Zorro (Spanish for ‘fox’) is an 8-bit platform game developed by Datasoft and published by US Gold in 1985. It was written by James Garon, with graphics by Kelly Day, and is based on a fictional character created by American writer Johnston McCulley.
Tag Archives: 1985
Fight Night, Commodore 64
Fight Night is a cartoony boxing game developed by Canadian company Sydney Development and published by Accolade in North America and US Gold in Europe in 1985.
Mama Llama, Commodore 64
Mama Llama is a scrolling action game where you have to protect a family of llamas from attack with a robotic sphere called a “Killdroid” while destroying waves of enemies on a 10×10 grid. It was written by Jeff Minter and first released by Llamasoft in 1985.
Batalyx, Commodore 64
Written by Jeff Minter at Llamasoft and first published by Ariolasoft in 1985, Batalyx is a compendium of six minigames that can be played in any order. Completing them all must be done within a set time limit in order to beat the game.
Beach Head, Apple II
The Apple II conversion of Bruce Carver‘s classic Beach Head was coded by Bryan Brandenburg of Sculptured Software Inc. and first published by Access in 1985, two years after the originals were released.
Rogue, PC
Rogue is an influential dungeon-crawling Role-Playing Game originally created by Michael Toy and Glenn Wichman (with later contributions by Ken Arnold) for Unix-based mainframes in 1980.
The original version of Rogue used the ASCII character set (text symbols) to create the world, and that is what you can see here in this first commercial version of game, published by Epyx in 1985.
Boulder Dash II, ZX Spectrum
It’s not clear who converted the ZX Spectrum version of Boulder Dash II, but the game was published by Prism Leisure in 1985.
Boulder Dash II, MSX
The MSX version of Boulder Dash II is subtitled “Rockford’s Riot“, which is different to the Commodore 64 version (which is subtitled “Rockford’s Revenge“). It was ported by Orpheus and published by Databyte in 1985.
Boulder Dash II, Commodore 64
Subtitled “Rockford’s Revenge“, Boulder Dash II was again designed and programmed by Peter Liepa and published in North America by Electronic Arts in 1985 as “Super Boulder Dash” (alongside a re-release of the first game). Boulder Dash II was published in Europe as a stand-alone game, though, by Beyond Software.
Boulder Dash II, Atari 8-bit
Boulder Dash co-creator Peter Liepa created Boulder Dash II on Atari 8-bit machines first, before converting it to the Commodore 64. He’s said openly in interviews that he prefers Atari‘s machine when it comes to programming games, so it should come as no surprise to find arguably the best version of Boulder Dash II on the Atari 8-bit.
As far as I know, though, it was only released in North America as part of the “Super Boulder Dash” package from Electronic Arts (alongside a re-release of the first Boulder Dash). The Atari 8-bit version was never released as a stand-alone game. At least not by First Star Software.
The King of Grabs 