Out Zone is a somewhat obscure, but rather excellent, two-player vertically-scrolling shooter, in the style of Ikari Warriors, released into arcades in 1990 by Toaplan. It’s not a game many will have heard of, but it certainly manages to provide some entertainment, when played today.
Tag Archives: Sci-Fi
A.B. Cop, Arcade
A.B. Cop is an arcade game developed by Aicom and released by Sega in 1990. The “A.B.” stands for Air Bike. So it’s “Air Bike Cop“. A.B. Cop uses the “Sega X Board“, which originated with 1987’s After Burner.
No Escape, Megadrive/Genesis
No Escape was developed by Bits Corporation, and published by Psygnosis for the Megadrive and SNES, in 1994. It is based on the science fiction action film of the same name, starring Ray Liotta and Lance Henriksen.
You play as inmate J.T. Robbins (a highly-trained ex-Marine), trying to escape Absolom penal colony island.
Phantasy Star Adventure, Game Gear
Released exclusively for the Game Gear – in Japan only – by Sega in 1992, Phantasy Star Adventure is a spin-off from the main Phantasy Star series and is a kind of RPG/adventure controlled with a simple menu system. A fan translation into English makes it playable to non Japanese speakers.
Anteform, PC
Anteform is a tiny, futuristic RPG, written for the PICO-8 development platform, and was first released in 2019. It uses the same game engine as Minima and was written by the same guy, Feneric (aka Eric W. Brown). It’ll run on Windows, Mac, Linux and Raspberry Pi.
PSI Warrior, Commodore 64
Created by Paul Voysey and Tayo Olowu, with graphics by Yemi Olowu, PSI Warrior is an almost mythical game, released fairly early in the C64‘s lifetime (1984) by Beyond Software.
Mega Apocalypse, Commodore 64
Mega Apocalypse is the sequel to Crazy Comets. It was programmed by Simon Nicol, with graphics by Bob Stevenson and music by Rob Hubbard, and was published for the Commodore 64 by Martech in 1987. It is a single-screen shooter in which you have to destroy a series of planets to complete each stage.
Hyper Dyne Side Arms, PC Engine
A very good PC Engine/Turbografx-16 conversion of the 1986 arcade game from Capcom, Hyper Dyne Side Arms is side-scrolling, bullet hell shooter featuring Mecha characters, fighting an invading alien empire. It was first released in 1989 and was published by NEC Avenue in Japan, and Radiance Software in North America.
Hyper Dyne Side Arms, Arcade
Hyper Dyne Side Arms is a horizontally-scrolling shooter, developed and published by Capcom in 1986. It can be played by two players simultaneously and features special combination attacks that can be performed when both players merge together. The game, of course, can also be played single-player.
Koronis Rift, Amstrad CPC
The Amstrad CPC version of Koronis Rift is very similar to the Atari 8-bit original. The Amstrad‘s multi-colour graphics mode emulates the Atari graphics so well that you’d have to wonder if it’s a clone of Atari‘s graphics mode… It probably is. 🙂
Koronis Rift was ported to the Amstrad by Mr. Micro Ltd. – for Lucasfilm Games – and first published by Activision in 1987.
