt with death, there’s another trick button to press whose sole purpose is to turn you around and have you shake your hips and breasts in front of the camera. This racks up the score quickly, but you can’t turn while strutting your stuff. The likelihood of biffing it shoots up drastically, as well. Still, when you think you’ve gotten used to weaving around rocks, a shark starts chasing you after the first two races, and it outright kills you if you get caught. Not only is that horrifyingly morbid, but it pushes the game up to a pretty frustrating plateau.

Nonetheless, Tropical Angel has some cool pseudo 3D sprite-based effects that look remarkably cool considering it was developed in 1983. This alone makes it worth checking out, even if for only a few minutes. It’s also notable for being an early video game starring a woman, even if she’s obviously in it for the sex appeal. Additionally, there’s an upgraded arcade board dubbed New Tropical Angel. If you make it to stage M-2 and hit the trick button, then the heroine will unsnap her bikini top as she turns around, briefly flashing the player.

There have somehow been very, very few games based on water-skiing, with only this one and Taito’s Water Ski coming out in 1983. Very little if any other such titles in this genre were released for a while, until Sega Water Ski in 1997 for their 3D Model 2 arcade hardware.

Roller Jammer

Original Release: 1984

Platforms: ARC, PS4, NSW

Roller derby is a strange sport that has unsurprisingly had few video games based on it. Aside from Konami making two different games off of the unlikely RollerGames license (a short-lived TV show that jazzed up the sport with WWF-style theatrics), Nichibutsu's Roller Jammer is one of the few (if not only) roller derby games to exist, if it can even be called that. It doesn't have roller derby's conventionally Byzantine rules, opting for a more simple racing format (albeit with a twist) that also just so happens to involve a lot of punching.

Before participating in a proper competition, you must first clear a Time Trial race where you need to reach the goal before time runs out. No frills here, you just need to avoid the many obstacles dotted throughout the stage (yellow flags at first, more menacing spikes later in the game) and reach the goal comprised of cheerleaders. The faster you cross the finish line, the more time you have for your first major competing race against the Big Bombers. Later gangs you face have increasingly intimidating names like the Mad Smashers and the Bone Crushers, although the second group you face has the patently ridiculous name of the Slick Slappers.

During these gang races, your goal is not to reach a defined finish line, but rather to pass a certain amount of competitors before time runs out. You only need to pass through 20 at first, but the amount increases in increments of 10 for the next two races. Then you need to clear another time trial, after which, the next competition starts out with 10 more needed to pass than what the first race of the last set started out with. The game goes over this pattern three times before the final race against the "Rail Rebels", of which you need to pass a staggering 70 for all the marbles. The other rollers will also be trying to punch you, with several seconds lost for every knockdown you take, but you can also punch back for self-defense and/or points. "P" symbols on the track further boost your score, and the letter "T" adds a bit of time, which could potentially save a narrow run.

The mechanic of passing enemies to reach your goal is an interesting and sometimes busted one, as you can re-pass others whom you've already passed once and there's no limit to how often they count. You could potentially reach the goal faster if you pass a cluster of five rollers, slow down a bit to let them pass you, and then pass them again, counting as 10 total towards your score. It's an interesting measure of victory, for sure.

Visually, Roller Jammer has some cool 3D effects too, that make it look impressive for 1984. It’s also a better combat roller skating than Kaneko’s Fighting Roller from the year prior.

Penguin-kun Wars

AKA: Penguin Wars, King of the Zoo (EU GB), Penguin-kun Gira Gira Wars (JP Remake)

Original Release: 1985

Platforms: ARC, FC, X1, MSX, PC88, MSX2, GB, PS4, NSW

Released in 1985 by UPL, Penguin-kun Wars is one of the many games of this era starring adorable penguins (Sega's Pengo and Penguin Land, Konami's Penguin Adventure, etc.). You engage in a sport called "dojiball", which has the dual meaning of "blunder ball" in Japanese as well as the English word "dodgeball". Players take positions on two sides of a table, each with five balls. The goal here is to throw the balls at your opponent and get all 10 balls onto the other side. You play as a penguin, while your competitors include bears, sheep, pandas, koalas, and beavers.

