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.
Tag Archives: conversion
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.
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.
Sword of Fargoal, Commodore 64
The Commodore 64 conversion of the VIC-20 classic, Sword of Fargoal, was published in 1983 by Epyx. It features the same Roguelike gameplay of the original, with a few small enhancements.
The NewZealand Story, FM Towns
A conversion of the classic Taito arcade game, featuring the cute Kiwi (Tiki), trying to rescue his girlfriend (Phee Phee) and his other Kiwi friends, from the blue leopard seal who has kidnapped them. The FM Towns version was first released in 1989 by Ving and was ported by Taito themselves.
Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss, FM Towns
Origin/Blue Sky Productions‘ classic MS-DOS RPG, Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss, was released for the FM Towns in 1993 by Electronic Arts Victor, Inc.*
*= Electronic Arts Victor was a joint venture between Electronic Arts and the Victor Musical Industries subsidiary of JVC, established in September 1992 in Tokyo. Electronic Arts Victor‘s mission was to translate Electronic Arts‘ library of games to Japanese language and to distribute them in Japan, as well as to create original titles for the Japanese market.
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Chase HQ, FM Towns
The FM Towns conversion of Taito‘s classic arcade game, Chase HQ, looks great and plays well, and is also considerably easier than the arcade original, which may appeal to some. It was published by Ving in 1991 in Japan only.
Turbo Out Run, FM Towns
A conversion of the Sega arcade racer, Turbo Out Run was ported to the FM Towns by CRI (CSK Research Institute) and published by Sega in 1989. In truth, it’s not a particularly good version of the arcade game as it lacks a number of features, doesn’t look as good, and doesn’t play as well as its parent.
Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers, FM Towns
The 1994 FM Towns version of Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers is a port of the popular Capcom arcade fighting game of 1993. It is the fourth game in the Street Fighter II sub-series, with four new fighters, adding to the existing roster of twelve characters from The World Warrior.
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Chaos Strikes Back, FM Towns
Chaos Strikes Back is a continuation of the classic Role-Playing Game, Dungeon Master. It’s a sequel – but not the sequel – to the first game, and was originally released as a stand-alone expansion disk on the Atari ST. On the FM Towns it was published on CD-ROM by Victor Musical Industries in 1990, and there’s a bit of faffing around to do before you can actually start the game*. Thankfully you can at least do this in English as there’s an option to play in that language.
*= Before you can play Chaos Strikes Back you must either create a new party (by entering the prison and choosing from the available portraits), and then save it to a new 720Kb floppy disk; or load a set of characters from a pre-existing FM Towns Dungeon Master save. You then need to enter the CSB portrait editor utility program and then click on ‘Make New Adventure’ to activate and save a new Chaos Strikes Back file to the disk. Only then will you be able to load and start the game…
The King of Grabs 