Eliminate Down is a top-quality single-player, side-scrolling, bullet hell shooter developed by Aprinet and published exclusively for the Megadrive/Genesis by Soft Vision in 1993. The game was only ever released in Japan, but is in English, so is easy to understand. There are fan translation patches available, and those translate the game into Spanish and Dutch.

In Eliminate Down you play the elite pilot of a craft known as ‘Steel Pyron‘ who must make his way into the core of a hostile alien civilisation – called The Amuleto – and tear the proverbial heart out of it…

Your craft has three different weapons that can be upgraded three times in a row by collecting power-ups, increasing their destructive power each time. You can also pick up and use barriers to protect you from stray shots.

Eliminate Down is peppered with fancy anime-style diagnostic animations and all the usual visual tropes that developers use to make it feel like James Cameron‘s Aliens meets Akira. With spaceships. And pretty patterns… Most importantly, though, is the fact that Eliminate Down is exceptionally well-planned and executed, as side-scrolling bullet-hell shooters go, so the whole thing feels challenging and ever-evolving in terms of the game’s story and themes, and also difficulty levels. Boss battles are particularly good and they come frequently.

This is a fun blast for anyone who likes an old 2D shooters. Eliminate Down is a solid challenge if you like to play these games as intended, or is fun for an hour or two if you want to cheat your way through it. I’d say that this is maybe even the best scrolling shooter on the Megadrive. I thought that it was better than any of the three similar Thunder Force games by Techno Soft for the Megadrive. Compile/Taoplan‘s MUSHA might give it a run for its money, though…

More: Eliminate Down on Wikipedia