Of course, the other player is tossing balls right back at you, so merely chucking them isn't likely to get you anywhere. However, getting hit by a ball will stun a character for a few seconds, giving you a chance to throw some more over without having them tossed right back. You can also reflect approaching balls with your own ball. Each match has a time limit too, with a little moving obstacle that pops up around the 20-second mark, reflecting the balls in other directions or otherwise causing havoc.

When time runs out, the player with the most balls on their side loses. If each are equal, you play a sudden death match with 11 balls, one of them being a bomb, which will explode after a certain amount of time, causing that player to lose. Each match is a best two out of three, as you eventually face off against other animal opponents in the great penguin wars tournament. Between each match are minigames, like ones where you play in outer space or play a game similar to whack-a-mole, as you toss balls at creatures that pop out of various holes.

This is a simple game, but it's fun and challenging, and the animal creatures are absolutely adorable, particularly the penguin hero when he gets knocked out. Look closely and you can even see UPL mascot Ninja-kun in the background! The theme music is a chiptune version of the J-pop song "Motto Sekkin Shimasho" ("Let's Move Closer") by singer Hidemi Ishikawa, which in turn was a cover of "The Glamorous Life", sung by Sheila E. and written by Prince.

ASCII published Penguin Wars on a few different home consoles and computers. They're all straightforward ports, though they allow you to name your character, and certain releases allow a second player to control the opponent, as long as it's after the first match. Penguin-kun Wars 2 is an original sequel created for the MSX2 that allows you to play as two separate penguins, the blue Penguin-kun and the pink Penpii. Each court is linked by an RPG-style overworld map, as you challenge various opponents of the animal world, most of whom have their own special abilities. It's a much more colorful game that also includes other changes, like facing off against two opponents at once. The Game Boy version is the only one of these ports to be released overseas, called Penguin-kun Wars Vs. in Japan and King of the Zoo in Europe. In addition to the penguin, you can also play as other animals like a cow, rabbit, bat, and rat, each with different strength and speed. You can also link two Game Boys together for a competitive mode.

Penguin-kun Wars was resurrected in 2017 by publisher City Connection for the PlayStation 4 and Switch, dubbed Penguin-kun Gira Gira (“Sparkling”) Wars, or just Penguin Wars internationally (shown above). This completely overhauls the game with cartoony, high-res 3D visuals, and features a "dekotora" (decorated truck) theme, filled with enormous, transforming trucks with shiny lights. You begin the game as the penguin Riley, but as you travel around in story mode and defeat more opponents, you get more characters to join you. The artwork is a perfect blend of "cool" and "cute", like an ultra-hip take on Sanrio characters.

The gameplay here has been upgraded substantially for the modern era. It plays faster, and allows you to choose the angle of your shot. You can also charge up your throws by holding down a button, something only featured in certain versions of the original game. The biggest change is that each character now has a life bar, which depletes every time you get knocked over. When it's empty, then that player loses. Tossing all of the balls on the opponent's side doesn't technically end the match, but it does cause all of the balls to attack them at once, which usually deals a ton of damage. As you throw balls, you also build up a special meter, which allows you to use special offensive or defensive moves, depending on the character. Some matches include bombs too, which must be tossed back after a few seconds, or else it'll detonate and you'll lose the match. As you play matches, you'll also be able to unlock and upgrade your abilities, which gives a solid framework to an otherwise simple experience. Also included is both local and online multiplayer for up to four players, with a split screen to ensure every player gets a proper view of the court.

Overall, it's a much more frantic, aggressive game than the original, but one that's also more exciting, and manages to be fun whether playing alone or with friends. In addition to a club jazz arrangement of "Motto Sekkin Shimasho", there's downloadable content where you can play as characters from Sunsoft's Hebereke (Ufouria) series, which even includes music tracks for their game.

Butasan

AKA: Pig ‘n Bombers, Psycho Pigs UXB (EU PC), Psycho Pigs (EN 3DS)

Original Release: 1986

Platforms: ARC, C64, CPC, ZX, MSX, X68, MOD, 3DS

Butasan ("Mr. Pig", also called Pig n' Bombers) from NMK and Jaleco features an adorable group of pigs as they engage in an explosive battle royale. The player controls a pink pig, wearing a pair of polka dotted boxer shorts, squared off against several other opponent pigs. The playing field, shown from an overhead view, is littered with bombs, each of which has a timer, denoting how long it'll take to explode. You can pick these up and toss them directly at an opponent to blow them up. Alternatively, you can toss them on the ground, wait until they're about to detonate, then lure other players into its explosion. Explosions also trigger bombs to also explode, setting off a chain reaction that can potentially cause tremendous devastation. Some power-ups can be enhanced by grabbing pearls, recalling the old "pearls before swine" saying.

