My Recommended MAME Games

[sneekyweezel]

Shadow Warriors

Tecmo, 1988, Fighter/ 2.5D









Alright arcade enthusiasts, let's get a look now at Shadow Warriors, known of course as Ninja Gaiden in the U.S., and Ryukenden in Japan. This game is the very epitome of what a great arcade fighter should be, combining everything from epic boss battles to fun stages.



As ninja Ryu Hyabusa, you take to the streets of New York city to fight an evil gang of ninja who have taken over the city. You will face many enemies, from hostile samurai, to phone pole swinging brutes, and must face off against a wicked boss " baddie" at the end of the progressive stage.


"Who wants some swords?!"

There are many power up items to be found throughout the stages, and you really need these badly because this is one tough fight. Vitamins will give you back one bar of health, and you can obtain these from throwing opponents into objects like signs and phone booths, and barrels. The dual swords (katana) can be picked up, and these are by far the strongest for dealing with these ninja punks in your way. You'll also find a clock for extra time.


"Who wants some popcorn?!"

There are a couple of signature moves to use to your advantage. The basic kick punch combo is sometimes useful, but to deal the most damage and clear the "lackeys" out of your way you will have to master the jump and throw technique, and you can also use the hanging "monkey" bars to kick forwards and backwards to knock them away! For a great blast of from the past it's Shadow Warriors- if you didn't get a chance to play it then check it out today!

My Shadow Warriors gameplay video:



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[sneekyweezel]

Kung-Fu Master

Irem, 1984, Fighter 2D





One of the awesomest beat ‘em up style arcade games ever, it's Kung-Fu Master.



You play as Thomas, the Kung-Fu Master. Your girl, Sylvia, has been kidnapped (or girlnapped!) and the captors have taken her away to the devil's temple. The temple is comprised of five floors, each being harder and more challenging than the floor before it. Every floor is full of enemy "lackeys", all of whom are out to kill you before reaching the final floor to rescue Sylvia. Lackeys are made up of a few groups, some purple "grabbers", some little people that look like elves, and knife throwers.



You of course are a force to be reckoned with, because you know the secret and deadly art of Kung-Fu. Front snap kicks, sweep kicks, punches crouching and standing, and the deadly jump kick and running jump kick are all at your disposal for dealing with your adversaries. At the end of every floor you're going to have to face off against a real boss "baddie", and only beating him will get you onto the next floor. The stick man, boomerang man, giant, and wizard stand between you and the final confrontation with "X", the last boss.



Let's not forget the fact that snake pots with evil dragons and confetti set as traps can also "do you in", as well as giant moths from holes in the wall so watch your step in the temple! If you missed playing it in the arcade then you have to play it- because it's just plain sweet!


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[sneekyweezel]

Willow

Capcom, 1989, Platform/ Shooter Scrolling







It's Willow, the great arcade game from the 1980s based off the movie from the same decade. In Willow, the evil witch queen called Queen Bavmorda has captured the holy baby Elora Danan, who is under the protection of Willow, a magician. Willow is joined by a warrior who Willow rescues, Madmartigan, who joins the fight against the wicked General Kael, some kind of skeleton monster that works with the evil queen.



In the game there are two basic controls, jump and fire, however there are more advanced controls, such as "mantling" (pulling yourself up onto the ledge above). To mantle you simply jump towards a ledge and Willow or Madmartigan grab it. There is also a high jump which is tricky to learn but it is executed by running a short distance and kind of turning and pushing the jump button at the same time. You will find an owl mage, who is a shopkeeper in the levels, and he will provide you with some very important items to help you defeat the enemy "lackeys" and boss "baddies" ahead on your journey.



Lackeys are comprised of a few groups, enemy infantry ground soldiers, archers who fire arrows, and "brutes", some who throw bombs and some who use various weapons like long chains and things like that. Also there are rat creatures that emerge from caves, and along the way you will also face some kind of chimpanzee monster things and also birds that drop rocks on you. So it's important to grab magic upgrades, and magic is used by holding down the fire button and then letting off when the gauge is filled. Both Willow and Madmartigan increase in strength by purchasing the upgrades at the store. Tornado magic, battle sword, charm pendant, life pack, magic bracelet, 1 up, charm ring, and moonlight magic are among some of the items for sale.



