NES

After each race, money is awarded based on your finishing position. You can upgrade your vehicle in the usual fashion, and top up turbo boosts. Fairly soon you’ll find you’ve maxed out the upgrades on your car, from then on the prize money simply becomes a turbo fund. You’ll waste turbos if used when touching cars or other obstacles, you must have clear track. It pays to save them for race winning moments. It’s easy to drain your entire reserves on one race trying, mostly in vain to catch up with Ivan!

‘Gra-dius’, or ‘Grade-ius’ however you pronounce it, Gradius is undoubtedly one of the NES’s classics. The system isn’t blessed with shooters, while still playable, many do not hold up well today

Ronald-the scary ass clown-McDonald and his bumbling sidekicks were common place in advertising, packaging and toys. Sometimes you’d even find them in McDonald’s joints, crashing kids birthday parties and generally scaring the living shit out of the kids (well Ronald anyway). It isnt a surprise they ventured into gaming, what is surprise, is that it isn’t a bad game!

Your mission is to put an end to the usual tyrannical dictator. Each level is broken into two sections. First you’ll have to survive a ‘dog-fight’, ie air combat against enemy fighter jets (I assume MiGs). As levels progress, the number of bogeys increases. By the final stages you’ll have to take down 9 jets before you can move on. These fights are initially where you’ll struggle most. You have a cockpit perspective.

Growing up in a household where both my brother and father are golf obsessives, you’d think I’d also have a fondness for the sport. Well I don’t. The appeal never rubbed off on me. The game seems unnecessarily long, excruciatingly tedious and involves being up before 7 on a Sunday – no thanks!

This is Technos’s take on an RPG using sprites very similar to those from their Double Dragon series. It plays like a more refinded DD, with less moves, however theres an abundance of weapons to keep it interesting. What sets this aside from other brawlers of the time, is the RPG elements. You an upgrade stats for punch, kick, throw, weapon, stamina, strength, agility, Defense, will power and max power. leveling isnt done through EXP like most RPGs, instead you collect money from defeated foes and purchase items from the many marketplaces.

As a kid I wished I had an outlet to access Godzilla, alas I was left only with my imagination.

Starting a game you’ll be presented with a chessboard. You control Godzilla & Mothra. You can move each monster a set number of squares and the different hexagons you land on determines the different battle stages you enter. When the action begins is where the game falls down!