MUSHA is a well-liked Megadrive shooter, made by famed Japanese developer Compile. It is part of the Aleste series, but features a ‘mecha’-suited protagonist fighting against a super computer that has taken over the Earth.
MUSHA was released in Japan by Taoplan in 1990 and in North America by Seismic the following year. It unfortunately didn’t get a European release.
Gunstar Heroes is a classic run-and-gun shooter, published initially on the Megadrive/Genesis by Sega in 1993. It was the debut game of the famous Japanese developer, Treasure.
Urban Strike is the second sequel to Desert Strike, and the follow-up to Jungle Strike, and it improves on both those games in a number of different ways.
For starters: there are now indoor shooting sections, where you have to search for MIAs and POWs and free them. Secondly: this time you get to fly different helicopters, and thirdly: you also get to drive ground assault vehicles! Yippee! 🙂
Desert Strike: Return to the Gulf is a classic helicopter action game, developed and published by Electronic Arts for the Sega Megadrive in 1992.
It is known for its easy-to-play but hard-to-master gameplay, and for its controversial ‘Gulf War’ storyline.
A relatively obscure Taito arcade game from 1989*, Fighting Hawk is a vertically-scrolling bullet hell shooter where you fly an A-10 ‘Tankbuster’ up the screen, fighting its way through waves of enemies and bosses.
Copta Snatch is a side-scrolling shoot ’em up for the Dragon 32. It was written by David K. Pridmore and published by Blaby Computer Games of Leicester in 1984.
Thunder Blade is a single-player helicopter combat game that debuted in arcades in 1987, courtesy of Sega. It combines overhead shooting sections with third-person, ‘over-the-shoulder’ shooting sections and it features lots of impressive graphical scaling effects on the buildings and enemies.
Also known as Defender II, Stargate is the 1981 sequel to Williams Electronics‘ Defender, which was released earlier the same year.
Stargate was designed and programmed by Eugene Jarvis and Larry DeMar of Vid Kidz, for Williams, and it features the same superfast blasting action as Defender, but with subtle differences.
Mercs is a classic arcade shooter from 1990. It was jointly developed by Sega and Capcom and features simultaneous three-player cooperative gameplay.
R-Type Leo is a spin-off from the famous R-Type series and was released into arcades in 1992. It was the last R-Type game to be made as an arcade game and was developed by Nanao, the parent company of Irem.
