Time Pilot (1982)

 One of the great things about Time Pilot is the sense of power your ship has. You're planted at the center of the screen and can turn in every direction, spraying bullets almost as fast as you can hit the button, unlike a lot of shooters from the period that would limit you to one to three shots at a time before you had to wait for the shots to either make contact with an enemy or leave the screen. So you just have this great sense of being able to tear through entire air forces like it's nothing, although the game of course gets more challenging as you go farther into the future and enemies become more advanced, more maneuverable and sending more homing missiles at you.

It's also a very nice-looking and sounding game. Colorful without being garish, flying behind parallax-scrolling clouds in the sky, clearly drawn enemies, and punchy impacts. 

Pippols (1985)

 

Pippols is a vertical shoot-em-up in which you control a guy trying to retrieve a holy ("holly") gem located at the end of a...I suppose you could call it a hedge maze of some sort. As you scroll up, enemies charge you from above and below, and you can only change your lane by hopping through gaps in the vegetation, but many of your enemies can hop over when they want. So a major part of the challenge is to know when to change to a different row so that you're not caught by an enemy while in mid-hop, especially since your character is relatively tall and an easier target to hit. You also need to be careful of dead-ends in the maze.

There are branching stages that you choose after completing one stage, and when you get the gem at the end, you have to go backwards (i.e., it becomes a downward scrolling game) through all the stages again. There are some power-ups you can find, such as shoes that let you jump over the plants

Konami was in its peak years when making this one. They used some tricks to get around the MSX's jagged scrolling problems, the graphics are clear and have a storybook charm, the music is great, and the game is easy to just jump right into but deceptively challenging.