Popular games published by company Tengen

In 1982, a sequel to the incredibly popular Pac-Man was introduced in the form of his girlfriend, Ms. Pac-Man. This sequel continued on the "eat the dots/avoid the ghosts" gameplay of the original game, but added new features to keep the title fresh. Like her boyfriend, Ms. Pac-Man attempts to clear four various and challenging mazes filled with dots and ever-moving bouncing fruit while avoiding Inky, Blinky, Pinky and Sue, each with their own personalities and tactics. One touch from any of these ghosts means a loss of life for Ms. Pac-Man. Ms. Pac-Man can turn the tables on her pursuers by eating one of the four Energizers located within the maze. During this time, the ghosts turn blue, and Ms. Pac-Man can eat them for bonus points. The Energizer power only lasts for a limited amount of time, as the ghost's eyes float back to their center box, and regenerate to chase after Ms. Pac-Man again. Survive a few rounds of gameplay, and the player will be treated to humorous intermissions showing the growing romantic relationship between Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man, leading all the way up to the arrival of "Junior".

Xybots is a sci-fi shooter with pseudo-3D environments explored from a third-person perspective. The game can be played by one or two players; the two-player mode takes place on a split screen. The hero(es) must move through a series of Gauntlet-style underground mazes, killing the bad guys and collecting health and other bonuses from flying saucers. It's designed to be played co-operatively, although bullets from one player can harm the other.

The objective of the game is to complete all 50 rallies without running out of fuel. There is no limit to how many vehicles a player can receive to complete a rally, as long as they have fuel. However, the destruction of the vehicle will subtract a small amount from the player's fuel tank. In the arcade, Genesis and Lynx versions, players could start the game at a higher rally, with additional opportunities to jump several levels from time to time. Players can continue their game from where they left off; however, the player has only one chance to complete the 50th and final rally. For completing the final rally the player gets one million points as a bonus. Players can get fuel in four ways: green globes, red globes, a checkpoint, and the rally point.

Pilot your massive mecha Aleste in the name of the Oda clan and seek revenge against the evil Chugoku Army for their atrocities! Robo Aleste is another title in the Aleste series by famed shoot-'em-up developer Compile where players must collect power-ups to defeat countless waves of enemies and large bosses.

Hard Drivin' is a 3D arcade hit from Atari Games. You are in control of a high-performance sports car. Your objective is to race around the course as fast as possible and hit as many checkpoints as possible. If you hit a checkpoint you gain extra time to go farther. You will see traffic on the road both in your direction and coming down the opposite direction, so be careful when you pass... The course has two sections: speed track, and stunt track. Speed track is longer, but you can usually achieve higher speeds. Stunt track requires you to perform several stunts such as jumping bridges, driving through a loop, and so on. Crashing the car has no serious consequences and indeed shows a replay of your crash from a cinematic angle. Admire your crash head-on into the cement truck, or clipping the minivan, or flying off the bridge in the wrong angle... You lose several seconds as your car is "reset" and you get up to speed again. The home conversions retain most of the then-advanced 3D graphics but lack the force-feedback that was in the arcade version.

Rolling Thunder is a run and gun/action arcade game that was released by Namco in 1986 and licensed to Atari Games for US manufacture and distribution. It runs upon Namco System 86 hardware, and was later converted for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, the Commodore 64, the Amstrad CPC, the Atari ST, the Commodore 64, and the Nintendo Family Computer. It was also featured in Namco Museum Encore. The player takes control of "Albatross", a member of the WCPO's (World Crime Police Organization) "Rolling Thunder" espionage unit. Albatross's mission is to save a missing female agent named Leila Blitz from a secret society named Geldra located in New York City. Albatross must travel through two different segments or "stories", both comprised of five stages, for a total of ten game stages. On each stage, Albatross can enter doors, to hide and take cover from enemies, as well jump over to higher or lower floors with rails, including stairs. Albatross begins this game armed with a standard-issue pistol, which can be substituted with a fully automatic assault rifle that allows for continuous firing by holding down the firing button. Albatross can gain ammunition for either weapon, by entering doors which are marked "bullets" or "arms". Despite the presence of a life meter, Albatross can only take two physical hits from the enemy: a single hit drains half of the meter, and he will be killed instantly when struck by a projectile attack such as enemy bullets or lasers. (However, all bullets can be blocked by your own).

Rampart is a game combining strategy and artillery action. Build your castle from Tetris-style pieces, place your cannons, bombard the enemy, try to repair, do it all over again. The original arcade release has a single-player and a two-player mode; later revisions incorporate three-player gameplay.

Klax is a 1989 computer puzzle game designed by Dave Akers and Mark Stephen Pierce. The object is to line up colored blocks into rows of similar colors to make them disappear, to which the object of Columns is similar. Atari Games originally released it as a coin-op follow up to Tetris, about which they were tangled in a legal dispute at the time.

