An arcade style dodgeball game developed by a small developer named Access, for D3 Publisher's Simple series, brought over to the States by A1 Publishing, who also published underrated Shooter: Starfighter Sanvein in the US, and Agetec, who published dozens of well-known Japanese games in the States too many to list but including Armored Core and Raw Danger. I played this game a lot as a kid in multiplayer and always liked it. The sprites look good, and there's a hint of achievable technical mastery that is unfortunately let down by the execution—dodging and catching just feels really inconsistent, which is too bad, like it doesn't read your inputs correctly or something. Not the best of these budget games, but I have a lot of nostalgia for it.

Biohazard Battle is a simple, medium difficulty STG that excels in presentation. The game feels like it begins immediately. Its OST blares over the SEGA logo as soon as you turn it on, leading you seamlessly to its start menu. After selecting your ship, the game begins as its dropped from a large mothership and the player ship descends from space through the planet's atmosphere and then finally the horizontal shooting segment that takes up the rest of the game. The slow blending of the black space and the blue atmosphere effect, the crescendoing music, the transition from the logos to the menu to the game itself, all as the OST supports these images—it achieves a unique cinematic effect that I not only haven't seen in other shooting games, but in many games period, even those whose whole purpose is to blend cinema and gameplay.

The remaining game has a sense of cohesion and verisimilitude as you travel through various biomes and take down the bug themed enemies. Its a pretty good console horizontal shooter, with caveats. The power up system is somewhat limited—there are a few different colored pick-ups as usual, but there's no upgrade system you usually see in STGs, so it makes the gameplay feel samey even though the levels and enemies have unique and interesting designs. It's always fun though. What really sets it apart is its presentation and style, not its gameplay.

The biggest impression Darius makes is it's presentation—super wide, projected from three CRTs side by side in the original cabinet. The levels look good, even though it's repetitive, the enemies and your ship look cool—but the boss enemies are the coolest, massive robotic fish that I have to imagine would take up most of a crt screen themselves.

The sense of choice and progression—both in your ship upgrades and in selecting each level—is decidedly utilitarian, but just enticing enough to make me want to replay, if only so I can see what bosses are behind door number two.

GI Joe is a simple but pretty fun rail shooter. Unlike Space Harrier, you're bound to the ground and can only move left or right; you can aim up and down from there, but you're otherwise stuck aiming forward from the spot you're facing. I kind of wonder why they didn't go the Space Harrier route, since the GI Joes have jetpacks, but it may have gotten too hectic with multiplayer. You can pick up missiles as you continue, which due a lot more damage than your There are three stages, each composed of different areas within them—you're running towards cobra's base, then inside, or through a cave base etc. The sprites are right out of the comics/cartoon and are fun to see, especially the boss sprites.