A very good PC Engine/Turbografx-16 conversion of the 1986 arcade game from Capcom, Hyper Dyne Side Arms is side-scrolling, bullet hell shooter featuring Mecha characters, fighting an invading alien empire. It was first released in 1989 and was published by NEC Avenue in Japan, and Radiance Software in North America.

The PC Engine/Turbografx-16 version of this game has two significant differences to the arcade version.

Firstly: while the arcade game is famous for its simultaneous two-player cooperative mode, this version of the game is for one player only. Which is disappointing. I’m not quite sure why this was decided to be the case, but it hurts the game significantly.

Secondly, in the PC Engine version of Hyper Dyne Side Arms you can pause the game and cycle through your available weapons. Which you definitely cannot do in the arcade version! (imagine that…)

Overall, this is a fun side-scrolling shooter on the PC Engine, in spite of its lack of co-op. And it’s still well worth a play today.

Hyper Dyne Side Arms was also released for the PC Engine CD-ROM.

The game has also been converted to: Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Amiga, Commodore 64, MS-DOS and ZX Spectrum. GO! published the home computer versions.

More: Hyper Dyne Side Arms on Wikipedia