You can't directly attack your opponents, but you can whack them to stun them. You can also duck under thrown bombs to avoid them. Various power-ups are also dropped onto the field, which can improve your speed or bomb throwing capabilities, knock out your opponents with sleeping gas, allow you to carry several bombs at once, or wear a Godzilla-esque suit that allows you to absorb a hit of damage. You win the match when you've blown all of the other pigs off the battlefield. Every few levels you'll also play a bonus whack-a-mole stage for extra points.

Butasan is a game of incredible chaos. Since the playing field can have tons of opponents, things getting pretty wild. Sometimes you can just sit back and watch everyone blow everyone else up. It's a totally valid tactic! It's also wilder than something like Bomberman, since there's very little in the way of obstacles or scenery, just lots of bomb tossing. It would be a great party game, but multiplayer is limited to two players.

This is also one incredibly adorable game. Despite the violence, they're all just cute pigs! They all have amusing expressions, even when they get blown up. Many opponents have different colors, introduced as you progress through the game, with different behaviors. When you run out of lives, your pig is blown into the sky, plastering his enormous face right into the screen. There's a variety of game over screens, depending on how far you are, which show the pigs cursing their opponents and nailing their effigy to a tree (channeling the Japanese "ushi no tokimairi" ritual) or rampaging through a city in their Godzilla costume, each with unique text channeling their bitterness. The music is all fast paced bluegrass, like you’re witnessing an insane farm competition.

Butasan didn't receive any console ports, but did end up on European home computers courtesy of US Gold, where it was retitled Psycho Pigs UXB. Its cutesiness was apparently too much, so the publishers tried to make it edgier. The cover shows a ferocious, leather clad pig holding a bomb, a stark contrast to its immensely cutesy Japanese art. Its magazine ad also showed a half-nude woman holding the game, which attracted a bit of controversy.

Despite the marketing, the game itself is visually faithful, and the ports are all decent. They suffer from some slowdown when too many pigs are on the screen, but the arcade version has similar taxing moments. The Commodore 64 version has some decent adaptations of the music by the Follin Brothers. The ZX Spectrum and MSX versions are both monochrome, even though the pigs are still introduced as having different colors. Back in Japan, an X68000 port from Dempa is essentially arcade perfect.

The gameplay of Butasan has shown up in a few other places. Jaleco's Suchi-Pai Adventure: Doki Doki Nightmare for 32-bit platforms, based on their pretty girl mahjong franchise, features a four player Butasan-esque minigame, except you can play as the different ladies from the series. The minigame compilation Game Center Love Plus Pengo! for the Xbox 360 and Switch also contains a similar minigame, though it uses the sentai-like characters from the game rather than the pigs, since it's not technically a Jaleco game.

Butasan did get an official remake in 2015 as a downloadable 3DS game, called Psycho Pigs for its English release. This version features simple polygonal models for the pigs and uses a slightly skewed overhead perspective. Due to the small size of the 3DS screen, the playing fields are also smaller, and filled with more details, like trees and grass to hide in. It also feels like it's harder to attack foes by directly throwing bombs at them, instead encouraging you to think more strategically and use the timed explosions to blow them up. It supports up to four players wirelessly, and did support play over the Internet, back when the 3DS was active. Included are new power-ups, like invincibility (shaped like a Superman logo except with a "P") and different types of bombs. You can store up a few at a time and use them at your discretion. You can choose arranged or original music, unlock different outfits for your pig, and even a few development docs for both the arcade game and its remake. It's a well-done upgrade, and it's a shame it's no longer commercially available due to the closure of the 3DS eShop.

The pig from Buta-san also appears in other Jaleco games, including the mahjong-themed Famicom puzzler Okkotoshi Puzzle Tonjan!? and the Game Boy pinball game Hero Shuugou!! Pinball Party. He's also a playable character in Game Tengoku, the vertical parody shoot-em-up. Here he's voiced by Akio Ohtsuka, the Japanese voice of Solid Snake from Metal Gear Solid, making him sound particularly badass.

