Megadrive

 i nearly shat my knickers when i got my first megadrive. i remember it as if it was yesterday, it was brand new, Japanese and cost £270 - it was my 2nd ever console after having an Atari 2600 and it crapped all over my Amiga 500. it was a great little machine and the easiest to modify to play Jap and PAL games (on the Jap model you just unscrewed a little plastic arm). there are some great shooters around for it, although many are starting to show their age. as ever the Jap consoles, cartridges and artwork were far superior to the awful PAL versions. you can pick one of these up for less than a tenner these days so this is cheap retro gaming at its best.

 

 
FORGOTTEN WORLDS/.crazy looking two player shooter which casts you as a muscled-up commando type who can fly and spin round through 360 degrees. killing enemies leaves behind CAPCOM's famous currency the 'Zenny'. collect all you can as there is a shop on each level where you can buy all kinds of weapon upgrades and shields. the controls take a bit of getting used to but this is a great game and a pretty decent conversion of the arcade original.

 

 GHOULS N' GHOSTS/.not quite as hard as the SNES/GBA version but challenging nonetheless. a straight port of the arcade original and a pretty good attempt at that. good stuff.
GYNOUG/.fantasy themed shooter with some fairly grotesque end of level bosses. looks pretty ropey nowadays but there's still some shooting fun to be had here. HELLFIRE/.faithful conversion of the arcade original. shows some innovation in having 4 types of weapon that can all be seperately powered up. quite good fun.

 
M.U.S.H.A ALESTE/.well I think this has to be my favourite megadrive game. i remember buying it back when it came out and subsequently selling it when I was skint. it took me a very long time to track down a reasonably priced copy of it again. this game is pretty much what you'd expect from COMPILE; vertical, massive levels, great enemies and loads of lovely weapons. the visuals are incredible considering the hardware and the game just oozes class. its not a very tough game which may put some off, but i say it should be in every discerning shmup-o-phile's collection.

 

 THUNDERFORCE 2/. the first Megadrive Thunderforce outing. exceptionally difficult and showing its age now. good fun but outclassed by its successors.
THUNDERFORCE 3/.again, you either like the Thunderforce series or you don't. fortunately I do. the series really pushed the megadrive hardware hard and, consequently, looked fantastic for the time. the only aspect i don't like is that none of the enemies flash white when you shoot them. be warned, though, this game is exceptionally hard and a tad unfair.

 

 THUNDERFORCE 4/.more of the same, but with even better graphics. yay!

 
ZERO WING/.tidy little horizontal shooter from TOAPLAN that lets you suck in enemies and use them as shields or projectiles in similar fashion to Darius Gaiden (on the PS1). not a huge fan of this game, its a bit slow for my liking and the whole style of the game is a bit bland but definitely worth a quick blast. worth owning if only for the appaling English translation - this is the game responsible for for giving us such 'classics' as "all your base are belong to us" and "somebody set us up the bomb". grab it  if you see it cheap. 

 
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