■ Japanese Famicom owners didn’t have the famous Nintendo seal of quality on their games, largely because buyers didn’t need that kind of assurance. In its absence, we’d imagine many players just looked for the Konami logo as a sign of a good product. Players loved the likes of Gradius, Contra, Castlevania and Metal Gear, and the company made a good deal of money on the platform. Of course the company had the occasional duffer here and there, but one of its best games for the Famicom was unfortunately widely overlooked – this one, in case you hadn’t guessed.
Crisis Force was Konami’s final Famicom shoot-’em-up, and the developer went all out to make it the very best. The game is an audiovisual treat, which is largely because the VRC4 mapper chip allows for special effects like vertical column scrolling to create a parallax effect, as well as more standard static backgrounds that still look awesome.