Shinobi – By Asmik

I always though it was a bit strange that Sega never choose to convert this game to the Mega Drive, it did get 3 other Shinobi games including the sublime Revenge Of though. The arcade version and later the Sinclair Spectrum version were always favourites of mine. Shinobi is basically a scrolling beat ’em ups, with platform elements, where your mission is to save kidnapped children. You are armed with shurikens and a limited amount of ninja magic that you can use to defeat the bad guys that include some tough end of level bosses. A lot of jumping is also required to get to platforms and over obstacles. Another notable feature of Shinobi is the bonus stages where you throw shurikens into the screen, from a first person perspective, in a target shooting like sub-game. All the graphics and sound here really are fantastic, it’s a pretty much faultless conversion of the original arcade game really in every way. Definitely the best version of Shinobi released for any machine and a real highlight of the systems vast catalogue.

9/10

 Side Arms – By Radiance

Side Arms is a very good conversion of the Capcom coin-op of the same name that is very similar to another Capcom game – Forgotten Worlds. It’s a horizontally scrolling shooter where you control a flying man as opposed to a space ship. Aliens come at you from both directions so you need to switch sides every now and again to kill them, hence the name. The enemies come at you in attack waves and when you take out a wave you can collect a handy power-up. You can actually build up to a really powerful gun but every time you get hit it reduces your weapon down one grade until you die. The graphics and sound aren’t anything special but they remain faithful to the original arcade game. Gameplay wise Side Arms is very good and although it is quite hard I have found that every time I play this game I get just a little bit further, proving it has a good learning curve. The TG is flooded with great shooters and Side Arms is another game to add to that list.

8/10

 Silent Debuggers – By Data East

Now here is a game to spoil Data East’s otherwise brilliant reputation. This is one of those games that looks superb in screenshots but absolutely sucks to play. At first glance you expect this to be a rather neat FPS something like Atari’s classic Xybots or an early Doom. In reality what we have here is one of the most boring games you will ever play. The idea of the game is to make your way through the tunnels of a space ship trying to find an alien, and yes that is it! When you get closer a noise gets louder letting you know and you can use a map to see where you are. This is a godsend as every single damn corridor looks exactly the bloody same. Granted the graphics are quite nice but that is the only thing it has going for it. This game should actually be prescribed to insomniacs to help them sleep its so boring.

3/10

 Skweek – By Loriciel / Victor

Originally produced by French company Loriciel and released for the PC Engine by Victor, Skweek is a unique strategy puzzle game that was criminally ignored by the unwashed masses on the home computers of the time. Despite this it still saw conversions to several consoles, including the brilliant version of the sequel Super Skweek on the Atari Lynx. This PCE translation is near enough identical to the original ST version and, despite its origins, only saw a release in Japan, but then they do like kitsch and cute in the land of the rising sun. The basic idea of the game is to try and paint all the blue squares pink on each level, however various obstacles stand in your way requiring real thought. Some levels require you colour squares in the right order, others see baddies stand in your way and there are also some tough limits to stick to. Skweek is never going to win any awards for its graphics and sound but you won’t find many games out there with more addictive gameplay. This game is hard to explain and best played. Fans of strategy puzzle games like Lemmings, Humans and Chip’s Challenge will really dig this unique little title for the PC Engine.

9/10

 Sonic Spike – By IGS

When the PC Engine was released in Japan it soon became the upgrade for all Famicom (the NES to us) owners what with its 16-bit graphics and sound. As a transitional machine many of the early games didn’t look much different to the Nintendo ones that came before them, Sonic Spike is one such game. In fact to look at this game you would swear it was on the NES! Only problem is that this abysmal beach volleyball game was released in 1990, several years after the PCE made its debut! Apart from the looks there is one absolutely huge problem with this game, it’s so slow you won’t believe. When you throw the ball up to make a serve it seems to take about an hour for the ball to come back down again. You wouldn’t even mind this so much but you then miss it due to the unresponsive controls! I really can’t think of much that is any good about this game so let’s just move on shall we and forget this travesty ever happened!

3/10

 Space Harrier – By NEC Avenue

Another conversion of a Sega arcade game and another that didn’t appear on the Megadrive either (the MD got Space Harrier II instead). Like Outrun and Afterburner this was another game that used Sega’s, at the time revolutionary, super scaler hardware to great effect. You fly into the action from a 3rd person 3D-style perspective taking out the aliens, avoiding the scenery and eventually going up against a giant boss. Being such a graphically intensive game it’s fair to say that Space Harrier didn’t translate very well to many home machines but this TG version is a sterling effort. NC did a great job of faking the scaling while keeping up the fast frame rate. The fantastic soundtrack of the arcade original is also recreated brilliantly along side the sampled speech and sound effects. Fans of the original game and arcade freaks alike should be putting this game high on their want list.

