MiSTerZine

Apple Lisa (MiSTer debut 2026-07-13)

Tue, 14 Jul 2026 14:55:00 +0000

Apple's 1983 Lisa "was the first mass-market personal computer operable through a graphical user interface (GUI)". Officially, Apple "stated that the name was an acronym for 'Local Integrated Software Architecture'". But "because Steve Jobs's first daughter was named Lisa (born in 1978), it was sometimes inferred that the name also had a personal association". Apple software developer Andy Hertzfeld said the acronym "was reverse-engineered from the name 'Lisa' in late 1982 by the Apple marketing team". "Privately, Hertzfeld and the other software developers used 'Lisa: Invented Stupid Acronym', a recursive backronym, and computer industry pundits coined the term 'Let's Invent Some Acronym' to fit Lisa's name" (per Wikipedia). Decades later, Jobs told his biographer Walter Isaacson: "Obviously it was named for my daughter."

Boogie Wings (MiSTer debut 2026-06-14)

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 06:36:00 +0000

Boogie Wings, Data East's 1992 arcade game, "is set around the time of World War I, where the player maneuvers biplanes, automobiles, animals, and various other unidentifiable objects to battle an army of mech-wielding scientists." Among them, "one of the game's bosses is a giant robot Santa Claus" (per Wikipedia).

Crude Buster (MiSTer debut 2026-06-10)

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 06:35:00 +0000

In Data East's 1990 brawler, released in the West as Two Crude, "players control Biff and Spike, two mercenaries hired by the American government to stop the terrorist organization Big Valley." "Because the duo are muscle-bound brawlers, they have the ability to pick up objects well beyond their own weight (e.g. cars and traffic lights) to use as weapons." Writing for Computer and Video Games magazine, Julian Rignall called Crude Buster "one of the best beat'em ups I've seen in years" and rated it 95% (per Wikipedia).

Air Gallet (30th decadeversary)

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 06:34:00 +0000

"When people talk about the fall of Toaplan, four companies always come up: Cave, Raizing, Takumi, and Gazelle," writes Hardcore Gaming 101. Gazelle made only a few games before fading into obscurity, among them Air Gallet, this 1996 vertical shooter published by Banpresto. Of one boss: "It's a large statue of a demon, surrounded in flames, choking others with its long, tentacle-like hair. It has some impressive attacks and starts crying blood once you blow off enough turrets."

MiSTer debut 2026-06-12.

Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon (MiSTer debut 2026-06-12)

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 06:33:00 +0000

"It is the first game to be created by Gazelle, one of the offshoots of defunct developer Toaplan that were founded after they declared bankruptcy in 1994," with "Knuckle Bash designer Junya Inoue serving as one of the game's graphic designers" (per Wikipedia). That May, Japan's Game Machine "listed Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon ... as being the eleventh most-successful arcade game of the month, outperforming titles such as Virtua Fighter."

Ikari Warriors (40th decadeversary)

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 06:32:00 +0000

"Amongst the numerous Commando clones on the market, Ikari Warriors was distinguished by its unique control style with rotary joysticks and a two-player cooperative mode," per Wikipedia. The game "was originally intended to be an official licensed adaptation of the film Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985), but SNK were initially unable to acquire the rights to the film." Even so, "Sylvester Stallone, whose role as John Rambo had an influence on the game, owned an Ikari Warriors arcade cabinet in the 1980s."

MiSTer debut 2022-08-03.

Fantasy Zone (40th decadeversary)

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 06:31:00 +0000

"The main character, Opa-Opa, is sometimes referred to as Sega's first mascot character," and the 1986 game, alongside Konami's TwinBee, is "credited with establishing the cute 'em up subgenre" (per Wikipedia). To arm the little ship, "the player must get money by defeating enemies, bases or bosses, and access a shop by touching a marked balloon."

MiSTer debut 2022-01-17.

