Final Fantasy VII is a legendary level-grinding Role-Playing Game, developed by Square and released for the Sony PlayStation in 1997.
While the Final Fantasy series had grown in stature throughout the 1990s, it was this seventh instalment that broke Japanese CRPGs into the mainstream, with its outstanding mix of 3D, polygonal graphics, Full Motion Video, and pre-rendered backgrounds.
Also known as Mr. Do! Run Run or Super Pierrot in Japan, Do! Run Run is the fourth and final game in the famous Mr. Do series. It was developed by Universal and published by Taito in 1984.
Mr. Do’s Wild Ride is the second sequel to the classic Mr. Do! and was released by Universal (not the film studio – the Japanese company) in 1984.
The 1983 sequel to the classic Mr. Do!, Mr. Do’s Castle, is a platform game this time, with pushable ladders and a hammer for bashing monsters.
Universal‘s 1982 arcade game Mr. Do! is an iconic, early digging game, with chasing monsters and falling apples, and plenty of cute, Japanese surrealism.
This 1995 arcade beat ’em up from Kaneko is an obscure Mortal Kombat clone, with digitised pictures of Jackie Chan and his stunt team playing a set of fairly weird fighting characters.
“But is it any good?” you ask. “Not bad,” is my reply.
Another Japanese conversion of Prince of Persia; this one done by Bits Laboratory for Brøderbund and released for the Sega CD in 1992.
Graphically and sonically it has been ‘enhanced’ to take advantage of the Sega’s CD‘s capabilities, but thankfully the developers resisted the temptation to fill the game with loads of Full Motion Video, which was prevalent on the format at the time.
Another fantastic conversion of Prince of Persia – this one for the PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16. It was a CD-ROM only release, so took advantage of Red Book audio streamed directly from the disc, and as a result: the music in the game is quite amazing and really adds to the atmosphere of the game.
Considering the graphical power of the Sharp X68000 this 1991 conversion of the classic Prince of Persia looks a little underwhelming.
The 1987 Nintendo Entertainment System conversion of Spy Hunter was handled by Sunsoft and is an excellent addition to the Spy Hunter family.
In some respects this is better than the arcade original, because it’s not quite so mind-bendingly difficult…
The King of Grabs 