Released exclusively in Japan by Sky Think Systems in February 1997, Harmful Park is an amazing side-scrolling shooter with a bizarre Japanese flavour.

The graphics and music are stunning and there is a simultaneous two-player cooperative mode which is a lot of fun to play.

Harmful Park knocks many of its peers out of the park (pun intended), and it really shows off the PlayStation‘s incredible 2D graphics capabilities as well. The only downside is that the game never got released in the West. There is, however, a fan-made English translation patch, which is well worth downloading and applying (the translated storyline is pretty funny too – a female scientist builds a pair of robotic bikes to fight the evil forces of Dr. Tequila, who’s built a futuristic amusement park and used it to take half a million people hostage, then sends her two reluctant daughters to go do the fighting for her).

On top of the excellent blasting action in the main game, Harmful Park also has a variety of minigames to unlock and play, including a multiplayer tank battle game. Harmful Park really is an excellent package and is fantastically well-produced. It’s one of my favourite PlayStation games and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Harmful Park is a world class obscure retro-gaming classic!

More: Harmful Park on Wikipedia