If a game could be tried for crimes against humanity, Super R-Type for the SNES would be the first to stand trial. It's the most viciously, sadistically difficult and unforgiving videogame I've ever encountered. Essentially a port of the arcade R-Type II with a short, largely extraneous level tacked on the front, Super R-Type is ruined completely by Irem's bizarre and irrational decision to exclude any restart points on any of its lengthy stages.

Whether you're thirty seconds in to a level or you've managed to battle and swear your way to the area boss, one tiny mistake and you're dumped right back to the beginning. Super R-Type will have even the most ardent shoot-em-up fan tearing at his (or her) clothes and hair with anguish.

The SNES' usual slowdown problems when more than a handful of sprites appear onscreen only add to the game's woes.

Bitterly disappointing, and arguably the worst entry in R-Type's otherwise illustrious canon.

Capcom's SNES conversion of their classic shooter Area 88 (or UN Squadron, as it was known in here) is an odd beast, and is best regarded as a re-imagining of the arcade original rather than a straight port.

First, the two-player element is gone (presumably excised, as poor Guy was in the SNES Final Fight, due to lack of cart space), and so are the characters' three selectable planes – in the arcade original, you could choose from Shin Kazama in his Tigershark, Mickey Simon in his F14 and Greg Gates and his A-10 Thunderbolt. In the SNES version, you start with the same aircraft regardless of which character you select - the choice now appearing to have little tactical effect on the game - and better planes are only available to purchase later on once enough cash has been earned.

Things are markedly different in the game itself – there's now a cunning twist to the energy bar system, with initial damage from an enemy bullet leaving you dangerously vulnerable to a second for a brief time; get hit twice in rapid succession and you're dead. And to make things even harder, you don't respawn from the same point as was the case with the coin-op – you have to restart the whole level from the beginning. This makes the game a far more hardcore experience than its forebear, and can lead to some seriously tense boss battles.

Cosmetically, Area 88 still looks the part, with detailed sprites and some impressive layers of parallax scrolling. The music too, is pleasant enough, in a jaunty early-nineties-synth kind of way, though it's strange that even the soundtrack didn't survive the conversion intact, with many of the original's themes altered or replaced.

Area 88's achilles' heel is its distracting level of slowdown – a frequent and irritating bugbear present in seemingly all SNES shoot-em-ups. Even so, it's a pity the programmers couldn't have found a way of limiting the amount of sprites that appear on screen to avoid this – I found myself frantically trying to shoot down planes, not to score points, but to keep the game running at a sensible speed. Having said this, it's almost vital that you kill everything you see anyway, since the enemy's heatseeking missiles and kamikaze tactics make missing even one of them a dangerous proposition.

There's no denying that Area 88 is a seriously tough challenge - far tougher than the arcade - but this doesn't make it any less enjoyable, and while it's not a classic of the magnitude of Konami's stunning Axelay, it's not a million miles behind either.

The SNES Area 88 may not be an arcade perfect port - such a thing may have been too much to hope for back in the early nineties - but accepted on its own terms, it's still a lot of fun, and harder to beat as well.

After a rather longer than expected hiatus (blame a mixture of infirmity, last weekend's i33 LAN gaming festival and downright laziness for my absence), I'm back with some lovely Japanese SNES box art for you to gawp at.

As you've probably guessed, these are my latest acquisitions from the far east, obscure platform game Jerry Boy being the most greatly anticipated. Despite the unfathomably cute graphics (on the box and in the game itself), it's fiercely difficult, the challenge primarily due to the fiddly control system which gives you four (count 'em!) ways to dispatch your fluffy enemies – your blobby sprite can also run, stick to walls, stretch himself flat and spit little red balls. While this is all very nice when things are going well, it's all too easy to get the button combinations slightly wrong and launch a ball when you wanted to run or stretch yourself when you actually wanted to stick to a wall, causing you to plummet to your doom.

Still, Jerry Boy is a nifty little platformer with some original ideas - it's just a shame the controls seem so intent on spoiling your fun...

Next up we have Yoshi's Island (or as the box's Japlish would have it, Yossy Island). It's billed as a sequel to Super Mario World, but really the two games have very little in common other than their obvious platform game roots – you control Yoshi as he leaps and bounds through the beautifully drawn stages (that prefigured Paper Mario's storybook art direction) with baby Mario on his back. Contact with a foe won't harm Yoshi; rather, baby Mario will begin to float off in a little bubble. If you don't burst the bubble before it floats away, you lose a life. Like Jerry Boy, this is a nice idea in theory, but it can become frustrating after a while - and baby Mario's constant screaming as he floats away is particularly draining.

