Aurail

Aurail is a 1990 arcade action game developed for Sega by Westone Bit Entertainment – the team best known for the Wonder Boy series. This is no fairy-tale island outing, though: Aurail is a science fiction shooter in which the player pilots a combat machine and grinds through enemy positions.

1990 caught the arcades in a transitional moment. The golden age of simple cabinets was over and the fighting game boom had not yet arrived, so studios experimented with ways to keep players at the screen. Sega was running some of the most technically capable arcade boards on the market, and its action titles leaned on large sprites, screen-filling explosions and escalating arsenals.

Aurail is a single-player game built on classic coin-op philosophy: short, intense runs where every credit buys another chance to push a little further. Weapon upgrades collected along the way add a strategic layer – whatever a hit costs you has to be won back the hard way.

For Westone fans the title is an interesting detour, proof that a studio associated with colourful platformers could also write hard-edged sci-fi action for the arcades. It sits in that overlooked corner of Sega's coin-op catalogue that emulation has finally made visible again.

Sega's arcade actions from the turn of the decade share a signature: generous artwork, aggressive pacing and audio engineered to drown out the neighbouring cabinets. Aurail draws fully on that school while showing how much quality output stayed in the shadow of famous names – the game never officially reached home systems in its day, which did its reputation no favours.

Through MAME emulation, Aurail runs right in your browser on OldGame.cz – this time the credit is free.