Race Drivin' is a sequel to the arcade driving simulator Hard Drivin'. Game play is similar to the first game. The player must complete laps around the race track before a timer expires. There are several checkpoints around the track which increase player's time as he passes.

The gameplay is similar to Taito's Violence Fight and SNK's Street Smart. The player must jump, punch, and kick their opponent until his/her energy runs out. If the player presses all three of the buttons at a time, the character will perform a "super move". The player begins Pit-Fighter by choosing one of the three playable characters, who all have different moves, speed, and power. In the player select screen in the arcade version, each player has a color to select the fighters with: for player one it's blue, for player two it's red and for player three it's yellow. As many as three people can play at a time, but there will be extra opponents to fight during any of this game's 15 different matches. Every third fight is a bonus round known as a Grudge Match.[1] In a Grudge Match, the player must fight against a CPU controlled clone of his or her fighter (if playing alone) or the other players in a multiplayer game. Getting knocked down three times eliminates a player from the Grudge Match, the winner is the last man standing. Losing the Grudge Match does not eliminate a player, but the winner gets bonus money. The final battle, the "Championship Match", is between the player and the mysterious entity that taunts between matches every once in a while, the Masked Warrior. If more than one person is playing the game before this match, they must fight each other to the death until only one becomes victorious and can fight him. Sometimes during matches the player will come across foreign objects such as knives, crates, sticks, motorcycles, and bar stools that can be thrown at you or your opponent. The player may also come across a power-up known as the "power pill". If the player or the opponent grab this item, one will become temporarily stronger and take less damage from hits. At times even the crowd will interfere in the fights. Two characters, known as Knife Man (Milt Loper) and Knife Woman (Dianne Bertucci), will come out of the crowd and stab the player with their daggers. The player can take these nuisances out with one hit. Sometimes there is also a fat bearded man with a stick. If the player knocks him down, the player can take the stick and use it against the current opponent. The audience will also push any fighter that ends up among them, and stays there more than a few seconds. They will be forced back into the fighting area.

Toobin' involves Biff and Jet racing their way down the rapids of a river, riding on tires. You rotate your tyre left or right, and drift as the current sends you, making sure to avoid the banks of the river, and the dividing lines in the middle. Hazards include crocodiles, stray logs and branches, and fishermen - you are armed with a limited supply of tin cans to take care of these. There are gates to slide through on the way down - these give you a points bonus. Each level has a strict time limit to adhere to, although there's a kickin' party at the end if you succeed.

MiG-29: Fighter Pilot is a successor to MiG-29 Fulcrum by Simis; this time the theater of operations is the Middle East. The joined forces of NATO and the Commonwealth of Soviet States are to stop General Hasouz who is seeking to gain control over the world's oil resources. You are the pilot of the Russian-built MiG-29 and you need to accomplish several strategic missions to ensure the success of the operation. As this is a simulation game, the MiG-29's control panel is recreated (displaying altimeter, compass, thrust indicator, radar and more), and many actions are done manually by the player (such as controlling brakes and landing gear, performing take off and landing, etc.). There are a number of weapons and an automatic targeting system to help successfully accomplish the missions. The MiG-29 is also equipped with flares and chaff used to avoid enemy fire. The game is divided into 5 missions plus a tutorial mission. Mission objectives include destroying the enemy's command control and communications systems, escorting a submarine to safety, and destroying enemy Scud missiles. Mission score is based on the number of enemy structures and craft destroyed. The game features real-time 3D polygon graphics and there are even several short video clips, something very uncommon for Genesis hardware.

Based on the arcade game, in Escape from the Planet of the Robot Monsters you are sent in on a rescue mission to Planet X. This planet has been taken over by robots and you must find and evacuate the remaining humans. It's a shooter similar to Gauntlet, only with an isometric viewpoint. You run around the levels shooting robots, rescuing humans and picking up items.

"Grind Stormer" is a 1993 vertically scrolling shooter arcade video game originally developed and published by Toaplan in Japan and North America. It is considered to be the spiritual successor to Slap Fight. Based around a video game within a video game concept, players assume the role of a young secret agent assigned by the government taking control of the NA-00 space fighter craft in an attempt to defeat the titular virtual reality simulator, rescue the abducted players who lost against it and unveil its true purpose.

The game has an unusual naming scheme. In Japan there were no issues, as the game was published by SIMS themselves. In North America and PAL regions however, publishing rights were given to Tengen, who altered many of the in-game banners and renamed the game Tengen World Cup Soccer, even though the majority of the work was done by SIMS. The game offers 24 different national teams from across the world, although the choices aren't based on any official tournament from the era. For 1993 the list is quite out of date; the Federal Republic of Germany (more commonly known as West Germany) had not existed since 1990 after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Russia is represented with the flag of the Soviet Union which dissolved in late 1991, and Yugoslavia had ceased to exist by mid-1992.

