Deathsmiles is an infamous (and much-loved) 2007 shooter from Cave – a Japanese company known for its relatively innovative and leftfield output. Cave shooters are ‘Bullet Hell’ in overdrive…
Tag Archives: Two-Player
Games that two people can play simultaneously.
Dark Chambers, Atari 8-bit
Bruce Lee, Atari 8-bit
Ron J. Fortier‘s and Kelly Day‘s classic Bruce Lee is part platform game, part beat ’em up.
In it you assume the role of Bruce, fighting his way through a number of simple puzzles. The basic aim is to collect the lanterns so that they open up new exits.
International Karate, Atari 8-bit
International Karate was released in 1986 by System 3 Software.
It was written by Archer MacLean and was one of the first beat ’em ups – ever – to actually feel like a decent game to play and not a ridiculous slug-fest.
Speed King 2, ZX Spectrum
A budget motorbike racing game, created by Derek Brewster in 1987 for Mastertronic.
Speed King 2 is the sequel to… well, nothing, because there’s isn’t a Speed King 1, as far as I can tell. Was there a prequel to this? If there was, I can’t find it… Maybe Brewster was trying to make a sequel to Full Throttle? Because Speed King 2 does look a bit like it. I dunno.
Bonanza Bros., Megadrive/Genesis
Bonanza Bros. is a split-screen, two-player, side-scrolling action game that first appeared in arcades in 1990. A number of home conversions followed although none were better than this Sega Megadrive/Genesis version which was released in 1991.
Ikari Warriors, Arcade
SNK‘s famous arcade shooter, Ikari Warriors, was released in 1986 at a time when many Commando clones were saturating the market, but managed to stand out against the competition.
Contra: Hard Corps, Megadrive/Genesis
Contra: Hard Corps is Konami‘s attempt to recreate the thrills and spills of the legendary SNES game, Contra III: The Alien Wars (aka Super Probotector), on the Sega Megadrive/Genesis, and – to be honest – it falls a little short of its SNES cousin.
Combat, Atari 2600
Combat was designed by Atari, Inc. and first released for the Atari 2600 in 1977 and was the pack-in game for the system until 1982 (meaning: you got a Combat cartridge with the console, upon purchase).
It was one of the first home video games I ever played (probably the same for millions of others) and it enthralled me. Yes, Combat is very simple by today’s standards, but in 1977 it was a revelation and was much cloned by other developers.
Rainbow Islands, PC Engine
The PC Engine version of Taito‘s classic arcade game Rainbow Islands was only made available on CD-ROM, so you had to have a CD compatible PC Engine to play it.
[That was: until emulation was invented…] 🙂
The King of Grabs 