Tag Archives: 1986

Alex Kidd: The Lost Stars, Arcade

The second game in the Alex Kidd series, and the only one released as an arcade game, Alex Kidd: The Lost Stars is a one or simultaneous two-player platform game, developed by Sega and first released in 1986. It of course features the cute boy wonder, Alex Kidd, although this time he’s accompanied by his female partner, Stella. Stella can be played alone or cooperatively with Alex.

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Commando, NES/Famicom

The 1986 NES version of Commando is a flickery mess to be honest, although that didn’t stop the game becoming a smash hit – selling over one million cartridges worldwide.

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Commando, Amstrad CPC

The Amstrad CPC version of Commando – published by Elite Systems in 1986 – is easy to write off, due to its chunky graphics and mostly featureless backgrounds, but it’s actually one of the better 8-bit conversions.

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Solaris, Atari 2600

Solaris is a space combat game designed and developed by Doug Neubauer and published by Atari Corporation in 1986. It is supposedly a sequel to Star Raiders, and does contain similar elements, but features a third-person viewpoint this time, rather than first-person. Solaris is one of the most technically-impressive games on the Atari 2600 and is a far cry from the early games released for the system.

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Vampire Killer, MSX

Konami‘s “Akumajō Dracula” was first released in 1986 for the MSX2. It helped set the template for a series that is still going (relatively) strong to this day – the Castlevania series.

This MSX game was also the first game in the Castlevania series to be given an English language release, and it was released in 1987 in Europe under the title of “Vampire Killer“, which then changed to “Castlevania” when the North American NES version of this game was released on cartridge.

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Paperboy, Commodore 16/Plus4

Joerg Dierks (of Kingsoft in Germany) wrote the C16/Plus4 version of Paperboy, which was published by Elite Systems, mostly on cassette throughout Europe in 1986.

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