Archer MacLean‘s Dropzone was initially released on the Atari 8-bit machines in 1984, before it later appeared on the Commodore 64 and became a smash hit.
Category Archives: US Gold
Fort Apocalypse, Atari 8-bit
Steve Hales‘ superb Fort Apocalypse is a classic American video game that originated on Atari 8-bit home computers in 1982.
The game is a multi-directional, scrolling shooter where you control a helicopter flying around a series of underground caverns looking for men to rescue.
Bounty Bob Strikes Back, Atari 8-bit
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.
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.
The King of Grabs 