Last of all we have the unfortunately named Supapoon (or at least I'm told that's what the kanji means), which cost me approximately 99p and is the game I've played the most of the three. It's an Arkanoid/Breakout clone – the sort of simplistic bat and ball game you'll find on a mobile phone these days. Despite its antique gameplay, it's surprisingly addictive – as with all simple games, it's the small nuances in the programming that save it from mediocrity, and Supapoon is well conceived, with bright, chunky graphics and a refreshingly gentle learning curve (it's certainly nowhere near as punishing as Arkanoid was). Only some rather harsh later levels with too many indestructible bricks mar what is a fun, unpretentious retrogame.

By a strange quirk of fate, Axelay and Gaiares (early nineties shoot-em-ups for the Super Nintendo and Sega Megadrive respectively) both dropped through my letterbox on the same day.

While neither game generated much cash when released, they've gradually gained a cult following by shooter devotees, with numerous web pages devoted to each. Despite such fan devotion, picking up a copy shouldn't be too hard - predictably, Ebay's the best place to start, with carts changing hands for only a few pounds. Collectors should definitely opt for the more rare Japanese originals, boxed with instructions (as I did) - it'll cost you considerably more, but it's genuinely worth the outlay because the box artwork is stunning in both cases.

Gameplay
Axelay and Gaiares both feature a quite atypical weapon system. In Axelay, you arm your ship with three different types of cannon at the start of each level. Each one has its own tactical advantage (my favourite is a dual laser that can fire in a 180º arc around each side of your ship), and can be toggled by tapping one of the shoulder buttons. Contact with enemy ships or bullets disables your currently selected weapon - once all three are gone you lose a life. Axelay's system plays a huge part in its success, and makes it perhaps one of the least frustrating shooters I've ever played.

Gaiares features a rather more complicated weapon system; your ship is armed with a R-Type style drone that can 'steal' power-ups from enemies. It's a clever idea, and works well - sapping enough energy from alien ships can create some impressive displays of firepower.

Graphics
Here's where the two games really diverge, and also expose the Megadrive and SNES's fundamental hardware differences. Gaiares' graphics are typical nineties shooter fare, with some pretty familiar looking sprites and backgrounds. Axelay, meanwhile, uses every bit of the Super Nintendo's processing power to create some pretty stunning effects. Sprite rotation and scaling, transparency and parallax scrolling are all used to create a game that could almost be mistaken for a Neo Geo title of the same vintage.

Axelay's bosses are huge and distinctive - the ED-209 style guardian at the end of Level two is particularly impressive. However, all this visual beauty does come at a cost - there's some glaring slowdown throughout as the processor struggles to shift all the sprites.

While Gaiares' graphics are more modest and workmanlike (the Megadrive's muddy pallette is constantly in evidence), it throws them around at a phenomenal speed without a hint of slowdown.

Sound
Typical retro shooter fare in both cases - up-tempo synth pop and familiar lasergun spot effects. Axelay's creepily memorable rumble as the 'Game Over' screen appears is rather good though.

Overall
When played in isolation, Gaiares feels like a solid, well programmed shooter. Juxtaposed with Axelay though, it really suffers. Axelay, put simply, is stunning. Its simple but ingenious weapon system, steadily rising difficulty and varied, imaginative level design put it on a par with shooting heavyweights R-Type or Gradius - it really is that good.

It came as no surprise to learn that the team behind Axelay were the very same people that eventually left Konami and formed Treasure. With programming might like that behind Axelay, its unsurprising that poor Gaiares seems a little stilted in comparison - indeed, it amazes me that only two years separates their initial release dates, such is Axelay's level of quality.

While Gaiares is still an excellent game, and should be collected and played by all genre addicts - it's totally outgunned by the incredible Axelay.

...and now a shameless plug for my new weekly (every Thursday) column on the marvelous Den of Geek, where I harp on with far too much enthusiasm about gaming past and present. Visit it here.

While you're at it, why not read my Michael Weldon (Psychotronic Guide to Film author) interview as well? He's a fascinating, outspoken chap with a terrifyingly broad knowledge of films and politics.

Disgraceful self promotion aside, DoG really is an awesome site and should be the first port of call for any movie or videogame obsessive.

The latest addition to my little console family arrived yesterday - a boxed Super Famicom (or SNES to us euro types). The only downside? No games yet. But the first batch has been ordered and they're on their way:

Area 88 (known here as UN Squadron), Supapoon (Arkanoid type game), Super R-Type, and (I can't wait for this one) Axelay.

Until they show up, I'll just have to stare at a blank screen...

Okay, so that header may be a little misleading since it's not me that's giving anything away - I'm merely advertising the fact that, by clicking here, you can download Iwanaga, a stunning little Japanese PC shooter, legally, for absolutely nothing!