Ninja-kun: Majou no Bouken

Original Release: 1984

Platforms: ARC, MSX, FC, FM7, PC88, MOB, WII, PS4, NSW

Ninja-kun: Majou no Bouken (“Devil Castle Adventure”) is about a little ninja guy scaling mountains and castles while fighting baddies. Released in 1984 by UPL, it was an early game developed by Ryuichi Nishizawa, who would later co-found Westone and develop the Wonder Boy/Monster World series, as well as Tsutomu Fujisawa, who was key to many of UPL’s titles.

The goal in Ninja-kun is simply to kill all of the enemies in each stage. Each level scrolls directly upward for a few screens, which are comprised of several cliffs. Ninja-kun attacks with shuriken, which can also be used to block enemy projectiles. Running into foes only temporarily stuns the hero, but getting hit by opposing fire kills him. However, it's also possible to stun foes by jumping on top of their heads. There are only three stages in total, which repeat infinitely, adding new and more difficult enemies as you progress.

Every once in a while, floating balls fall from the top of the screen. If you collect three, you’re taken to a bonus stage where you need to collect all of the orbs in a stage in a certain amount of time.

For a game made in 1984, Ninja-kun looks pretty good. The sprites might be diminutive, but they're still colorful and detailed. The hero's most notable characteristic is his eyes, which bug out in a panic whenever he's stunned or killed. The only real issue is posed by the odd jumping controls. You can only jump if you're running left or right and hit the jump button. If you're standing still while pressing the button, you leap down to the cliff below instead, which is quite confusing. Still, the rotation of enemy types and fun combat keeps things engaging despite its simplicity.

Ninja-kun was also ported to the Famicom by Jaleco, but the controls are poor and the game feels pretty buggy. The various computer versions are no better and suffer even worse from some technical constraints. The MSX version was released in Europe under the title Ninja. Between 2004 and 2005, a company called CatalyStar put out a whole bunch of Ninja-kun mobile games in Japan, among them a port of the original called Ninja-kun EX. The Famicom version was also available on Nintendo's Virtual Console, but only in Japan. The game was first released internationally in 2015 for the PS4 by Hamster, as part of their Arcade Archives series.

It should be noted that this game has nothing at all to do with the NES game Ninja Kid, which is actually an adapted version of the Famicom game Gegege no Kitarou. Likewise, it’s unrelated to the Taito arcade game The Ninja Kids, a humorous side-scrolling beat-em-up. Further, this is an entirely separate project from the identically titled Ninja-kun from Micro Cabin, released for the PC-88 and MSX in 1983.

Ninja-kun: Ashura no Shou

AKA: Ninja-Kid II / Rad Action

Original Release: 1987

Platforms: ARC, MSX2, FC, MOB, WII, PS4, NSW

This arcade sequel takes the gameplay of Ninja-kun and greatly expands upon it. Although there are still many stages where you simply need to clear the screen of bad guys, there are also a number of side-scrolling areas where the goal is to get to the end. There are far more levels overall too, which are generally bigger than the screens from the original game. You even get to choose between different paths at the beginning of the game, and the route depends on a card selected at the start.

The game keeps introducing new enemies throughout its 31 stages (in one path), and even some large boss-style monsters. Some of the later enemies require advanced strategies, like tiny samurai armors that only become vulnerable for a second after jumping on their heads. In addition to some swimming stages where Ninja-kun uses a katana, there are also very brief "puzzle" stages — if you can get to the end, you receive a bonus weapon for the next stage. Interestingly, you can also choose to dishonor yourself and skip it.

The additional weapons include a boomerang, which is slightly stronger than the shuriken, the extremely powerful bombs, and a fire wheel with limited usage. Most importantly, the controls have been fixed, so pressing Down now makes Ninja-kun drop to the lower floor (or crouch if there is none), while pressing Up cycles through the available weapons. Ninja-kun now is as agile as they come: He can hold onto walls and slowly climb up by mashing the jump button, or scale barriers even faster with a tricky wall jump. When he falls too high, Ninja-kun is incapacitated for a few seconds upon impact, but this can be prevented with a saving roll.

