Developed by a team led by Yu Suzuki at Sega in 1985, Space Harrier is a super-fast third-person, flying-into-the-screen fantasy blasting game, originally housed inside a hydraulic cabinet in arcades. This would jerk around as you moved the control stick, giving you a feeling of movement as you played the game.
Tag Archives: Colourful
Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, Arcade
Capcom‘s Cadillacs and Dinosaurs is a side-scrolling beat ’em up, based on a series of comics (and an animated TV series), and first released into arcades in 1993.
The game bears all the hallmarks of classic Capcom arcade games of the time: vivid, colourful graphics, relentless action, and violent, cartoon humour.
Rainbow Islands, Arcade
Rainbow Islands: The Story of Bubble Bobble 2 is possibly Japanese game developer Taito‘s finest hour. On any system.
Shantae, Game Boy Color
Shantae is a great little platform adventure game, made for the Nintendo Game Boy Color by WayForward Technologies and published by Capcom in 2002.
The main character is a female, half-genie swashbuckler, called Shantae, and is up against the pirate Risky Boots and her band of cack-handed shipmates.
Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, GameCube
It is debatable what the best Mario Kart game of all time is.
Wriggler, ZX Spectrum
A weird, colourful, original worm-based race game on the ZX Spectrum, released by Romantic Robot in 1985.
Actually, Wriggler is less of a “race” game and more of a “crawl” game. The pace is not very fast at all.
Kururin Squash!, GameCube
I only discovered this marvellous game recently, on the back of posting screenshots of its predecessor on here. But I’m extremely glad I did, because Kururin Squash! is a fantastic update of the same game mechanics that made Kuru Kuru Kururin so compelling to play: guiding a spinning stick around a series of mad, twisting mazes.
Kururin Paradise, Game Boy Advance
Fantastic 2002, Japan-only sequel to Kuru Kuru Kururin, developed by Eighting and published by Nintendo for the Game Boy Advance.
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, GameCube
Nintendo‘s 2002 release of their tenth Legend of Zelda game (if you count Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages as two games, which I do) was a real leap, in terms of graphical presentation.
Continue reading The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, GameCube
Kuru Kuru Kururin, Game Boy Advance
Kuru Kuru Kururin is a weirdly-named but wonderful (and original) Game Boy Advance game, developed by Eighting and first published by Nintendo in 2001.
The idea is that you have to control a spinning stick, and take it around a series of increasingly twisting and torturous courses, without touching the sides, or hitting other hazards. And do it against a time limit. It’s one of those games with a simple premise, but offers quite a tough and interesting challenge.