Granada

About Granada

Granada (1990) is Wolf Team's free-roaming tank shooter, inspired by Namco's Grobda and Assault, in which mercenary Leon Todo pilots a Maneuver Cepter through a war over rare metals in a futuristic Africa.

Granada in Depth

In a futuristic Africa in 2016, a war over mining rights to rare metals has escalated quickly thanks to new weapons called Maneuver Cepters. Mercenary Leon Todo pilots the titular Maneuver Cepter tank to end the conflict once and for all. A multidirectional shooter similar to Thunder Force, it mixes action and shooting with mission-based exploration across eight themed stages, using a main two-button layout, with four difficulty levels that each add different conditions depending on the version.

Unlike most shooters, each level is a large field full of enemies, obstacles and enemy generators that can be roamed freely. The goal is to destroy every main target, marked as red dots on the HUD in the bottom right corner, and finally a boss, before the timer runs out, collecting items scattered around the stage along the way. It took two years to develop and was the first Wolf Team project to emphasise play over plot. It became briefly popular among X68000 owners and was nominated for Oh!X magazine's Game of the Year, losing to titles such as Dungeon Master, and the Genesis version was praised for its presentation, graphics, sound, controls, play and replay value.

Making Granada

Wolf Team developed and published it exclusively for the X68000 in Japan in 1990, influenced by arcade games such as Namco's Grobda and Assault. A Sega Genesis port followed the same year, published by Wolf Team in Japan and Renovation Products in North America, and retrospective reviews of the Genesis version have been equally positive.