The character sprites look about the same as in the original game, but the background graphics have improved a bit. It's not exactly a classic, but it's still pretty fun. This was ported to the Famicom in 1990 by UPL itself, and is a significantly better conversion than the Famicom version of Ninja-kun. Other than the downgraded graphics, the game plays pretty much the same. This was meant to be released in the U.S. by American Sammy under the name Ninja Taro, but that never came to fruition. There are even a couple of different title variations around the globe — the "World" version is known as Ninja Kid II, while North American carts were known as Rad Action.

The game also reached the MSX2, courtesy of HAL. It looks better than the Famicom version, but the scrolling is choppy and the multiple routes at the beginning have been removed. There was yet another mobile version in 2007, although this one was called Ninja Kid (no numeral) and was only available in Korea. Aside from a prettier interface, it seemingly adds life bars for the stronger enemies.

Super Ninja-kun

AKA: Super Ninja Kid (EN)

Original Release: 1994

Platforms: SFC, PS4, NSW

After the first two Ninja-kun games, Jaleco basically adopted the character from UPL and turned him into their own mascot, redubbing him Ninja Jajamaru-kun. His first appearance was a 1985 Famicom game, but he starred in plenty of titles over the years, often shifting into other genres. A few of these even made their way stateside, like Ninja Taro and Maru’s Mission on the Game Boy. Most of the series has since been released in English by ININ Games.

However, 1994 saw the release of Super Ninja-kun for the Super Famicom, which is a drastically expanded remake of the original arcade game. This was developed by Jaleco, rather than UPL. It features much of the same goofy charm, now redrawn with 16-bit graphics. The stages here have been expanded, and the goal is to reach the end rather than killing everyone. The first two areas are based on the arcade game, but the rest are entirely original. The control scheme has been expanded to allow for dashing too, boss battles have been added, and you can join a friend for a two-player co-op mode. Ninja-kun can take several hits before he dies as well, and can expand his life meter by grabbing heart containers. When collecting spirits from fallen enemies, it charges a power gauge, allowing him to unleash a variety of magic spells. The hero begins with the standard shuriken, but after beating a level, he’s rewarded with new weapons, including bombs, lightning bolts, and more.

Overall, it's a decent update, but it just comes off as a run-of-the-mill side-scroller. It’s also fairly easy, as it was probably made for a younger audience. This isn’t to be confused with the American SNES game Super Ninja Boy, which is part of Culture Brain's Chinese World series. While originally Japan-exclusive, it can also be found on the Ninja Jajamaru-kun compilations overseas by ININ.

Other Cult Classics

Scrambled Egg

This 1983 Technos game casts you as Boss=Hero, a red ball with two eyeballs. The goal is to break all of the eggs in the stage by kicking them, which will send them sliding across the level, cracking other eggs in its path. You also have to deal with enemies called the Sukiyaki Brothers, along with the more aggressive foe Tuna Head, which can be disabled by kicking eggs into them. You have to be careful when kicking though, as you can also be knocked back. Find and hatch the red chicken, and it will come to your aid. A compellingly eccentric title, though each stage takes a little too long to complete. The North American version, retitled Eggs by distributor Universal, changes some of the graphics and gives Boss=Hero a dapper hat.

Mysterious Stones

In this 1984 game developed by Technos and published by Data East, you play as an ersatz Indiana Jones named Dr. John (Dr. Kick in Japan) as he explores ancient ruins in search of treasure. The game borrows some mechanics from the developer's earlier title Scrambled Egg, as you kick stones around the screen, which not only breaks them but will also take down enemies in your path. You're equipped with a pistol too, though it doesn't work against some enemies. As with that prior title, you’ll also occasionally unleash a bird, which flies around the screen and takes down baddies. The adventure is time-limited, as stages collapse into lava if you take too long, and you also need to escape each ruin by a certain time to claim victory bonuses. It's difficult to play at first, but still holds many intriguing secrets.

Bogey Manor

In this 1985 game from Technos, you control Fritz as he explores four screens of a haunted mansion, breaking all of the glowing orbs and then finding the exit before it crumbles. Each screen also has four floors, which you can travel between via stairs or doors that teleport you around. Most of the area is blacked out except for the floor you're on, though an item will illuminate the whole area. Fritz has a stick which can be used on some enemies too, but he can also temporarily distract them by pointing, or disable them using trap doors on the floor. If you fool them, they can become angrier! Power-up doors also let him turn into Super Fritz, allowing him to jump between floors without using staircases. An unusual but engaging game.

