Space Raiders (GC) - A third-person shooter re-imagining of Space Invaders by Taito. Nasty aliens move around in front of you and you gotta kill them while collecting powerups and dodging bullets with evasive rolls. There are story and survival modes, progress is the same in both but you get some cutscenes in story mode. There are boss fights at the end of each area which can be quite tricky. The game is fun, basically it's rather mindless blasting with a bit of bullet pattern reading. Powerups are nice, I wish the quite slow main shot would get updated more often but I guess that's part of the Space Invaders style, a game where shooting is limited to one shot after the previous one has either hit a target or moves out of screen. SR is not that strict but shooting speed is still low. Didn't know it existed until recently when a friend of mine told me about the game. Has not been released in Europe, prolly that's why it went past me back in the day.
Juno First, Wizard of Wor Arcade and Pac Man 4k (Atari 2600) - Now that Atari have bought Atariage, they had to stop selling their unlicensed games like RobotWar 2684 (Robotron), Scramble or Galagon (Galaga) by Champ Games and some others. A few months ago, a Last Chance Sale was started where you could order those games for the last time, and I did just that.
Juno First is a port of the arcade game by Konami with a 3D-ish setup and lots of blasting. Gameplay, graphics and sound are top notch, really addictive, it's amazing how accurate the game is and how great it runs on 2600.
Wizard of Wor already got ported to 2600 in the early 80s but this one here is an almost arcade-perfect version with all the bells & whistles, plays great and is addictive like crack, just like the original game.
Pac Man 4k was developed by Dennis Debro in 2011 as a challenge to create a proper Pac Man game on 2600 with only 4k of ROM space which was the standard of early 2600 carts. The outcome is nothing short of amazing, he managed to squeeze nearly all original features in there, the ghosts also behave almost like their arcade counterparts and the overall look and feel is 100% Pac Man. No comparison to the botched original release from 1980.
Dahna: Megami Tanjō (MD) - Action platformer, looks and plays a bit like a mix of Rastan and Golden Axe. Average-to-good graphics, decent sound, gameplay is fun, level design is a mixed bag but overall a very nice game that's good for a couple of hours. Has only been released in Japan so all text is Japanese, there's an English patch floating around if you want to follow the story but it's not necessary to actually play/complete it so I haven't bothered to apply it yet.
