Super Famicom/Super Nintendo Entertainment System
A
Accele Brid アクセルブリッド
- Developer: Genki
- Release: 1993
Accele Brid is a hybrid shmup with a behind-the-shoulder view, similar to Harrier, that looks extremely cool as you hurtle through tubes firing at passerby. It's not a terribly difficult shmup, but it's most notable aspect is in how cool everything is. The UI is particularly standout, giving the appearance of a mech cockpit with flashy lights and diagrams
ActRaiser 1 and 2
- Developer: Quintet
- Release: 1990, 1993
- Notable Staff: Hashimoto Masaya - Director, Miyazaki Tomoyoshi - Writer (together with Hashimoto, created the Ys series at Falcom and founded Quintet), Koshiro Yuzo - Composer, Koshiro Ayano - Artist
ActRaiser is one of my favorite games on the SNES, just an extremely tight and fun experience that excels in all aspects, with some fun use of the SNES's unique capabilities. Quintet does fantastic work. The first Actraiser is a combination god sim and action platformer, where you travel the world in your floating palace and rebuild, expand, and protect nations that have been ravaged by evil. As you build the city, the people begin to bring you requests, leading to vanquishing some evil in a cave or dungeon nearby, getting you to send a warrior of heaven to take care of things. The platforming sections feel great, and, thanks to the sound design, everything feels super meaty and fun in them. Between the action and sim sections, everything loops extremely well to keep you going until you crush the whole thing out at once. The game is tied together by Koshiro's excellent soundtrack, his work always is a joy to listen to and fits his projects perfectly. The sequel unfortunately cuts out the god sim part of the game, but is still worthwhile if you enjoyed the first
Alcahest アルカエスト
- Developer: HAL Laboratory
- Release: 1993
- Notable Staff: Iwata Satoru - Producer, Ishikawa Jun - Composer (Kirby series main composer)
Alcahest is a neat and very arcade-style top down hack and slash, sort of a bridge between Capcom's Magic Sword and Gauntlet. As you traverse dungeons with your party, it leans very very heavily on your teammates abilities, some shooting projectiles, or healing, allowing charge attacks, etc, as well as your equipment's own unique abilities
Aretha: The Super Famciom, Aretha II: Ariel's Mysterious Journey, Rejoice: Beyond the Aretha Kingdom
- Developer: Japan Art Media
- Release: 1993, 1994, 1995
- Notable Staff: Yamaguchi Atsushi - Director (Background designer on a number of titles, Klonoa 2, Bullet Witch, and art director on Nier Replicant)
The Aretha series is a relatively typical RPG for the most part, with the Super Famicom titles being entries 4-6, following the first 3 on the Game Boy. It's very visually similar to the Lunar series, in large part due to sharing a number of staff, but most standout is the battle system. Enemies can approach from any of 4 directions, making you turn to face each group as you fight. There's some very silly and neat items in the series, especially of note is the one that instantly levels your whole party to 99. It's in the same vein as Final Fantasy of RPGs that lean towards really high health and magic pools, so fights get into absurd numbers. If you like RPGs, the series is very much worth a shot.
Arkanoid: Doh It Again
- Developer: Taito
- Release: 1997
The third title in the Arkanoid series, keeps the blockbreaking gameplay typical of the series, with the main addition being extra bosses and some extra music, along with of course new stages. If you enjoy Arkanoid, Doh It Again is a very worthy followup
