Tag Archives: 1987

Dungeon Master, Amiga

FTL and Software Heaven‘s classic Dungeon Master was available on the Amiga in two different forms. Initially it was only available for Amigas with 1MB of RAM, and wasn’t available for the Amiga 500 (which only had 512kb of RAM) for quite a while, which gave Atari ST owners bragging rights for this amazing game for a few months.

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Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei, Famicom

This is the very first Megami Tensei game, released for the Nintendo Famicom in 1987, and it looks very basic compared to later Megami Tensei games, but was the foundation on which a successful series was built.

Based on a trilogy of fantasy novels by Japanese author Aya Nishitani, Megami Tensei was originally created as TWO distinct role-playing games. One version (this game) was developed by Atlus and published by Namco in 1987 for the Famicom. A separate version for home computers was co-developed by Atlus and Telenet Japan and published by Telenet Japan the same year.

The original game was never officially released in the West due to its use of religious themes, and Nintendo‘s sensitivity to them, but an English fan translation does exist that can be applied as a ROM hack.

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Ghostbusters, Sega Master System

The 1987 Sega Master System conversion of David Crane‘s classic Ghostbusters is… Okay. It’s actually got a few enhancements over other versions that make it a bit more of a challenge, although it does have its down sides.

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Barbarian, Atari ST

Palace Software‘s notorious Barbarian is a ‘sword and sandal’ beat ’em up with a knockout gimmick: you can decapitate your opponent with a well-placed sword stroke!

Granted: you have to time it correctly, and get the distance between you and your opponent right, but when you pull it off the head bounces off in hilarious fashion, before being finally getting booted off the screen by a gremlin.

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Delta, Commodore 64

Designed and programmed by Stavros Fasoulas in 1987, Delta is a classic side-scrolling shooter with spaceships, sprites, and fast, furious action.

And: like Fasoulas‘s previous game, Sanxion, it’s also immensely challenging.

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Thunder Blade, Arcade

Thunder Blade is a single-player helicopter combat game that debuted in arcades in 1987, courtesy of Sega. It combines overhead shooting sections with third-person, ‘over-the-shoulder’ shooting sections and it features lots of impressive graphical scaling effects on the buildings and enemies.

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Psycho-Nics Oscar, Arcade

This obscure 1987 arcade game from Data East was a big influence on many games that came after it, in particular Manfred Trenz‘s Turrican series. It is obviously itself influenced by Nintendo‘s 1986 game, Metroid.

It also displays some similarities to Karnov, another Data East arcade game released the same year.

And, while you may have never heard of this game, it’s safe to say that it’s a bit of a ‘hidden gem’ in terms of old arcade games still worth playing today.

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RoadBlasters, Arcade

Released into arcades in 1987, RoadBlasters is a legendary driving/shooting game from Atari Games. It is, however, a little tricky to control…

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Match Day II, ZX Spectrum

Match Day II is the 1987 sequel to Match Day. It was again coded by Jon Ritman and published by Ocean Software.

The graphics in Match Day II were created by Bernie Drummond (who famously made Batman with Ritman in 1986), and could be described as “more characterful” than in the previous game. One thing is certain, though: the players in Match Day II definitely have Eighties haircuts!

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