The Sega CD version has a completely original episode based on the fantastic Batman: The Animated Series show, which is the highlight of an otherwise mediocre product where you go around racing the baddies like Poison Ivy, Riddler, Joker, Clayface in your batmobile/batwing across the streets/skies of Gotham City. Sounds cool but the game doesn't play well with an atrocious framerate really hampering the experience, whilst the majority of the driving sections are uninspiring shooting stages. Props to the great visuals and the soundtrack though, but look out for the Riddler's virtual arcade stage... shudder.

Irem's last game for the arcades—and what an incredible way to bow out.

There’s fabulous maneuverability around the stages: you can climb and attach yourself on almost anything, whether that’s a dodgy looking ceiling or any type of vehicle or machine gun. The game almost begs you to use those as you’re always on your toes, with the enemies shooting left, right and centre from almost anywhere.

In one boss fight, the huge contraption thingy shoots this screen-filling circular ring of death at you, which demands you to constantly switch between a helicopter, a gun-toting jeep and on-foot. Exhilarating stuff.

The graphics engine was used in Irem’s previous games like Undercover Cops, In the Hunt and GunForce I, and it has never looked better. There are detailed animations for almost everything in this game and it’s justchef kiss. The shooting has to be great and it is—there’s a dual gun-combo of a light and heavy and the added power-ups makes it a power fantasy at times.

You don’t get any story beats and there’s also no ending (as I imagine Irem ran out of money), so that sucks. But you do get a performance based scoring system where you’re ranked based on how many hostages you save and medals you collect—all the way from Private to Marshall.

This team went on to form Nazca and create the revered Metal Slug series on the Neo Geo. I’m excited to try those…

Cadillacs and Dinosaurs is what happens when you mix Final Fight with freaking dinosaurs. You get the great mechanics of Capcom’s original brawling masterpiece, drive a cool Cadillac, and then mix it with a world-ending plot featuring dinosaurs.

The dinos are fun and all that, but you’ve come for the brawling—and in my opinion you get a great one. The game feels as smooth as butter, especially with Jack, Hannah and Mustapha; as they just glide through the levels with a variety of running kicks, slides and jumps—it’s really a joy to play. Items like guns, bazookas, explosives etc., and your usual garden-variety knives are fun to play around with and enhance the gameplay experience.

It’s the hallmark of a great brawler when you barely feel like using the special attack and this game definitely has that feeling in spades.

It's not to everyone's taste, but personally, I love the cinematic aspect that the Golden Axe series brought to the brawler genre, and The Revenge of Death Adder is certainly the most refined and ambitious of the lot, that shockingly was a full arcade exclusive. Sega definitely should have ported it over to the Saturn at least as this game deserved it.

Of the original three characters – Ax-Battler, Tyris-Flare and Gilius Thunderhead, only the latter dwarf makes it to the game and what an entry! He's perched on top of Goah the giant throughout the game, and aids him with screen-filling death magic and a helpful dose of "dwarfish encouragement". The other characters are Stern, the typical barbarian who is a stand-in for Ax-Battler. Little Trix, an imp who grows trees to regain health. Last but not least, there is also Dora, the badass female centaur who’s probably the most powerful of the lot.

The exotic mounts return in this game and they’re even more spectacular this time. There is the skeletal fire-breathing drake of course. Plus, there are additions like a freaking fire-spewing praying mantis and a scorpion with electric-shock abilities. All of them look absolutely marvelous, and, what’s more, you can mount these beasts with a ballista/catapult and use them to unleash further mayhem on the enemies.

The soundtrack is underwhelming compared to the first two games but the graphics are great. From caves to the forest, to the battlefields and the towns; it's great scene after great scene. The game is blessed with ample screen rotation tricks and large sprites of enemies embellished with great animations. Also, it would be remiss of me not to mention the branching paths this game has which adds replay value to an already fantastic package.

The boss fights are possibly the only sore point of this game, as you mostly fight some human thugs over and over again with not much variety. Thankfully, the villain from the first game, Death Adder makes a welcome return and the battle with him on top of the castle is certainly the best one. His dragon shield breaths fire and lightning and gobbles up all your magic attacks!

