Tag Archives: Japanese

Ghosts ‘N Goblins, NES/Famicom

The NES/Famicom port of Capcom‘s classic arcade game, Ghosts ‘N Goblins, was developed by Micronics and first published in 1986. And – just like its parent – it is a very difficult game to make progress in.

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Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness, Nintendo 64

Set eight years before the events of Castlevania 64, Legacy of Darkness is a prequel to the first N64 Castlevania, featuring a ‘man-beast’ called Cornell who is trying to save his sister, Ada, from being used as a sacrifice to resurrect Dracula.

The game is set in 1844 and begins with Cornell arriving at his home village, only to discover that it’s been burnt to the ground by Dracula’s skeleton army. He finds Ada’s pendant on the ground and follows her scent to Dracula’s castle.

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Castlevania, Nintendo 64

Developed by Konami‘s Kobe division and first released in 1999, Castlevania on the N64 (sometimes referred to as “Castlevania 64“) is a third-person 3D game – the first 3D game, in fact, in the popular horror/platform/action series.

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Chase HQ, PC Engine

The PC Engine version of Taito‘s classic car chase game, Chase HQ, is pretty decent. It was ported by Daiei Seisakusho for Taito , and is reasonably accurate, although it’s not quite as good as the arcade original itself. No surprises there, really, because the PC Engine (or the North American TurboGrafx-16 counterpart) is a small 8-bit console that was known for punching above its weight, but it wasn’t able to perform miracles.

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Fire Shark, Arcade

Fire Shark is a vertically-scrolling shoot ’em up developed by Toaplan and first distributed into arcades in 1989. It is the sequel to Flying Shark, which came out in 1987, and once again features biplanes that must blast their way through ten different stages of military mayhem.

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Flying Shark, Arcade

Developed by Toaplan and first released into arcades in 1987, Flying Shark (aka Sky Shark in North America) is a challenging vertically-scrolling bullet hell shooter with a military theme. You fly a biplane over jungle and sea and must blast your way through five increasingly more difficult levels.

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Dragon’s Curse, PC Engine

Dragon’s Curse is the American TurboGrafx-16 conversion of the classic Sega Master System game Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap. It was ported by original developer Westone and published by NEC in 1990 in North America and Hudson Soft in Japan in 1991. In Japan the game was confusingly released as “Adventure Island” (not to be confused with Hudson Soft‘s own Adventure Island series), and has a short intro sequence not seen in the American version.

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Three Wonders, Arcade

Three Wonders is an unusual arcade game from Capcom that was first released in 1991. What’s unusual about it is that the game is based around three separate games – each of which you can choose to play in any order, cooperatively with a friend, and that are supposedly linked by the game’s storyline and characters.

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Pocky & Rocky with Becky, Game Boy Advance

Pocky & Rocky with Becky for the Game Boy Advance is the fourth game in the Pocky & Rocky series (following on from Kiki Kaikai, Pocky & Rocky, and Pocky & Rocky 2). The game was developed and published by Altron in Japan in 2001 and was subsequently localized and published by Natsume in North America in 2002.

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Pocky & Rocky 2, Super Nintendo

The sequel to Pocky & Rocky (known as Kiki Kaikai in Japan) was developed by Natsume and published by Ocean Software in Europe (by Natsume themselves in Japan and North America). Pocky & Rocky 2 was first released in 1994 and is a similar scrolling shooter to its predecessor, but with multiple companions, instead of just one.

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