Released on 26th September 1986 in Japan, Akumajō Dracula (translating as: “Demon Castle Dracula“) was the very first release in the Castlevania series, predating the MSX version of the game by about a month. Konami released it on the Famicom Disk System where it quickly became a hit with Japanese gamers.
It began a long-running series of platform/horror-themed video games and set the template for the Castlevania series as a whole.
The Famicom Disk System (FDS) was a peripheral for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) that allowed games to be loaded from disk rather than cartridge. Not only that but it also had extra RAM on board and an extra sound chip.
Released into arcades in 1985, TwinBee is a cute, vertically-scrolling shooter that is much more challenging than it looks.
A launch title – and a so-called ‘Killer App’ – for the Sega Saturn in 1995, Daytona USA is a conversion of the famous Sega arcade race game.
The second game in the infamous Cotton series, developed by Success and released into arcades first, then converted to the Sega Saturn in 1997.
Continue reading Cotton 2: Magical Night Dreams, Sega Saturn
Sega‘s 1991 arcade release, Cotton: Fantastic Night Dreams, is a strange-but-cute side-scrolling shoot ’em up featuring a young witch on a broomstick, called Cotton.
Hudson Soft‘s infamous 1987 platformer, Kato & Ken, is known by a variety of different names, depending on where it was released.
In its native Japan it is known as Kato-chan & Ken-chan and is loosely based on a television show called Fun TV, and the madcap antics of its two hosts, Kato-chan and Ken-chan. In North America the game is known as J.J. & Jeff and features a couple of bungling detectives out to solve a kidnapping case…
Never officially released in English-speaking territories (but translated by fans as “Psychic Killer Taromaru“) this side-scrolling action game is one of the rarest Sega Saturn titles in existence.
Rare because publisher Time Warner Interactive only produced a very limited number of copies of the game in 1997, before pulling out of the games market altogether. So actual copies of Shinrei Jusatsushi Tarōmaru have changed hands for silly money over the decades.
Dino Crisis was a 1999 PlayStation release for Capcom and features soldiers taking on dinosaurs in a futuristic setting.
Knight Lore for the Famicom Disk System was developed by Tose Co. Ltd. for Jaleco with the blessing of its original creators, Rare. It was published only in Japan in 1986.
The King of Grabs 