Of course at the end of most levels you'll have to face off against some kind of terrible boss, which blocks the path to the next level, and the ultimate face off between you, General Kael , and the wicked Queen Bavmorda. Crossroad, Cherlindrea's forest, Fin Raziel's island, Sorsha's camp, Tir Asleen Castle, and Nockmaar castle are the six stages in the game as you will progress using the map shown at the end of passing a stage. Willow plays some stages solo, as does Madmartigan, and they also play some stages together, like stage two at the end with the chariot. So don't miss out on this awesome adventure- it's "Willow" and it rules!




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[sneekyweezel]

Vigilante

Irem, 1988, Platform/ Fighter Scrolling





If anyone out there has ever played this game, then you will understand why Vigilante is one seriously awesome beat ‘em up genre in it's own class ever.



As the game starts out your girl, Madonna is kidnapped (or girlnapped!!) by the brutal gang known as the "skinheads", and abducted to the back of a paddy wagon. You start out to the mean streets of New York City to track her down, and the game is five levels of all hell against you. You will have to fight your way through many different thugs to get to her, and every level is made up of lackeys, which fall under many classes. Some will just be your basic "grabbers" that choke you like in Kung-Fu Master, some will have sticks that they beat you with, some will have guns to shoot you, and some will be brutes with bike chains.



"Spit outta your mouth kid!!"

You’re obviously no one to be messed with, as you know the secret and deadly art of some kind of martial art. Front snap kicks, sweep kicks, jump kicks, punches while crouching, standing, and jumping will take the skinheads down. You can also find the super bad nunchucks throughout the city, and picking up these sweet tools gives you the ultimate edge against these losers. You will carry these until you take a certain amount of damage, then you will drop them, so try to hold onto these as long as you can, because you have to face a boss at the end of the level.



This game will always be one great ride from start to finish for me. If you never got a chance to play this then make sure not to miss out on Vigilante!


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[sneekyweezel]

Dragon Breed

Irem, 1989, Shooter/ Flying Horizontal





So if you've ever been to the arcade and played Dragon Breed, then you'll already know why I say it's "pure awesomeness"! Dragon Breed was one of the games I actually missed in the 1980s, however I discovered it in Arcade Legacy, so I thought I'd do a review on it since I got hooked.



Basically the story behind Dragon Breed is you're some kid who looks like a cross between Cloud from Final Fantasy, and Keith Courage In Alpha Zones (strange), and you jump on your dragon to take out some monsters that are inhabiting the stages. Now you are going to find a variety of lackeys in your way, from all kinds of weird looking alien squid-like things to centipedes and also soldier things with helmets and wings.



The controls for the game are very basic, as there is only one button to operate both the character and dragon, the shoot button. Pushing it rapidly makes the kid fire his crossbow, while holding it down for a period of time makes your dragon release a blast from the mouth, destroying enemies in the way. There are power-ups for the dragon that can be gathered as you go along the stages, and some come in the form of flying baby dragons, and are released by shooting it to turn them into some kind of dragon "mouth" that powers the dragon up when collected.


"Get the baby dragon!"

You also can collect power-ups by jumping off the dragon onto islands, and picking them up on the ground, while the dragon protects you from bombing lackeys overhead. Then you can jump back onto the dragon to resume battle. The dragon has various forms of transformation, as you will start out with the basic "green" dragon, which doesn't have really any strength. If you pick up a red "mouth", you'll gain the ability for the dragon to breathe flame, and picking up a second red mouth makes the dragon even more strong with flame power. If you pick up a gold mouth, the dragon gets the ability to shoot many projectiles, and also a "tail whip" ability. Pick up a second gold mouth to become even stronger. There's also a blue mouth for electricity, and a silver mouth makes the dragon fire out baby dragon homing missiles, flattening all in your path! This is how you "breed" the dragon.



You'll have to face off against a boss "baddie" monster at the end of the stage, some fearsome and terrifying creature from the depths of hell's worst fantasies. If you breed the dragon right, you have nothing to worry about. Don't miss out on Dragon Breed, it's one sweet game!

My Dragon Breed gameplay video:



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[sneekyweezel]

Green Beret

Konami, 1985, Platform/Shooter Scrolling





One of the arcade’s greatest from the mid-1980s is Green Beret. The game was known in the USA as Rush'n Attack. You play as a special ops soldier on a mission to save prisoners of war from behind the enemy lines.



