Nintendo‘s famous flying game, Pilotwings, first came out in Japan in 1990, then the following year was a launch title for the North American and European releases of the Super Nintendo.
Pilotwings uses scaling and rotation effects (known as ‘Mode 7’ in some circles) to give a visual representation of the ground, with regular 2D sprites making up everything else, and it works extremely well.
A conversion of an MSX2 remake of the classic arcade game, Xevious, published on the PC Engine by Namcot in 1990. And – like a lot of PC Engine shooters – it is a good experience.
Initially released in 1990 by Telenet Japan, Valis III is a CD-ROM-only platform game for the PC Engine. It was released for the TurboGrafx-CD in North America in 1992.
Captive is a classic Tony Crowther game, published by Mindscape in 1990. It is a futuristic, first-person RPG/action game in the style of Dungeon Master.
At first I didn’t really much like the game – I thought the graphics were dated and garish and the controls finicky – BUT… after a bit more reading/research I managed to get a foothold in the game and I really started to enjoy it.
A 1990 homebrew conversion of the classic Freescape game, Total Eclipse, by the Hungarian coder Soós Ferenc (aka “SF”). It requires 64K of RAM to run.
And Total Eclipse an excellent conversion – pretty much identical to its Commodore 64 parent (from which it was converted).
A 1990 homebrew conversion by Pygmy that requires 64K of RAM (which technically makes it a Plus 4 release). Driller is an impressive achievement on the 6502, even if it does run slowly.
Developed and published by Zeppelin in 1990, Santa’s Christmas Caper is a rarity: it is a Christmas-themed “Bullet Hell” shooter that is actually not too bad.
There are over 130 Mega Man titles, and many are essentially the same formula. That is: choose a level based on one of a number of boss enemies (usually themed, with a unique name); run and jump your way through a tortuous series of platforms and ladders to reach said boss; then whup its ass in a boss fight.
The Atari ST conversion of Ghouls ‘N Ghosts is pretty ugly.
Only ever released in Japan, this PC Engine conversion of Capcom‘s classic Ghouls ‘N Ghosts was developed by NEC Avenue and is one of the very best conversions out there.
