BC Engine

PCE STG Project

Exploring the PC Engine's shooting game library in chronological order!

NEC/Hudson Soft's PC Engine console (released in Japan on October 10, 1987) is renowned for its sheer number of shooters, many of which are high points in the genre. The shooters on the system benefited from the lessons learned from the arcade and Famicom games from the years preceding, as well as the PC Engine and its various hardware expansions supporting more better sprites and higher quality music on CD systems. The timing of the console's release also coincides with the popularity of STGs in Japan. The system sold well in Japan, which meant its catalog is vast! The stars seemingly aligned.

I thought a fun project would be to play through the shooters on the system in release order to see what the system has to offer and how they evolved over time. This is a way to give me a bit of order and structure for playing games on the Analogue Duo rather than having hundreds of games and not being sure which to play. I also hope it will expose me to various types of shooters on the system and maybe result in playing some hidden gems.

I am following this list on Wikipedia, based on Japanese release date.

I share my thoughts in near-real-time on the Insert Credit forum.

Table of Contents

This table contains all of the games played thus far, in release order, meaning you can scroll through the topic and read about them essentially in this order. Some games may be revisited and posted about more. Each game's title links to the first post about the game in this thread.

Game Format Release Date (JP) Publisher Developer Notes
R-Type HuCard March 25, 1988 / June 3, 1988 Hudson Soft Hudson Soft Port of Irem's arcade game, originally released in two parts
Galaga '88 HuCard July 15, 1988 Namco Namco Arcade port
Fantasy Zone HuCard October 14, 1988 NEC Avenue Bits Laboratory Port of the 1986 Sega arcade game
Space Harrier HuCard December 9, 1988 NEC Avenue Dempa Micomsoft Port of the 1985 Sega arcade rail shooter; designed by Yu Suzuki
Dragon Spirit HuCard December 16, 1988 Namco Namco Port of the 1987 arcade game; first vertically scrolling shooter on the system
Hany in the Sky HuCard March 1, 1989 Face Face Vertically scrolling, first non-arcade port shooter on the system, strange in a good way
P-47: The Freedom Fighter HuCard March 20, 1989 Aicom NMK Hori WW2 shooter; arcade port
Deep Blue: Kaitei Shinwa HuCard March 31, 1989 Pack-In-Video Hi-Score Media Work Hori aquatic shmup
Kyūkyoku Tiger HuCard March 31, 1989 Taito Taito port of 1987 arcade vertical shoot-'em-up by Toaplan; a.k.a. Twin Cobra
Gunhed HuCard July 7, 1989 Hudson Soft Compile a.k.a. Blazing Lazers in NA; 1989's All-Japan Caravan entry; loose media tie-in with Gunhed movie
Hyper Dyne Side Arms HuCard July 14, 1989 NEC Avenue Capcom Hori shooter; port of Capcom's 1986 arcade game; Special CD version later release; released in NA as Sidearms
Rock-On HuCard August 2, 1989 Big Club Manjyudo Hori space shooter
Ordyne HuCard September 8, 1989 Namco Namco Hori shooter, arcade port
Battle Ace SuperGrafx HuCard November 30, 1989 Hudson Soft Hudson Soft First-person ship shooter; launch game for SuperGrafx

Current Game

Battle Ace (1989)

Upcoming Games

This is an ordered list of the upcoming games. When the list gets low, I go and pull more from the release list.

Stuff to check out and not forget:

Ranking

What follows is a list, in order, of my favorite game to least favorite game. Entirely subjective! I update this after I move on to each game.

  1. R-Type
  2. Gunhed (a.k.a. Blazing Lazers)
  3. Ordyne
  4. Kyūkyoku Tiger
  5. Hyper Dyne Side Arms
  6. P-47: The Freedom Fighter
  7. Space Harrier
  8. Dragon Spirit
  9. Hany in the Sky
  10. Fantasy Zone
  11. Galaga '88
  12. Rock-On
  13. Deep Blue: Kaitei Shinwa

Resources