Lutter is an obscure-but-interesting combination of platform game and maze game, but with RPG elements – like levelling – also thrown into the mix.
You play the titular Lutter, a knight of the realm on a quest to rescue the princess from a maze-like castle of platforms, ladders, doors and monsters.
Translating into English as “Love Warrior Nicol“, Ai Senshi Nicol is an obscure Konami shoot ’em up, released for the Famicom Disk System in 1987. It has, to date, never been released outside of Japan.
Otocky is a cute and colourful side-scrolling shooter with a unique and interesting take on the subject. It was developed by SEDIC for ASCII Corporation and first published in 1987.
You see, rather than firing bullets, you throw balls at enemies to destroy them. And you can throw the balls in eight directions, so in effect you can shoot at enemies behind you (and above and below you) too.
Known in its native Japan as Tobidase Daisakusen, in America as 3-D WorldRunner, and other territories as The 3-D Battles of WorldRunner – I’m sticking with the simpler and more familiar WorldRunner for this website.
WorldRunner is a third-person running and jumping game where you’re sprinting into the screen and must avoid hitting oncoming objects or falling into pits. It starts off easy but quickly gets very challenging. By stage two you’ll be tearing your hair out…
Konami released Arumana no Kiseki in Japan in 1987. It is an action platformer with a cool rope mechanic that you use to climb to out-of-reach platforms.
Now this is a weird one… Monty On The Run (aka Monty no Doki Doki Daidassou) is a bizarre Japanese conversion of a famous British platform game. It was released by Jaleco in 1987 and bears little resemblance to the classic original.
Released on 26th September 1986 in Japan, Akumajō Dracula (translating as: “Demon Castle Dracula“) was the very first release in the Castlevania series, predating the MSX version of the game by about a month. Konami released it on the Famicom Disk System where it quickly became a hit with Japanese gamers.
It began a long-running series of platform/horror-themed video games and set the template for the Castlevania series as a whole.
Released into arcades in 1985, TwinBee is a cute, vertically-scrolling shooter that is much more challenging than it looks.
The second game in the infamous Cotton series, developed by Success and released into arcades first, then converted to the Sega Saturn in 1997.
Continue reading Cotton 2: Magical Night Dreams, Sega Saturn
Sega‘s 1991 arcade release, Cotton: Fantastic Night Dreams, is a strange-but-cute side-scrolling shoot ’em up featuring a young witch on a broomstick, called Cotton.
