My favourite retro game developers

 

Each time I used to hear the Capcom jingle when loading a game on my SNES as a boy I knew I was in for a quality gaming experience.  Capcom are not only responsible for undoubtedly the most iconic fighting game ever, Street Fighter II but for many other superb games as well.

Some of my personal favourites :

The 194X series of shoot-em-ups - some of the best ever and still get a regular airing on my emulation devices to this day

Final Fight - the classic side-scrolling best-em-up featuring some fantastic characters

Ghosts 'n' Goblins - The fiendishly tough and addictive platform/shooting title

Captain Commando

Aladdin - an excellent platformer with different versions available for SNES and MegaDrive

Exed Exes

Legendary Wings

Mercs - a walkaround military themed shoot-em-up

These are just some of my favourite titles from their huge library of titles, a full list of which can be found on Wikipedia.

Another developer of some excellent titles Konami made many great games during the 16-bit era, one of the first titles from them I played as Tiny Toons - Buster Busts Loose on the SNES, graphically beautiful cartoony platformer featuring Buster Bunny, I spent many an enjoyable time playing this and still give it a go on my various devices to this day.

Some of my other favourites :

Frogger

The Simpsons Arcade

Salamander 2

The Castlevania games

As with Capcom a full list of their library is on Wikipedia

Perhaps best known for the Donkey Kong Country and Donkey Kong Land games on SNES and Gameboy, the SNES titles in the series were, at the time, widely praised for their incredible graphics and animation which still stand up today and are still really great titles to play.

However after their success with the DK titles they went on to develop many other quality titles, some of my other favourites :

Killer Instinct

GoldenEye

Perfect Dark

Again a full list of their library is on Wikipedia.

The last company in this list, Devolver Digital isn't strictly a developer of retro games but I wanted to feature them as they are my favourite current indie game developer who have made some of the best and most innovative games I've enjoyed over the last few years, I'm not yet to experience a bad title from them, my personal favourites :

Pepper Grinder - a superb platformer where you character uses a drill to burrow through areas of each level

Boomerang X

Ruiner

I'm really looking forward to seeing what more excellent titles they're planning in the future and already have a few in my Wishlist on the Steam store!  

So there you have it, a small insight into my favourite retro game developers (plus one present day one!)