Umihara Kawase is a weird-but-great Japanese platform game first released for the Super Nintendo in 1994.
The game has an excellent rope-based mechanic that makes it different and interesting to play.
Umihara Kawase is a weird-but-great Japanese platform game first released for the Super Nintendo in 1994.
The game has an excellent rope-based mechanic that makes it different and interesting to play.
Zynaps is a smart side-scrolling shoot ’em up, developed by Dominic Robinson, John Cumming and Stephen Crow (with music by Steve Turner), and published by Hewson Consultants for the ZX Spectrum in 1987.
The Game Boy Color has a brilliant remake of The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening. It was first released in 1998 and features an added colour-themed dungeon not seen in the original monochrome release.
Continue reading The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening DX, Game Boy Color
This 1991 sequel to the classic Squaresoft RPG Final Fantasy Legend is considered by many to be even better than the first game. And I would have to concur with that view.
Final Fantasy Legend on the Nintendo Game Boy is a game that particularly resonates with me because I remember buying it back in 1989 and playing it to death over the space of six months. Everywhere I went at the time I had my Game Boy, battery pack, and Final Fantasy Legend cartridge, and I would play it whenever I had the time. And when I hear the iconic music playing it takes me back like a time machine…
Anyone familiar with the NES game Mr. Gimmick will see similarities between that and Trip World, a cute and slightly weird platform game released for the Nintendo Game Boy in 1992 (incidentally the same year as Mr. Gimmick).
The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening (1993) is like a mini version of the Super Nintendo classic A Link To The Past (1991) – both games share more than just the same DNA. At times Link’s Awakening feels like A Link To The Past without colour. Which is a huge compliment because A Link To The Past is one of the best games ever made. This, too, is among the best Game Boy games of all time.
Continue reading The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, Game Boy
The fifth game in Nintendo‘s famous “Metroid” series, and the first to use 3D graphics, Metroid Prime follows the well-worn gameplay path of the earlier Metroid games (that is: have all your equipment; lose all your equipment; have to find all your equipment again) and again sees you playing as Samus Aran, a female ex-soldier with a powered exoskeleton.
Released in its native Japan in 1992, and everywhere else in 1993, Landstalker is a memorable real-time action adventure in a well-defined fantasy world. The Megadrive‘s answer to Zelda, in some respects.
Known as Gimmick! in Japan and Mr. Gimmick everywhere else, this 1992 release was an attempt by Sunsoft to push the graphical powers of the Nintendo Entertainment System further than they’d ever been pushed before (in order to compete with the Super Nintendo, which was relatively new on the market).
In order to do this, Sunsoft used all kinds of clever programming techniques using graphical tilesets and colours, and the end result is very striking. But it wasn’t enough to compete with the newer consoles of the time and Mr. Gimmick sank without a trace, into relative obscurity.