All 16-Bit

Review #12508 Night Striker Hyperzone's ugly cousin MD CD 1993 Taito Shooter Shooter › Corridor G 43 / 100 Bad Screenshot used for review/reference purposes. 2 / 5 Gameplay Looks and plays a lot like Hyperzone for the SNES, but without the benefit of Mode 7 for sprite scaling. Enemies appear as a mess of blocky pixels and are easily lost in the background so it's hard to find and shoot them. A is an auto-shot while B and C are single shots. In other words, you only need A. There are no powerups, othe weapons, or other mechanics. Controls are customizable in that you can choose to invert movement and can enable or disable a momentum-based auto-correct feature. Turn it off immediately. Health doesn't recover between stages so this is a tough game. And like all of these games it...

Review #12122 Stellar-Fire Fast Battlezone Sega CD 1993 Dynamix Shooter Shooter › Corridor X 24 / 100 You've been warned Screenshot used for review/reference purposes. 1 / 5 Gameplay Plays like Battlezone, that vector-based first-person tank shooter game. Only, in this game your enemies aren't slow-moving tanks. Instead, they're lightning fast birds and missles that you simply can't hit. You've got two weapons plus a screen clearing bomb with limited ammo. The gun and missile weapons have unlimited ammo and rapid fire. Hitting anything is only by chance due to how fast enemies are and the fact that they spend most of the time flying around being untouchable. They hit you far more often than you hit them. Health pickups are everywhere to the point where I never even though...

Review #12119 Star Wars - Rebel Assault FMV Rogue Squadron Sega CD 1993 JVC Shooter Shooter › Corridor G 49 / 100 Bad Screenshot used for review/reference purposes. 1 / 5 Gameplay Unfortunately, the controls here are absolutely atrocious. There are two control schemes - dpad and flight - but in both cases there's a crazy amount of drift. There are three views - behind, top-down, and in-cockpit. Each stage uses one or more of these but they can't be toggled between at-will. Movement is positively brutal. You have to roll and pull to banke but again the drift is terrible. Combine this with an FMV background that makes it impossible to identify obstacles that will damage you and you've got a recipe for frustration. 4 / 5 Level Design I love the stag...

Review #12116 SoulStar If only the gun worked Sega CD 1994 Core Design Shooter Shooter › Corridor E 65 / 100 Your mileage may vary Screenshot used for review/reference purposes. 3 / 5 Gameplay I really wanted to love this game but it has a couple of deal killers. First off, you weapon is weak and ineffective. I felt like I rarely killed an enemy despite firing constantly and doing a decent job of lining up my shots. Even powering up the gun with a couple of pickups did nothing to improve its lethality. There are a couple of subweapons (bomb and missile) with better power but switching to them is is slow and they get used up quickly. Before long I found it was easier to simply avoid enemies than try to kill them. That is, until I got to stage 2 when you have to kill them all. That's when the ga...

Review #12086 Novastorm Generic corridor shooter #12 Sega CD 1994 Psygnosis Shooter Shooter › Corridor G 46 / 100 Bad Screenshot used for review/reference purposes. 2 / 5 Gameplay It's a corridor shooter like Star Fox. Your ship has an enormous hitbox. Good luck avoiding damage. Enemies, on the other hand, are incredibly hard to hit. Could've been great. Bosses are damage sponges and don't give any indication that you're damaging them. 3 / 5 Level Design The video jerks and swoops around with reckless abandon. It's almost nauseating. Still, it's showy and keeps your attention. Some areas have collision which makes the stage feel more interactive than most of these FMV games. 3 / 5 Theme Pretty gene...

Review #12077 Microcosm Star Fox meets Innerspace Sega CD 1993 Psygnosis Shooter Shooter › Corridor X 22 / 100 You've been warned Screenshot used for review/reference purposes. 1 / 5 Gameplay Corridor shooter like Star Fox or Space Harrier. Your ship is very small. No pause button. Unlimited ammo. Hard to gauge depth. Enemies take far too many hits. Better to avoid enemies than try to kill them. No health pickups and you don't regain health between levels. Playable, but only barely. 1 / 5 Level Design Enemies come in waves as a useless background video plays. It gives the sense of movement but is so disconnected to your movement that it feels fake. 1 / 5 Theme The opening video is very promising! It has shades...

Review #12003 After Burner III Now you can see forward, and behind Sega CD 1992 Sega Shooter Shooter › Corridor G 48 / 100 Bad Screenshot used for review/reference purposes. 3 / 5 Gameplay Same old After Burner gameplay, with a couple of wrinkles. The first is the inclusion of a cockpit view, which is a literal gamechanger. It can be toggled back to the annoying behind view if you prefer (I don't). I wish this could be toggled mid-game, but whatever. The second change is an infrequent "chase" mode where either an enemy plane or a missile is on your tail. You have an afterburner and an air brake to lose your tail. Overall I enjoyed this game more than the previous games in the series because I can see better. It's a fast game but isn't deep or engaging long-term. It's...