The game has four stages to the arcade, you go in armed with your trusty knife with which you'll be slashing your way through the various levels to get closer to rescuing the prisoners. As you progress you'll find officers lying on the ground, killing them gives you a powerful weapon to use on your foes. This could be a flamethrower, a rocket launcher, or some grenades, each having a limited number of uses, three or four shots. These are capable of multiple kills though, unlike the knife.



The game had many releases to other home systems because of it's popularity. Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Commodore Plus/4, the Nintendo Entertainment System, Amstrad CPC, Atari 8-bit, the MSX, and the BBC Micro, IBM, Gameboy, Nintendo DS, and XBOX 360 Live Arcade! That's a lot!



None of the home versions were as good as the arcade, but they were fun. All us old timers remember playing our own version for hours as kids. Mine was the Nintendo, it was awesome! There was also a sequel that was released later known as M.I.A. Missing In Action. If you've never heard of Green Beret or Rush'n Attack, check this one out real soon!


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[PantherUK]

Psychic 5

Jaleco, 1987, Platform / Fighter Scrolling







This is a nifty platform game from 1987 where you take control of 5 Espers, Naoki, Akiko, Bunta, Makoto and Genzoh. The aim of the game is to rid the levels of Satan and his monsters. Bang in a credit and you get to choose between Naoki and Akiko for level 1.



Each Esper has their own unique skills which I won't tell you about as discovering that is part of the fun, but it is pretty much given away on the select screen. There is a time limit to reach and destroy Satan and on the way there are various power ups, like the incredibly useful Time Up and the cumulative X2 multipliers for a higher scoring game which you can find by hammering the various chests and containers throughout the level. There is also a witch, Zara, flying about the levels and if you manage to bop her one then you get to nab her broomstick and fly around like Harry Potter with almost invincibility for a limited period. Collect all of the lettered tokens to spell the word EXTRA for extra lives.



The other Espers can be unlocked by either finding them in the level in a magic jar or by collecting a secret bonus, once you have them all then you can use different strategies for different parts of the level. But you can only select an Esper at the start of each level or in one of the telephone boxes within the level. Be warned though, you are vulnerable while in the phone box.



I used to play this game in a shop back in 1988, the owner usually had two cabinets in there, and to be honest I was crap at it! It does however have decent music, really nice sprites, it's challenging and it is very colourful...

A look at level 1...


Japanese advert for the Famicom sort of port... (Embedding disabled unfortunately, so you'll have to click through to YouTube...)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28m92ZM7LAI

Pictures either by me or off the net, videos by their respective YouTube uploaders...


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[PantherUK]

Bomb Jack

Tehkan, 1984, Platform / Run Jump









Bomb Jack is a great yet simple and addictive platform game from 1984. I played this back in the arcades back then and at home I had the fairly good Commodore 64 version.
The aim of the game is to jump around the play area and collect all the bombs. After you have collected the first bomb, one of the others will have a lit fuse. If you can get around the screen and collect all 23 of the remaining bombs while lit you will get a massive 50,000 point bonus at the end of the level. 22 will give you 30,000, 21 is 20,000 and 20 is 10,000.



There are other bonuses to collect by way of tokens. A "B" is a bonus multiplier which is worth 1,000 points and this increases the multiplier at the top of the screen. An "E" is an extra life this is also worth 1,000 points and of course the extra life! An "S" is the special which is worth 1,000 points too and gives you a free credit. You can also tap the jump button while in mid air to make Jack glide across the screen, very useful for getting out of scrapes as well as collecting bombs. The other token is the "P" which works like the power pill in Pac-Man, making all the enemies "getable" for a limited time. This token is worth a different amount of points depending on the colour, which changes every time you jump while it's on screen.



There are five different backgrounds that loop around but the platforms change and the enemies get faster and faster and there's more of them. This game comes from a time when arcade graphics and sound were starting to get more and more advanced. In my opinion, graphics wise, this game was a couple of years ahead of its time and I definitely recommend it. The best way to enjoy it, if you can, is stood up in front of a cabinet, and it will make you sweat buckets after about level 8, or maybe that's just me..!



Gameplay video...


The Commodore 64 version I cut my teeth on...


Pictures either by me or collected from the net, videos by their respective YouTube uploaders...


