TG16 Games:

Air Zonk - I really was not too big into the Bonk games so how good could this spin off be?  But Air Zonk is a surprisingly good cute'em up, tons of power ups, funky options, and clutch charge up attacks.

Cadash – A sidescrolling action adventure game like the arcade.  A little wonky but seems like a good time.
 

Chew-Man-Fu – Pac Man meets Bomber Man in kind of a funky puzzle/maze game where you run enemies over with giant marbles.  Some hilarious dialogue between stages.

Dungeon Explorer – A gauntlet style hack n slash for 5 players.  Plays pretty well.

J.J. & Jeff – Another one I owned.  Honestly one of the worst games of all time.  Ugly graphics, worse controls, and bird poop humor.

Lords Of Thunder – This game rocks.  You pick different power=ups and armor sets and go at it in fantasy flavored shmup levels.

Military Madness – Easy to get into Strategy game.  The in-game user manuels lays everything out and fans of Advance Wars should feel right at home.

Moto Roader – Busted racing game, pretty much unplayable with the way cars teleport around the track.  Micro Machines this ain’t.

Neutopia – Nintendo’s lawyers should have sued, this has to be the most shameless Zelda clone ever.  Still if you like the original NES and wanted more, this is for you.  Hitting enemies with the sword seems harder than it should be with how easy it is for them to hit you.

Neutopia II – Much of the same as the first, but this one makes combat a bit less clunky since now you can attack in 8 directions and you sword stays out for a second allowing you to move in into enemies.

New Adventure Island – Pretty much a 16 bit Adventure Island.  I think I like this one more than Super Adventure Island.

Ninja Spirit – Irem does it again with a really cool ninja action title.  Haven’t two clones tossing out ninja stars and hooks makes you feel like a total BA.

Parasol Stars – How did we get from dinosaurs shooting bubbles to guys shooting rainbow out of their crotch to using umbrellas like a kung fu Mary Poppins?  What if it the next Mario game, you didn’t jump on enemies heads but instead tossed vegetables at them?

Power Golf – Boring even by golf standards

Psychosis – Kind of trippy shmup, kind of ugly and run of the mill too.

R-Type – A classic shmup with good powerups, tunes, and enemy designs.  Sure you can play it elsewhere, but this is still a pretty good port.  Check it out!

Soldier Blade – Lightening fast shmup.  This one is pretty smooth.

Space Harrier – Never could get into Space Harrier and this isn’t the best version of the title out there

Splatterhouse – Nope quite as gory as the name would imply, still a great arcade horror themed beat em up


Victory Run – A racing game kind like Outrun or Rad Racer.  Not a great looking title and forcing you to manually shift gears makes things more irritating than needed.

Ys Book I&II – Excellent cutscenes and sound for being 1989, that must have been unreal.  Gameplay itself though is just you walk into enemies and hope they die before you do.  A bit too primitive to really enjoy, but neat to see the roots of this great series.


PC Engine Games:

Akumajō Dracula X Chi No Rondo – This title gets a lot of praise and it is easy to see why, all the levels and enemies are so well crafted and deliberate.  You can read their attacks and how you need to navigate around the level, getting there is the hard part.  That animated intro and CD soundtrack blew me away for being a 16-bit system.    There are alternate paths, bosses, endings, and another character to play as.

There are so many nods and throwbacks, this is like the swansong and love letter to the classic vania.  And many of the enemies and storyline spill over into the excellent in its own way Symphony of the Night, so it really feels like the end of an old era and the start of something new.

Aldynes – A rather generic Shmup, expect a few of those on here.  Some cool big boss designs.

Appare! Gateball – A ton of menus but once you are playing this is basically croquet.  I don’t know of any other video croquet games so that is pretty unique, could be fun multiplayer.

Bomberman ’94 – A step up from the other Bomberman title as it features some more complex single player levels.  Turns out we did get this one as Mega Bomberman for the Genesis, I might prefer that version because the soundtrack really slaps in the Sega version.  But you still have everything you need here for some serious multiplayer fun.  It's a blast.

