Introduction Metroid was developed by Nintendo R&D1 under producer Gunpei Yokoi, first released for the Famicom Disk System in Japan in August 1986 before arriving on cartridge for the NES in North America the following year. The team set out to blend Super Mario Bros’s side-scrolling action with The Legend of Zelda’s open, non-linear exploration,…
Introduction Donkey Kong began as a 1981 arcade platformer built by Nintendo R&D1 under Shigeru Miyamoto, assigned by Gunpei Yokoi to rework unsold Radar Scope cabinets into something with wider appeal. The result introduced a carpenter hero originally called Jumpman, his captured love interest Pauline, and the giant ape Donkey Kong, wrapped in some of…
Introduction Super Mario Bros is a side-scrolling platform game directed by Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka for Nintendo’s in-house R&D4 team, released for the Famicom in Japan in September 1985 and for the NES in North America shortly after. Miyamoto had joined Nintendo as an artist and toy designer and originally pitched a game built…
Introduction The Steel Empire is a horizontally scrolling shoot ’em up developed by Hot-B and released for the Sega Genesis in 1992, originally launched in Japan under the title Koutetsu Teikoku (literally ‘Empire of Steel’), then brought to North America by Acclaim’s Flying Edge label as The Steel Empire and to Europe under the more…
Introduction Whip Rush 2222 A.D. is a horizontally and vertically scrolling shooter developed by Vic Tokai for the Sega Genesis, published by Sega in Japan on May 26, 1990 and by Renovation Products in North America that October. Set in the 22nd century after humanity has exhausted the Solar System’s resources, the story follows three…
Introduction Fire Shark is a vertically scrolling shoot ’em up developed by Toaplan, originally released to Japanese and European arcades in 1989 under the title Same! Same! Same! (literally ‘Shark! Shark! Shark!’), with Romstar handling the North American arcade release. The Sega Genesis conversion was built in-house by Toaplan itself and released in Japan and…
Introduction Insector X began life as an arcade shooter developed by Hot-B under contract for Taito, released to arcades in 1989 with a deliberately comical tone that Taito had requested. After buying the rights back from Taito the following year, Hot-B built its own Mega Drive version, published in Japan under its own name and…
Introduction Sub-Terrania is a multidirectional shooter developed by the Danish studio Zyrinx and published by Sega for the Mega Drive/Genesis in 1994, notable as the debut project of a team formed from members of two Amiga demoscene groups, The Crionics and The Silents. Set at a future deep-space mining colony overrun by an unknown alien…
Introduction Super Fantasy Zone is a side-scrolling shoot ’em up developed and published by Sunsoft for the Sega Mega Drive, released in Japan in January 1992 and in Europe the following year, though it never saw an official North American release. Sunsoft came to the project with experience from having developed the Famicom version of…
Introduction Sol-Deace is a horizontally scrolling shoot ’em up developed by Wolf Team and published by Telenet Japan, originally released for the X68000 computer in November 1990 under the name Sol-Feace before reaching the Sega CD in Japan the following year. The Sega Genesis cartridge version, ported and published in North America by Renovation Products…
Introduction Zero Tolerance is a first-person shooter developed by Technopop, the first independent studio to develop for the Sega Genesis, and published by Accolade exclusively for the console in 1994. It runs on a pseudo-3D, sprite-scaling ray-casting engine built entirely on stock Genesis hardware, letting players control Captain S. Ishii or fellow soldier Cyber-Cop, two…
Introduction Galaxy Force II is a sprite-scaling rail shooter developed by Sega R&D1, an expanded update of 1988’s arcade original Galaxy Force built on Sega’s sprite-scaling Y Board hardware, adding two new levels and other refinements shortly after that first release. The Mega Drive/Genesis version arrived in 1990 as part of a wide multi-platform rollout…