Taito‘s Crime City in an obscure run-and-gun arcade game, first released in 1989. It is part of the Chase HQ series, and the two playable characters – Tony Gibson and Raymond Brody – are the same leads as in the first Chase HQ. You can play either alone, or two players can play the game simultaneously, cooperatively.
Tag Archives: Obscure
Cadash, Arcade
If you’re looking for a weird, obscure fantasy action game to play you could do a lot worse than Taito‘s 1990 arcade game Cadash, which mixes platform gaming with RPG-style elements in a way that is rarely seen in this kind of coin-operated title.
Haunted Castle, Arcade
Haunted Castle is an obscure Castlevania arcade game, developed by Konami and first released in 1988. Until recently, I’d never seen it before, and playing it now I have to say that it is pretty unsophisticated for a late Eighties arcade game, and it pales into insignificance compared to other Castlevania games, like Super Castlevania IV or Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. It’s also insanely difficult. Maybe unfairly so.
Rollaround, Commodore 64
Rollaround is an isometric action/puzzle game written by Tony Kelly of Mr. Chip Software and was published by Mastertronic in 1987. The gameplay is a combination of Marble Madness, Bobby Bearing, Spindizzy and Q*Bert, where the aim is to control a rolling ball that moves around a map of screens, rolling over tiles, activating switches, and collecting cross tiles for points.
Energy Breaker, Super Nintendo
Energy Breaker is an isometric, tactical, turn-based RPG, developed by Neverland and published exclusively for the Super Nintendo by Taito in 1996. It was only ever released in Japan but does have an English fan translation patch available for it, which makes it playable to Western audiences.
Alcahest, Super Nintendo
Alcahest is a scrolling, overhead action game – with RPG elements – that was developed by HAL Laboratory and published by Squaresoft in 1993. It was only ever released in Japan, but a fan-made, English translation patch is available to make it fully playable to Western audiences. Which is what I’m showing here.
Time-Gate, ZX Spectrum
Written by John Hollis and first published by Quicksilva for the 48K ZX Spectrum in 1983, Time-Gate was the first Spectrum game I ever played and is a simple first-person space shooter – basically a Star Raiders clone with a few differences.
Donkey Kong 3, Arcade
Donkey Kong 3 is a platform shooter released into arcades by Nintendo in 1983. As a sequel to one of the greatest video games of all-time [Donkey Kong] it is a relatively obscure instalment in the series and doesn’t get talked about, or played, much now. Probably because it’s not that great.
Canyon Warrior, ZX Spectrum
Canyon Warrior is a vertically-scrolling shoot ’em up written by Ste Cork and published by Mastertronic in 1989. The game came out very late in the ZX Spectrum‘s life, which is probably why it’s technically quite impressive (for the Spectrum).
Winter Gold, Super Nintendo
Winter Gold is an Olympic-style sports game developed by Norwegian company Funcom and published by Nintendo in 1996. While it is not that well known it is interesting because it was one of the few games to utilise the Super FX chip to provide extended 3D graphics capabilities, in the same way that Star Fox, Doom, Vortex and Stunt Race FX did.
