Forgotten Worlds

Of all the Capcom action games from the late eighties, Forgotten Worlds has one of the most distinctive control ideas: your character floats and aims independently of the direction of movement. The 1988 arcade original handled this with a rotary dial that swung your fire through a full circle while the level scrolled horizontally past you. The result is a shooter that fits neither the platform genre nor the pure shoot-em-up.

The second thing that set it apart was the shop. Money dropped by defeated enemies buys better weapons and upgrades, which introduced a genuine decision into arcade action — spend now for immediate firepower, or save toward something heavier. That was not standard practice in 1988, and it is part of why the game is remembered outside dedicated Capcom circles.

The Sega Mega Drive conversion had to solve the missing rotary controller. Aiming on a standard gamepad works differently, and that is the clearest point of divergence from the coin-op — anyone who played the original board will feel it within a minute. Visuals and music, on the other hand, made solid use of the sixteen-bit hardware, and the game still looks sturdy for its year.

It has aged better than most arcade shooters of the same vintage precisely because its central idea does not depend on raw hardware muscle. On OldGame.cz you can run Forgotten Worlds directly in the browser, so trying it costs nothing but a minute. Expect a short overall runtime and steep difficulty, as was standard for arcade conversions of the era.