Released for the Master System by Sega in 1986, Black Belt is a scrolling beat ’em up in the tradition of the classic Irem arcade game, Kung-Fu Master. And it is a challenging and fun game to play.
Tag Archives: 8-bit
Yie Ar Kung-Fu 2: The Emperor Yie-Gah, MSX
The sequel to the classic Konami arcade game, Yie Ar Kung-Fu, Yie Ar Kung-Fu 2: The Emperor Yie-Gah was only ever released for home computers and was never produced as an arcade game. It was first released for MSX compatible computers, on cartridge, in 1985.
Shadow of the Beast, Sega Master System
Shadow of the Beast for the Sega Master System was developed by TecMagik and published by Psygnosis in 1992, and this port has some differences to the Amiga original – arguably to its detriment.
Commando, Atari 8-Bit
***CANNED GAME***
The Atari 8-Bit version of Commando was developed by Sculptured Software for Data East in 1989, but unfortunately the game was never released. Thankfully a prototype still exists and is available online, which is good because this is one of the best 8-bit ports of Commando around.
A Whole New Ball Game, ZX Spectrum
Written by Pete Cooke [Tau Ceti, Academy, Micronaut One, Earthlight, Stunt Car Racer], A Whole New Ball Game is the 1989 sequel to the puzzle game, Brainstorm, and was only made available on the covertape of Crash magazine issue 66 (July 1989). It was basically given away, as a full game, with the magazine.
Chimera, Commodore 64
Set on an uninhabited spaceship, Chimera is an isometric adventure/puzzle game where you control a robot* that must destroy the ship before it crashes into Earth. The game was written by Shahid Ahmad and published by Firebird in 1985. The music is by Rob Hubbard.
*= The player character looks like a robot, but does in fact require food and water to survive, so there’s a bit of a contradiction going on in the story, as far as who or what the player actually is.
Castlevania: Spectral Interlude, ZX Spectrum
Castlevania: Spectral Interlude is a free-to-download homebrew Castlevania game for the ZX Spectrum, developed and published by Rewind (a Russian indie team) in 2015. The game is playable on 128K Spectrums only and is available digitally for Spectrum +3s as a disk-based game, and also as a TAP file. A limited number of physical copies were also produced for sale.
Continue reading Castlevania: Spectral Interlude, ZX Spectrum
Shadow of the Beast, Commodore 64
The Commodore 64 conversion of Shadow of the Beast was developed by DMA Design and published by Ocean Software in 1990. And it’s a reasonably good port of the scrolling fighting game, with decent graphics and atmospheric music.
Commando, Apple II
The 1987 Apple II conversion of Capcom‘s Commando was developed by Quicksilver Software, Inc. and published by Data East in North America only, and it is a reasonable port although the play window is probably the smallest out of the all the versions of Commando I’ve played so far.
Commando, BBC Micro
Unfortunately the BBC Micro version of Elite‘s conversion of Commando is an absolute travesty, with terrible graphics and horrible gameplay and the only thing it has in common with the arcade original is the name of the game and the basic scenario.