Jeff Minter‘s affinity for Atari 8-bit computers meant that it was inevitable that the machine would get a version of his game, Gridrunner. Which it did in 1983.

Atari 8-bit Gridrunner is playable, but doesn’t really make use of the Atari‘s colour capabilities, with backgrounds and spites that shimmer, but basically all stay the same colour, wave after wave (blue and brown, nice). Which is disappointing coming from Jeff. That said: the game plays great and is an intense blaster from the early days of home video gaming, so shouldn’t be written off by its underwhelming looks.

There are 31 ‘grid areas’ to play, choosable from the title screen, and the later ones are extremely challenging.

Overall, Gridrunner on the Atari 8-bit machines is a decent, straightforward shoot ’em up with a few minor bells and whistles.

More: Gridrunner on Wikipedia
More: Gridrunner on llamasoftarchive.org