Forgotten Worlds

released on Dec 31, 1988

Forgotten Worlds can be played by up to two players simultaneously. The player controls a flying muscle-bound soldier armed with a rifle with unlimited ammo. The Player 1 character is equipped with a long-range automatic rifle, while Player 2 has a short-range wide shot. The controls in the original coin-op version consists of an eight-way joystick for moving the character in the air while flying and a unique rotatable button known as the "roll switch".Rotating the switch left or right allows the player to adjust their character's aim in one of sixteen directions, while pressing it causes the player character to shoot his gun. This allows for the player to move their character anywhere while keeping their aim in one direction. Pressing the switch rapidly will cause the character to perform a "megacrush" attack will destroy all on-screen enemies, but at the expense of a portion of their vitality gauge. The player character is accompanied by a satellite module orbiting near him that will provide backup firepower every time the player fires their gun. Like the main character, the satellite can also be rotated with the roll switch. Rotating the character while firing will only rotate the aim of the satellite, while rotating the character without firing will not only rotate the satellite's aim, it will also move its relative position around the player. The player can obtain blue-colored coins known as "zennies" from defeating enemies throughout the game. The zennies are used as currency to obtain new power-up items from shops located at certain points in each stage. When the player enters an item shop, they are given a choice of the items available and a limited time to make any purchase they wish. These items consists primarily of new weapons for the satellite module, but also includes a health kit to restore lost vitality, an armor that allows the player to sustain additional damage, and even tips on how to defeat the boss awaiting at the end of the current stage. Forgotten Worlds consists of five stages with a total of eight bosses. The player will lose if their vitality gauge runs out, but will be given a chance to continue.


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eh. Interesting concept with a scrolling multidirectional shooter, but as a consequence of being able to shoot in any direction it basically means ya get floded with enemies and projectiles from every which direction, and that can be really overwhelming. You do have a satellite that you can lock by shooting and it does function like a shield which can help in some situations, but I feel like the games pace is way faster than the positioning speed of the satellite so I couldn't really use it to the best effect. There's also a money system for upgrades too! It's very mechanically dense, but idk I couldn't really get into it ngl. The game has a strange "kill the gods" theme to it and the visuals can get quite grotesque at points which ain't really my thing. It's a game!

Rotating your character around with A and C is a little awkward at first, but once you adjust to it this becomes one of the best non-traditional shm'ups on Genesis. I had fun messing around with all the different weapons you could get in the shops that pop up once or twice per stage and finding the best loadout for each stage/boss encounter.

It's also surprisingly forgiving given Capcom's knack for making brutally difficult games- you have a life bar that can be upgraded several times and have wonder-boy styled elixirs that revive you upon losing all your energy. It's a refreshing change of pace from other shooters of the era that simply wanted you dead ASAP to extend the playtime. I'm sure the arcade version is like that, but I can respect when the developers can tell the difference between what's feasible for arcade play versus home console play, and this definitely fits the bill.

It's a shame there aren't too many other shooters like this on the console, aside from Trouble Shooter and its Japan-only sequel. Even if it's very short and simplistic after adapting to the control scheme, there's a good time to be had here.

Played on Capcom Arcade. It took me a stage or two to realize that you can spin your character around, and in the manual it tells you to use your trigger buttons to spin your guy left or right. After a few stages of that I thought how much better it would feel if it used twin stick controls, just tried it, and was really surprised when that worked. I was already enjoying flying through stages blasting lizard men as a Fist of the North Star character via Tom of Finland, and the freedom of movement added a lot to it.

The game slightly overstays its welcome for me, maybe because I wasn't very good and never had enough money to buy the cool looking weapons, so I had the same weapon for most of the game; still, a shooting game where you're just a guy flying around is pretty novel (only other ones I can think of are ESP Ra.De. and Espgaluda). Each stage is really difficult, but the bosses were pretty fun to fight.

[Capcom Arcade Stadium]

Beautiful pixel art. But the game was ridiculously difficult. I used the invincibility cheat to get to the end.

Also, why were the heroes voices so high pitched?

