Tag Archives: shooting

Space Gun, Arcade

Released into arcades by Taito in 1990, Space Gun is a first-person sci-fi horror shooter set on a crippled spaceship that has been overrun by killer aliens. It can be played by one or two players.

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Operation Wolf, ZX Spectrum

The ZX Spectrum version of Taito‘s classic arcade shooter, Operation Wolf, was developed and published by Ocean Software in 1988.

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Fantasy Zone II: The Tears of Opa-Opa, Sega Master System

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.

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Super Dragon Slayer, ZX Spectrum

Converted by John F. Cain, from an original Commodore 64 game by John Ferrari, Super Dragon Slayer is a platform shooter featuring an agile magician who must jump, climb and shoot his way – left to right – through four large, scrolling levels. It was first published for the ZX Spectrum by Codemasters in 1989.

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Super Dragon Slayer, Commodore 64

Designed and programmed by John Ferrari, with music by Barry Leitch, Super Dragon Slayer is a platform shooter first published for the Commodore 64 by Codemasters in 1988. In many ways this game reminds me of the early days of C64 software, with unforgiving gameplay and instant death if you put a foot wrong. That said, this is still a pretty good game. Just a very difficult one.

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The Eidolon, Atari 8-Bit

Using an enhanced version of the fractal engine created for Rescue On Fractalus, The Eidolon is a first-person action game – developed by Lucasfilm Games and published by Epyx in North America in 1985 and Activision in Europe in 1986 – that divided critics when it was first released. While Zzap!64 magazine gave it 97% and a gold medal; raved about the game, and said that it was “not to be missed“, the reviewers of Computer Gaming World disliked it, describing it as “one of the worst games of 1986“… There’s no accounting for taste…

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Kiki Kaikai, Arcade

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.

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Bay Route, Arcade

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.

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Doom, Sega Saturn

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.

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Turbo Sub, Atari Lynx

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.

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