Although the Commodore 64 was not thought to be particularly well-suited to these types of isometric platform games, Head Over Heels bucks the trend by being arguably just as good – if not better – than the Spectrum original.
Thanks to the sterling efforts of programmer Colin Porch.
It might be considered primitive by today’s standards, but back in 1984 when Pitstop II was first released, it really raised the bar for arcade-style racing games. That is: racing games that are fun to play, rather than being as realistic as possible.
Lucasfilm Games released Ballblazer upon unsuspecting audiences back in March 1984 (actually, on Atari 8-bit systems first).
The game is a futuristic one-on-one sports game, with two players battling it out, from inside the confines of a small, floating vehicle, called a Rotofoil.
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.
David Lubar‘s relatively obscure 1984 classic, Pastfinder, is a weird vertically-scrolling shooter in which you control a spider-like craft that can crawl, shoot and jump, and you must explore a radioactive landscape picking up artefacts from a mysterious planet.
Novagen‘s classic 3D exploration game, Mercenary, was first released for the Commodore 64 in 1985. It was designed and coded by Paul Woakes.
Jeff Minter‘s classic Iridis Alpha is a weird horizontal shoot ’em up first released in 1986 through Llamasoft and Hewson Consultants.
Dennis Caswell‘s brilliant 1984 platform game, Impossible Mission, has lost little of its appeal over the decades. There is something so gloriously timeless about it, and the challenge it presents is difficult, but do-able.
LucasFilm Games‘ classic space shooter, Rescue On Fractalus, was first released on Atari 8-bit computers in March 1984, and this Commodore 64 version came a year later, in 1985.
Although it doesn’t look like much, Spore is in fact a high-tension, high-speed, single screen Gauntlet variant, with lots of shooting, shooting, shooting!
The King of Grabs 