Nova 2001

Midway's Robotron 2084 is an arcade classic, but importing it was troublesome in Japan, since the dual joysticks were difficult to replicate in standard Japanese arcade cabinets. UPL's 1983 game Nova 2001, developed by future Westone co-founder Ryuichi Nishizawa, attempts to replicate it for a single joystick, but allows you to hold down a secondary button to lock your firing direction. Taking place in outer space, you control a spaceship fending off a variety of encroaching aliens. The space stations in the backgrounds are a nice touch, too. Despite its inspiration, including several similar visual effects, it's nonetheless an exciting shooter in its own right.

Raiders5

Another game from UPL and Nishizawa, Raiders5 is an unusual action-puzzle hybrid. The goal is to destroy all of the glowing targets in each stage, which extends for several screens vertically. While you can destroy most of the blocks in each stage, you're limited to traveling down narrow corridors, and can't shoot in different directions unless you have the space to turn around. By examining all the points in each stage, you can find the path that lets you reach all of the glowing blocks. You're also hounded by enemies that can't be killed, but instead temporarily turned into eggs. It takes a few credits to understand, but it's a pretty unique game.

Ark Area

A sequel to Nova 2001 published in 1987 by UPL, though without Ryuichi Nishizawa's involvement. It plays similarly, though the controls are changed so that your direction is always locked when moving, and you need to tap a button to change it. The visuals have improved and there's a much greater variety of enemies and patterns across the game's 23 areas. As with Nova 2001, the trippy, sci-fi visual style was carried forward for later UPL games like Atomic Robo-kid and Bio-ship Paladin. The finale is an insanely psychedelic mess, and instead of staff credits, it displays the PCB components.

Wiz

This 1985 side-scroller developed by Seibu Kaihatsu and published by Taito casts you as a cloaked wizard, who looks an awful lot like Orko from Masters of the Universe (and in turn, the black mages from Final Fantasy). With your default cane weapon, you can shoot projectiles, but other limited-use magic spells allow you to stop time, blast everything on the screen, or set yourself on fire to provide temporarily invulnerability. There are three stage types —a forest, a cave, and a snowy area — which loop several times with different color variations and enemy patterns. For an action platformer release around the time of the original Super Mario Bros., it’s pretty cool! The dragon Miclus pops up in later Raiden games, too. Sony also released an MSX port named Magical Kid Wiz.

Cop 01

Similar to Nichibutsu's Cosmo Police Galivan released around the same time in 1985, Cop 01 is also a futuristic action game patterned after Kung Fu Master. As the hero cop James attempting to rescue his partner Stacy, the focus here is purely on running-and-gunning, as you barrel forward and shoot enemies, making it a prototype to Rolling Thunder. Killing foes builds your energy gauge, which fuels your jet pack, allowing you to float above enemies. The game has six levels, after which the kidnapped lady thanks you in a digitized voice. It’s a fun game let down by some choppy animation, particularly when jumping. As with Soldier Girl Amazon, the instruction card artwork features a woman dressed in a skimpy costume.

Performan

A 1985 title developed by Toaplan and published by Data East, this is an unusual cross between a maze game like Pac-Man along with the underground tunneling of Dig Dug. The titular robot Performan can attack enemies with his boomerang, but it's much more fun to use the explosives littered around the level, which can be detonated by either shooting them or digging beneath them. You can also dig holes underneath the surface to temporarily evade enemies, but they can still follow you down below, and due to the perspective, it's hard to tell what's above ground and what's underneath it. In between stages are comical Pac-Man like intermission sequences. It’s not Toaplan's best, but remains an interesting hybrid.

Distopia

Toaplan's last project before bankruptcy was a side-scrolling action game called Genkai Chousen Distopia. Playing as one of four characters, you'd explore a post-apocalyptic world, allowing you to choose which stages to play by picking from four different routes. The game wasn’t completed or ever released, so the only remnants are some screenshots, design documents, and a brief gameplay video taken by a Toaplan staff member before the company shut down. Whatever can be seen shows off the brilliant pixel artwork that’s signature of Toaplan's output at the time. Perhaps one day it can be restored and released à la Westone's Clockwork Aquario.