8/10

 Splatterhouse – By Namco

This is one of the games that really got the PC Engine noticed, an unbridled gore fest from Namco with more than a passing nod to the Friday 13th films. The main character wears a hockey mask, just like Jason Vorhees, and also uses an array of weapons to take out the enemy. But rather than you killing annoying teenagers you are killing all sorts of horrible beasts and ghoulish creatures on a mission to save your girlfriend. It’s very much a standard scrolling beat ‘em up in gameplay style but it’s the gore and graphical touches that really set it apart from the rest. Everything is beautifully animated and incredibly well drawn, the bosses are of particular note and really dominate the screen. Scrolling fighters is one area that the TurboGrafx is rather weak in so Splatterhouse is a very welcome addition to the library and without doubt one of the best games on the machine. Yet another terrific arcade conversion from the guys at Namco.

9/10

 Street Fighter II: Champion Edition – By Capcom

This PC Engine port of one of the most popular arcade games of all time is certainly an impressive achievement and required a special Hu-Card to make it possible. It is basically a half way house between the original SNES version and the Special Champion Edition that appeared on the Sega Mega Drive. So you have all 12 characters, including the bosses, but no speed settings. In comparison there are both good and bad things that can be picked up. The sprites are smaller than the SNES version and it lacks the parallax scrolling of the MD version but it does have much better sound than the MD version and better animation than the SNES version. Most people won’t care about this though and will just want to know how it plays. Well the biggest think that need to be pointed out, although its probably obvious to many, is that you will need to get a new controller. The two button joypad is useless for this game and so a six button arcade stick is an essential pick-up. Once you acquire one of these then you will find this plays every bit as good as the arcade original. Capcom really must be congratulated for squeezing this game into the little PC Engine and without the Super CD-Rom, which actually has a conversion of the original Street Fighter, this is without the best fighting game available.

9/10

 Strip Fighter II – By Games Express

This has to be one of the most bizarre games out there for the PC Engine and also a pretty rare one too, I was lucky (if that is the right word!) enough to play it via a friends Everdrive flash card. In case you haven’t guessed by the name this is an unlicensed Street Fighter II rip-off with a pornographic theme. You get to choose one of just 6 female characters and must try to defeat the others and an end of game boss. When you beat an opponent you get a digitised image of them in their underwear, beat them again in the second round and you get to see them completely naked! The quality of these images is actually very good but what made me laugh was how they seem to bare no resemblance at all to the character in the game! The funniest one is this ugly fat chick you fight who suddenly becomes a stunning blond porn model when you beat her! While the digitised images of the fighters are good their in game personas are really bad with some of the worst animation I have ever seen in a game. They jerk around the screen pulling off stupid looking moves in their skimpy outfits. They all have special moves ripped straight out of SF2 and it also supports the 6-button controller too. Sound wise there is some muffled speech and repetitive out of tune music. Strip Fighter II is amusing for a while but you will soon get bored and see it for the terrible game it really is, naked ladies or not!

4/10

 Super Volleyball – By Video System

Volleyball has never been the most popular sport so it’s not very often you see it translated onto a console and when you usually do it’s the bikini clad beach version. Well this game tries its very best to recreate the thrills and spills of international volleyball, it does a pretty good job too. You start by choosing your team from the available selection of countries and selecting the type of game you want to play. The game itself takes up an unusual viewpoint, while being side viewed (not unusual at all) it is 2D and flat with no up or down movement (very unusual). This kind of reminded me in many ways of the classic Atari Basketball, however the screen does scroll horizontally with the action. Each team has 4 players and you get to control just one of them. The CPU players on your team tend to just hand around the net so its your job to serve and volley from the back of the court. I can’t quite put my finger on what I liked about this game, I just did. I still find it strange that while the TurboGrafx doesn’t have a decent football game it plays a mean game of volleyball!

7/10

 Takin’ It To The Hoop – By Aicom Corp.

And it’s time for more crappy TurboGrafx sports in the form of this very sub-standard basketball title. If you have seen my review of Sonic Spike Volleyball then you will know what to expect from this game. It’s another title that looks like it would be more at home on the NES. With its roster of stupid teams, cute big headed players and lame badly animated cut scenes you could be forgiven for thinking it was on the Nintendo console. The most criminal part of this side-on viewed basketball game though? That would be the complete inability to even jump. Yes you heard that right, a basketball game where you can’t actually jump! There is really no excuse for that and there really is no excuse for releasing bloody awful games like this either.

