[10] Set in the 29th century, an evil god known as Bios has destroyed most of the Earth, turning it into a desolate wasteland known as the Dust World.

The controls in the original coin-op version consist of an eight-way joystick for moving the character in the air while flying and a unique rotatable button known as the "roll switch".

Pressing the switch rapidly will cause the character to perform a "megacrush" attack which will destroy all on-screen enemies, but at the expense of a portion of their vitality gauge.

These items consist primarily of new weapons for the satellite module, but also include a health kit to restore lost vitality, armor that allows the player to sustain additional damage, and even tips on how to defeat the boss awaiting at the end of the current stage.

Versions were produced for the Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, and IBM-compatible PC.

Every graphical frame was digitised directly from the arcade version's screen using a DigiView Gold device and stored the data on an Amiga 500 computer.

The God of War was hand sketched, redrawn on the computer and colored with Deluxe Paint, although the mirroring function saved time.

The player rotated the character in these versions by holding the fire button while pushing the joystick left or right.

The TG16 CD port is one-player only, but allows the player to select between either of the two unknown soldiers at the start of the game (with their respective abilities from the arcade version retained).

[21] In Japan, Game Machine listed Forgotten Worlds on their September 1, 1988 issue as being the second most-successful table arcade unit of the month, outperforming titles like Sky Soldiers and Ninja Spirit.

[42] In the United Kingdom, U.S. Gold predicted the home computer port could outsell their previous best-selling Capcom release Bionic Commando, which had sold 70,000 copies in the UK as of early 1989.

[30] Critics compared the arcade game favorably to earlier shooters including Capcom's Side Arms (1986), Konami's Nemesis (Gradius) and Sega's Space Harrier.