Axelay

Publisher: Konami
Developer: Konami
Release Date: September 1992

An original and SNES-exclusive shoot-em-up, Axelay was what you expected from Konami at the time: expertly-designed action with gorgeous graphics and catchy music. What you didn't expect, and what made the game particularly notable, was the graphical warping effect that produced a pseudo 3-D perspective in the vertical-scrolling stages. It's funny to think about now, but this effect blew a lot of people away back then, and was what distinguished the game among the glut of shooters that populated the Super Nintendo's first year.

Disregarding the graphical novelty, Axelay is at its heart an alternating vertical and horizontal scrolling shooter. There are no power-ups-- instead, you choose three weapons at the beginning of each stage which you can switch between in the heat of the action. The pace is typically slow, similar to a game like Gradius or R-Type. There is never an overwhelming number of enemies on screen, but many of the enemies take an abundance of hits, and the action involves quite a bit of terrain-dodging. Furthermore, the weapon-changing mechanic gives the game an air of strategy, as you often need to switch to the correct weapon to navigate certain portions of a level.

Though the Super Nintendo isn't commonly known as a great system for shoot-em-ups, it does feature a small group of them which are of a notably high-quality. If you are a fan of the genre looking for action on your Super NES, Axelay certainly belongs at or near the top of your list.

The Legend of the Mystical Ninja

Publisher: Konami
Developer: Konami
Release Date: February 1992

This game was a revelation for me as a kid. Never before had I seen so much variety in one cartridge! In fact no one in the western world had even heard of Konami's Goemon series before The Legend of the Mystical Ninja, and to be honest, no one had afterward either. The reason? Konami renamed the series' two iconic characters, Goemon and Ebisumaru, to "Kid Ying" and "Dr. Yang." But that is a superficial point.

The variety of gameplay at the time was striking. The heart of the game is the exploration of each town, as the player controls Kid Ying(and a second player Dr. Yang in 2P mode) in attacking enemies and collecting coins and power-ups. Each town has a variety of shops and mini-games to play, but the goal is ultimately to reach the entrance to the 2D side-scrolling "action stage" at the end of the town and to defeat the boss.

Besides the main action, Mystical Ninja offers nearly as much content in the form of mini-games which can be played at the abundance of shops in each town. Among them are a first-person maze, an Arkanoid clone, and even the first level of Konami's original Gradius! This game had so many different little games to play that I thought it was huge and amazing as a kid, and certainly very fun.

The graphics are good and pleasant for a first-generation title, and the music is yet another memorable early SNES soundtrack, this one of generally soothing, traditional Japanese-style music and instrumentation. The song on the title screen is one of my all-time favorites, and brings back vivid memories of the early days of the Super Nintendo whenever I hear it.

The Goemon series would continue in several iterations on the Super Famicom in Japan, but would not again grace western shores until the release of Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon on Nintendo 64. It was definitely to the detriment of western gamers that we missed on the sequels.