Big Karnak (MiSTer debut 2026-07-05)

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 06:30:00 +0000

In Gaelco's 1991 coin-op, per Wikipedia, "players assume the role of a pharaoh warrior who embarks on a journey through four increasingly difficult levels taking place in an Ancient Egypt setting to save his wife by defeating the Egyptian gods Horus, Nut, Isis and Osiris." The studio "decided to work on a horizontal-scrolling arcade game similar to Double Dragon, Bad Dudes Vs. DragonNinja and Ghouls 'n Ghosts." It stayed an arcade exclusive for decades: "The title was never ported to other systems, until its inclusion as part of the Gaelco Arcade 2 compilation for Evercade."

Breakout (50th decadeversary)

Sun, 12 Jul 2026 06:30:00 +0000

"The reason Atari wanted me to design it is they were tired of their games taking 150, 200 chips, and they knew I designed things with very few chips, so we had incentives for getting it under 50 or under 40 chips," Steve Wozniak said of Breakout in a 2007 interview with Gamasutra. Atari's engineers, faced with the finished board: "They had trouble understanding it."

MiSTer debut 2020-12-12.

Night Slashers (MiSTer debut 2026-07-10)

Fri, 11 Jul 2026 06:32:00 +0000

"Data East also created Night Slashers, clearly their best beat-em-up and undoubtedly capable of cracking a connoisseur's Top 10 list, if it weren't for the game's unbelievable obscurity," reads a 2006 review at HonestGamers, which sums up the appeal: "watch the heads roll, the chests implode, and the guts soil the cement."

Trio The Punch (MiSTer debut 2026-07-08)

Fri, 11 Jul 2026 06:31:00 +0000

"Nothing about this game is done well, and yet everything just meshes together so perfectly into one gigantic dose of pure nonsense," writes Hardcore Gaming 101, which also says Trio The Punch "is like a visual representation of the writings of William S. Burroughs if he was a Japanese video game designer."

Battle Garegga (30th decadeversary)

Fri, 11 Jul 2026 06:30:00 +0000

"A number of shoot-em-up fans regard it as one of the best shooters of all time; others feel that the cluttered visual style and rank system ruin some pretty cool ideas," writes Hardcore Gaming 101. That rank system reacts to how well you play, and "creates some ridiculous scenarios where players will intentionally suicide at points to make the difficulty manageable, and can only properly clear it by scoring high enough to rack up extra lives."

MiSTer debut 2023-09-10.

Cabal (MiSTer debut 2026-07-05)

Mon, 06 Jul 2026 06:31:00 +0000

"The rather obscure Japanese TAD Corporation wondered what it would be like to give a third-person point of view to gun-based carnage," writes Hardcore Gaming 101, crediting Cabal with the wave of imitators that followed, Wild Guns and NAM-1975 among them: "None of these games would likely exist if Cabal didn't set the table."

Biomechanical Toy (MiSTer debut 2026-07-05)

Mon, 06 Jul 2026 06:30:00 +0000

"The colorful, trippy graphics are reminiscent of many Amiga games," writes Hardcore Gaming 101 of Spanish maker Gaelco's run-and-gun. "It's not really on the level of other genre greats like Metal Slug (though it did predate that game by about a year)."

Flash Boy (MiSTer debut 2026-06-30)

Wed, 01 Jul 2026 06:30:00 +0000

Flash Boy shipped on Data East's DECO Cassette System, tape-loaded arcade hardware where "the machine was turned on and 2 to 3 minutes later the game was loaded and ready to be played," as AtariProtos describes it. "The tape medium didn't prove to be nearly as robust as Data East had hoped, and the cassettes had a bad habit of failing to load after only a few months."

Darius II (MiSTer debut 2026-06-16)

Wed, 17 Jun 2026 06:30:00 +0000

"In addition to a three-screen release, there is also a (more common) two-screen version," notes Hardcore Gaming 101; the MiSTer core runs the two-screen one. "For some unknown reason, Darius II was renamed Sagaia outside of Japan."