This 1986 release from Anirog is seen as something of a ‘killer app’ on the Commodore 16, although personally I think it’s over-rated.
Tom Thumb is a smooth-scrolling platform game with a strange jump mechanic: Tom can only jump when the run button is pressed, and when he does it’s very slowly. Thankfully you can change his direction in mid air. Not that that makes a great deal of difference, because Tom Thumb is an extremely difficult game to make progress in.
The Commodore 16 is a somewhat underrated home computer that had a relatively short lifespan and was intended as a low-cost replacement for the Commodore VIC-20.
It had 16K of RAM (thus the name) and a 6502 compatible CPU that ran twice as fast as the CPU in its older and more expensive cousin, the Commodore 64. It had a video and sound chipset called “TED” that offered a colour palette of 121 colours, and more efficient use of video memory than the C64, but it had no hardware sprites (it did however have a built-in software sprite routine with fewer restrictions than on hardware sprites).
Pikmin was released for the Nintendo GameCube in 2001 and was an instant hit with gamers.
Designed and produced by Shigeru Miyamoto, the first game in the Pikmin series introduces Captain Oilmar, an alien who crash lands on a mysterious planet and where he befriends small creatures called Pikmin who help him rebuild his ship.
As 2019 draws to a close we wish you a happy new year, 2020!
Best Wishes,
The King of Grabs
Konami‘s 1992 conversion of the smash arcade hit Track & Field features more events than the original. In fact, it’s something of a mashup of Track & Field and its famous follow-up Hyper Sports.
Trailblazer is a well-regarded, ball-based racing game written and designed by the prolific Shaun Southern of Mr. Chip Software and published by Gremlin Graphics in 1986.
Trailblazer did apparently originate on the Commodore 16 and was expanded to take advantage of the Commodore 64‘s extra memory, and the result is a suped-up version of the original game.
Less successful than its sequel (and arguably less enjoyable too), Kikstart was written by Shaun Southern and published by Mastertonic in 1985.
An officially-licensed adaptation of the classic 1966 science fiction film, written by John R. Edmonds and published by Quicksilva in 1984.
Hudson Soft converted and published Stop The Express (aka Bousou Tokkyuu SOS) itself in Japan in 1984.
Converted from the ZX Spectrum original by Hudson Soft and published on the C64 by Commodore itself, Stop The Express is both an excellent conversion, and a great little game in its own right.
The King of Grabs 