Sadly nowhere near as good as the original Revenge.

What a great game! Wish I'd played this at the time as it probably would have blown me away. Hey, listen to this!

Beatemup/adventure game hybrid that isn't too great but has some real slick animation. There's one kick in this that I've absolutely seen before but I can't place where from. I think it might be a KOF2002 animation.

Replay. Semi-regular runthrough - I didn't write anything about it at the time because I honestly wouldn't know where to start. It's just one of my favourite games ever and hit me like a truck when I was younger. The ending of the words is ALMSIVI.

Another good DoDonPachi. No really, I love that big laser!

I was hoping for a cutesy DW4, but this was just clunky and slow. Really weird considering DW3 had already come out by this point, they obviously knew how to make a good musou. Odd.

Not ringing many bells. I think it was another digitised one?

If I had a list of games I desperately wish would get translated, this is on it. An endearingly silly love letter to tokusatsu hero shows. When you create your hero you enter their name and it comes up as a big logo! Anything you put in! Wow!

Played this after watching the absolute garbo movie. Not particularly good, not sure why you'd want to play it over any of the more famous PS2 racing games outside of being a really big Stallone fan.

Do celebrities get mad when people make shitty games with their name on them? I would.

Can't really remember any of the tunes from this. Wanted to like it more than I did.

Intensely ugly game.

Fine I guess, but it can be really hard to make out what's actually going on in these polygonal ones.

Supremely frustrating game because it looks and sounds absolutely awesome - they are clearly pushing the Neo Geo to its absolute limit - but it plays like complete ass. It takes two full attack strings to break open an item barrel. Every aspect of gameplay is coated in extra thick molasses.

I'm even worse at horizontal shooters, but this is still cool. Tons of personality.

From what I remember this was the sequel to Sorcer Striker? Hasn't really stuck in the mind much for me. Dimahoo is a very fun name to say though. Dimahoo, Dimahoo, Dimahoo!

Had to give up on this one because I was playing on emulator and the button sensitivity stuff just didn't work. From what I played it felt like this game could probably be finished in about 15 minutes if you skipped every cutscene (which I will absolutely be doing if I ever play a proper copy).

The only thing I can remember about this one is the name Duff McWhalen, which is funny. Maybe I shouldn't have played so many of these one after the other.

Completely badass game. I had to remap my controls a fair bit, I wonder what it's like on an N64 pad. Play this.

Just rewatch the movie, which is very good, instead of playing this game, which is very bad.

Weird that this exists but I think Capcom should do more daft things like it. I cannot forgive how they made Vega look in this, though.

Replay. Started this but then decided to take a break from the Mega Man Marathon to avoid burning out on the Blue Bomber. Got a decent chunk into it though and this is still primo PS1 fare!

Don't have much to say about the game, but Joe Madureira should be outlawed.

Replay. Mate asked me to play it over Fightcade with him so I obliged. Never been a fan. Great character art though, bring back giant shoulderpads Jill Valentine.

Okay I don't remember this one.

Replay. Solid management game, had no idea there was a sequel until recently but I'll need to play it.

Another Three Kingdoms one. That's all I've got.

It feels really difficult in these Psikyo joints to claw back your momentum after getting killed. Like, moreso than most other shmups. And I get killed a lot so that's trouble!

Interesting in that it's an unlicensed game but otherwise not much going on here. I've just noticed the title font on here is in SSF4 Abuket font, fuck me. I thought we'd escaped that.

Interesting as a weird curiosity - a beatemup spinoff of House of the Dead - but otherwise not much to enjoy here. I do like that they threw in a Yusaku Matsuda-inspired guy for no reason.

I SAID no thank you!

Impressive amount of playable characters by the end of the game but otherwise not really all that great, I thought.

It's fine!

The tank controls just suck all the air out of this one - player mobility sucks and enemy mobility does not. Wakle Skade is a very funny name for a protagonist though.

Not really a great shmup but the biggest love letter to super robot shows there ever was. This is a 2D horizontal shmup that comes on four discs because of the amount of video and music shoved in to make this as much a super robot anime as is possible. Nice!

Only played the first mission and then put it to the side because I felt like it would deserve some proper time dedicated to it. One for next year.

Replay. Can't remember why I went back to this but it's always a good time. juddajuddajudda
(me seeing this actually runs on a Windows 10 PC: IT'S WOOORKIIIINNNGGGG)

Similar to Battle Garegga, so it's decent enough but not one of my favourites. The number of ships available is pretty good!

You can learn the bassline for the Pepsiman theme very quickly! Try it!

More of the same from Die Hard Arcade, and I'm perfectly fine with that.

Some sections ended up just being way too frustrating for me to actually finish this game, but everything up to that point was absolute top notch kusoge. Amazing how janky and low-rent one game can be. Highly recommended.

I think I'd like this more if it was less about the lock-on. Sometimes I just want to shoot what's directly in front of me.

Unique presentation although I didn't think it was an especially great game. Great title though.

Can't really remember anything of it, but I feel like I should.

The kind of FMV game I do not like.

A very basic 3D beatemup, but you can smash enemies into tons of stuff or smash enemies with tons of stuff, so that's good. I like the main guy's brown leather jacket/red gloves combo!