Bomberman Panic Bomber – I played this one before on the Virtual Boy of all places.  A bit like Puyo Puyo mixed with the bombs of Tetris 2.  Maybe I am missing something with how the combo system worked but it really felt like a stalemate as it was easy to clear garbage blocks with small bombs and even regular blocks with the big bombs.  A single vs computer match must have lasted 15 mins, which is just too long, this shouldn’t be paced like a round of tennis. C’mon

Chō Aniki – The infamous flying muscle-man shmup.  It is still quirky, but not quite as queer as later entries in the series got.  Just alrite.

Daimakaimura (Ghouls n Ghosts) – I’ve always been more of a Castlevania fan than a GnG fan.  It feels like enemies are constantly swarming and even if you fight them off, they respawn 2 seconds later.  Seems like a solid port though.

Dragon Spirit – Play as a Dragon shooting dinosaurs, how cool is that?  The dragon’s hitbox is pretty big and sometimes background objects can damage you when you wouldn’t expect.

Fantasy Zone – One of the couple of TG16 games I used to own.  Really fun cute em’ up along the lines of Defender.  Got to love those tunes.

Galaga ’88 – It’s Galaga again, doesn’t have any additional bells and whistles over the original.  Enemies explode into fireworks, so at least it is festive.

Ginga Fukei Densetsu Sapphire – sick 3D effects, hard rockin’ soundtrack, cyberpunk backgrounds, anime girls!  There are more than a few shmups in the mix, but this is one that takes it to the next level.

Ninja Ryūkenden  - Something feels off about Ninja Gaiden here, maybe it is just me.  Still cool to see a different spin on the classic.

PC Genjin – Remember Bonk?  One of dozens of mascot platformers with ‘tude to come out in the 90s.  Compared to Sonic and Crash, Bonk sure was the poochie of that group.

Salamander – Better known as Lifeforce.  Hell yeah, honestly it plays the same but I dig this even more than Gradius.  Having a new “near arcade” mode is pretty sweet as well.

Seirei Senshi Spriggan – A Musha-like shmup.  If you are into that, you will like it, felt a bit samey to me though.

Snatcher – A really cool cyberpunk detective adventure.  This is a super text heavy game and it is all in Japanese here, but try this out on the Sega CD sometime.

Spriggan Mark 2 – Switches from a vertical to horizontal shooter in this sequel that barely resembles the first game.  Plays out like an episode of Robotech, with pilots constantly in your ear yelling stuff.  The non-stop chatter does really break up the flow of the game, might not mind it as much if I had any idea what was going on.

Star Parodier – Kinda the Hudson answer to Parodius.  Fun cute em up that lets you play as a flying Bomberman or even a Hu Card.  You know you love it.

Super Darius – Other than the over the top, G Darius which features screen-size dueling lasers and the ability to convert mini bosses to allies, this fishtank shmup series didn’t really excite.

Super Momotarō Dentetsu II – Some kind of train based board game.  Can’t read it so can’t play it.  Wonder if this inspired some of the later Mario Party games where you all travel around together in a car or buggy.

Super Star Soldier – Another solid shmup.  I’m running out of ways to describe shmups!

The Genji and the Heike Clans – Just a random incoherent mess of enemies swarming you in this ugly title.  It features 3 different playmodes: overhead, side scrolling, and “big” mode, too bad they all play awful

The Kung Fu – It’s the first endless runner!  A pretty primitive auto-walking punch and kicking brawler.  More of time capsule, rather than something that holds up today.

The Legend of Valkyrie – a neat like overhead action-adventure title with an adorable Valkyrie.  Not sure what the characters are saying in the shops but seems mostly straightforward and playable.  The animations are cute and even the jumping is handled well.  Surprised this didn’t take off and become a bigger franchise.

And that is the TG16 mini library.  There are some hidden goodies like two more shmups: Force Gear and Twinbee, which are alrite, and some near arcade and caravan modes for a couple games.  Great little system, thanks for joining me on this journey.