Tag Archives: pioneering

Super Chase: Criminal Termination, Arcade

Super Chase: Criminal Termination was first released into arcades by Taito in 1993, followed soon after by a Super Nintendo version called “Super Chase HQ“. It is an enhanced sequel to the classic Chase HQ, and Special Criminal Investigation, and features viewpoints that change, depending on where you are in the game, and what vehicle you’re driving. In fact, this moving camera feature has been so well implemented by the developers that it really enhances the dynamism of the exciting car-chase gameplay.

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The Eidolon, Commodore 64

The Commodore 64 version of Lucasfilm GamesThe Eidolon came out just after the Atari 8-bit original, in 1985. The game divided critics, but in my opinion it is an atmospheric and unusual cave exploration game, with weird-looking monsters and scary-looking dragons, and is still worth playing today.

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Virtua Cop, Arcade

Virtua Cop is an arcade lightgun shooter developed by Sega AM2, directed by Katsunori Itai and supervised by Yu Suzuki. It was first released into arcades by Sega in 1994.

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Time Crisis, Arcade

Time Crisis is a classic lightgun shooter, developed and distributed into arcades by Namco in 1995. The game is played in a 3D environment, with all the locations, characters and cut scenes fully-modelled as texture-mapped polygons. Unlike many lightgun shooters of the time, Time Crisis is a single-player only game, because it utilizes a foot pedal for taking cover.

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Gunbuster, Arcade

Gunbuster is a lightgun-based First-Person Shooter (FPS) for up to four players, first distributed into arcades by Taito in 1992. It was released as “Operation Gunbuster” in North America and as “Gun Buster” in Japan.

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Eric and the Floaters, ZX Spectrum

I find it pretty amazing that Hudson Soft‘s famous maze-based, bomb-blasting game, Bomberman, was released for the ZX Spectrum in 1984, but it was. It was developed by Hudson Soft themselves and published by Sinclair Research in the UK (much like Hudson Soft‘s other famous Spectrum game, Stop the Express). Even more bizarre is the name of the game, but there was a good reason for the change…

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Breakout, Atari 2600

Brad Stewart‘s 1978 Atari 2600 conversion of the pioneering 1976 arcade game, Breakout, is a software-based cartridge version that most people who’ve played the game will be familiar with. Mainly because – as far as I know – the original arcade version of Breakout is currently un-emulatable, because it utilizes mechanical components that prevent it from being played as a ROM file in something like MAME.

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Devilish: Ball Bounder, Nintendo DS

Devilish: Ball Bounder (aka Classic Action: Devilish in North America; aka Devilish in Europe) is the third game in the Devilish series and was released thirteen years after its predecessor, Devilish: The Next Possession for the Megadrive/Genesis. It was developed by Starfish Kaihatsu and released for the Nintendo DS in 2005 in Japan and Europe, and 2007 in North America.

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Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, FM Towns

LucasArts‘ classic point-and-click adventure, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, was released for the FM Towns by Victor Musical Industries in 1993, and although it was a Japan-only release it does include the English language version, which makes it perfectly playable to Westerners.

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Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders, FM Towns

Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders is the second SCUMM game from Lucasfilm Games (aka LucasArts), after Maniac Mansion, with game development led by David Fox, and with Matthew Alan Kane as co-designer and co-programmer. It was originally released for the Commodore 64 in 1988, and this enhanced FM Towns port was published in Japan in 1990 by Fujitsu. The game is playable in both English and Japanese.

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