Growing up my best friend had the game Sidearms for TurboGrafx16 (PCE). I loved it. I like the action, it looked good (obviously), and the music was great. I like the side scrolling and being able to shoot left or right instead of just going one direction. After playing that I quested for games on the NES that provided similar game play.
The only one that I found at the time was Section Z, a seemingly little known title from Capcom. It's premiss was much like that of Sidearms, lone spaceman cruising the galaxy to defeat evil robots and organisms. Section Z wasn't a full-featured as Sidearms, it's levels were all very similar and didn't offer much up/down layout, but I like the game and played it forever. It's a pretty tough game.
What made it even tougher was the level layout. In order to get between sections of the space station you were in, you had to defeat warp generators. And each warp machine took you to a different room. It was all very confusing and you could very easily get stuck going in circles if you didn't map it - or if you didn't have a map. Thankfully, I did have a map.
I don't remember if the map came with the game or if I managed to find the map someplace else, at a store or swap meet or something. Nonetheless, the map was a huge help. I found some
lost Nintendo artifacts when cleaning the house and included in that was the Section Z map. So for those that long to recapture the uh...magic...of Section Z with half the frustration, here you go:
Download lower res Section Z mapDownload higher res Section Z mapThere may be "better" maps out there for this game. Though I can't prove it, I have to believe this is an official Capcom map of the game. I can't imagine any other reason why it would be made so hard to read.
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