Fortified Zone, known in Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

 as is a video game developed and published by Jaleco

Jaleco

is a Japanese video game publisher and developer established in 2006.The original Jaleco Ltd was founded in 1974. In 2006, it decided to become a pure holding company by renaming itself Jaleco Holding and splitting its video game operations into a newly created subsdiary that took its former name...

 for the Game Boy

Game Boy

The , is an 8-bit handheld video game device developed and manufactured by Nintendo. It was released in Japan on , in North America in , and in Europe on...

. It was first released in Japan on February 26, 1991 and later released in North America

North America

North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

 in September of 1991. It was later added to the 3DS Virtual Console

Virtual console

A virtual console – also known as a virtual terminal – is a conceptual combination of the keyboard and display for a computer user interface. It is a feature of some operating systems such as UnixWare, Linux, and BSD, in which the system console of the computer can be used to switch between...

 on July 7, 2011, but the Australia region had it added on July 28, 2011.

Story

Fortified Zone's plot follows two Mercenaries named Masato Kanzaki and Mizuki Makimura as they infiltrate a literal fortified zone, where they must take on mercenaries, soldiers, robots and monsters before destroying the central complex at the fortified zone's heart.

Gameplay

Fortified Zone was ahead of its time in allowing the player to switch between characters during game play. Each character has their own strengths and weaknesses: Masato (the male mercenary) uses all the special weapons, but cannot jump. Mizuki (the female mercenary) can jump, but cannot use the special weapons. A top-down shoot-'em-up, the game had four multi-room levels, titled 'Field', 'Jungle', 'Caves' and 'Complex'. At the end of each level the player faces a 'boss' character: a cannon installation, a supertank, a dragon, a bulldozer and a large assault vehicle as the final boss. Items that can be picked up in gameplay include medical packs, flamethrowers, hand grenades, rocket launchers, 3-way machine guns and chain guns.

Sequels

The game was the first entry in the Ikari no Yōsai series, and was followed by two sequels: Ikari no Yōsai 2 for the Gameboy (which was released only in Japan), and Ikari no Yōsai for the Super Famicom (released outside Japan as Operation Logic Bomb

Operation Logic Bomb

Operation Logic Bomb, known in Japan as is a overhead action video game developed and published by Jaleco for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. It was first released in Japan on April 23, 1993, and later in North America in September of 1993. It is the second sequel to the Game Boy game...

for the Super NES).

External links

• Ikari no Yōsai and Ikari no Yōsai 2 at Jaleco