Undercover Cops (1992)

at January 04, 2024

 

Undercover Cops (アンダーカバーコップス, Andākabākoppusu) is an arcade-style beat 'em up video game developed and published by Irem, originally for the arcades in 1992. It is Irem's first attempt in the modern beat 'em up genre that was founded by Kung-Fu Master. Players control "city sweepers", a police agent-like group who fight crime by taking down thugs in New York City in the year 2043.

3x3 Eyes: Juuma Houkan (1995)

at January 04, 2024

 

The second 3x3 Eyes game for the Super Famicom. This time as a side scrolling adventure game with fighting sequences instead of a JRPG.

Terranigma

at September 20, 2023

 

Terranigma[a] is a 1995 action role-playing game developed by Quintet for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), with manga artist Kamui Fujiwara acting as the character designer. The game tells the story of the Earth's resurrection by the hands of a boy named Ark, and its progress from the evolution of life to the present day. The game is considered the third and final entry in an unofficial trilogy of action RPGs created by Quintet, also including Soul Blazer (1992) and Illusion of Gaia (1993).

Terranigma was published in Japan by Enix on October 20, 1995, and in Europe and Australia by Nintendo starting in December 1996; the game was not released in North America due to Enix having already closed its U.S. branch by the time localization had finished, and has not been re-released due to complicated issues relating to its rights. The game has been met with critical acclaim for its presentation, gameplay, and story, although it has been criticized for its difficulty.

Final fight (1989)

at August 18, 2023

 

Final Fight is a side-scrolling beat-'em-up video game produced by Capcom. Originally released as an arcade game in 1989, it was the seventh title released for the CP System hardware. Set in the fictional Metro City, the game lets the player control one of three street fighters: former pro wrestler and city mayor Mike Haggar, expert brawler Cody Travers, and modern-day ninja Guy. The trio set out to rescue Jessica (Haggar's daughter and Cody's girlfriend) when she is kidnapped by the Mad Gear Gang.

The game began development as a sequel to the original Street Fighter released in 1987, under the working title Street Fighter '89, but the genre was switched from a fighting game to a beat 'em up and the title was changed to Final Fight following the success of Double Dragon. Final Fight was ported to various home computers and consoles, including the ZX Spectrum, Super NES and Sega CD.

It became a major commercial success in arcades, selling 30,000 arcade units worldwide while becoming the highest-grossing arcade game of 1990 in Japan and the year's highest-grossing arcade conversion kit in the United States. The Super NES version also sold 1.5 million cartridges worldwide. It spawned the Final Fight series, followed by several sequels. Its development team later worked on the original Street Fighter II, and some of the characters from Final Fight later appeared as playable fighters in other entries of the franchise, such as the Street Fighter Alpha sub-series.

King Of The Monsters (1991)

at August 18, 2023

 

King of the Monsters is a fighting game developed by SNK, released for arcades in Japan in 1991, and ported to the Neo Geo AES later that same year.The game features playable giant monsters that are reminiscent of characters from kaiju and tokusatsu films.

In 1992, a sequel titled King of the Monsters 2 was released for arcades. Months later, King of the Monsters was ported to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. It would then be ported to the Sega Genesis in 1993. It was included in the video game SNK Arcade Classics Vol. 1, which was released for the Wii, PlayStation 2 and PSP in 2008.

Wolfenstein 3D (1992)

at August 18, 2023

 

Wolfenstein 3D is a first-person shooter video game developed by id Software and published by Apogee Software and FormGen. Originally released on May 5, 1992, for DOS, it was inspired by the 1981 Muse Software video game Castle Wolfenstein, and is the third installment in the Wolfenstein series. In Wolfenstein 3D, the player assumes the role of Allied spy William "B.J." Blazkowicz during World War II as he escapes from the Nazi German prison Castle Wolfenstein and carries out a series of crucial missions against the Nazis. The player traverses each of the game's levels to find an elevator to the next level or kill a final boss, fighting Nazi soldiers, dogs, and other enemies with knives and a variety of guns.

Wolfenstein 3D was the second major independent release by id Software, after the Commander Keen series of episodes. In mid-1991, programmer John Carmack experimented with making a fast 3D game engine by restricting the gameplay and viewpoint to a single plane, producing Hovertank 3D and Catacomb 3-D as prototypes. After a design session prompted the company to shift from the family-friendly Keen to a more violent theme, programmer John Romero suggested remaking the 1981 stealth shooter Castle Wolfenstein as a fast-paced action game. He and designer Tom Hall designed the game, built on Carmack's engine, to be fast and violent, unlike other computer games on the market at the time. Wolfenstein 3D features artwork by Adrian Carmack and sound effects and music by Bobby Prince. The game was released through Apogee in two sets of three episodes under the shareware model, in which the first episode is released for free to drive interest in paying for the rest. An additional episode, Spear of Destiny, was released as a stand-alone retail title through FormGen.

Wolfenstein 3D was a critical and commercial success and is considered one of the greatest video games ever made. It garnered numerous awards and sold over 250,000 copies by the end of 1995. It has been termed the "grandfather of 3D shooters", and is widely regarded as having helped popularize the first-person shooter genre and establishing the standard of fast-paced action and technical prowess for many subsequent games in the genre, as well as showcasing the viability of the shareware publishing model at the time. FormGen developed an additional two episodes for the game, while Apogee released a pack of over 800 fan-created levels. Id Software never returned to the series, but did license the engine to numerous other titles before releasing the source code for free in 1995, and multiple other games in the Wolfenstein series have been developed by other companies since 2001.