Tag Archives: Japanese

Shinobi, Arcade

The arcade version of Shinobi was developed and published by Sega in 1987. It is a scrolling run-and-gun action game featuring a lead character called Joe Musashi who is on a mission to defeat the Zeed terrorist organisation. The aim of the game is to rescue kidnapped students of his clan and each level has a certain number of hostages to release.

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Blaster Master, NES/Famicom

Released in Japan and North America in 1988, and Europe in 1991, Sunsoft‘s Blaster Master is a mixture of platforming and shooting that was a minor hit on the Nintendo Famicom/NES.

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Super Contra, Arcade

Super Contra is the sequel to Contra and was developed and distributed into arcades by Konami in 1988. It’s another challenging vertical screen run-and-gun shooter featuring super soldiers Bill and Lance, fighting the same alien creatures as seen in the previous game. Except this time they’re on a different mission and events are set one year later.

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Contra, Arcade

Contra is a run-and-gun arcade game developed and published by Konami in 1987. It is the first game in the long-running Contra series and was renamed as Gryzor – and tweaked slightly – for European arcades.

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RoboCop 2, Arcade

The arcade version of RoboCop 2 was developed and published by Data East in 1991 and is loosely based on the 1990 Irvin Kershner-directed film sequel of the same name. In it you play as RoboCop and must stop a criminal drug baron, called Cain, from spreading a new drug called ‘Nuke’.

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Renegade, Arcade

Renegade is an arcade beat ’em up that was developed by Technos Japan and distributed into arcades by Taito in 1986. Although Renegade might appear basic by today’s standards it was in fact an important game in the fighting genre and one that defined many of the gameplay standards we still see today.

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Dark Savior, Sega Saturn

Dark Savior is an isometric action game developed by Climax Entertainment and published by Sega for the Saturn in 1996. In my opinion the game is a bad idea, badly translated, poorly executed, and with some pretty awful story-telling.

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Somer Assault, PC Engine

Somer Assault – also known as Mesopotamia in Japan – is a weird-but-imaginative scrolling action game where you control a pink Slinky-type creature that must battle its way through twelve stages of enemies to defeat an evil sorceress who is trying to conquer the world. It was developed and published by Atlus in 1991.

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Ikari Warriors, MSX

The 1987 MSX2 version of the classic coin-op, Ikari Warriors, is arguably the best 8-bit conversion of this scrolling shooter around. It was converted by SNK themselves, so is about as authentic as an MSX fan could hope for. In fact: the producer of this port was Koji Obada, who designed the original arcade game.

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Thunder Force IV, Megadrive/Genesis

Known in North America as “Lightening Force: Quest for the Darkstar” (shouldn’t that be “Lightning Force“?!), Thunder Force IV was developed and published by Techno Soft for the Sega Megadrive in 1992.

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