Yars’ Revenge, Atari 2600

Written by Howard Scott Warshaw and published by Atari, Inc. in 1982, Yars’ Revenge is one of those old video games that plays a lot better than it looks, and is much more subtle that you might think upon first inspection.

In fact, it took me decades to actually ‘click’ with the game and finally be bothered to learn how to play it properly.

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Sonic Advance 3, Game Boy Advance

The third and final Sonic Advance game – Sonic Advance 3 – was published by Sega on the Game Boy Advance in 2004. It was again developed by a third-party developer, Dimps.

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Sonic Advance 2, Game Boy Advance

Sonic Advance 2 was again developed by Dimps for Sega, who published it exclusively for the Game Boy Advance in 2002.

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Sonic Advance, Game Boy Advance

Sonic Advance was the first Sonic game to appear on a Nintendo platform, and it was developed by Dimps and first published by Sega in 2001.

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Colony 7, Arcade

Taito‘s American division developed this vertical screen base defence game in 1981. Colony 7 owes quite a bit to Missile Command, if the truth be known, and was also probably the very first video game to feature “rip-off” micro-transactions too…

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Archer Maclean’s Pool, Atari ST

Following on from Jimmy White’s Whirlwind Snooker, Archer Maclean’s Pool was published in 1992 by Virgin Games. It was of course designed and programmed by Archer MacLean.

And, because pool is much more simple to play than snooker, and because this game uses the same engine as the previous game, Pool is arguably more immediately playable and more fun overall than its predecessor.

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Jimmy White’s Whirlwind Snooker, Amiga

Programmed and designed by Archer MacLean and published by Virgin Games in 1991, Jimmy White’s Whirlwind Snooker was one of the first ever billiards simulations to use 3D graphics to represent the table, and it worked very well.

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River Raid, Atari 2600

Written by Carol Shaw for Activision and published initially for the Atari 2600 in 1982, River Raid is an early vertically-scrolling shoot ’em up with simple graphics, challenging gameplay, and its own unique set of rules.

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Pokémon Ruby Version, Game Boy Advance

Pokémon Ruby Version – released the same time as Pokémon Sapphire Version – was developed by Game Freak and published by Nintendo in 2002 in Japan and 2003 everywhere else. It is known as a ‘third generation’ Pokémon game.

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Dragon Skulle, Commodore 64

Dragon Skulle is the fourth and final game in the Sir Arthur Pendragon series, from legendary publisher Ultimate Play The Game. It was first released in 1985 and actually received lukewarm reviews in much of the press at the time.

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