Tag Archives: Bullet Hell

Fire Shark, Arcade

Fire Shark is a vertically-scrolling shoot ’em up developed by Toaplan and first distributed into arcades in 1989. It is the sequel to Flying Shark, which came out in 1987, and once again features biplanes that must blast their way through ten different stages of military mayhem.

Continue reading Fire Shark, Arcade

Flying Shark, Arcade

Developed by Toaplan and first released into arcades in 1987, Flying Shark (aka Sky Shark in North America) is a challenging vertically-scrolling bullet hell shooter with a military theme. You fly a biplane over jungle and sea and must blast your way through five increasingly more difficult levels.

Continue reading Flying Shark, Arcade

Three Wonders, Arcade

Three Wonders is an unusual arcade game from Capcom that was first released in 1991. What’s unusual about it is that the game is based around three separate games – each of which you can choose to play in any order, cooperatively with a friend, and that are supposedly linked by the game’s storyline and characters.

Continue reading Three Wonders, Arcade

Gates of Zendocon, Atari Lynx

Developed by Epyx and published by Atari Corporation, Gates of Zendocon is a scrolling shooter that was released exclusively for the Atari Lynx in 1989. The game was in fact a launch title for the colour handheld, along with California Games, Blue Lightning, and Electrocop.

Continue reading Gates of Zendocon, Atari Lynx

Zarlor Mercenary, Atari Lynx

Zarlor Mercenary is a single or multiplayer vertically-scrolling “bullet hell” shooter that was developed by Epyx and released exclusively for the Atari Lynx in 1990. The game plays in landscape (horizontal) format, and the background scrolls horizontally too.

Continue reading Zarlor Mercenary, Atari Lynx

Zero Wing, Megadrive/Genesis

The English language Sega Megadrive conversion of Toaplan‘s Zero Wing has gone down in history as one of the (unintentionally) funniest games of all time. The intro sequence (which was created for this version of the game and does not appear in the arcade original) features some of the most hilariously bad translations of all time, including the now iconic sentence “All your base are belong to us“, which became a meme in the early 2000s.

Continue reading Zero Wing, Megadrive/Genesis

Zero Wing, Arcade

Zero Wing is a side-scrolling bullet hell shooter developed by Toaplan and distributed into arcades by Namco in Japan and Williams Electronics in North America in 1989.

Continue reading Zero Wing, Arcade

Raiden Densetsu, FM Towns

Released in Japan as “Raiden Densetsu” (“Legend of Raiden“), but with a title screen that calls it “Raiden Trad“, this is an authentic port of the Seibu Kaihatsu arcade game Raiden, but with a few extra options.

Continue reading Raiden Densetsu, FM Towns

Viewpoint, FM Towns

Originally released as an arcade game on Neo Geo MVS hardware, Viewpoint is an isometric bullet hell shooter originally developed by Aicom, ported by Sammy and published by Ving for the FM Towns in 1993. It obviously takes inspiration from Sega‘s Zaxxon, but its aesthetic owes more to Irem‘s R-Type.

Continue reading Viewpoint, FM Towns

Viewpoint, PlayStation

The 1996 PlayStation version of Aicom‘s classic isometric shooter, Viewpoint, was ported by Visual Concepts Entertainment and published by Electronic Arts. It features updated graphics and music, with the same basic gameplay elements of the original.

Continue reading Viewpoint, PlayStation