3/10

 Talespin – By Turbo Technologies

Everyone remembers the classic Disney series Talespin right? The one that was a spin-off of Jungle Book with Baloo flying a plane? No? Well ok it wasn’t one of Disney’s biggest hits but NEC chose to license it regardless (it was probably cheap) and release this game exclusively to the TurboGrafx audience. I am sure you have probably already guessed that this is going to be another generic platformer, and it pretty much is to be honest. Despite being very bland in gameplay style though it does have a few nice features. The first one is the cut-scenes before and after each level, they are really well drawn. The levels are also very varied in their setting and Baloo’s weapon changes with the level too, in the jungle you have coconuts while in the sea you seem to have some sort of super soaker. Lastly it has some pretty cool little bonus stages to break up the platforming monotony. The graphics and sound are also pretty good and capture the style of the cartoon perfectly. Platform game fans will certainly enjoy this game while the rest of us will probably get bored quite quickly.

6/10

 Tiger Road – By Victor

Tiger Road was a 1987 arcade game by Capcom, Victor licensed the game for the PC Engine but decided to make a number of changes. In true Nintendo NES style the game was changed from a great scrolling beat ‘em up to a platformer with fighting aspects. I have no idea why they chose to do this as I was a massive fan of the original game. Many of the same elements are here like the different weapons, scrolls and the plot involving rescuing kidnapped children. But the added platforming aspects make for some frustrating moments in the gameplay as you have to time jumps and suffer cheap deaths. The graphics are pretty good but look a bit squashed for some reason. The sound isn’t bad but is pretty forgettable. All of that said I did still get a lot of enjoyment out of Tiger Road on the TurboGrafx, but I do have to wonder if that is mostly because of my love of the original arcade game rather than this game being good.

7/10

 TV Sports Basketball – By Cinemaware

You know when you get that game where one small mistake by the programmers pretty much spoils what would have otherwise been a great game? Well this is one such title! Initially this seems like its going to be a cracking b’ball game for a system plagued with terrible sports titles. The graphics are nice, the sound is good and it has all the elements needed to recreate the sport very nicely. So what is this big no-no I hear you all asking, it’s something very simple. During the game the action starts off being viewed from a top down ¾ kind of perspective, much like the NHL Hockey games on the Megadrive. This is great until you move into the middle section of the court, then it switches suddenly to a side-on view, WTF! Then just to confuse you more it switches right back as soon as you move into the final third of the court. As well as totally disorientating you it leads to you losing the ball as you trying to re-adjust yourself. I have no idea what the developers were thinking when they implemented this. After a while you might be able to get used to this and you might be able to enjoy what could have been a great game but I doubt it.

4/10

 TV Sports Football – By Cinemaware

American football, or grid iron as we often call it here, is a strange sport for me as I cannot stand watching it on TV but have often enjoying playing video games based on it. Very unlike baseball where I also don’t like watching but have also yet to find a video game version I have really enjoyed. TVSF uses a top down view with a ¾ perspective for the players that scrolls vertically and this works pretty well for the most part. Graphics and sound are mostly pretty average but there are a few digitised sound effects and some nice presentation screens. The problems in this game are all in the gameplay department. Firstly the computer A.I. is absolutely shocking, especially the players on your own team! Secondly the controls just don’t work very well at all and this ultimately makes the game very frustrating to play. TV Sports Football is yet another game to add to the pile of crappy sports games on the TurboGrafx.

4/10

 TV Sports Hockey – By Cinemaware

Sports game in general are pretty bad on the TurboGrafx, I struggle to think of many that are any good, but thankfully this game is one of the few that I have enjoyed. It’s top viewed much like EA’s NHLPA games on the Megadrive but rather than featuring real ice hockey teams it uses different countries, more like the Olympic tournament. First of all the game has some nice presentation with announcers detailing the upcoming game, I guess this is the TV part of the title. Once into the game it’s all pretty standard fare with close-up face offs, organ music, grunting sound effects and fast action gameplay. The controls are really easy to pick up and there is of course a more worthy 2-player mode too. My only complaint is that it’s pretty hard to actually score a goal. With its nice graphics and sound, speedy gameplay and great presentation TV Sports Hockey is easily one of the best sports titles for the machine.

7/10