Arkanoid: Revenge of Doh, Arcade

Arkanoid: Revenge of Doh (aka Arkanoid 2) is the sequel to Taito‘s hit game Arkanoid and was released into arcades in 1987.

It takes the ‘bat and ball’ genre (aka the ‘Breakout‘ genre) to previously unheard of levels of both playability and difficulty, and it also managed to influence a lot of other games in the process.

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Arkanoid, Arcade

Taito‘s Arkanoid was released into arcades in 1986 and did for bat and ball games (often referred to as Breakout clones) what Mario did for platform games. That is: revitalise them with new ideas and features.

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H.A.T.E., ZX Spectrum

Costa Panayi‘s final game on the ZX Spectrum was published by Gremlin Graphics in 1989. It is an isometric shoot ’em up in the mould of Zaxxon, and it is technically very impressive.

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Alien Highway, ZX Spectrum

The direct sequel to Highway Encounter, Alien Highway is an isometric, third-person shoot ’em up with you taking control of a robot trying to push a bomb up a road, in order to destroy an invading alien base.

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Highway Encounter, ZX Spectrum

Highway Encounter is another classic ZX Spectrum game created by the talented and prolific Costa Panayi of Vortex Software. It was first published in 1985.

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Tornado Low Level, ZX Spectrum

Tornado Low Level (aka TLL) was written by Costa Panayi and published for the Spectrum by Vortex Software in 1984.

It is a classic action flight game whereby you control a ‘swing-wing’ Tornado jet and must ‘hug’ the terrain in order to wipe out enemy targets.

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Total Eclipse, Amiga

The third Freescape game, Total Eclipse, was released on 8-bit home computers first (ZX Spectrum, C64 and Amstrad CPC), and later appeared on 16-bit machines, including this excellent Amiga conversion, published by Domark in 1989.

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Valhalla, ZX Spectrum

Valhalla was a game that was heavily marketed as an “epic” adventure with limitless possibilities back in 1983 when it was first released. It was portrayed by its publisher, Legend, as something of a ‘killer app’ on the Spectrum, and they even tagged it with a “MoviSoft” logo to make it seem “cinematic” – MoviSoft was the name of the game’s engine.

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