Originating on the Amstrad CPC, Spindizzy is a genius piece of coding and game design. It is an isometric exploration game, where you play as a spinning gyroscope (called GERALD) trying to collect gems across a large map of screens. It was designed by Paul Shirley, and the Spectrum port was handled by Phil Churchyard. Spindizzy on the Spectrum was published by Electric Dreams in 1986.
Wee Ninja is a homebrew scrolling platform game for Atari 8-bit home computers (with 32K of RAM). It was written by Paul Lay and first released by Playsoft in June 2025, to rapturous applause.
My jaw nearly hit the floor when I first saw Venom Wing on the Amiga. It’s a late release from legendary software house Thalamus, coming out in 1990, and it’s a real stinker…
Developed by The Code Monkeys and published by Accolade in 1991, Turrican on the Game Boy is a decent scrolling run-and-gun shooter.
The PC Engine/Turbografx-16 version of Capcom‘s classic arcade game, Strider, was programmed by Capcom themselves, and first published by NEC Avenue in 1994.
Developed by BlueSky Software and Zono, The Amazing Spider-Man: Web of Fire is a Marvel-licensed platform/action game featuring the infamous web-slinger. It was released exclusively for the Sega 32X in 1996.
Continue reading The Amazing Spider-Man: Web of Fire, Sega 32X
Written by Jason J. Railton and first released in 2026, Go-Go BunnyGun is a side-scrolling shooter on the ZX Spectrum that features a bunny girl on a rocket, flying through space. With smooth, colourful graphics and compelling gameplay, Go-Go BunnyGun is another great “Modern Retro” release.
What I love about Jeff Minter‘s Gridrunner Plus Plus is that it combines the simplicity of the arcade hits of old, with modern, trippy visuals. And a good dose of humour.
Anteform is a tiny, futuristic RPG, written for the PICO-8 development platform, and was first released in 2019. It uses the same game engine as Minima and was written by the same guy, Feneric (aka Eric W. Brown). It’ll run on Windows, Mac, Linux and Raspberry Pi.
Written for the PICO-8 development platform and first released in 2018, Minima is a miniature version of the early Ultima games and runs on Windows, Mac, Linux and Raspberry Pi. It’s a tiny RPG with exploration, a scrolling overworld, first-person dungeon crawling, turn-based combat and movement, and NPCs to talk to.
