1990 Taito
Platform: Arcade, Taito WOWOW
What has always been fascinating is how Parasol Stars never seemingly saw a proper release in arcades, and was only released on consoles and home computer platforms (the story of the C64 edition is of course already well known).
According to contributor Daniel, the developers of the PC Engine version were contacted (source: https://unmamed.mameworld.info/non_taito.html#ParasolStars) and asked if the game was converted from an arcade machine that was never released. They confirmed that it was developed from scratch specifically for the console.
However, it was revealed that the game was location tested as an arcade cabinet in one or more sites in Japan. It was essentially a PC-Engine inside an arcade cabinet.
Reports at unmamed.mameworld suggest that around the time of the US launch of the PC-Engine/Turbografx system, there was a local arcade that had Victory Run and Galaga ’90 in a cabinet advertising the Turbografx-16 system – suggesting this could have been the plan for Parasol Stars’ release. Continue reading