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.

[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?

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.

Forgotten Worlds is a passable shmup at its core, but there are things about it that deeply frustrate me. It features this mechanic where you can upgrade weapons and health for coins, which sounds all fine and dandy, but managing your health and weapons and coins all at once is total hell for some reason. It seems like some levels are weirdly scarce of coins, some had them hidden in certain places and in others I just could not find any. At the end of each level you can sometimes obtain a bonus surplus of coins, but I never quite understood the criteria for such and it felt like it was random whether or not I was given one. You will need a good amount of weapon upgrades AND health upgrades to get by, but it always feels like there's little to no room to purchase both.

I'm not a fan of that upgrades system at all. It's a total hassle, and honestly really fucking stupid in my opinion when Thunder Force II was released for the console the same year and its upgrades were simple as dirt and much better to boot anyways (and that game isn't even very good either). I actually had to run through the whole game twice, because the first time I reached the final boss the weapons I had were not damaging him at all. Or at least, I don't think they were, because there's no feedback. I really hate that. When I get hit the screen shakes around and I flicker for a bit, but there's hardly (or sometimes never) a signal that I'm actually damaging the bosses?

By the way, the final boss is crap even with sufficient upgrades. His two attacks aren't really telegraphed, whichever one he chooses is random, and one of them is insanely hard to dodge. Also, no continues, and even before him it's an absurdly difficult game. Have fun, asshole!

I wish I knew what I was doing here because people seem to really like this one and I couldn't figure out how to get the bonuses or Zenny people kept earning.

There's no sound or graphic that plays when you hit a boss' weakspot so it's really hard to tell if you're actually damaging them. This is most notable on the Dragon but other bosses have this issue too.

Two stars, one for each player that let me get through this game and some of the really fast BS it can throw at you.

An enjoyable shmup with multi-directional aiming and a "kill the gods" theme. The only thing that sucks is that they hid the mega crash ability(double tap "shoot" really quick), there's no mention of it in the demo scroll though maybe the cab artwork might show it, but unfortunately I didn't have access to that. Would've potentially made the fight against those shotgun-wielding assholes in saiyan armor a bit more tolerable in the later stages. Special shout out to fighting the kaiju-sized Raoh in stage 3 which is the highlight of the game.

The final boss and his almost-guaranteed to hit multi-laser attack that's there to devour the last of your pocket change can still eat my ass though.

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!

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.

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