Developed and published by Titus in 1993, Lamborghini: American Challenge is a third-person racing game where you drive a Lamborghini supercar around various locations in America. And it is an exceptionally good console racer, made from good, old-fashioned 2D pixel art and a convincing old school road effect.
Continue reading Lamborghini: American Challenge, Super Nintendo
RPM Racing for the SNES is an isometric, split-screen racing game that was developed by Silicon & Synapse (the company that later became Blizzard) and published by Interplay in 1991 in North America, and in 1992 in Japan. I don’t think it was ever given an official European release. The RPM part of the title stands for: “Radical Psycho Machine“.
It is the predecessor to Rock n’ Roll Racing (1993), and the successor to Racing Destruction Set (1984). They apparently took the core logic editor and track editor from Racing Destruction Set and ported it over to the SNES, before customising it with everything else they wanted in the game.
Sega‘s Virtua Fighter was the first arcade fighting game to feature full 3D graphics, and was initially released in October 1993. It was a product of Sega‘s AM2 R&D team, a development group within Sega headed by Yu Suzuki, using the Sega Model 1 arcade board.
First published by Hit-Pak (the ‘budget’ label of Elite Systems) in 1988, the C64 version of the classic bat-and-ball action game, Batty, is more or less the same as the ZX Spectrum original, but with chunkier graphics. And, like the original, it is an excellent Breakout/Arkanoid clone.
This sequel to Battle Clash was released only in Western regions in 1993 (USA) and 1994 (Europe), for the Super Nintendo. It was developed by the same team at Intelligent Systems who made the first game, and it is called: Metal Combat: Falcon’s Revenge. It features lightgun-style shooter gameplay and uses the Nintendo Super Scope.
Continue reading Metal Combat: Falcon’s Revenge, Super Nintendo
Mega Apocalypse is the sequel to Crazy Comets. It was programmed by Simon Nicol, with graphics by Bob Stevenson and music by Rob Hubbard, and was published for the Commodore 64 by Martech in 1987. It is a single-screen shooter in which you have to destroy a series of planets to complete each stage.
The ZX Spectrum version of Barbarian II: The Dungeon of Drax was developed by M.C. Lothlorian and first published by Palace Software in 1988.
Continue reading Barbarian II: The Dungeon of Drax, ZX Spectrum
The Spectrum version of Barbarian is an okay fighting game, but it doesn’t quite have the satisfying decapitation animation of the original C64 version…
The fourth Soulcalibur game was once again developed by Project Soul for Namco. It was first released in 2008 for the PS3 and XBox 360, through Namco Bandai Games.
The third instalment in the Soulcalibur series was developed by Project Soul and published by Namco in 2005. Soulcalibur III was first released for the PlayStation 2, and was later followed by an improved arcade version (it was actually the last Soulcalibur game to receive an arcade release).
