259. Chuuka Taisen (Disco, Famicom, 1989)

Chuuka Taisen ("China War") is a horizontal scrolling shooter released by Taito in arcades in 1988, followed by ports to a variety of them-contemporary home consoles. As the name implies, Chuuka Taisen is set in China, and borrowing from the always popular Monkey King / Sun Wukong tropes, stars a little monkey king as he flies atop his cloud, blasting some sort of balls at his opponents. While the character sprites are pretty basic, the stages boast nice impressionist looking backgrounds with classic Chinese scenery that are pretty impressive for the Famicom / a total mood. 

Gameplay is pretty standard for shooters of the time: You can upgrade your attacks power by collecting a certain number of powerups, and while your character moves plenty fast, your hitbox is also gigantic, making Chuuka Taisen a pretty challenging game. The combat is manageable when you are only getting one enemy wave at a time, but it quickly becomes a bullet heck when more opponents show up.

Occasionally, you will fight a stronger opponent who instead of being a dumpling or bird-human hybrid looks like some kind of thunder god. When vanquished, these gods leave behind a doorway that you can fly into to enter a shop, where you can choose between one of 4 special weapons, though some are much more useful than others. I played through Chuuka Taisen until I finished the first level, whose boss I think was a Phoenix, but looked more like a huge chocobo (though this game predates the chocobo, as far as I can tell).

3/5, an average scrolling shooter with some Chinese flavor