Mouser

A 1983 arcade game from UPL, again by Ryuichi Nishizawa. You play as a cat named Nyanta who must rescue his girlfriend Mariya from a group of mice. Taking inspiration from Donkey Kong, you start at the bottom of a building and work your way up via ladders, with enemy mice tossing bouncing balls from above or chucking bricks from the side. The goal is not merely to reach the top, but also to catch enough mice, which extends the top ladder, allowing you to reach Mariya. It’s a chaotic game with a lot going on, but it’s different enough to set it apart from the Nintendo classic that inspired it. Also ported to the MSX by Sony. Unrelated to a game of the same name also released in 1983, made by Nasir Gebelli, for IBM PCs.

Mighty Guy

One of a few overhead run-and-gun style games from Nichibutsu (the other being Ninja Emaki and Soldier Girl Amazon), Mighty Guy is a bit different than most. With two buttons, you can punch and jump kick enemies, while pressing both activates an energy-sapping Psycho Gun, which lets you aim an energy beam around the screen. This is powerful but difficult to use since it stops you in your tracks, but you can also find a limited use machine gun to make things easier. The screen also scrolls horizontally and wraps around infinitely, as you’re still supposed to charge upward to progress. The levels transition smoothly from one area to the next, though the whole game is only a few minutes long. The level and enemy layout feels very haphazard, but pummeling and blowing up enemies is still pretty fun.

Fancy World

A 1996 title from Korean developer Unico, Fancy World: Crisis of Earth is a single screen platformer that’s a whole lot like Snow Bros. and Tumblepop, as you jump through each screen and toss balls at enemies until they keel over. What sets this apart from other similar games is the world traveling theme, as well as the colorful visuals that channel the vibe of Westone games. Unico also made a similar game at the same time called Magic Purple, where you control a boxing glove-wielding duck as he pummels enemies and knocks them off the screen. This also has a wide variety of stages, beginning in undersea kingdoms, then working all of the way up into outer space.

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Table of Contents

Introduction
The Astyanax
Ninja Kazan
Momoko 120%
Ginga Ninkyouden
Avenging Spirit
Castle of Dragon
Sword Master
Psychic 5
Esper Boukentai: Maou no Toride
Charlie Ninja
J. J. Squawkers
Ganryu
Ganryu 2: Hakuma Kojirou
Legend of Makai
Psycho-Nics Oscar
The Cliffhanger: Edward Randy
Cannon Dancer - Osman
Cosmo Police Galivan
Xain’d Sleena
Toki
Guardian
Wardner
Demon’s World
Atomic Robo-Kid
Mutant Night
Vandyke
Dyna Gear
The Outfoxies
China Gate
Blue’s Journey
Clockwork Aquario
Biomechanical Toy
Big Karnak
Thunder Hoop
TH Strikes Back
Magician Lord
Ninja Combat
Kid Niki: Radical Ninja
Kaiketsu Yanchamaru 2: Karakuri Land
Kaiketsu Yanchamaru 3: Taiketsu! Zouringen
Hammerin’ Harry
Hammerin’ Harry Console / Portable Games
Hammerin’ Hero
Legend of Hero Tonma
Ninja Spirit
Lightning Swords
Mr. Heli
In the Hunt
GunForce: Battle Fire Engulfed Terror Island
GunForce II
Ninja Emaki
Kyros
Aurail
FixEight
Out Zone
Ninja Commando
Shock Troopers
Shock Troopers: 2nd Squad
Demon Front
Gundhara - Juudan Arashi
Heroic Episode
Soldier Girl Amazon
Heated Barrel
Funky Jet
Rod Land
Snow Bros.: Nick & Tom
Snow Bros. 2: With New Elves
Nightmare in the Dark
ZuPaPa!
Cabal
Blood Bros.
Riot
Spinal Breakers
Empire City: 1931
Dead Angle
Dynamite Duke
Alligator Hunt
Gamshara
City Connection
City Connection Rocket
Pipi & Bibi's
Kickle Cubicle
Tropical Angel
Roller Jammer
Penguin-kun Wars
Butasan
Ninja-kun: Majou no Bouken
Ninja-kun: Ashura no Shou
Super Ninja-kun
Other Cult Classics
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