Funky Jet

When you boil it down, I suppose Funky Jet isn’t much more than a fun 30 minute jaunt with some lively visuals, but it achieves that humble goal with such aplomb that I can’t help but think it deserves much more credit than it gets. The formula it strives to improve upon is a tricky one to touch since it’s the kind of thing that was practically perfected from the jump, but Mitchel Corporation really found a way to make it their own. It’s kind of genius how they took two genres with such straightforward fundamentals and figured out that they’d work together so well.

Gate of Doom

I know I’m playing armchair game designer here, but I really feel like Gate of Doom would become something great with just a handful of changes. Increase the default movement speed, rebalance some enemy damage output (or just give players full health when respawning), make magic usable in boss fights, and make the power-up items permanent and you’d have a much more reasonable game that actually feels like a proper blend of action and RPG elements. As it is now, Gate of Doom wears the skin of a D&D campaign and does so very well, but when you actually get your hands on it, it just feels like a less polished and poorly balanced take on contemporaries like Gauntlet, Cadash, and The King of Dragons that were all doing the same thing more effectively, to say nothing of the excellence that the Capcom D&D games would achieve just a few years later.