There have been plenty of games out there that like to take elements from other, more popular games, and combine them together to make something more “inventive” and “unique”. A lot of the time, this doesn’t work as gracefully as one would imagine, but there are those few cases that do make all these different elements come together to work in beautiful harmony, such as the case with Forgotten Worlds. It had been a minute since I had gotten my usual Capcom fix, so I needed to take care of that somehow, and after looking around in the Capcom Arcade Stadium, I found this title. Going in, I thought it would just be yet another generic space shooter that has you playing as Contra-like characters. However, I ended up being pleasantly surprised, because yes, as a whole, it it can be seen as yet another generic space shooter, but it does like I mentioned earlier: taking many different elements from plenty of other successful games and brings them together in harmony. Therefore, I found this game to be great, and yeah, it may not bring that many new elements alongside all the other elements, but it still creates a pretty solid experience that any arcade nut can enjoy.

The story is extremely generic, one that has been done many times before, so there is no use in talking about it anymore, the graphics, of course, are pretty great, which is to be expected from a Capcom arcade title, the music can be very enjoyable… at least, I say “can” because it will constantly be drowned out with the sound that your bullets make, so that’s fun to listen to, the control is mostly solid, but there are some issues that I had with it that I will get into later, and the gameplay feels familiar, yet new, with all of these different elements combined together to create a fun experience.

The game feels like a mix between Contra, Gradius, and Fantasy Zone, where you take control of one of two beefy Contra-esque super soldiers, go through a plethora of different stages, shooting down any enemy that threatens you on your mission, gather plenty of money for powerups along the way, and take on deadly bosses of all shapes and sizes. It plays pretty much like your average space shooter for the most part, but there are quite a lot of changes and additions that make this game stand out from others. In terms of the simpler stuff, you control a dude rather then a ship, and you have fully directional movement rather then being stuck looking one way the whole time. It isn’t much, but it is a neat difference, especially since so many other games in the genre keep you fixated in the same position all the time. Alongside this, there are also more unique levels to find within this game that you wouldn’t see in others of the same genre, such as Egyptian and Greek themed levels, which is pretty nice to see.

In terms of the main gameplay gimmicks, it is about what you would expect, but like I mentioned earlier, it combines elements from past popular titles to make something fun and somewhat memorable. From Contra, the game takes both the designs of the central protagonists, and the general style of Contra, having voiced lines of dialogue, and cutscenes and graphics that would look straight out of one of those games. From Gradius, it takes the general progression through stages and the shooting mechanics, with you generally moving on an automated path, and having different options that you can use to help out in combat and increase firepower. And as for Fantasy Zone, the game takes the shop mechanic, where you can collect money from a lot of the enemies you take out, and use it to purchase plenty of different helpful upgrades, such as more powerful shots, different kinds of shots, armor for your character, and plenty more. Sure, it isn’t confirmed if all of these games and mechanics were direct inspirations for this title, but you do feel the influence from all of these titles when you play these games, and you wouldn’t think it would work all that well together, but it surprisingly works pretty well.

I really don’t have too many complaints about the game. Yeah, it did get repetitive at points, and arcade syndrome makes an unwanted appearance once again, but for the most part, I was having a pretty grand time… but again, that’s only for the most part. This goes into my main issue with the game, and I’m not even sure if it is the game itself is at fault for this. Whenever I died in the game, and I came back in using another credit, it made the controls for aiming get pretty… wonky. There were plenty of times the directions I would aim in were not properly mapped to what direction I was turning in, whether it being off just by a few inches, or if it was completely backwards. Needless to say, this made combat situations much more stressful, given how I have to figure out what direction the game wanted me to tilt the joystick in just to defend myself. I was playing the game on the Capcom Arcade Stadium, so that may have something to do with it, but again, I can’t confirm that for certain.

Overall, despite not being too creative, and having some pretty awkward control issues, I still had a pretty great time with Forgotten Worlds, with me really enjoying the combination of all these different elements seen in other games, as well as the other new elements brought into the concoction. I would recommend it for those looking for something new, yet short to check out, as well as for those who generally like all of the other games that I just mentioned in this review. But alas, now that I reviewed the game, I guess it can go back to being a yet another FORGOTTEN gem… yeah, alright, that wasn’t my best work.

Game #298

A really interesting style of shoot em up. The way the character rotates on the screen is quite a unique idea for the genre but the execution ends up being just ok. That may be in part to the amount of levels that just throws the kitchen sink at you. Anyone that actually finished this in the arcade back in the day, must have spent a good £20 at least.

I liked the visuals and whilst the gameplay was interesting, it didn't really do it for me as much as I'd hoped. Still a fun shoot em up though and it was nice to finally play it.