Fantasy Zone is a colourful scrolling shooter from 1986. It was created by Sega and it looks simple and cartoony, but is in fact very challenging.
The main character, Opa-Opa, is sometimes referred to as “Sega‘s first mascot” and is very similar to the one seen in the earlier TwinBee. Both TwinBee and this game have been credited with the creation of the “cute ’em up” genre, and that is probably not too far from the truth.
Creatures II: Torture Trouble is the sequel to the brilliant Creatures. It was again created by John and Steve Rowlands and published by Thalamus, this time in 1992.
Continue reading Creatures II: Torture Trouble, Commodore 64
Legend of Mana is the fourth game in the Mana series. It was once again directed by Koichi Ishii and was published by Square on CD-ROM for the PlayStation only in 1999.
Wiz ‘N’ Liz was developed by Raising Hell Software for the Amiga and Sega Megadrive only and was first published by Psygnosis in 1993. It is a side-scrolling collecting game with cute graphics and jolly music and can be played one or two-player.
Thunder Blade is a single-player helicopter combat game that debuted in arcades in 1987, courtesy of Sega. It combines overhead shooting sections with third-person, ‘over-the-shoulder’ shooting sections and it features lots of impressive graphical scaling effects on the buildings and enemies.
I hadn’t seen this 1989 arcade game from Atari Games before, until I played it recently, and even then I found it on the Commodore 64 first, then realised that it was an arcade conversion.
Skull & Crossbones has all the ingredients of a classic arcade action game, but – having played it extensively now – I can see why it failed…
Mercs is a classic arcade shooter from 1990. It was jointly developed by Sega and Capcom and features simultaneous three-player cooperative gameplay.
Released ten years after the original Salamander, Konami‘s 1996 sequel – Salamander 2 – is more of the same horizontal/vertical scrolling blasting action, but with a different style of graphics, bigger, better weapons, and more spectacular events.
Bubble Memories: The Story of Bubble Bobble III was released into arcades by Taito in 1996, and – as the subtitle makes clear – this is a canonical Bubble Bobble sequel. It has been described as “Bubble Bobble on steroids”…
R-Type Leo is a spin-off from the famous R-Type series and was released into arcades in 1992. It was the last R-Type game to be made as an arcade game and was developed by Nanao, the parent company of Irem.
The King of Grabs 