Tag Archives: 2D graphics

Flat, two-dimensional graphics, usually constructed of pixels. Not three-dimensional.

Fortune Builder, ColecoVision

Fortune Builder is a business simulation game that was developed by Circuits and Systems, Inc. and published by Coleco Industries in 1984. Alongside Utopia on the Intellivision, from 1981, it is one of the earliest examples of a resource management video game. Fortune Builder pre-dates SimCity by five years, and is more complex – at least in some respects.

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Donkey Kong Jr., ColecoVision

The famous sequel to Nintendo‘s classic Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr. sees the roles reversed in this cute platform game, in that this time it’s Mario (aka Jumpman, as he was known back then) who is the protagonist, and Donkey Kong who has been kidnapped and must be rescued. This time, by his son, Donkey Kong Junior.

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Cabbage Patch Kids: Adventures in the Park, ColecoVision

Cabbage Patch Kids: Adventures in the Park is an action/platform game based on the Cabbage Patch Kids toys that were popular in the mid-Eighties (and are still available to this day). It was first released for the ColecoVision in 1984.

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Alcazar: The Forgotten Fortress, ColecoVision

Alcazar: The Forgotten Fortress is a dungeon-crawling action game, designed and coded by Tom Loughry with graphics by Keri Longaway (nee, Janssen), and first published by Activision for the Coleco Adam and ColecoVision console in 1985.

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The Hobbit, PC

The 1983 MS-DOS version of Beam Software‘s classic text adventure, The Hobbit, allows you to choose between 40 or 80 column display for the text parser, and whether you want to play the game with pictures or not.

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Barbarian II: The Dungeon of Drax, Commodore 64

The sequel to 1987’s cult hit Barbarian, Barbarian II: The Dungeon of Drax is a similar fighting game, but with more variety than the first game, and the possibility of exploring the actual world by moving from screen to screen (“wow! What a technological advancement!“). Barbarian II was first released in 1988 by Palace Software. The game was later licensed by Epyx for distribution in North America under the title of “Axe of Rage“.

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Barbarian, Commodore 64

Palace Software‘s Barbarian: The Ultimate Warrior is a fondly-remembered and controversial one-on-one fighting game from 1987, where two gladiatorial combatants slug it out to the death in a variety of different locations. Actually, there are two different versions of this game, each with different backgrounds. The first version has a throne room and then a pit. The second version has a meadow and a clearing in a forest. I’m not sure why there are two versions of this game, but that definitely seems to be the case.

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Eliminate Down, Megadrive/Genesis

Eliminate Down is a top-quality single-player, side-scrolling, bullet hell shooter developed by Aprinet and published exclusively for the Megadrive/Genesis by Soft Vision in 1993. The game was only ever released in Japan, but is in English, so is easy to understand. There are fan translation patches available, and those translate the game into Spanish and Dutch.

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Midnight Resistance, ZX Spectrum

The ZX Spectrum conversion of Data East‘s Midnight Resistance was created by Jim Bagley and Keith Tinman and was published by Ocean Software in 1990. It wouldn’t be unfair to say that it is probably the best run-and-gun shooter on the humble Speccy, and punches well above the machine’s weight.

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