Archipelagos came out on the Atari ST, Amiga, and for PC MS-DOS, and was developed by Astral Software in the UK and published by Logotron in 1989.
It is a strange first-person puzzle game where you must cleanse a series of islands of the ‘Blood of the Ancients’ by clicking on some obelisks.
The Atari Lynx version was the original version of Chip’s Challenge. It was developed by Chuck Sommerville at Epyx and first released in 1989.
Known as Inside Outing on 8-bit home computers, and Raffles on 16-bit computers, this excellent isometric platform game translates very well to the Atari ST.
Space Manbow is an original MSX2 release from Konami. It first came out in 1989 and it ‘wowed’ home users with it fantastic graphics and smooth scrolling. Unfortunately it was never released outside of Japan.
Released in 1989 for the Sega Megadrive/Genesis, Phantasy Star II is a pioneering RPG for its time. It’s a sequel, obviously; to the classic Sega Master System release of 1987, Phantasy Star.
The Apple II version of Prince of Persia is the original, released by Brøderbund in 1989.
The game wasn’t a big hit initially, but word of how good it was grew when the game was converted to other systems and was also released in Asia and Europe. Prince of Persia gradually built into a phenomenon.
The 1989 MS-DOS conversion of Chuckie Egg plays okay, but I’m not sure what is going on with those graphics. They’re horrible!
Lutter is an obscure-but-interesting combination of platform game and maze game, but with RPG elements – like levelling – also thrown into the mix.
You play the titular Lutter, a knight of the realm on a quest to rescue the princess from a maze-like castle of platforms, ladders, doors and monsters.
Known affectionately as ‘Indy 500‘, this high octane race game broke new ground when it was first released in 1989.
This 1989 BBC Micro conversion of Taito‘s classic arcade game, Bubble Bobble, was never commercially released. Which is a shame because it is rather excellent.
The King of Grabs 