Sega Mega Drive shoot-'em-up Steel Empire launches on PC next week

Side-scrolling steampunk shooter Steel Empire is coming to PC next week, more than 25 years after it first appeared on the Sega Mega Drive.

The PC version will launch on Steam on Thursday, and it'll be based on the 2014 3DS port. Publisher Teyon says it'll have "improved graphics and controls" along with full controller and Steam achievement support. It doesn't give any more specifics on the visual changes, or what resolutions it'll run at.

It's made up of seven stages, all of which have boss fights, and as you progress you'll level up and pick power-ups, including additional lives and bombs. You can choose to play each stage as either a small, fast plane or a slower, sturdier zeppelin.

Clearly it'll appeal to players nostalgic for the original, but the action looks fast and the levels varied enough to potentially pull in fans of the genre who have never played it, too.

No word on the price yet, but keep an eye on the Steam page.

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.