Sandbox games usually don't interest me unless they have good pvp, or good combat in general
I'd be intrigued by attempting to get a lot of peeps together in Terraria and attempting to play it like a big army strategy game lol.
Anyway, my pc copy of Taito Legends 2 came in the mail today, imma just talk about some of my favorite games and share some screenshots.

This is Metal Black. It's a very fun shmup from the makers of Darius. At first I didn't like it, but that's really cause the first stage is somewhat dull in comparison to the rest of the game. The level design is
really intense, and the boss battles are epic, and the aesthetics and music are beautiful
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9q1iKTBSco&list=FL8PsS0ogNnTJ7ovFcJkWbKA&index=20Part of what makes the game stand apart is the beam system. Constantly entering onto the screen are little particles that you can collect to increase your score and beam level, but that enemies and bosses can also grab to power up. The more particles you have, the better your regular shot is, but you can also sacrifice all your particles for a suped up short beam attack concentrated on one enemy. In addition, the bosses can use this beam too, and you can clash beams (like in the screenshot above), with the one who got the most particles usually being the winner.

Also the intro is kinda epic.

Next up, we have Dungeon Magic.

It's basically a traditional beat em up (think Golden Axe, Final Fight, Double Dragon, Streets of Rage, etc.), but with the twist that it's also an exploration based dungeon crawler. Instead of linear scrolling stages, you have huge maps with multiple paths, tons of secrets, bosses, and cool stuff. It's really fun, and the Dungeons and Dragons inspired aesthetic works great.




On a similar note, there's also Cadash.

It's basically the inspiration for Zelda 2 on the Nes. It's an early side scrolling co-op action rpg, in which you talk to people in towns, buy ****, and fight monsters in dungeons. It even has those annoying knight guys from Zelda 2 that block with a shield and you have to hit them the opposite of which way they are blocking (crouching or standing).
Also the translation is pretty funny.


I also find it funny that the captured princess is all cutesie anime...

But the player characters are all drawn pretty realistically.







THE brave man.


There's other games I wanted to talk about, but I'll just conclude for now with Rayforce.

It's a vertically scrolling shmup, and one of my favorites. The games concept is that you have a regular rapid laser, but you also have a homing laser that can lock onto multiple enemies in the background for massive damage. The score of the enemies you destroy is multiplied by how many you got with one laser shot.
The games level design is really great, with a great balance of trying to play defensively and avoid the massive amount of gunfire, while trying to get close to lock on with your laser and prevent yourself from being overwhelmed. The way the game works, you often never see the bullet that kills you until after it does so, because your trying to keep track of so much stuff at once. It's a game of absolute focus.
I don't have as many screenshots of this one (yet) but this one I enjoy a lot

For the record, I did dodge that.
This is an arcade collection, so all these games are available for emulation on the internet. I highly recommend giving them a try on the MAME emulator, since they're a lot of fun.