Splendid Arcade Music #4

BlaZeon (1992)

As is likely evident from their prevalence on this blog, I'm rather fond of shoot 'em ups. Specifically, retro or modern-but-retro-flavoured 2D shoot 'em ups (as opposed to modern 3D games such as FPS's that fans insist on using the same term to describe). Despite this fondness, however, I certainly haven't played all of them.

Something else I'm fond of is retro game music. I have around 65,000 MP3s in my music folder and over half of these are from game soundtracks, with many coming from games I've merely heard of and not yet played. Accordingly, today, while I was working, a tune started playing that I didn't recognise. This happens often - who has that many songs memorised? - but it was one of those 'new to me' songs that I immediately liked. It was obviously a game tune, and I had a feeling it was from a shmup too, so I did a quick check of my archives and found that it's from BlaZeon, a game I'd heard of but never encountered in real life. Further investigation (via YouTube) revealed that the game had an R-Type-style 'giant battleship' stage, and it was to this stage the tune that had impressed me so was set.

I will now play the game in question at some point as it looks pretty decent, but until then, behold this stonking choon (composed by Tsukasa Masuko, apparently) and see if you find it as pleasing as I did!



Special Note: I didn't record this great tune myself, I'm just an admirer, so all credit goes to the original composer

First Look MSX #2

Dragon Slayer by Nihon Falcom (1984) - MSX

The other day I was nosing through some stuff online and encountered a pretty cool looking game called Legacy of the Wizard which I then decided I wanted to play. Naturally, it turned out to be part of a long-running series and, being me, I had to play (and hopefully review) the first entry, and indeed all other previous games in the series before I could play the one that caught my eye to begin with. That first entry, as it turned out, was an important game that I didn't know too much about - Dragon Slayer - which was, according to many, the first ever action RPG, and that means it directly influenced The Legend of Zelda among many others! It was originally developed by Nihon Falcom and released in 1984 for NEC's PC-88 before being ported to several other Japanese home micros, but due to the difficulty in emulating those well (in my experience), I've been looking into the game via its MSX version, and like many firsts, it's fascinating.

Sega Super Scaler Games #7

Super Hang-On (1987)
By: Sega AM2 Genre: Racing Players: 1 Difficulty: Medium-Hard
Featured Version: Arcade First Day Score: 9,950,140
Also Available For: Mega Drive, X68000, Nintendo 3DS, Game Boy Advance, Amiga, Atari ST, PC, Apple Mac, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum

Just thinking of the great names of the other 'Super Scaler' games automatically reminds me of giant hydraulic machines with excited crowds around them in bustling amusement arcades, but that's not the case with Super Hang-On. I had it on my Speccy and later I also had it on my mighty Mega Drive, but I was never fortunate enough to encounter the original in any arcades I visited, so I guess I've always associated it with those two systems. I suppose the Speccy more than the MD, though the version for Sega's own console was obviously far more accurate. The Speccy version was good too, though. As far as I recall, anyway, though I haven't played it for many moons. It may even be among the best racing games on the little home micro. Not that that's saying much, I know. But regardless of all this, I'm way overdue in checking out the super-scaling original, so let's go!