The Latin American publisher QUByte Interactive has announced that it will be bringing two of Arcade Zone's Super Nintendo beat-em-ups Iron Commando and Legend to modern consoles later this week, as part of its "QUByte Classics" line-up. So, if you fancy taking a look at a couple of more obscure 16-bit beat-em-ups, this might be something that will pique your interest.
To give you some background on the original developer Arcade Zone, it was a French/UK company, founded by ex-Titus employees Lyes Belaidouni and Carlo Perconti in 1993. Over the next couple of years, it would go on to develop three different games for the Super Nintendo before shutting its doors, with the third (not included here) being the run-and-gun platformer Nightmare Busters (which wasn't officially released at the time, but nearly two decades later in 2013).
Out of the two games included in this upcoming collection, Legend was the first title that Arcade Zone released for the console, coming out for the Super Nintendo in North America and Europe in 1994.
It was a side-scrolling, cooperative, beat-em-up similar to Golden Axe and focused on two muscle-bound warriors who must defeat the corrupt son of the king of Sellech. Reviews of the original game were pretty mixed at the time of release, with the most flattering assessment of the title coming courtesy of the French magazine Console + (who awarded it 90%), while the panel of reviewers over at EGM only gave it a 6.8 on average.
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Iron Commando, meanwhile, was released the following year exclusively in Japan (after Sony cancelled plans to distribute the game in Europe to focus on PlayStation) and instead followed a soldier and a martial arts master, on a quest to stop an organization named G.H.O.S.T from getting its hands on a radioactive meteor.
Like Legend, it also featured cooperative play, letting you and a friend team up to take on the various enemies (including thugs, gunmen, and spear-wielding knights) standing in your way.
This new release will bring the two games to modern consoles, with a range of screen and filter options. You will be able to purchase the collection for Nintendo Switch, PS4/5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on June 15th. Both games are already available on PC (via Steam and GOG).