Quarth is a brilliant mixture of Tetris and shoot ’em up and was first played in arcades in Japan in 1989. Outside of Japan it is known as “Block Hole“, which – let’s face it – is a stupid name, so I’m sticking with the original name, Quarth.
Tag Archives: 1989
APB, ZX Spectrum
Another fine conversion of Atari‘s classic arcade game, APB (All Points Bulletin), this time converted by Walking Circles for Tengen and first published by Domark in 1989.
California Games, Atari Lynx
Epyx‘s classic C64 game, California Games, was converted (by Epyx themselves) to the Atari Lynx and released in 1989.
Atari Lynx Special
The Atari Lynx is a handheld console that was developed by Epyx and manufactured by Atari Corporation from 1989 to 1995, and it features a wide variety of colourful and playable games available in cartridge format.
Toki, Arcade
Toki is a relatively obscure platform-based arcade game, by Japanese developer TAD Corporation, which was first released in 1989. And it is as bloody hard as nails!
Herzog Zwei, Megadrive/Genesis
Developed by Techno Soft and first published in 1989, Herzog Zwei is an early real-time strategy game, predating Dune II by three years. It is the sequel to Herzog on the MSX2 and it shares the same DNA as that game.
Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle, Megadrive/Genesis
Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle is a 1989 platform game released for the Sega Megadrive/Genesis. It was developed in-house by Sega as a competitor to the Nintendo Mario games, which were hugely popular at the time.
Continue reading Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle, Megadrive/Genesis
The Untouchables, Commodore 64
The Untouchables is a classic movie-licensed action game developed and published by Ocean Software in 1989. It mixes a number of different gameplay styles.
Fighting Hawk, Arcade
A relatively obscure Taito arcade game from 1989*, Fighting Hawk is a vertically-scrolling bullet hell shooter where you fly an A-10 ‘Tankbuster’ up the screen, fighting its way through waves of enemies and bosses.
Skull & Crossbones, Arcade
I hadn’t seen this 1989 arcade game from Atari Games before, until I played it recently, and even then I found it on the Commodore 64 first, then realised that it was an arcade conversion.
Skull & Crossbones has all the ingredients of a classic arcade action game, but – having played it extensively now – I can see why it failed…