MUST PLAY'S #~1~

                   #1 Panzer bandit  

Fill in Café-1997 PS1

Single plain beat em up, with the ability to go in and out of the background like guardians heroes, but thankfully the gameplay is way better then that one, similarly to capcom fighters at its time, its very combo heavy, juggling is easy to do, but there are hard limits, where you can't just combo one guy forever, eventually the combo just ends. You can grab dudes and toss them into one another, very mad stalker like, string uppercuts into specials into  basic moves, basically its fun. the bigger the combo the more coins you get, witch only give you score.

tThe cast: they all have fairly varied movesets and are all fun to play

story: idk, beat the bosses with your friends or some shit

You can pick stages in any order, I assumed that maybe, if I picked a certain order it would change something, but nope they are the same every time.

its fun, go play it!!!

#2 Gun force 2 / Geo storm 

IREM-1994
ARCADE

Same team of dudes later went on to make metal slug. This one plays better though, since your constantly duel wielding machine guns, when you point to a direction to shoot, the main gun shoots there instantly, while the 2nd one does an ark till it reaches the location witch is very helpful for filling the screen with bullets, and emulates the sensation of movie like duel-wielding perfectly.

This feature is only halfway there in metal slug, the machine gun does do the same ark much, but you can't duel wield it to the same effect, in later games they did add duel-wieldable weapons but they don't produce the same effect sadly.

bosses are way less spungy, compared to metal slug too

Not much more to say, its just very fun and well made.

                       #3 Run saber by Horisoft

SNES-1993

Similarly to Strider you cal climb and cling to anything, slashes looks similar, but you have to power them up first, in addition when they can just they pull a sonic, screwball, super star wars attack, slide, if you press down while falling it does a diving kick you can steer like a car.

fairly short platformer with varied locations, so i don't want to spoil it, that's all you get.

              #4 ANE-SAN by NEC Avenue
PC-ENGINE CD 1995

Plot is about a bunch of sukeban taking over territory, good shit

Combat is basic. Stun-locking is really easy and you can kick downed girls, no weapons, but you don't really need them. Music and visuals elevate this game so much. 

Like Panzer Bandit you get to pick your stages in any order you desire.                                                   (one of the stage graphics)

its easy to fuck up and, not realize you can buy items for your room, if you don't buy any, you'll be severely handicapped to the point where you'll get two shoted.

in addition, next to the buy option, theirs another one that lets you play this minigame for some extra cash,

Mash, to get her face looking

as spooky as possible.👺😳

    #5 Briganty: the roots of darkness by GIGA PC98-1995

   WIN-1999

logo so good, you shit your pants

🙈

2 playable characters (press Esc to swap) with a decent amount of moves and a great amount of special moves you get by leveling up. Kombat is good, you hit things, they get stunned satisfyingly and it just works.

(PC98)

 

Its one of the technical marvels on pc98 along with NightSlave

where the scrolling is pretty smooth and large sprites being rendered seamlessly is really impressive. 

Windows version on the other hand is legit smooth and it plays a little bit better, but there are no major differences outside of that. Short game, but they do let you revisit stages and your always free to go back to your hotel room, where 2 spicy scenes await you, (its possible to not go back, and stack the scenes you missed on top of each other, so you come in, do some fun, leave, comeback and do it again :^)) 

Final note if your gonna grind for all the moves do it at the lava place, keep killing the same 2 golem monsters, they will respawn forever, if you leave and reenter the room. (all new special move inputs appear in your stats screen, to see them press Esc).

The windows version is stupid hard to find, a really cool dude gave it to me a long time ago, and now I'm passing it down to you: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AkhR3de9bIDs-0tgTzg6-BlMs_F7?e=FtmDXS 

FIN, go home.