Obviously a very cool game but I didn't know at all how to play it. Need to read the constructions (used to call instructions this as a kid haha) and go through it again.

No, no thank you.

Knocked me for six. What a cool game! Boss health is excessive but that's my only issue. This one really got me itching to go on a run of shmups.

It's fine. I don't like that title though.

Same as Gunbird.

Watching my cousin play this traumatised me as a kid, finally decided to face my demons and play it. Inventory management and backtracking are not very exciting - dropped it with no plans to return after getting out of the police station.

You walk around in eight directions and you shoot stuff, but it's worse now.

More of the same. The cover art for these is really cool though, right?

Looks great, plays bad. Tale as old as time.

Replay. Now THIS is charm!

Really cool just how many combinations of your team are possible. This kicked my ass and then I read the review on here about difficulty scaling with credits. Absolutely fiendish.

Replay. Still really impressive even now! I like how much of it feels like an actual investigation rather than you solving a series of video game puzzles. I did not get a good ending.

Not very good, is it? There's a kind of charm to it though. I think I will go back and finish this at some point.

Another one that I think I need to go through again to really click with.

Better than Guardian Heroes, although I didn't finish it at the time. I remember thinking the combo system was actually pretty good. Will get back to it.

I'm sure I would have had fun playing it but I honestly cannot remember anything about this game. Whoops!

They do the Lightning Strikes Again bit in this one too, and it still rules.

I don't really remember anything about this, but I shelved it, so I must have thought it was decent enough to go back to at some point.

It was good, but it's possible that Gaiden has ruined me for the rest of this series.

Another forgotten Legend.

Replay. Had been reading The Oral History of Street Fighter II and they talk a fair bit about Darkstalkers in it, so I gave this a quick run. Still not really into how it all shakes together but it's not a bad game. I would play Bishamon.

Not quite as strong a game as some of Capcom's other heavy hitters on this list, but man, I wish they still made games that looked like this.

Replay. Had to do Tekken Force as part of the book. I don't like Tekken.

Not really a kart racer guy but this seemed decent enough. Did you know Yoshinori Ono of SF4 fame was the composer for this? Crazy!

Replay. Old reliable. I love how the big blue laser looks.

You walk around in eight directions and you shoot stuff. Sometimes that's all you need!

Replay. It's some more Tower of Doom. It's good!

Part of my ongoing quest to play every Mega Man game. Thought it was decent enough, but my save corrupted somehow and I haven't been holed to restart it yet. Maybe one day.

Just okay. By this point I'd definitely cemented that I preferred Cave to Psikyo.

Replay. Same as VSav and COTA. Maybe the most 90s game of all time.

This is how you use a license, because it is 10x funnier to try and pass this off as a John McClane adventure. Mental game. There's a review on here that calls it the father of the Yakuza series and they're completely right.

Pretty much the same deal as RayCrisis for me. Decent, but if I was going to go back to a polygonal shmup it'd be Radiant Silvergun over any of these.

Replay. Fun idea, good enough to play about with for 20 minutes. Mega Man charm counts for a lot!

Obviously very funny to look at but it plays like ass.

It's definitely cool, but these tiny bullets are killing me, man. My eyesight is bad.

Probably would have liked it a lot if I played it at the time of release, but this ended up being a big-time disappointment. Just felt sluggish and killing things took forever. Obviously looks awesome, though.

Didn't get anywhere near finishing it, but it did seem really cool. I need to play it more.

It's no Skull & Crossbones.

Got nothing. Gone.

Better than Final Fight 2 for sure, but still pretty lackluster. There isn't even boss music! What the hell!

Not good. I think the only notable thing about this to me is that Grifter isn't in it. Is he not this comic's only popular character?

Another game where if I'd played it at the time I would probably love it, but now just doesn't really hold my attention.

Another great OST. Game is extremely hard, though.

I feel like your ship moves a little too slowly and your hurtbox is massive.

Looks really cool, but I wasn't too bothered about finishing it. I'll pick it back up at some point.

Replay. Man, it really does suck that hitting objects takes health, doesn't it? A very punishing game, but the presentation is just so cool. I was obsessed with it a kid, right up until I got the bad ending in it, at which point I was too disquieted to play it again.

The two-lane gimmick mostly helps with making the game quicker because you can avoid stuff. I think it being a not-terrible Power Rangers game did a lot of the heavy lifting for me.

Adding in live-action FMVs are fun but otherwise this is an immediate step down from 3.

This is how you do an FMV game! I wanna see those digitised folks walking around, picking up stuff and looking at it - maybe even reacting to it!
Really cool, all the hokey charm of FMV combined with a pretty cool story that involves some real-world history, which I like. Education!

A brawler that has a pretty extensive movelist for a two-button controller, but sadly this doesn't stop it being janky and dull.

Ultraman shmup where you play as a ship from one of the many Science Patrols, which makes sense. It has all the Ultra fanservice you could want but it's not very good beyond that.

Gunstar Heroes but harder. There's a bunch of points in this where it feels like there is exactly one and only one way you can not take damage, so it can be pretty frustrating.

Presentation carries what is otherwise a pretty annoying game, honestly.

Extremely dope. I was only able to finish it with save states, but I want to try without because it really is just that cool. Play it!