The match-three puzzle game Columns was one of Sega’s most ubiquitous titles in the early ’90s, yet this second sequel didn’t even come out in Europe. Couple all this with a relatively unusual two-player co-op mode, and you have one of the most exhilarating shooters available for Sega’s console. Its colorful graphics and transforming robot enemies provide the atmosphere of a Saturday morning TV anime show, and if you thought bullet hell shooters were the preserve of later consoles like the Saturn, you may be surprised at how much mayhem Aero Blasters manages to throw at you.Ĭonventional level designs are interspersed by stages where the scrolling speeds up and the player hurtles through a maze of narrow, sharply-angled corridors, injecting a welcome bit of variety and tension. Like most games of its era, it’s inspired by things like Gradius and R-Type, yet it’s faster and breezier than either. The sheer volume of shooters available for the Genesis meant that a few inevitably slipped under people’s radars, and Aero Blasters is perhaps one of the less well known. We’re still trying to figure out what ’90s game designers had against trees. Bad Omen‘s also one of several ’90s games that feature a killer tree as an area guardian. A few technical flaws and design choices knock it back a little (such as the annoying bit where you have to fight your way to an exit after destroying a boss – die and you have to fight the boss again) but it remains a novel, overlooked title. The horror-themed graphics add atmosphere, but it’s the speed and variety of the action that makes Bad Omensuch an entertaining game. With a bit of practice, the system quickly becomes second nature, and as the action progresses up the screen, Bad Omenbegins to more closely resemble a scrolling shooter than something like Arkanoid – there are enemies to destroy, obstacles to avoid, and area bosses to take out.įurther Reading: 25 Underrated SNES Games It gives the player two paddles to control instead of one – the first only able to move left and right, the other able to move forward and back as well as from side to side. Bad Omen/Devilishīat-and-ball games were already looking antiquated by the early ’90s, but Bad Omen brought some really fresh ideas to the aging format. Although not the most original or strategic shooter on the Genesis, Crying is at least one of the most unusual-looking and technically impressive. What’s most notable about Crying, though, is just how fast and smooth it is every level offers a constant onslaught of enemies and bullets that swoop and pulsate across the screen in hypnotic and slightly eerie fashion. A gaudy relic from a bygone age, ToeJam & Earl still has lots to offer, particularly when played with a friend. It’s an example of the game’s weird, inventive sense of humor, which extends to an ingenious two-player mode where the screen only splits in half when players head off in different directions. Obstacles include ice-cream vans and violent chickens, while the aliens’ only available response is to knock them out with tomatoes. Essentially a top-down dungeon crawler, it sees a pair of ungainly aliens (the ToeJam and Earl of the title) hunting a surreal landscape for the missing parts of their spaceship. Quite possibly the most ’90s game ever made, with its backward hats, chunky sneakers, and other period fashion accessories, ToeJam & Earlremains a delightful curio. The range of power-ups and things to collect keeps things interesting (the crocodile hero appears to have a worrying addiction to fruit machines), and some of the monsters are endearingly strange. While the single-screen, trap-the-monsters action may have seemed old hat at a time when Sonic was tearing through levels like lightning, Wani Wani World has aged quite well. At any rate, the resulting game is a bright, breezy bit of fun. Was Kaneko inspired by the success of Sonic the Hedgehogand intent on creating an “animal with attitude” character of its own? Quite possibly. Later ported to the Sega Game Gear by Kaneko itself, Berlin Wall was mysteriously altered for the Genesis, where it was given a new title and an entirely different central character – a crocodile (“wani” being the Japanese word for crocodile). In 1991, Japanese studio Kaneko created an arcade game called The Berlin Wall – a revival of the old Space Panicgame with better graphics, end-of-world bosses, and lots of power-ups. If you’re into collecting things, the box looks great, too. El Viento may desperately want to be a Castlevaniabeater, but it’s more akin to a ’90s straight-to-video movie, which oddly enough, is actually a recommendation.
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