Badlands is effectively the spiritual successor to Atari's previous racing games Super Sprint and Championship Sprint. Similarly to the Sprint titles, Badlands pits three cars against each other in a three lap race around a small, single-screen circuit. Bonuses are present in the form of wrenches which can be traded for goods such as extra speed, extra acceleration or better tires Unlike the Sprint games, Badlands expands upon the formula, taking place in a post-apocalyptic environment and equipping each of the players with cannons. In reality, the cannons do little except to slow cars down by repeatedly shooting at them, but the shop between levels offers the possibility of arming the car with missiles which will destroy the target car, placing it at a severe disadvantage as a replacement is brought onto the track, taking a few seconds. The tracks also featured a number of new obstacles, including mines and retractable barricades.

Gauntlet III is an action-based dungeon exploration game. Like in the predecessors you empty areas infested by all kinds of enemies while running for the exit. Like this was rather a straight forward thing in the first two games, it's not that easy to finish a level anymore. While you only had to run until you find the exit (and besides killing hordes of enemies you probably find some keys to unlock doors leading to deeper dungeons) you might have to solve a few "quests" to proceed to the next level in this installment. These "quests" are very basic, for example you have to find object A, then bring it to B, advance to C and finally go to D to uncover the exit. While the first two games had a top-down view, Gauntlet 3 has an isometric perspective. The old four characters (warrior, wizard, elf and valkyrie) are ready for action again and this time they get backup by four new characters which include the Lizard, Neptune, Stoneman and the Iceman.

In just a few years, mankind has succeeded in destroying the environment and endangering all living species. Under the guidance of the evil Dr. Machino, robotic machines were built to turn the Earth into a soulless place without live nature. There is only one hero who can save the living beings of the planet - you, a little possum. Fight Dr. Machino's robots and liberate the Earth! This is an action platformer very similar in gameplay style to Sonic games. The possum can jump and run very quickly, as well as spin to hurt the enemies and breeze through the levels. Various robotic creatures will will try to kill you during your journey to Dr. Machino's lair. You can either avoid or try to defeat them on your way.

Steel Talons brought realism-oriented helicopter combat to the arcades, and later to home systems. The action is viewed from behind your helicopter, with the 3D polygon world rotating around you, taking in mountains, rivers and deserts. There are 12 missions in total, each of which requires you to destroy targets in a set time limit. There are also training and head-to-head (against a CPU-controlled drone) modes. You have a limited number of automatically-targeting missiles as well as a cannon. A tracking map tells you where you are on the level, and where the enemies are.Contact with the ground, mountains or other vehicles will damage or destroy your helicopter.

In this platformer the player must help Pinkie to prevent the total extinction of dinossaurs throughout the universe.

The game begins by asking the player(s) to choose a difficulty level, not only making the enemies more difficult and the players weaker, but higher difficulties start the players in a later set of levels (called "galaxies") and with some powerups. The easiest difficulty level starts the player(s) in the first level with no bonuses. The player controls a tank with constantly draining fuel, and must navigate through multiple levels (14 stations in the arcade version) from bottom to top, encountering obstacles and enemies. Along the way, a player may find powerups including tank fuel, stars (currency), shields, and two types of sub-weapons: smart shots (homing missiles) and bombs (powerful rockets). Each level has a key that will open a door at the top of the level, which will either take the player to the next level or to a special hub with multiple powerups that must be escaped in 10 seconds or less. If the player is unable to escape, the tank will lose half its fuel. After escaping the hub, the player(s) then proceeds to the next station. Occasionally, the player(s) will face a boss that must be defeated to advance. Normal shots are ineffective however, and the player must decide/guess the appropriate time to buy sub-weapons to greatly raise the chance of victory. After destroying a boss, the player(s) can continue to the end of the level. Between levels, the player is taken to a shop where items and upgrades to tank speed, power, etc. may be purchased with stars. Any damage caused to the player's tank will decrease the shield level. Purchasing a shield drastically reduces damage down to a mere pixel worth of the fuel gauge per hit. When the fuel depletes, the speed of the tank is reduced to a crawl and a countdown begins from 10. If no fuel is gained before the timer reaches zero, or if the player is shot during the countdown, the tank explodes and a life is lost. The arcade version, in addition to having special two-joystick controls for each player, contained three special contest levels, with one contest star in each. With three contest stars and nine normal stars, the player(s) could compete in a special time-limited contest level in which the player could win a T-shirt. A later version of the game was released which eliminated the contest levels and stars.

Two pirates battle against a variety of enemies while picking up treasures in a quest to find and kill The Evil Wizard.