I know there are absolutely loads of terrible games floating around on the net free of charge - they're usually free because nobody would pay for them - but believe me, Iwanaga is very different. In fact, if it had been released a few years back for the Saturn or Megadrive, every shoot-em-up addict in both hemispheres would have gone mad over it.

The game is controlled by the directional, z and x keys; holding z moves your crosshairs and fires at enemies above you, while tapping it swishes your sword to clear certain types of bullet and ground-based foes. pressing x makes you jump, pressing it twice makes you high-jump. Pressing the down key and z changes weapons. There's a bit more to the controls than that, but if you've played many retro games (golden oldies Cabal or Rambo III aren't disimilar) you'll pick it up in no time. I've heard the game also supports joypads - though I haven't tried this myself.

Like all the best Japanese shooters, Iwanaga's plot makes no sense at all - it appears to be set in the fifteenth century or something, and the shadowy graphics and zen-like music gives the game a creepy atmosphere. Iwanaga's control system and gameplay touches are also very reminiscent of Treasure's 16 Bit efforts, and the nicely designed monsters recall stylish MD blaster Gynoug.

All in all, a pretty good pedigree, I'm sure you'll agree.. enjoy!

As you've probably gathered by now, I'm a big retro game fan, so when I heard that Geometry Wars was coming to the Nintendo Wii, I got unnecessarily excited.

Geometry Wars started out as a playable mini game in Project Gotham on the XBox 360, but it was Geometry Wars Retro Evolved, released on the 360's XBLA, that really caused a fuss. Geometry Wars took the control system from Atari's Robotron and fused it with the vector graphics visuals of Asteroids, creating an addictive, fast placed blaster which garnered acclaim from fans and media alike.

Because I don't own one of Microsoft's hefty consoles, I've not been able to play Geometry Wars for myself, so when old chum Nathan appeared on my doorstep one evening with a copy of GW Galaxies, I booted up my humble Wii with considerable anticipation.

The control system, it has to be said, is something of an acquired taste. Movement is achieved through minute twiddlings of the Nunchuck, while you aim and fire at enemies with the remote. While this should work beautifully on paper, mimicking the twin stick approach of the original (or many other games, such as Bangaio or Smash TV), in practice it's rather less intuitive than you might expect.

The other thing that struck me was the sheer number of colours, enemies, bullets, sparks, particles, squares and lines the game throws at you - it all looks very pretty, but I genuinely struggled to understand what was going on much of the time. Add to this a strangely distracting background grid that warps beneath your ship as you move and fire, and you're left with a mind-numbingly psychedelic fog of war.

If you don't believe me, look at that screenshot above - is that really a game, or is it a Carlos Santana T-Shirt?

Having said all this, GW Galaxies remains a highly addictive game, and while I found myself confronted with the big Game Over with irritating regularity, I couldn't help going back for the proverbial 'one more go.'

Addictive or not, I still couldn't help feeling a sense of relief when Nathan took the game away again. There's something about the constant, hallucinogenic explosions of colour that made me feel rather odd, like an LSD addict transfixed by fireworks. In fact, I can feel an acid flashback coming on now... oohh... the colours...

Following an unusually harrowing day at the office, I sat down last night with a glass of vino for an impromptu session on the classic R-Type (the almost arcade-perfect version for the PS1).

'Right,' I said to myself as the familiar R9A Arrowhead craft flew onto the screen, 'I'm not going to move until I've completed it.'

Terrible, terrible idea. After sailing through the first two levels (let's face it, as terrifying as Dopkeratops - the first boss - appears, he's dead easy to beat, and the heart thing on level two is even easier if you position your ship correctly), and only losing a life or two on the 'giant ship' third stage, I hit a complete and utter brick wall on level four. In case you don't remember, it's the one with the hundreds of little green spores everywhere. Through sheer determination, and after a lot of swearing, I finally managed to battle my way to the end of level guardian, a sort of mechanical, modular affair that splits into blocky sections.

By this time, it was pushing midnight and fatigue - and inebriation - were really beginning to set in, and I was forced to abandon the war effort. Somewhere in here, there's a moral message - something about drinking and playing retro shooters obviously - but the more important one is that R-Type is still an unbelievably addictive game, even after all these years. It's fiercely difficult, and even made number seven in a top ten listing of all-time hard games, but this is really part of the appeal.

Gamers of a certain age will possibly remember the once mind-boggling sight of R-Type playing on a Sinclair ZX Spectrum. This was the late eighties equivalent of seeing an almost perfect replica of Crysis running on a Nintendo DS, it was that close to the arcade version. Everything was there - all the sprites, all the gameplay - with only a hint of the colour clash that plagued any Speccy game that dared to be anything other than monochrome.

Well, just to remind you how great that conversion was, here's a video of someone playing Speccy R-Type from beginning to end. I bet he can't do that after a bottle of red wine...