Late-era releases on a console are always interesting to look at, because they can often provide a tantalising glimpse of what the hardware was really capable of.
Titus’ Incantationcertainly proved beyond doubt that the dear old 16-bit Super NES was more than capable of beautifully presented games with stunning pixel art, lovely big sprites with lots of frames of animation, and consistently smooth, slick scrolling.
The Evercade retro gaming platform has introduced me to a variety of great games that, for one reason or another, I never played “back in the day”.
One such example is Burnin’ Rubber, the Vic Tokai-developed follow-up to the Data East arcade game of the same name. This is a simple, straightforward, top-down racing game that predates Midway’s classic Spy Hunter by a year, and one of the most monstrously addictive titles in the Evercade’s launch lineup.
Given the popularity of Atari’s Star Raiders, it’s surprising that Namco never brought Star Luster, its own take on the early days of the space sim genre, to Western NES owners.
Thankfully, we can now enjoy it officially outside of Japan thanks to its release as part of Namco Museum Collection 1, cartridge 02 in the Evercade collection. And good Lord have I ever been enjoying this game; it’s absolutely one of my favourites from the Evercade’s launch lineup, and a game I feel it’s a real shame more people don’t know about.
With that in mind, then, I’m doing my bit! Check out Star Luster in action in the video below — and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!
It’s a new video series! With me pressing “pause” on the long, multi-part playthroughs a while back, I’m now free to do some more varied stuff.
And, to complement the articles I’ve been writing about the Evercade retro gaming platform here on MoeGamer, I wanted to start making some videos on its myriad games, too. So here’s the first of those for you to enjoy, with more following every Friday.
Ninja Golfis one of the most distinctive, memorable titles on the Atari 7800. And it’s also one of my favourite games from the Evercade’s launch lineup. So let’s enjoy it together in the video below — don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!
The best of overlooked and underappreciated computer and video games, from yesterday and today.