Battletoads Mar 2, 2015

Rare's answer to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles took the characters into a wide variety of genres, with an impressive amount of cartoonish abilities, but were often undermined by their extraordinary difficulty.

Gaiapolis Mar 1, 2015

Odd, vertically scrolling fantasy hack-'n-slash by Konami with some light RPG elements.

Metamorphic Force Mar 1, 2015

Another Konami beat-'em-up, about a squad of fighters who transform into anthropomorphic animal warriors.

S.P.Y.: Special Project Y Feb 28, 2015

One of Konami's earliest beat-'em-ups, which still hadn't quite settled down on the formula and also dabbles in a number of other genres. It's not a licensed title this time, but it really wants to be James Bond.

The Simpsons Feb 27, 2015

More beat-'em-up goodness by Konami! The Simpsons have seen a lot of rotten video game tie-ins in their early run, but this 4-player extravaganza is actually pretty awesome, perfectly capturing the tone of the series while still managing to be a fun brawler at the same time.

X-Men Feb 27, 2015

And here's some beat-'em-up not-quite-as-goodness by Konami! X-Men is still an alright game, but not quite up to the standard of the company's other licensed titles of the time, and mostly confused kids by not adopting the look of the contemporaneous cartoon show.

What games are all about Feb 27, 2015

If you clicked some of the quick info box links in the articles this month, you might already have seen this new feature slowly building up, but now it's official: Just like the genres last month, you can now browse for themes by looking at screenshots. You want to see which games take place on tropical islands, or let you swing around with a grappling hook? Which games were never published? No problem! And if you don't care, then just go to hell!

500 Word Indies: Muri Feb 26, 2015

A retro throwback to DOS-era sidescrollers, complete with PC speaker-type sound effects.

Game Center 199X First Strike Episode 7: HuniePop, The Blue Flamingo & Obey Feb 26, 2015

This time we're covering the slightly controversial erotic match 3 game HuniePop. We also take a quick look at the stop motion shmup The Blue Flamingo and an early access strategic mind game with rabbits, Obey.

Your Weekly Kusoge: Ninja Clowns Feb 25, 2015

Ninjas! Clowns! They go together terribly in this wretched arcade beat-em-up from Strata.

Violent Storm Feb 23, 2015

Another gang busting beat-'em-up by Konami, this is often lumped in with the Crime Fighters series on those grounds (as did our old article), but it is actually very distinct from the other two.

Crime Fighters / Vendetta Feb 23, 2015

Over the course of the next few weeks, we're going to completely replace most of our coverage on classic Konami beat-'em-ups with newly written standalone articles, starting with this pair of overly stereotypical '80s/'90s street gang brawlers.

Game Club 199X: Obitus Feb 22, 2015

If you're following the iTunes/RSS feed, you might have seen this about a week ago. If not: After last month's text-only offering, we're back to games with pretty pictures and sound. But still forced to draw maps to be able to do anything. The HG101 Podcast Warriors take on Psygosis's 1991 multi-platform RPG/adventure Obitus.

Brain Lord Feb 21, 2015

An excellent (and sadly overlooked) SNES action-RPG developed by the same team as 7th Saga and Mystic Ark.

Update: Pre-Street Fighter II Fighting Games Feb 19, 2015

We've expanded our big genre overview with four more titles that are not necessarily great, but historically interesting: Chop Suey, Knight Games, Nekketsu Judo and Panza Kick Boxing. Not entirely new but previously unannounced at this space is the coverage for the early IBM PC title Bushido.

Your Weekly Kusoge: Man Enough Feb 18, 2015

This attempt at a dating sim, featuring very embrassed looking real life digitized models, is about the worst you could hope for.

Last Alert Feb 16, 2015

One of the early Turbografx-16 CD-ROMs, this Telenet run-and-gun can't quite measure up to the best, but it's still pretty fun. Plus the English voice acting is famously laughable.

Litil Divil Feb 15, 2015

Explore the depths of hell in this action-adventure with some high quality animation.

Suikoden Feb 13, 2015

We updated our article on Konami's 108-character RPG series with coverage for the Japan-exclusive PSP title, with some additional smaller text updates in between.

Your Weekly Kusoge: Madō King Granzort Feb 12, 2015

This pseudo follow-up to Keith Courage in Alpha Zones completely fails to show off the improved technology of the Supergrafx console.

Pandemonium! Feb 10, 2015

Two early 2.5D platformers that tried to combine traditional gameplay with polygonal visuals, that's mostly remembered now for the creepy jester protagonist.

Neon Genesis Evangelion (N64) Feb 6, 2015

There were a number of Neon Genesis Evangelion games, but most of them were adventure games or weird "raise Rei Ayanami as your daughter" sims. This is one of the "action" games based on the anime...though it's still not terribly good.

Your Weekly Kusoge: Deep Blue Feb 4, 2015

Experience four levels of sea life being flung at you from the right side of the screen forever in this extremely poor Turbografx-16 shooter.

Nethack Feb 2, 2015

What began as a clone of ASCII based dungeon hack RPG Rogue eventually spawned into an addictive classic.

Dragon Knight Jan 30, 2015

WARNING: Due to the subject matter, this is the most NSFW article on the site ever. Only browse in a safe environment and in a situation where you're comfortable with seeing exploitative erotic content.

One of the formative works of Japanese erotic gaming, this series of RPGs proved that ero software could actually be backed up by a proper game.

First Strike: Broforce and Super Time Force Ultra! Jan 28, 2015

Another day, another First Strike! And another double header, to boot. We're covering two run & guns with a twist this time, namely Broforce and Super Time Force Ultra!

Your Weekly Kusoge: Total Recall Jan 28, 2015

It's another shlocky NES Schwarzenegger tie-in, which doesn't even seem to be able to remember which movie it's supposed to imitate.

Pengo Jan 27, 2015

This one has been in our article pipeline for years, but finally we managed to wrap it up with the latest remake, which was released for the Xbox 360 exclusively in Japan. Back in its time, this early Sega title was one of their first big hits, and apparently tremendously popular in Japan and Europe, judging by the many clones on various computer platforms.

Browsing genres just got better! Jan 27, 2015

We revised our genre index to make it much easier for you to find interesting-looking games. Every genre now gets its own page, and every article is represented with a screenshot. Check it out the link and have fun exploring! (Themes will follow eventually, but it will take a while.)

Godzilla Jan 26, 2015

Some of the earliest games starring the greatest monster of them all. To be continued some time in the future...

Submissions are temporarily closed Jan 25, 2015

As of today, article submissions are closed. If you have pitched a topic and it has been accepted, please continue to work on it, however, for the moment we will not be accepting any new pitches until we work our way through our posting backlog. Please check back soon!

Tecmo Knight / Wild Fang Jan 24, 2015

Absurdly violent arcade beat-'em-up where you can summon a tiger, a giant and a dragon to ride on and take out huge enemies as a tiny knight, made by Tecmo (who would have guessed?) shortly after the original Ninja Gaiden.