Forgotten Worlds Review (Mega Drive)

Forgotten Worlds was an interesting shoot-em-up arcade game back in the days. Not only was it developed by Capcom, it featured 2 player simultaneous play and a innovative control system were you rotated a second joystick on a 360 degree axis to determine what direction you wanted to fire in. On the shiny new CPS-1 arcade board this certainly looked the business when it came out too.

As a flying marine you are tasked with the job of kicking alien butt armed with a nice big gun and a satellite which follows you around. You can upgrade your weapons by picking up money which the bad guys drop and finding a shop along the way. To add variety the levels have branching paths to take you to different areas with new and exciting foes to better.

The Megadrive conversion is not far off in capturing the look and feel which made the arcade game a minor hit for Capcom at the time. Sadly there was no way of replicating the rotating arcade controls so you are resigned to using two buttons to control which direction you fire, which feels very clumsy. In addition to this due to the restriction of the 4 Meg cartridge format levels 6 and 8 were dropped, which to be fair probably wouldn’t bother anyone who had never played the arcade extensively.

The simultaneous 2 player mode is a nice feature carried across into the conversion and some of the backdrops still impress such as the Egypt themed level. The bosses are often huge and imposing, sometimes sporting cheap tactics to make you lose a life! As a shoot-em-up there is a lot to like about this game, it is fast and furious and will keep you coming back for more.