Cotton Reboot!

Cotton: Fantastic Night Dreams is a scrolling shooter game reminiscent of Parodius where players assume the role of a young witch named Cotton who, alongside her fairy companion Silk, travels various increasingly difficult levels through a fantasy dream-like world on a quest to defeat several monsters and get her Willow candy.

Players must blast various monsters and avoid being shot while collecting crystal power-ups to enhance Cotton's firepower and unleash powerful magic spells on enemies, in addition of bombs capable of obliterating enemies. The game incorporates some role playing game elements, as players are able to level up their attack up to 13 levels. The player has lives represented by an arrow and three lives, though only one hit is allowed per life and the game is over once all lives are lost, unless more credits are inserted into the arcade machine to continue playing.

The world of Filament has been enveloped in an evil mist, causing eternal night. This unnatural darkness threatens the land and its inhabitants. A Fairy named Silk asks Cotton to defeat the monsters spreading darkness. Cotton initially refuses until Silk mentions Willow candy, which Cotton will do anything to obtain. This sets Cotton off on her broomstick, blasting through waves of enemies to save the world and acquire her reward

Cotton: Fantastic Night Dreams was produced by Success founder Takato Yoshinari. Masaru Hatsuyama and Toshiyuki Kuwabara acted as co-programmers. Hideki Tamura, known for being an anime animator, served as character designer. Tamura was also responsible for the pixel art as co-graphic designer along with artist Shinobu Itō, prior to her role on the unreleased party game QP for Neo Geo, and Tatsuo Kashima.

The music was composed by Kenichi Hirata, while Cotton was voiced by radio actress Takae Yoriguchi. Tamura remarked that he quit the anime industry prior to working on the project, being his first job in a video game development position, and as such, was memorable to him in how it taught him how game development worked. Tamura recalled that the game went under the working title Kurumi-zaka Diary: Katsugeki-Hen early in development, but forced the team to change the name to Cotton and change the story to one that made little sense later on. It made use of hand-drawn animations, which was uncommon for an arcade game at the time.

Cotton garnered positive reception from seven reviewers of Gamest during its 1991 AOU Show appearance. In Japan, Game Machine listed it as the ninth most popular arcade game of May 1991. In the July 1991 issue of Japanese publication Micom BASIC Magazine, the game was ranked at number sixteen in terms of popularity. Gamest also gave it several awards for the 5th Gamest Grand Prize. Cotton won 4th place in the Best Shooting Award, 4th place in the Best Direction Award, 4th place in the Best VGM Award, and the character of Cotton won 2nd place in Character Awards for best character.

The TurboGrafx-CD port received positive reception from critics. 82 out of 30 score, ranking at the number 101 spot in a poll, indicating a popular following. French magazine Consoles + praised its arcade-accurate graphics, animations, hard rock soundtrack, playability and replay value but criticized the presentation. Electric Brain compared the game with Parodius while noting its difficulty level, regarding it to be an above average shoot 'em up.

Cotton: Fantastic Night Dreams spawned several sequels and follow-ups. Retro Gamer regarded Cotton to be one of the key games in the "cute 'em up" sub-genre alongside Parodius, Fantasy Zone, TwinBee and Harmful Park. In a 2018 interview with 4Gamer.net, designer Yoshiyasu Matsushita stated that Cotton was an influence during the development of Twinkle Star Sprites.