Category Archives: Company

Video game companies.

Super Pipeline, Commodore 64

In the early 1980s a Bridlington-based company called Taskset made some stand-out Commodore 64 games and Super Pipeline is one of their best.

In fact, only the sequel – Super Pipeline II – is on a par with this entertaining game, at least as far as Taskset output is concerned.

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Psytron, ZX Spectrum

Psytron is an early shoot ’em up released for the ZX Spectrum by Beyond Software, who published it in 1984.

It’s a futuristic “base defence” game in essence, with you playing through six different levels trying to fend off alien invaders on a 10-screen landscape – the “Betula 5 Installation”.

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Head On, Arcade

Head On is an early arcade game, developed by Sega and manufactured by Gremlin Industries (not to be confused with Gremlin Graphics or Gremlin Interactive) in 1979.

It was the first maze game where the goal was to collect the dots, making it something of a precursor to Namco‘s Pac-Man which came a year later in 1980.

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Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong’s Double Trouble, Super Nintendo

The third Donkey Kong Country game was first released in 1996. It was again developed by Rare and published by Nintendo. This one featuring Dixie Kong and her cousin Kiddy Kong.

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Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest, Super Nintendo

Following a year after the original Donkey Kong Country, this 1995 sequel is more of the same platforming action, with pre-rendered graphics, only this time you’re playing as Diddy Kong – and his girlfriend, Dixie Kong – on a mission to rescue Donkey Kong.

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Donkey Kong Country, Super Nintendo

Donkey Kong Country is a famous SNES platform game, created by British developer Rare and published by Nintendo in 1994.

It is famous for a number of reasons. Primarily because it was one of the first mainstream games to use pre-rendered 3D graphics in a 2D setting. And also because it was one of the biggest cartridges Nintendo ever produced, and was a massive-seller.

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Pac-Mania, Arcade

Pac-Mania is the 1987 sequel to the classic Pac-Man, and it is generally very highly-rated by those who’ve played it.

Pac-Man creator Toru Iwatani was involved in Pac-Mania‘s development for Namco, so the game is properly canon, totally authentic, and deviously subtle.

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Tau Ceti, PC

The PC MS-DOS version of Tau Ceti was coded by Derek Baker at Comtec and published by CRL Group (Thunder Mountain in North America) in 1987.

It features gaudy, four-colour, CGA graphics, but is otherwise the Tau Ceti we know and love.

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Tau Ceti, Atari ST

The 1986 Atari ST conversion of Tau Ceti – by Ron De Santi of Comtec – is much faster than the 8-bit versions and therefore more challenging. And what a brilliant challenge it is!

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