After the failure of the poor Nastar Warrior or Rastan Saga II, Taito tries to veer the series into a different direction with Rastan III. Gone is the hack-n-slash with minor platforming gameplay, now it has been replaced with Final Fight/Golden Axe-esque beat-em-up action, which was extremely popular in the arcades till the mid-90s.

Rastan Saga III visually is absolutely fantastic. The game has a dual-screen layout with huge, gorgeous sprites in highly detailed screens ranging from forests to a shipwreck. Features quality Team Zuntata music as well, though not as instantly memorable as their output in Darius, Bubble Bobble and Rastan etc.

The game tries to be non-linear by giving players the choice in choosing which stage to tackle first, which adds some surface-level variety, though not sure if it matters much with the ending. Rastan also gets a personality change: in this game he's more Conan-like beyond just the visual likeness; he's more like a mercenary or a gun-for-hire where he chooses to destroy his enemies not to save his "Rastania" or homeland, but to get ALL the loot. He even brings two friends along to aid him in the quest to gain the ultimate treasure.

Don't go expecting a classic. It was not really pushing the brawler genre forward, rather just cashing in on the craze of the time. But if treated like what it is: a short romp through gorgeous fantasy vistas with great music, then there's a good chance of liking it.

I went in expecting a straight-up brawler; something that's easy to play, hard to master - 'Double Dragon' kind of shit. What I got instead is the full NES HARD experience from this game.

Battletoads contains some levels that makes Ghosts 'N Goblins level 3, 5 and 6 look piss-easy. What makes this game so difficult is it’s not your typical short with learning one pattern NES game; it actually contains a lot of content – 13 levels of diverse platforming, racing, brawling and God knows what else; it’s this variety and length though that makes it so hard, as it demands you to put on many hats.

Level 3 (turbo tunnel), level 5 (surf city), level 7 (volkmire’s inferno) are driving levels that demands inhumanly-fast reflexes and memorization, and they’re among the toughest in the game. Level 4 (arctic caverns), level 6 (karnath’s lair), level 8 (intruder excluder), level 12 (revolution) are really tough, quick-on-your-feet platforming sections. Level 9 (terra tubes) is your mandatory crap NES water level, and level 10 and 11 with the rat race and unicycle hopping was such bullshit that without my trusty emulator juju magic I would have given up there and then.

Saying all that, I still won't mark it as a mediocre or even a bad experience as the game contained some quality stuff as well. For one, it’s really funny and the animations are suitably excellent. The music is pretty catchy and the antagonist, the Dark Queen is 8-bit hotness! The aforementioned level, Karnath’s Lair has some of the most inventive platforming that I’ve ever come across, as you use the massive snakes to get across the stages. The first two levels are engaging and whet your appetite for what’s to come; even the driving sections before the “turbo” part are fun to start with before you-know-what happens. For NES veterans only!

Turrican for the Amiga is another landmark game that is known to have great music, and yes, Chris Hülsbeck’s score is pretty fantastic with plenty of great tunes in every level.

Regarding the gameplay, Turrican has the basic gun fire that shoots one-way only, gains multi-directional shooting while holding the fire button, rolls into a ball ‘Metroid-style’ and becomes an indestructible force, can plant mines and explode bombs on enemies.

Turrican controls fine but lacks i-frames when taking hits and you can die pretty easily from even basic enemies/object. The character thankfully has a life bar with three continues only (can use the 99 lives code). Otherwise, there are generous 1UPs littered throughout the game, which you will need to stack up as the continue system is harsh (only level continues, no stage).

While the music is great and shooting is fine, the stages, platforming and enemy design feels lacking; the enemies are not memorable (i.e. Mega Man games) and has barely any humanoid ones. The bosses are huge and challenging enough. The platforming is mediocre with some poorly designed jumps. The backgrounds are just not distinct enough, which after a while really starts blending together, making the exploration somewhat of a chore, especially when the game design is tied to a strict timer. You want players to explore and find hidden power-ups, lives and soak in the atmosphere, but then you put in a hard timer...

While the incredible sound and rich graphics immediately excites you when you boot the game, the first punch animation and hard death just as quickly evaporates that elating feeling.

Shadow of the Beast was a showcase for the Amiga's graphical power and its musical capability, but as per the reviews even back then the game design was not the best, veering too much into the bullshit category far too often, not helped by the stiff controls and limited animations. But THAT soundtrack... man it's simply astounding how good it is.