Gridrunner came out on the Commodore 64 in 1983, making it a fairly early shooter for the system. Gameplay is basically the same as the VIC-20 original, but with slightly better graphics and a few more clock cycles to play with.
Tag Archives: 1983
Matrix: Gridrunner 2, VIC-20
Matrix: Gridrunner 2 was confusingly re-titled as “Attack of the Mutant Camels” on the VIC-20 in North America. The suits in charge of this re-naming fiasco insisted that the title from one of Llamasoft‘s older games be used, instead of “Matrix“.
Well: f*ck them, I’m calling it “Matrix: Gridrunner 2” in light of a lack of some common sense here…
Attack of the Mutant Camels, Atari 8-bit
The Atari 8-bit version of Attack of the Mutant Camels came out simultaneously with the Commodore 64 version, in 1983, and is pretty much the same game, but with a few graphical tweaks.
Attack of the Mutant Camels, Commodore 64
Attack of the Mutant Camels is Jeff Minter‘s 1983 tribute to the then popular The Empire Strikes Back on the Atari 2600.
Abductor, VIC-20
Abductor is an early shoot ’em up from Jeff Minter and Llamasoft; releasing exclusively for the VIC-20 in 1983. The game is a sort of a cross between Galaxian and Defender, except that the aliens swoop down to try to take six arbitrary ‘men’ that you’re protecting. The unfortunate thing is that this idea doesn’t work that well in practise…
Beach Head, Atari 8-bit
The Atari 8-bit version of Bruce Carver‘s classic Beach Head came out simultaneously with the Commodore 64 version, so both are considered “the originals”, although this version was co-coded by Kevin Homer so technically could be considered a conversion.
Thrusta, ZX Spectrum
Thrusta is an early 16K ZX Spectrum game written by Patrick Richmond and published in 1983 by Software Projects.
Beach Head, Commodore 64
Beach Head is an infamous war-based action game created by Access Software and first published for the Commodore 64 and Atari 8-bit computers in North America 1983. It was later released by US Gold in Europe in 1984.
The game is set in the Pacific theatre of the Second World War and features five individual stages of combat, each based on a fictitious amphibious assault of an enemy island. You can play Beach Head at four difficulty settings.
Fortress, BBC Micro
Fortress on the BBC Micro is a bland and overly-difficult Zaxxon clone written by Matthew Newman and first published by Pace in 1983.
Jumpman Junior, Atari 8-bit
Jumpman Junior is the Atari 8-bit cartridge version of Randy Glover‘s classic 8-bit platform game, Jumpman. It was first published by Epyx in 1983.
Since the game came on cartridge the number of levels has been reduced, down to 12, but they are at least all-new levels and not recycled levels from the disk version.
The King of Grabs 