Shopping for Japanese import games was a little more challenging in the '90s. We didn't have the internet then, so all you had to base your purchasing decision on was the game's cover and, if you were really lucky, a small review in a recent issue of your favourite video game magazine.
I've lost count of the number of times, as a kid, I bought a game based solely on whether or not I 'connected' with its cover artwork and the tiny selection of screenshots on the back, and, more often than not, my intuition proved to be correct. One shining example of this is Wolf Team's FZ Senki Axis, also known as Final Zone. I can still recall plucking it out of the bargain bin in my local video game store and marvelling at the cool anime-style cover.
FZ Senki Axis is part of a series which began life in 1986 with Final Zone Wolf on Japanese home computers and would continue on PC Engine CD with Final Zone II (released early in 1990; FZ Senki Axis would arrive later in the year). While Wolf Team created the series, the second game was developed by Telenet's internal 'Renovation Game' studio. Nonetheless, FZ Senki Axis shares a connection with the earlier title and has the same lead character.
The cover of this Mega Drive / Genesis title is pretty captivating, but the discovery that it came with a set of glossy postcards blew my pre-teen mind back in 1991. However, it was the core premise—you control a hulking mecha as it stomps around an isometric landscape, destroying enemies—that really hooked me. My obsession with massive Japanese robots was still in its infancy back then, and this was one of its formative video game building blocks.
The reason I'm regaling you with this is that Final Zone is now available digitally on Nintendo Switch, PS4 and Xbox, thanks to the efforts of Ratalaika Games. Now, I'm not going to stand here and claim this is some kind of forgotten classic or that you simply have to rush out and download it immediately—the controls take some getting used to, for starters, and some of the enemy sprites jerk around the map quite erratically, which can make them difficult to kill.
It's not a perfect game by any means, but it's one that I've got a real affinity for, even after all of these years. Oh, and the soundtrack—composed by Motoi Sakuraba (Star Ocean, Mario Golf, Mario Tennis, Golden Sun, Dark Souls and Shining The Holy Ark) and Masaaki Uno is wonderful.
Final Zone is being sold at a pretty low price point, so if you have a few spare coins sitting in your eShop, PSN or Xbox account, you could certainly do worse.