Review #9902 Battle Ace After Burner without a machine gun PCE SG 1989 Hudson Soft Shooter Shooter › Corridor H 26 / 100 Horrible Screenshot used for review/reference purposes. 1 / 5 Gameplay Looks and plays like After Burner, but with the slowest missiles ever. Enemies come in waves of four and you can only lock onto and fire missiles at up to two of them. The the other button fires your gun but it has no auto-fire. So basically the gameplay amounts to mashing both buttons while avoiding missiles fired at you. It's as tiring and obnoxious as it sounds. I was so done with this game after only the first stage. Oh and did I mention the one shot death and restart at the beginning of the too-long stage? Yeah, no thanks. 1 / 5 Level Design Enemies come in the sam...

Review #8139 Thunder Blade Hey I can beat stage one in this version PCE 1990 NEC Shooter Shooter › Corridor H 30 / 100 Horrible Screenshot used for review/reference purposes. 1 / 5 Gameplay This version is better in most ways than the Genesis version. Movement in the behind view is significantly improved such that you don't have to strictly adhere to the draw a box method of play. It's still annoying and I didn't enjoy it much but again is an improvement over the Genesis version and it's horrible movement speed. The top down view, on the other hand, is massively improved. Not great, but passable. Whereas the Genesis version was like the Pilotwings helicopter level as an autoscroller, this one is basically 1942 if you can't move vertically. 2 / 5 ...

Review #8131 Spiral Wave Battlestar Galactica meets Space Harrier PCE 1991 Media Rings Shooter Shooter › Corridor G 47 / 100 Bad Screenshot used for review/reference purposes. 2 / 5 Gameplay Movement feels good - you can move.to any spot on the screen. Feels more like Gyruss than Galaxy Force. In other words, all you need to do is line yourself up with enemies who follow a very strict movement pattern, before moving out of the way to avoid their incoming missiles. Kill a few baddies and then fight a boss to finish the stage. You've only got one weapon - a laser - so there's not much to do. Oh and you die in one hit and there's no lives or continues. One hit and it's game over. 2 / 5 Level Design There's a stage select screen that's h...

Review #8069 Jinmu Denshou Ground Harrier PCE 1989 Big Club Shooter Shooter › Corridor H 30 / 100 Horrible Screenshot used for review/reference purposes. 1 / 5 Gameplay Space Harrier without a gun. Instead you've got a sword that's nearly useless. Every hit you put on an enemy hurts you so the only strategy is to avoid enemies like you're playing Top Gun for NES. You can jump but not fly and the jump is too short to be useful. 1 / 5 Level Design Try as I might I couldn't beat the first stage. It was empty besides wave after wave of enemies with an impossible boss fight to cap it off. 3 / 5 Theme Kabuki Quantum Fighter vibes 3 / 5 Art Style Nice scrolling and sprite scalin...

Review #8001 After Burner II Fire! Fire! Fire! PCE 1990 NEC Shooter Shooter › Corridor G 43 / 100 Bad Screenshot used for review/reference purposes. 2 / 5 Gameplay Main problem is that your reticle is tiny, your targets are tiny, and your plane blocks most of the screen. All this adds up to it being extremely difficult to hit your targets. Controls aren't inverted and can't be changed. Movement is extremely awkward as you're stuck in a very small square perhaps one quarter the size of the screen. Your plane's movement is exaggerated compared to how far you press on the d-pad so it just feels strange. Gameplay is limited to two things - movement and aiming a reticle far in the distance onto an oncoming enemy and firing a missile. You've got limited ammo which is gone quick...

Review #6058 Panorama Cotton 3D Gunstar Heroes MD 1994 Sunsoft Shooter Shooter › Corridor D 70 / 100 Good Screenshot used for review/reference purposes. 3 / 5 Gameplay Tough as nails. Enemies swarm from stage two onward and you don't regain health between stages for some reason. B has auto fire but it's slow so mashing or holding briefly and then taking a brief pause gives you a faster fire rate. C fires a magic spell. I think it helps but it's hard to tell. Thankfully enemies die from a single hit, unlike many other games in this genre. A toggles between three speeds. No slowdown despite crazy stuff happening. The way the camera moves makes shooting a bit annoying and distracting. This is my main complaint. 4 / 5 Level Design Amazing variety ...

