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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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.
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.
Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders, FM Towns
Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders is the second SCUMM game from Lucasfilm Games (aka LucasArts), after Maniac Mansion, with game development led by David Fox, and with Matthew Alan Kane as co-designer and co-programmer. It was originally released for the Commodore 64 in 1988, and this enhanced FM Towns port was published in Japan in 1990 by Fujitsu. The game is playable in both English and Japanese.
Continue reading Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders, FM Towns
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.
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.
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…
Shadow of the Beast, FM Towns
Shadow of the Beast on the FM Towns was first published in Japan only by Cross Media Soft – a brand of Victor Musical Industries (a subsidiary of JVC) – in 1991, and came on CD-ROM.
Tim Ansell, who programmed the FM Towns version of Shadow of the Beast (and Shadow of the Beast II), founded the famous British developer The Creative Assembly in 1987 and this was one of a number of contract ports that he did for Psygnosis in the late ’80s and early ’90s.
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.
Marvel Super Heroes, Arcade
Marvel Super Heroes is a one-on-one fighting game developed by Capcom and distributed into arcades in 1995. It is the second Capcom beat ’em up based on characters from the Marvel Comics line and is loosely based on “The Infinity Gauntlet” storyline from the Marvel Universe. The gameplay follows the Street Fighter II template for fighting games and uses six buttons and a joystick for each player. The game can be played in either normal or ‘turbo’ mode.
The King of Grabs 