Tag Archives: Japanese

Advance Wars, Game Boy Advance

Advance Wars is turn-based tactical war game developed by Intelligent Systems and was first published in North America on September 10th 2001.

As everyone knows: the following day the world witnessed the horrific attacks on the World Trade Centre, and this tragic event resulted in the delay of Advance Wars being released to the rest of the world.

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Zoda’s Revenge: StarTropics II, NES

The 1994 sequel to StarTropics, Zoda’s Revenge again features the red-haired hero, Mike Jones, only this time he’s on a time-travelling adventure searching to find a series of puzzles shapes called “Tetrads”.

These Tetrads are actually a nod to Tetris, and in the Virtual Console re-release of StarTropics II their names have been changed to “Blocks”, probably to avoid any legal problems. But anyway, I digress…

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StarTropics, NES

StarTropics is an action adventure game released by Nintendo in 1990. It was developed in Japan, but was only ever intended for released in North America and Europe, which is kinda weird, but that was the plan all along apparently…

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Head On, Arcade

Head On is an early arcade game, developed by Sega and manufactured by Gremlin Industries (not to be confused with Gremlin Graphics or Gremlin Interactive) in 1979.

It was the first maze game where the goal was to collect the dots, making it something of a precursor to Namco‘s Pac-Man which came a year later in 1980.

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Pac-Mania, Arcade

Pac-Mania is the 1987 sequel to the classic Pac-Man, and it is generally very highly-rated by those who’ve played it.

Pac-Man creator Toru Iwatani was involved in Pac-Mania‘s development for Namco, so the game is properly canon, totally authentic, and deviously subtle.

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Chinese Hero, Arcade

Chinese Hero is an overhead fighting game that was developed by Nihon Game (later to become Culture Brain) and manufactured by Taiyo System in 1984.

It is the first game in the so-called “Super Chinese” series and features simultaneous two-player action set on a single screen play area.

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Little Ninja Brothers, NES

Little Ninja Brothers is the second game in the “Super Chinese” series* and the predecessor of Super Ninja Boy on the SNES. It was developed and published by Culture Brain in Japan in 1989. North America got it in 1990 and Europe in 1991.

It is an excellent one or two-player level-grinding RPG, with random battles, but instead of turn-based combat you get real time beat ’em up action instead, and works very well.

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Super Ninja Boy, Super Nintendo

Super Ninja Boy is an action role-playing game developed by Culture Brain and released on the SNES in 1991 in Japan, and in 1993 in North America.

It’s a sequel to Culture Brain‘s previous title, Little Ninja Brothers for the NES, and it’s not a brilliant game the truth be told, but it does hold a special place in my heart because it was one of the first games I ever reviewed as games journalist.

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Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island, Super Nintendo

The follow-up to one of the best platform games of all time (Super Mario World), is – unsurprisingly – also one of the best platform games of all time!

Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island was released by Nintendo in 1995 to much anticipation, and it didn’t disappoint.

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Power Drift, Arcade

Power Drift is a superfast racing game designed by Yu Suzuki and first released into arcades by Sega in 1988.

The game uses high speed scaling effects (similar to After Burner and Out Run) to generate the tracks and the cars on the road, and the speed at which you race is pretty startling.

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