Mechanized Attack is a manic, one or two-player lightgun shooter that was released into arcades by SNK in 1989.
On the face of it you could argue that Mechanized Attack is a clone of Taito‘s 1987 hit, Operation Wolf. You could also argue that it’s not a very good clone.
The second Lethal Enforcers, first released into arcades in 1994, goes in a different direction to the first Lethal Enforcers – Lethal Enforcers II: Gun Fighters being a lightgun shoot ’em up set in the ‘Wild West’, in 1873. What hasn’t changed, though, is the fact that Konami used the same technology for digitising the graphics in this game as they did the first, and it still looks pretty dodgy as a result…
Lethal Enforcers is the first in a series of arcade lightgun shooters from Konami. It was initially released in 1992 and features digitised photos of people and places, which was relatively innovative back in ’92, but by today’s standards now looks pretty rough.
Written by John Gibson and published by Imagine Software in 1983, Zzoom is a simple first-person shoot ’em up where the aim is to protect refugees from attacking enemy forces.
Based on the smash hit film of the same name, Terminator 2: Judgment Day is a one or two-player lightgun shooter developed and distributed by Midway in 1991. In this game you’re flung into the future (post-1997), after the nuclear holocaust caused by SkyNet, to fight for The Resistance against ‘The Machines‘.
Zombie Raid is a first-person arcade lightgun shooter for one or two simultaneous players. It was developed and distributed by American Sammy in 1996.
Crypt Killer is a three-player, horror-themed lightgun shooter that was first distributed into arcades by Konami in 1995. It uses 3D polygonal graphics for the backgrounds and 2D scaled sprites for the enemies and objects. In some respects it is Konami‘s attempt at producing a House of the Dead-style shooter, although in my humble opinion it isn’t as good as Sega‘s famous horror shooter series.
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.
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.
Continue reading Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss, FM Towns
The FM Towns version of the classic Dungeon Master was ported by FTL Games (the game’s original developer) and published by Fujitsu in 1989 (two years after the original Atari ST version, and three years before the DOS version came out). This was a Japan-only release, on CD-ROM, but the game is playable in both English and Japanese, which is great.
The King of Grabs 