The sequel to Miner 2049er, Bounty Bob Strikes Back, again features the jumping cowboy trying to walk on every piece of platform surface, although this game is much more subtle and challenging than the first one.
Category Archives: US Gold
Miner 2049er, Atari 8-bit
The original Miner 2049er fitted into just 16K of RAM, so would run on an Atari 400 (as well as any other Atari 8-bit home computer). It is a very early platform game, written by Bill Hogue in 1982, and featuring the character ‘Bounty Bob’.
Dark Forces, PC
Dark Forces is LucasArts‘ attempt at Doom, with a Star Wars make-over. It was first released in 1995 for MS-DOS PCs.
Looking at it now: it hasn’t aged too well, although it’s still fun to play if you get the controls set up correctly.
X-Wing, PC
Still considered to be one of the best Star Wars games of all time, X-Wing is a serious, high-tech, fantasy combat sim – in space obviously – with all the different ships from the famous films in there somewhere, modelled in low-res 3D.
Maniac Mansion, Atari ST
The Atari ST does have an excellent conversion of the classic Commodore 64 LucasArts point-and-click adventure, Maniac Mansion on its books.
Strider II, Megadrive/Genesis
Strider II is a console-only sequel to the great Capcom arcade game of 1989. It was developed by British company Tiertex and published by U.S. Gold in 1990. A Sega Megadrive version followed later in 1992.
Al-Qadim: The Genie’s Curse, PC
I remember playing and reviewing this PC MS-DOS game when it first came out in 1994.
Al-Qadim: The Genie’s Curse is a more ‘action-oriented’ TSR role-playing game, compared to many of the other ‘Gold Box’ TSR RPGs of the time (and there were lots – courtesy of SSI and US Gold). ‘RPG Lite’ you could call it.
Beach Head II, Commodore 64
Soooo much better than the first Beach Head… Beach Head II is a balls-to-the-wall, digitised speech-laden action game that sees “The Allies” versus “The Dictator”. The game was developed by Access Software and first published in 1985.
Dropzone, Commodore 64
Archer MacLean‘s seminal Commodore 64 shooter, Dropzone is like a cross between Defender and, erm, Defender, but with more realistic graphics. And slightly different gameplay. But the principles are pretty much the same: super-fast, super-smooth, side-scrolling shooting. Avoid touching anything – or it’s instant death.
Bruce Lee, Commodore 64
Ron J. Fortier and Kelly Day‘s brilliant Bruce Lee shows that you can squeeze real character into tiny pixels if you try hard enough, what with it’s dozy sumo (The Green Yamo) and daft ninja chasing you down relentlessly, like idiots on the run. And punching and kicking them is not only hilarious, but also essential, if you are to keep them off your back.
The King of Grabs 