The FM Towns conversion of Taito‘s smash hit arcade shooter, Operation Wolf, is both an authentic port of the original, and also a playable and fun game that utilises mouse controls to great effect. It was first published by Ving in 1990.

Graphically, Operation Wolf on the FM Towns is pretty much identical to the arcade version, with large, smooth-moving sprites and scrolling backdrops. The intermission screens are also pretty much ‘arcade perfect’. The only real difference between this and the original is the fact that the information panel on the right-hand side is narrower and designed differently, and that some of the information contained within it (like ammo counts) have been moved to the main play window (at the bottom).

Because the game is played from CD-ROM the music and sound effects are high quality, and the in-game speech (which is in English) is clear and precise. The music in the game is actually different to the arcade original, and – while it is top quality red book audio that streams from the CD – it doesn’t always seem to fit the game’s frenetic action.

As a Japan-only release Operation Wolf does contain Japanese text throughout, but that’s not an obstacle to playing the game – it’s perfectly playable to non-Japanese-speakers. It’s a superb port that shows that the FM Towns is more than capable of reproducing many of the classic arcade games of the ’80s and ’90s.

More: Operation Wolf on Wikipedia