Fantasy Zone II: The Tears of Opa-Opa is the sequel to the classic 1986 Sega arcade game, Fantasy Zone. Rather unusually, it came out first on the Master System, before later being released as an arcade game. Usually the opposite occurs, but in this case the Master System version was released in 1987 and the arcade version came out in 1988.
Continue reading Fantasy Zone II: The Tears of Opa-Opa, Sega Master System
Kiki Kaikai (the literal translation being “Strange and Mysterious World“) is a shoot ’em up developed and distributed into Japanese arcades by Taito in 1986. Set in Feudal Japan, the player assumes the role of a Shinto shrine maiden, called Sayo-chan, who must use her ‘O-Fuda’ scrolls and ‘Gohei’ wand to defeat renegade spirits and monsters from Japanese mythology. Sayo’s ultimate aim is to free The Gods of Fortune who have been imprisoned by evil spirits.
This terrible pun of a title (meant to ‘parody’ the word Beirut, the capital city of Lebanon) was developed by Sunsoft and distributed into arcades by Sega in 1989. It’s a one or simultaneous two-player Contra clone scrolling through a futuristic warzone.
The Sega Saturn port of Doom was developed by Rage Software and distributed by GT Interactive in 1997. Like the PlayStation version (on which this port is based) it contains both Ultimate Doom and Doom II, but is a little disappointing in terms of performance and presentation.
This 1991 release from Atari Corporation is a conversion of relatively obscure arcade game from 1985, and it is a decent game on the Atari Lynx, with excellent graphics and absorbing gameplay. It was developed for the Lynx by NuFX.
Turbo Sub is a fast-moving first person shooter in which you pilot a futuristic attack submarine and must fight off an alien force attacking the Earth.
Out of Gas is a top-down action/puzzle game developed by Realtime Associates and published exclusively for the Game Boy, in North America only, by FCI (Fujisankei Communications International) in 1992. And it is generally derided by those who’ve played it.
The Sega 32X port of id Software‘s Doom was developed and published by Sega of America in 1994. While the game doesn’t run in a full window (there’s a permanent border around the screen, probably to keep the frame rate up, which is unfortunate), it is an otherwise very good conversion, with smooth movement and decent controls.
The Game Boy Advance port of id Software‘s classic first-person shooter sequel, Doom II, was developed by Torus Games and first published by Activision in 2002. Unlike the first Doom on the GBA this port doesn’t use the original Doom engine, but instead uses the Southpaw Engine, that was designed for native use on the GBA and has been used in a number of other games. Torus Games had to therefore recreate all the levels from scratch for this port, and I have to say that they did a great job.
The Game Boy Advance version of Doom was developed by David A. Palmer Productions and published by Activision in 2001. It is a playable and enjoyable version of id Software‘s shooter classic on Nintendo‘s capable handheld.
***CANNED GAME***
The Atari 8-Bit version of Commando was developed by Sculptured Software for Data East in 1989, but unfortunately the game was never released. Thankfully a prototype still exists and is available online, which is good because this is one of the best 8-bit ports of Commando around.
The King of Grabs 