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[PantherUK]

Contra

Konami, 1987, Platform / Shooter Scrolling






From the MAME History -

In 2631, a meteorite strikes the Galuga archipelago near New Zealand, carrying with it a dormant alien being. Two years later, a terrorist organization calling themselves Red Falcon takes over the island as part of their plot to invade the Earth. Bill Rizer and Lance Bean, of the Contra unit, are sent to the Oceania island to stop the evil threat.

Contra is an excellent platform/shooting scrolling game released in 1987 by Konami. Known in Europe as Gryzor this is one hectic game depending on the dipswitch settings. Gryzor was the version I played back in the day. The main difference as far as I can tell between the European game and the others is the levels. Although they have the same content and running order, the US and Japanese versions have 10 levels, whereas the Euro version has 5. Basically on the Euro model most of the levels have been pushed together. For example level 5 on the Euro game is the equivalent of levels 7, 8, 9 and 10 on the others. This makes for one hell of a long final level in comparison. The only other difference, which is sadly lacking on the Euro version, is co-op play. My friends and I were limited to taking turns, I didn't know about this until years afterwards.



The controls in this game are spot on and so responsive and the levels and bosses are nice and varied. You start with a basic gun and this can be upgraded from flying weapon pods and other pods fixed in the terrain. These need to be shot and they spin out across the screen to be picked up. The available weapons are a machine gun with auto fire, a spread gun which fires out 5 shots in an arc, a laser, fireball and rapid bullets. There is also a barrier power up which gives you invincibility for a limited time. You can tell which is which by the letter on the pick up token, "R" for rapid bullets, "S" for spread gun and so on.



There are a couple of tunnel levels where you view the action from behind your hero and you have a time limit to destroy electric barriers as well as guns and enemies. I've always loved the music from the tunnel levels, in fact this game has very good music throughout. Couple that with some excellent sprites and backgrounds, it's no wonder that Contra is a bona fide classic. I recommend this to anyone who wonders why we all bang on about the classic games from the 80's, and I believe it answers all the questions! This was also the first game I ever 1CC'd in the wild.



Gameplay video...


Pictures either by me or from the internet, YouTube video by it's original uploader.


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[Nostalgia]

Killer Instinct 2

Rare, 1995, Fighter / Versus





Lots of typing ahead, just know that this game is good. You don't need to read all of this.

I never used to like this game much. I always compared it too much to the first Killer Instinct and, as a lot of people have agreed over the many years, the sequel doesn't hold up well against the original.

But then I saw some videos on youtube of a guy (jandoedel on youtube) doing all kinds of custom Ultra combos and all kinds of technical stuff that you couldn't do in the first game and it made me realise that I just had no idea about this game. You have to realise that I was mostly going off what I saw in the arcades back in the day, and back then it's not often that you would see someone willing to risk their actual money trying to perform some crazy combo or something.

After playing this a lot recently due to me doing a 1CC challenge for it, I am starting to realise it's better than the original in some ways. Before I go in depth too much, I will say some of the popular characters of the first game such as Orchid, TJ Combo and Jago are here once again, but I think you will be happy with the new additions as well. You should be, because they are bloody awesome.

The graphics are a different style but you can't argue they look gorgeous. And the soundtrack, while definitely overall isn't as strong as the first game, is definitely awesome. Especially on Glacius' stage.

The game doesn't need too strong a PC to run at 100% in MAME.

I can definitely recommend this game for two main reasons. The first is it is a LOT more forgiving and in general easier than the first game. In Killer Instinct 1 if you mess up a combo you will often be bent over and severely punished by the CPU. In this game, of course going by default difficulty, you can get away with a lot more. Combo Breakers are really easy to do in this game as well and, unlike in the first game, you don't lose too much health when your combo is broken.

The second reason is the customization of the combos.

In KI2 you have basic 'auto' combos like in the first game, and while the first game did have plenty of customization, in the sequel you can really go nuts with how many chains you want to add on to your combo. This is mainly determined by your super meter, which grows larger the more your opponent blocks. As you can imagine, that itself brings a lot more tension to matches.

There are videos on youtube you can look up (once again, refer to jandoedel) to see just what I mean. You can really add it up into some legit HUGE combos.

I realise in the first game you could do 80+ hit combos, but they were all just glitches really. In this game it's way more legit because you are using your super meter.

There are still some nice finishing moves, including the classic 'Ultimate' finishers, but I really think the main feature of this game is getting awesome customized combos, especially Ultras.

I've never tested it online but it runs fine offline on my relatively old PC.











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