SNK‘s Twinkle Star Sprites was released for the Neo Geo in 1996 and is an interesting mix of vertically-scrolling shoot ’em up and head-to-head puzzle game. Yes, I know that sounds weird, and this game IS weird, but weird in all the right ways…
Tag Archives: weird
Castlevania II: Belmont’s Revenge, Game Boy
Castlevania II: Belmont’s Revenge was first released in 1991 and is the sequel to Castlevania: The Adventure on the Nintendo Game Boy.
Castlevania II makes much better use of the Game Boy‘s hardware than its predecessor, and is considered to be one of the best titles on Nintendo‘s monochrome handheld.
Continue reading Castlevania II: Belmont’s Revenge, Game Boy
Trip World, Game Boy
Anyone familiar with the NES game Mr. Gimmick will see similarities between that and Trip World, a cute and slightly weird platform game released for the Nintendo Game Boy in 1992 (incidentally the same year as Mr. Gimmick).
Monster Max, Game Boy
Monster Max on the Game Boy is a direct descendant of the classic isometric platform game Head Over Heels, it having been created by Jon Ritman and Bernie Drummond – the same team who made Head Over Heels, and a string of other hits on the ZX Spectrum.
And Monster Max is a brilliant little game! The movement, jumping and inertia are slightly more refined than in some of their other games, which makes Monster Max a joy to play.
Liquid Kids, Arcade
Liquid Kids is a bizarre-but-fun platform game by Taito, first released into video game arcades in 1990.
Mr. Gimmick, NES/Famicom
Known as Gimmick! in Japan and Mr. Gimmick everywhere else, this 1992 release was an attempt by Sunsoft to push the graphical powers of the Nintendo Entertainment System further than they’d ever been pushed before (in order to compete with the Super Nintendo, which was relatively new on the market).
In order to do this, Sunsoft used all kinds of clever programming techniques using graphical tilesets and colours, and the end result is very striking. But it wasn’t enough to compete with the newer consoles of the time and Mr. Gimmick sank without a trace, into relative obscurity.
Resident Evil Zero, GameCube
Resident Evil Zero is a prequel to the first Resident Evil game and originally came out on the Nintendo GameCube in 2002.
It is the fifth major instalment in the Resident Evil series. The game uses the older ‘pre-rendered’ style of backgrounds, but is much darker and more serious than the first Resident Evil.
Resident Evil – Code: Veronica, Dreamcast
Resident Evil – Code: Veronica was released exclusively on the Sega Dreamcast by Capcom in 2000.
Resident Evil 6, PC
Resident Evil 6 continues Capcom‘s infamous survival horror series in such a high-octane fashion, that its fifteen minute pre-title action sequence would shame even a James Bond film.
Resident Evil 5, PC
The first in the Resident Evil series to feature simultaneous cooperative play, Resident Evil 5 (2009) is a somewhat strange (but interesting) instalment that takes place in Africa.
This time you’re up against a virus, a corrupt corporation, local ‘zombie’ thugs, and black magic and superstition as well. All in broad daylight too, as the first part of the game seems to take every opportunity to kick you outdoors into the blazing sunshine (as though the developers were insisting that this episode would all be set outdoors, because we’d all been sat indoors playing games for too long in the dark).
