Finest Hour

Finest Hour is a run and gun arcade game that was released by Namco in 1989 only in Japan. It runs on Namco System 2 hardware, and was described by the commpany as "one of their all time best" in its attract sequence; however, it was never ported to any home consoles, which means it may not have lived up to this big statement.

The player must take control of a Transformer-like battlemech known as "Sygnus", who is equipped with a laser cannon, Vernier jump-jets, auto-targeting, and an automatic cooling system. Similar to Namco's own Mirai Ninja (which also ran on their System 2 hardware), pushing the joystick twice in the same direction will make Sygnus switch from a march to a dash while he is moving, and you cannot make him change the direction that he is facing in mid-air. However, unlike the aforementioned Mirai Ninja, he has no life meter - but if he overheats, the game will instantly be over.