Retro Gaming Australia

I spy some Daimakaimura in there. Nobody is surprised.

Here’s the release schedule for the featured games:
February 19/20
Black Tiger
1943
Avenger

March 5
Ghosts’n Goblins
Gunsmoke
Sector Z

March 19
Legendary Wings
Side Arms
Trojan

April 2
Rush & Crash
Exed Exes
Commando

April 16
1942
Pirate Ship Higemaru
Sonson

Area 88, better known outside Japan as UN Squadron, is arguably one of the best shoot ’em ups Capcom produced. Area 88 was a reasonably popular manga series in Japan, involving ace pilot Shin Kazama, who is signed up to a mercenary by his supposed best friend, who had eyes on Shin’s bride-to-be. Shin is on a 3 year contract, and must either serve out the term or buy out the $1.5 million contract by becoming a the top pilot.

Unless you were lucky enough to own an X68000, the Mega CD version of Final Fight was as good a home conversion as you were going to get. It’s not as heavily censored as the SNES version, has all three characters, and a pretty bitchin’ arranged soundtrack. It still loses a little bit of the graphical lustre of the original, though.

King of Dragons is a side scrolling hack and slash game with light RPG elements. It’s kind of a predecessor to the more popular Knights of the Round. A port for the SNES was released in 1994, but its a bit of a downgrade from the arcade game.

Mega Man 5 was the last game in the Mega Man series to see a release in Europe and Australia. To date, Mega Man 6 was not released in PAL regions in any official form until its Wii Virtual Console release in March 2012, since neither the Mega Man Anniversary Edition compilation nor the PlayStation remixes were released here.

Mega Man X4 was the first game in the X series to be developed exclusively for the 32-bit consoles. While it had an easy time getting released in Japan, Europe and Australia, the game was initially blocked by Sony Computer Entertainment’s extremely lame policy of not allowing 2D games to be published on the PlayStation. Capcom decided to play hardball, and threatened not to release Resident Evil 2 for the PlayStation in North America if Mega Man X4 was not approved. SCEA folded faster than Superman on laundry day.

Mega Man: Battle & Chase is the inevitable kart racing spin off of the Mega Man series. It’s not particularly well known due to the US release of the game being cancelled – at least until its appearance as a bonus in Mega Man X Collection. The game basically takes the power stealing concept of the series and applies it to kart racing.

Mega Man X2 picks up about 6 months after the first game, with X assuming the role as head of the Maverick Hunters following the defeat of Sigma. However, a group of powerful Mavericks calling themselves the X Hunters take control of the North Pole, and begin taunting X with the remnants of Zero’s body.

Mega Man 7 is the somewhat unfairly maligned 16-bit continuation of the classic Mega Man series. The game was rushed to market by Capcom, and wasn’t quite up to the high standards set by Mega Man X and its sequels.

Mega Man in Dr Wily’s Revenge (or Rockman World) is the first of the portable Mega Man series which saw five instalments on the Game Boy. It was the first Mega Man game to be outsourced by Capcom, yet most people were still happy with the end result.