Tag Archives: robots

Highway Encounter, MSX

The MSX conversion of Costa Panayi‘s Highway Encounter was coded by Pedro Sudon in 1985. It is possible that the game was only ever published in Spain on the MSX since the only versions I can find are in Spanish.

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Strider 2, PlayStation

A port of an arcade sequel by Capcom, released for the PlayStation in 2000. The original Strider is rightly revered by gamers and the sequel pays homage to it by retaining the original’s look and feel.

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Metal Gear Solid, PlayStation

Metal Gear Solid is an award-winning tactical espionage action game focusing on stealth gameplay and it was first released by Konami in 1998. It was directed, produced and written by Hideo Koijima and follows on from the MSX games Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake.

You play as codename “Solid Snake“, a legendary American soldier who infiltrates a nuclear weapons facility in order to neutralise a terrorist threat who are threatening a nuclear strike on The White House. Snake must sneak around, liberate hostages and stop the terrorists from launching the strike, all the while avoiding enemy contact as much as possible and gathering information about the situation.

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Ganbare Goemon: Uchū Kaizoku Akogingu, PlayStation

Yippee! A Goemon game on the PlayStation! This one called Ganbare Goemon: Uchuu Kaizoku Akogingu (in English: “Ganbare Goemon: Space Pirate Akogingu“), and it’s apparently a direct sequel to Ganbare Goemon 3 although Sasuke and Yae are not playable characters in this game. This was the first Goemon game on the PlayStation and it was first published by Konami in 1996.

Thankfully this game was given an English fan translation in 2020 by Adventurous Translations, which makes it playable to non Japanese speakers. According to the readme file on the translation patch the game was not much fun to translate (mostly for technical reasons), and isn’t seen as being a very good game by the person who translated it. That said: I got the translation patch to work fine and am overjoyed that I can now play it in English, so a big thank you to Adventurous Translations for their efforts (they are much appreciated).

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Rapid Reload, PlayStation

Called Gunner’s Heaven in its native Japan, Rapid Reload is a run-and-gun scrolling shooter with amazing 2D graphics, massive amounts of destruction, and lots of tough boss battles. It was developed by Media.Vision and published by Sony.

Rapid Reload was first released for the PlayStation in 1995 and made an immediate impression with gamers, predominantly because of the action-packed gameplay and the sheer amount of on-screen carnage. Outside of arcades, little had been seen on this scale before – at least in terms of the amount of stuff going on on-screen. You only have to play the first level to know what you’ve got in store when you play Rapid Reload.

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Ganbare Goemon Kirakira Dōchū: Boku ga Dancer ni Natta Wake, Super Nintendo

Also known (in English) as: “Go for it! Goemon: The Twinkling Journey – The Reason I Became a Dancer“, this fourth instalment of the much-loved Goemon [Super Nintendo] series is about as crazy, challenging and fun as a video game can be.

Many feel that this final Goemon game on the Super Nintendo is the best in the series, so it’s great that it’s finally been given an (unofficial) English translation. The game follows the same pattern as previously, with isometric exploration sections, interspersed with side-scrolling platform/action sections.

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Crystal Mines II, Atari Lynx

I would say that Crystal Mines II – an original puzzle game released exclusively for the Atari Lynx in 1992 – is arguably one of the best games on the system.

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Pier Solar and the Great Architects, Megadrive/Genesis

Pier Solar and the Great Architects is a famous homebrew Role-Playing Game released in 2010. It was developed by a team called WaterMelon and was initially released on cartridge exclusively for the Sega Megadrive.

Since then, though, it has been ported to a number of different platforms, including HD remakes for Dreamcast, PlayStation 3 & 4, Wii U, PC, XBox One, and Android.

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Flashback, Megadrive/Genesis

Delphine Software‘s classic futuristic adventure game, Flashback, came out first on the Amiga in 1992 but was originally developed with the Sega Megadrive as its target platform.

Timing and cartridge production issues meant that it came out after a number of other ports had already been released, but that didn’t dent enthusiasm for the game on the Megadrive.

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Herzog Zwei, Megadrive/Genesis

Developed by Techno Soft and first published in 1989, Herzog Zwei is an early real-time strategy game, predating Dune II by three years. It is the sequel to Herzog on the MSX2 and it shares the same DNA as that game.

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