Review #2435 YamYam Star Fox meets My Neighbor Totoro SFC 1995 Bandai Shooter Shooter › Corridor H 27 / 100 Horrible Screenshot used for review/reference purposes. 1 / 5 Gameplay This is the most simple Space Harrier clone I've ever encountered. Enemies scale in from the distance and fire one or two shots at you. You stay on the ground unless you press up on the d-pad and enemies fire at where you are or where you're headed. The area you cane move around in is rather small, but enemies have generous hit boxes so all you need to do is mash A or B while continuously rotating the d-pad. The controls are responsive, but it's absolutely braindead gameplay. 1 / 5 Level Design Every "level" is identical. It's just a stright-forward corridor...

Review #2322 Soukou Kihei Votoms: The Battling Road Mech fighting on ice SFC 1993 Takara Shooter Shooter › Corridor X 13 / 100 You've been warned Screenshot used for review/reference purposes. 0 / 5 Gameplay I tried to reserve a zero on gameplay for games that are have zero redeeming qualities. Games that no one should play. This is one of those games. It plays like Virtual On or Custom Robo - you and three other mechs maneuver within a small arena and shoot machine guns up one another. However, unlike those other games, there are no walls or other features. So it's just a big open area. More than anything it reminds me of Combat for the Atari 2600. Movement is extremely awkward where up and down give you forward momentum and left and right turn but only while you're moving. So you w...

Review #2001 Accele Brid Not even good as a tech demo SFC 1993 Tomy Shooter Shooter › Corridor H 33 / 100 Horrible Screenshot used for review/reference purposes. 1 / 5 Gameplay Some of the worst corridor gameplay imaginable. Enemies scale in so badly that it's impossible to gauge distance and therefore to aim at and hit them. Most are flying but you're grounded so you have to jump and shoot at just the right moment. You don't jump high enough to hit everything and enemies disappear too quickly to hit many of them anyway. Your main weapon is weak and takes too many hits to kill anything, plus both your primary and secondary weapons run out of ammo after only a single burst of shots, leaving you with a long cool down period where you can only first a single shot every second or two. I ...

Review #7073 Space Harrier Much better than the sequel TG-16 1989 NEC Shooter Shooter › Corridor H 36 / 100 Horrible Screenshot used for review/reference purposes. 2 / 5 Gameplay Framerate and gameplay are much better than the sequel on the Genesis. Still not great, mind you. There are fewer boss fights and the levels are super short. Far easier than the sequel as well. Ultimately just a boring game. Kind of a one trick pony. I'm sure it was impressive in 86 but not anymore. 1 / 5 Level Design Levels are about 45 seconds long and composed of a handful of enemy waves that repeat. Some levels have a much of obstacles. 3 / 5 Theme 1 / 5 Art Style Some of the worst artwork on the 4th genera...

Review #4571 Super Thunder Blade Draw a box, then a line Genesis 1989 Sega Shooter Shooter › Corridor X 9 / 100 You've been warned Screenshot used for review/reference purposes. 0 / 5 Gameplay Two modes - behind and top down. The behind mode is sort of fun but the only way to play it is to draw a square with the d-pad. Enemies shoot where you are and there are a ton of them so you have to keep moving to where you haven't been recently. You seem to shoot joining missiles so there's no need to aim. Movement is incredibly slow and momentum based. It feels like your pushing your chopper uphill. So terrible. The top down sections are utterly abysmal. They make the other view look amazing by comparison. It's an autoscroller where you have no vertical movement. You can only move horiz...

Review #4530 Space Harrier II Flash Gordon on Checkerboard Planet Genesis 1989 Sega Shooter Shooter › Corridor X 24 / 100 You've been warned Screenshot used for review/reference purposes. 1 / 5 Gameplay Umm, this is a famous game right? Could someone tell me why? This game plays like trash. The only good thing I can say about it is that you've got the whole screen to move around in. After Burner and other games keep you within a small box in the center of the screen but here you've got the whole thing. Good luck hitting targets in the distance though. I guess the checkerboard helps. The real issue here is the nauseatingly low framerate. It sucks any enjoyment you might have had. Oh and not having rapid fire. You have to mash but not too fast as only so many bullets can be on screen...

Review #4216 Galaxy Force II Panzer Dragoon 0.1 Genesis 1992 Sega Shooter Shooter › Corridor G 43 / 100 Bad Screenshot used for review/reference purposes. 2 / 5 Gameplay No health refills between levels. Plays just like Panzer Dragoon, Rez, etc. Move your reticle over a handful of enemies to highlight them all and then fire missiles to take them all out. Pretty cool. Unfortunately the controls are horrible. You can barely move. It works well enough since the game demands so little of you but man is it bad. 3 / 5 Level Design Each level has an outside area and then a corridor inside a base. Reminds me of Star Fox. 2 / 5 Theme Generic space shooter motif with no story or personality 2 / 5 Art Style...