Otocky is a cute and colourful side-scrolling shooter with a unique and interesting take on the subject. It was developed by SEDIC for ASCII Corporation and first published in 1987.
You see, rather than firing bullets, you throw balls at enemies to destroy them. And you can throw the balls in eight directions, so in effect you can shoot at enemies behind you (and above and below you) too.
Released into arcades in 1985, TwinBee is a cute, vertically-scrolling shooter that is much more challenging than it looks.
The second game in the infamous Cotton series, developed by Success and released into arcades first, then converted to the Sega Saturn in 1997.
Continue reading Cotton 2: Magical Night Dreams, Sega Saturn
Sega‘s 1991 arcade release, Cotton: Fantastic Night Dreams, is a strange-but-cute side-scrolling shoot ’em up featuring a young witch on a broomstick, called Cotton.
Doomsday Castle is the 1983 sequel to The Pyramid.
It again features ‘Ziggy’ – the guy in the floating gun turret – and again features simple, single-screen shooting action.
Fantasy Software released two games in 1983 featuring a character called ‘Ziggy’, and this game – The Pyramid – was the first of them.
The Pyramid is a simple, single-screen shooter, with you playing as Ziggy – inside a floating gun pod – who must escape from a gigantic pyramid.
Developed by Hidden Treasures and published by Logotron in 1988, StarRay is a decent 16-bit side-scrolling shooter for the Amiga.
Another conversion, but a very good one. Andrew Braybrook‘s classic horizontally-scrolling shooter, Uridium.
Released by Electric Dreams Software in 1987, Firetrack is a fast vertical shooter, designed and programmed by Nick Pelling (aka Orlando), the guy who made Frak! (among others).
The classic Elite originated on the BBC Micro. David Braben and Ian Bell‘s classic space combat/trading game was first released by Acornsoft in 1984.
The King of Grabs 