Introduction Super Conflict is a turn-based military wargame developed by Manley & Associates and published by Vic Tokai, released in North America in March 1993 as the 16-bit successor to the earlier NES game Conflict. Play takes place on hex maps where each side fields infantry, armour, artillery, helicopters, aircraft and naval vessels, and every…
Introduction Koei brought the fourth entry in its long-running Romance of the Three Kingdoms series to the Super Famicom on 9 December 1994, with the North American release following in July 1995 as Wall of Fire. Players take command of a warlord in the collapsing Han empire and manage everything a province needs: farmland and…
Introduction Technosoft released Herzog Zwei for the Mega Drive in Japan in 1989, reaching the rest of the world the following year, and its historical importance is hard to overstate: it arrived three years before Dune II and is widely credited as the first true real-time strategy game. Rather than a mouse cursor, the player…
Introduction Intelligent Systems developed Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War for Nintendo, releasing it on the Super Famicom on 14 May 1996 under the direction of Shouzou Kaga. It is the fourth entry in the series and the strangest in structure: instead of many compact maps, it uses a handful of enormous ones, each…
Introduction Quest released Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together on the Super Famicom on 6 October 1995, with Yasumi Matsuno directing, designing and writing it. Battles play out on an isometric grid where elevation genuinely matters – archers gain range from high ground, spellcasters need line of sight, and a unit caught in a valley…
Introduction Taito developed and published The Ninja Warriors in 1987, with cabinets reaching operators in February 1988. Its defining feature was hardware rather than software: the cabinet housed three contiguous monitors, the outer two reflected into place by mirrors, producing an extraordinarily wide playfield that no home console of the era could reproduce faithfully. The…
Introduction TAD Corporation released Toki in Japanese arcades in December 1989 under the title JuJu Densetsu, with Fabtek handling the North American release as Toki in February 1990. Akira Sakuma designed it around a premise no other platformer of the era shared: an evil sorcerer transforms the hero into an ape and abducts the woman…
Introduction X-Men: Children of the Atom launched on Capcom’s CP System II board in Japan on 8 December 1994, reaching the rest of Asia weeks later and North America during 1995. It was the first fighting game Capcom built around licensed Marvel characters, and the ambition shows in every frame: sprites far larger than those…
Introduction Pang was developed by Mitchell Corporation and published by Capcom in 1989, appearing as Pomping World in Japan and as Buster Bros. on North American cabinets. The premise is simple enough to grasp in one glance and surprisingly hard to master: bouncing balloons drift around the screen, and the player fires a harpoon straight…
Introduction Raiden reached arcades in September 1990 and became the breakout success of its developer, Seibu Kaihatsu, after years of lower-profile releases. Distribution was split by territory: Tecmo handled Japan while Fabtek brought the game to North American operators. Players pilot the Fighting Thunder fighter craft against an alien invasion, working through eight densely populated…
Introduction A.S.P. Air Strike Patrol was developed and published by Naxat Soft, released for the SNES in 1994 as a helicopter combat shooter with an overhead perspective, tasking players with flying attack helicopter missions against ground and air targets across a series of increasingly difficult stages. Players manage a limited but upgradeable arsenal of missiles…
Introduction Bahamut Lagoon was developed and published by Square, released for the SNES in 1996 as a tactical RPG combining grid-based strategy battles with dragon-taming mechanics, released late in the console’s life just as Square was shifting its major RPG output toward the PlayStation. Players command a squad of soldiers each paired with a tamed…