Tag Archives: Pixel Art

Demon’s Crest, Super Nintendo

What is interesting about Demon’s Crest – a 1994 Super Nintendo release from Capcom – is that it is a spin-off from the Ghosts ‘N Goblins series.

Eagle-eyed gamers will recognise the red-skinned, demonic lead character – called Firebrand – as an enemy from the original Ghosts ‘N Goblins arcade game. In fact: Demon’s Crest is actually the third game featuring Firebrand, after Gargoyle’s Quest (Game Boy), and Gargoyle’s Quest II (NES).

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Axelay, Super Nintendo

Konami‘s Axelay is considered a cult classic among shoot ’em up fans.

First released on the Super Nintendo in 1992, Axelay cleverly mixes side-scrolling and vertically-scrolling blasting action, and also makes excellent use of the Super Nintendo‘s infamous ‘Mode 7’ scaling technique, to create a weird ‘cylindrical’ rolling effect on some of the levels.

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Paperboy, Arcade

Atari‘s 1985 arcade hit Paperboy features an isometric road to cycle down and houses to throw newspapers at. It’s an attractive proposition for an arcade game. Especially when the game has real bike handlebars for steering, which the original arcade cabinets did.

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Rainbow Islands, Arcade

Rainbow Islands: The Story of Bubble Bobble 2 is possibly Japanese game developer Taito‘s finest hour. On any system.

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Sabre Wulf, ZX Spectrum

Ultimate Play The Game‘s iconic seventh release for the ZX Spectrum was first released in 1984.

Sabre Wulf is a colourful maze/action game, and was the first game to feature the lead character Sabreman.

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Crypt of the NecroDancer, PC

Crypt of the NecroDancer is a smart modern, indie retro game that crosses rhythm game mechanics with ‘Roguelike’ dungeon-crawling. And it works extremely well and is a lot of fun to play. Crypt of the NecroDancer is like Ultima, but played to the beat of an Abba tune…

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FEZ, PC

FEZ is a wonderful, colourful 2D platform game that utilises an interesting three-dimensional screen-flipping technique as part of the game mechanics.

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Super Aleste, Super Nintendo

The ‘daddy’ of Super NES shooters (in my opinion), Compile’s 1992 masterpiece Super Aleste made waves on consoles, and around the world.

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