Another excellent Hijong Park retro tribute game – this one possibly his best so far – Steel Alcimus is an overhead helicopter shooter with either twin-stick joypad, or keyboard and mouse controls. I played it with mouse and keys and found the control system to be really quite ingenious.
Frantic Dimension, PC
Frantic Dimension is another great, free game, made by talented Korean Hijong Park and released on Steam in 2018.
The opening animatic in Frantic Dimension is quite funny – made even funnier by the slightly off-kilter use of English (it’s not a criticism – I like it). 🙂
Rolling Bird, PC
Rolling Bird is a modern tribute to the classic arcade game Rolling Thunder.
Graphically it looks a bit like an NES game, or an old arcade game. The colours are bold and the animation simple, but still excellent.
Rolling Thunder 3, Megadrive/Genesis
Rolling Thunder 3 is a Sega Megadrive/Genesis exclusive. It was developed by Now Production and published by Namco in 1993. It did not appear in arcades, like its predecessors did.
Rolling Thunder 2, Arcade
Rolling Thunder 2 continues on from the classic Rolling Thunder: it’s secret agent “Albatross” against the sinister agents of “Geldra”, except this time you can play the game as the rescued Leila (from the first game) from the outset. Or, you can play two-player cooperatively with a friend, which you definitely couldn’t do in the original.
Rolling Thunder, Arcade
Rolling Thunder is a side-scrolling arcade action game, developed and manufactured by Namco in 1986.
You take control of Codename “Albatross” – a highly-agile secret agent and a member of the “Rolling Thunder” espionage unit. Your mission is to rescue your partner, Leila Blitz, from a secret society called “Geldra”, and who are holding her against her will somewhere in New York City.
Touch the Dead, Nintendo DS
Known as Dead ‘n’ Furious in Europe, but I’m going with the North American title for this Nintendo DS rail shooter – a touch-screen tribute to Sega‘s infamous arcade game House of the Dead. Only the title reference doesn’t work properly because there’s no “of” in it… I would’ve gone for ‘Touch of the Dead‘, which doesn’t really make sense but is better than what they used, because it at least references the original game properly. Anyway…
100 Best Level-Grinders Of All-Time
Level-Grinders; Dungeon-Crawlers; Role-Playing Games – whatever you want to call them – they are my (and many other people’s) favourite type of video game.
They allow you to build up your characters via the process of levelling. That is: by gaining experience, which in turn increases your character’s power levels.
Level-Grinders also allow you to hoard virtual items that don’t exist in the real world; accumulate unimaginable wealth in an imaginary world, and solve mysteries while you’re doing it.
Over and over again. For the love of the grind…
So here we go… The 100 Best Level-Grinders Of All-Time…
Tales of Phantasia, Game Boy Advance
This 2003 remake of Namco‘s SNES classic Tales of Phantasia was the first time the game had been officially translated into English.
While much of the game remains the same, there are a few differences.
Tales of Phantasia, Super Nintendo
Tales of Phantasia is an RPG developed by Wolf Team, and first published for the Super Nintendo by Namco in 1995. As JRPGs go, it is quite memorable.
