Did the Spanish Armada get eaten by a giant beetle? Was Waterloo won when Napoleon found himself scythed into chunks by the talons of a sphinx? Did Cromwell seal a decisive victory at the Battle of Naseby by the tactical deployment of a minotaur? ...

Do you have the reflexes of a champion? How about the dexterity of a missile-equipped death mech? If you answered yes to at least one of those questions, then Treasure’s Bangai-O Spirits is up your alley. Developed as a sequel to the Dreamcast favorite, you pilot an anime-like mech against a battalion of nukes, laser bullets and enough formidable opponents to turn your tears into ash. ...

Only ever released in Japan. A very limited edition. By legendary software house Treasure. Any one of those would make pixel-eyed shoot-’em-up fans reach for their credit cards, but Bangai-O ticked all three boxes on N64. Being a brilliant game didn’t do it any harm either. Of course they ruined some of that cred by rehashing it for a global release on Dreamcast, but the N64 one remained the best and is still prized by collectors ...

When you think of firework games, the mind immediately pings to Boom Boom Rocket (or for us older stagers, Fantavision). Both of these were cracking little titles - but developer Arkedo reckons it’s not a bit like either one of them - and it’s definitely not a puzzler!

Instead it appears to be a ballistic-based battler, a shoot-’em-up-into-the-sky, if you will. The object is to create barrages of beautiful ...

Okay, let’s clear something up: the man character’s name isn’t Bleach, it’s Ichigo. They call him Bleach because his hair looks bleached and they call the manga/anime series “Bleach” because “emo anime guys doing cool shit with swords and ghosts” doesn’t fit so well on a TV screen. If you already knew that, then you probably know about Bleach: Dark Souls, the Sega game coming to the ...

If you’d prefer to work for your Pokemon, then Bokura wa Kaseki Holder (translated as ‘We Are Fossil Holders’) is for you. This dino-baiting Poke-’em-up asks you to build your prehistoric war beasts from scratch. ...