Defender II was programmed by Jeff Minter of Llamasoft and published by Arc Developments in 1990. It is a home computer-only sequel to Williams Electronics‘ classic arcade game, Defender. The game includes a version of the original Defender, and its sequel, Stargate – as well as Minter‘s own Defender II.
Tag Archives: 1990
Mindroll, Amiga
Mindroll is a 16-bit conversion of Stavros Fasoulas‘ classic Commodore 64 ball-rolling maze game, Quedex. It was converted by Silent Software and published in North America for the Amiga and PC by Epyx in 1990. As far as I know it wasn’t released in the UK or Europe, which is strange considering that the game originated there.
ActRaiser, Super Nintendo
ActRaiser is an interesting Japanese fantasy action game that was developed by Quintet and published by Enix on the Super Nintendo in 1990. It has side-scrolling, platform-based hack-and-slash sections, with an interesting overhead ‘God game’ component.
Thunder Force III, Megadrive/Genesis
Thunder Force III is a shoot ’em up developed and published by Techno Soft for the Sega Megadrive in 1990. It drops the overhead view stages from the first and second games and is entirely side-scrolling, which personally I find a little disappointing.
Aliens, Arcade
This 1990 arcade game from Konami plays fast and loose with the storyline, locations and situations from James Cameron‘s famous film, Aliens, but is still reasonably enjoyable to play.
Dragon’s Lair, Atari ST
Released for the Atari ST, Amiga, Mac, and DOS, ReadySoft‘s 1990 adaptation of Don Bluth‘s classic laserdisc arcade game Dragon’s Lair relied on a small army of artists to painstakingly convert the video frames into 2D hand-drawn art, which was done for the entire game.
Heatseeker, Commodore 64
Heatseeker is a weird platform action game, written by Paul O’Malley and published for the Commodore 64 by Thalamus in 1990. It’s probably one of the strangest games I’ve ever played, and it has to be said that the game does suffer a little because of that. It’s so unconventional as to be borderline playable.
Devil’s Crush, PC Engine
Devil’s Crush is the sequel to the classic console pinball game Alien Crush, developed by Compile and first published for the PC Engine in 1990 by NAXAT Soft in Japan (as Devil Crash), NEC in North America, and Tengen in the UK. It is the second game in the Crush Pinball series.
Deliverance: Stormlord II, ZX Spectrum
Deliverance: Stormlord II is the sequel to Stormlord and was published by Hewson Consultants in 1990. Programming and art were once again handled by Raffaele Cecco and Hugh Binns respectively, with game design by Paul Chamberlain and Barry Simpson.
It’s a single-player platform game where you once again take control of Stormlord to rescue kidnapped fairies from the evil forces of the defeated Black Queen; fighting from ‘Hell’, all the way up to ‘Heaven’.
Rogue Trooper, Atari ST
The Atari ST version of Krisalis Software‘s 1990 adaptation of 2000AD comic anti-hero, Rogue Trooper, is the same as the Amiga version, except with a more standardised display area and without the smooth scrolling.
The scrolling is pretty jerky to be honest although it doesn’t ruin the game. Control responsiveness isn’t as good as the Amiga version either, but it’s good enough.
The King of Grabs 