Tag Archives: console

Megami Tensei Gaiden: Last Bible III, Super Nintendo

The third game in the Last Bible series (a subseries of the Megami Tensei games), was developed by Multimedia Intelligence Transfer and published by Atlus – in Japan only – for the Super Famicom in 1995. It is a Role-Playing Game with random encounters and turn-based combat, and features the unique Megami Tensei trait of talking to monsters to try to recruit them, calling them into your party, and fusing them together to make more powerful monsters who will fight with you. This is a Japanese-only release that currently benefits from fan translations into both English and Spanish, which makes this excellent game playable to a good proportion of the Western world.

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Spectre, Super Nintendo

Originally an award-winning game on Macintosh computers, Spectre is a first-person tank battle game for one or two players, initially developed by Peninsula Gameworks. This Super Nintendo conversion was developed by Synergistic Software and released in North America by Cybersoft, and in France and Germany by Gametek, in 1994. As far as I can tell it wasn’t released anywhere else, so remains relatively obscure, as SNES games go.

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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.

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Montezuma’s Revenge, ColecoVision

Originating on Atari 8-bit home computers in 1983, this ColecoVision port of the pioneering platform game, Montezuma’s Revenge, was developed and published by Parker Brothers in 1984.

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Kirby’s Dream Land 3, Super Nintendo

Kirby’s Dream Land 3 was developed by HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo in 1997. It is the successor to Kirby’s Dream Land 2 on the Game Boy, and was the first and only Dream Land adventure on the Super NES.

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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.

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SOS, Super Nintendo

SOS is an intriguing survival adventure game set on a sinking ship in The North Sea, in 1921. The game features four playable characters, each with a different story, although the ultimate aim is the same for all of them: to escape from the stricken Lady Crithania, which has been hit by a gigantic wave and has capsized off the coast of England. SOS was developed by Human Entertainment and published exclusively for the Super Famicom by Field Co. Ltd. in 1993 (1994 in North America; published by Vic Tokai). In Japan the game is known as “Septentrion“.

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Kirby’s Dream Course, Super Nintendo

The first Kirby game released for the Super Nintendo, Kirby’s Dream Course is a miniature golf game that was developed by HAL Laboratory and Nintendo EAD, and first published by Nintendo in 1994. The game began development as a standalone title called “Special Tee Shot“, with its own original characters and art assets, but was later turned into a Kirby game after the success of the Kirby series on the Game Boy.

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Fantasy Zone II: The Tears of Opa-Opa, Sega Master System

Fantasy Zone II: The Tears of Opa-Opa is the sequel to the classic 1986 Sega arcade game, Fantasy Zone. Rather unusually, it came out first on the Master System, before later being released as an arcade game. Usually the opposite occurs, but in this case the Master System version was released in 1987 and the arcade version came out in 1988.

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Marble Madness, Megadrive

The Japanese Megadrive release of Marble Madness is completely different to the North American and European release of the game and was developed and published by Tengen in 1993. It is far superior to the Western Megadrive/Genesis release and is more authentic to the arcade original. In fact: it is very, very close to the arcade game, in terms of graphics, sound and gameplay. If you didn’t know that the Japanese version of the game was different, I’d recommend checking it out as it may shock you to find out how good it is…

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