Tag Archives: shooter

Arena, Game Gear

The game’s full North American title is Arena: Maze of Death, but it was released as just Arena in Europe so that’s what I’m going to call it. It’s an isometric shoot ’em up with you playing a “pro-democratic freedom fighter” called Guy Freelander who must fight his way through a variety of industrial locations in order to reach a television station to broadcast proof of an evil corporation’s wrongdoings.

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Zybex, Atari 8-bit

Zybex is a 1988 shoot ’em up from British developer/publisher Zeppelin Games. It’s a horizontally-scrolling progressive weapons blaster with a main character that looks a bit like the jetpack guy from Dropzone.

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Power Strike II, Game Gear

Power Strike II is a re-titling of the second Aleste game on the Game Gear. It was again developed by Compile and published by Sega in Europe and Brazil in 1993. The original Japanese title was “GG Aleste II: Lance Bird“.

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GG Aleste, Game Gear

The Aleste series of shooters is well known on the MSX, Sega Master System and Super Nintendo, and on the Game Gear this spin-off is known as “GG Aleste” (or Power Strike in some territories). It was developed by Compile and published by Sega in 1991.

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Lunar Jetman, Atari 8-Bit

An Atari 8-bit homebrew conversion of Ultimate‘s classic Spectrum shooter, Lunar Jetman, made by Fandal and Irgendwer in 2014, that is even more frustrating to play than the original…

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TimeSplitters: Future Perfect, XBox

TimeSplitters: Future Perfect is a first-person shooter developed by Free Radical Design and published by Electronic Arts in 2005. It is the third game in the TimeSplitters series and was released for XBox (the version shown here), GameCube, and PlayStation 2.

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Spheres of Chaos, PC

A trippy Asteroids tribute originally released for the Acorn Archimedes in 1993, Spheres of Chaos was re-programmed and re-released free for Windows and Linux by the original author, Iain McLeod, in 2012. And it’s still available to download for free from spheresofchaos.com – at the time of writing.

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Lunar Jetman Retrospec Remake, PC

Another Retrospec remake of a classic Ultimate game. This time: Lunar Jetman. This one was released in 2002 and unfortunately is another flawed piece of software.

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Jetpak Solar Crisis, PC

Jetpak Solar Crisis is a homebrew remake of Ultimate Play the Game‘s classic Jet Pac, made by Retrospec and released for free in 2004. While not all Retrospec remakes are good games, this one is actually pretty decent.

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Secret Commando, Sega Master System

Known in North America as “Rambo: First Blood Part II” (complete with movie licensed characters), and “Ashura” in Japan. Also known as: “Not-So-Secret Commando“, since this is an unsubtle clone of Capcom‘s classic 1985 arcade game, Commando (and SNK‘s 1986 game, Ikari Warriors – since it has a simultaneous two-player mode and level designs that echo that game). Joking aside: it’s a pretty good clone of Commando, although it does play rather slowly.

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