Category Archives: Company

Video game companies.

Top Spin, XBox

PAM Development‘s 2003 release, Top Spin, was the moment when tennis games came of age and went full 3D.

From Match Point on the ZX Spectrum, via Super Tennis on the Super Nintendo, to this… Arguably the pinnacle of all modern tennis games.

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Super Mario World, Super Nintendo

Mario games may be looked down upon by some gamers as “for kids”, but this game proves otherwise.

Super Mario World (1990) may look and sound like a kid’s game on the surface, but – underneath the hood – the gameplay is for pros…

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Daikatana, Game Boy Color

Not the infamous Ion Storm first-person failure (also known as John Romero’s Daikatana), but a Japanese, Zelda-style implementation of the Daikatana franchise on the Game Boy Color, first released in 2000.

And it is surprisingly good too!

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The Sacred Armour of Antiriad, Commodore 64

Released by Palace Software in 1986, The Sacred Armour of Antiriad (known as “Rad Warrior” in North America), is an action platform game featuring a half naked hero, called Tal, who must find a set of armour (called “Antiriad”), wear it, and go off on an adventure looking for trouble.

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Super Mario Sunshine, GameCube

Games-players will always argue among themselves about which is the greatest “retro” Mario game of all time.

For me it is a toss-up between Super Mario Sunshine (2002) and Super Mario World (1990) on the SNES.

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Tranz Am, ZX Spectrum

Set in a post-apocalypse USA (in the year 3472, no less), Tranz Am is an overhead racing game where the aim is to collect eight cups (The Great Cups of Ultimate), which have been randomly dispersed around the continent.

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Pssst, ZX Spectrum

Featuring a cute robot (called Robbie) whose job it is to keep the insects away from the plants.

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Cookie, ZX Spectrum

Another of Ultimate‘s early ZX Spectrum classics, Cookie – from 1983 – is a simple arcade-style action game where you are a little chef sprite shooting bags of flour at ingredients to knock them into a mixing bowl.

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The Sentinel, Amiga

Geoff Crammond‘s The Sentinel (aka The Sentry in North America) is a strange chess-like game where you have to sneak up on an overseeing watcher, who is perched high on a platform, overlooking the play area, and absorb him before he does the same to you.

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Sensible Golf, PC

Relatively obscure follow-up to Sensible Soccer and Cannon Fodder.

Sensible Golf was first released in 1994 for the PC and Amiga, and didn’t really make much of an impact on the market, although it’s not a bad game at all.

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