Tag Archives: 8-bit

The Evil Dead, ZX Spectrum

The ZX Spectrum version of Palace Software‘s The Evil Dead video game was never released as a stand-alone title, although it was given away as a freebie on the b-side of the cassette for the ZX Spectrum version of Cauldron. Probably because Palace realised that no person in their right mind would pay money for a game this bad.

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Cauldron, ZX Spectrum

Palace Software‘s 1985 release, Cauldron, is a conversion of the Commodore 64 original, where you play as a witch who is on a quest to become the “Witch Queen” by defeating her opponent, “The Pumpking”.

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Gremlins: The Adventure, ZX Spectrum

Gremlins: The Adventure is a text-based adventure, with graphics, based on the successful comedy horror film from 1984. It was first released in 1985 by Adventure International and was programmed by Brian Howarth with artwork by Teoman Irmak.

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Snowball Sunday, Commodore 64

Snowball Sunday is a winter/Christmas-themed snowball fight game for the Commodore 64, written by Ashley Routledge and David Saunders. There isn’t much information available about it online, but from what I can tell it was given away free with various Commodore magazines in 1988. It was also freely available for download from Compunet (aka CNet) – an interactive service provider that was accessed via dial-up, that existed from 1984 to 1993.

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Snowdown, Commodore 64

Snowdown is a one or two-player Christmas-themed action game that was written by Badger Punch Games and first released for the Commodore 64 in 2020.

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Merry Christmas From Horace, ZX Spectrum

This 2016 homebrew release for the ZX Spectrum is a tribute/sequel to the classic Hungry Horace, Horace Goes Skiing, and Horace and the Spiders games from Psion, originally developed in the early 1980s by Beam Software. It is a Christmas-themed Horace game written by Steve Broad.

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Eye of the Beholder, Commodore 64

This amazing Commodore 64 port of the 1991 Amiga/MS-DOS RPG classic, Eye of the Beholder, was released on 21st November 2022 and is one of the best homebrew remakes I think I’ve ever played. It was written by “Jack Asser“, with the help of a number of other talented individuals, and comes as a CRT (cartridge) file for quick-loading.

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Ultima VI: The False Prophet, Commodore 64

The Commodore 64 version of Ultima VI: The False Prophet was programmed by Axel Brown of Imagitec Design and published by Origin Systems in 1991 and is the only 8-bit port of the game available. It is a somewhat stunted version of Ultima VI, with a number of changes made to make it fit onto three double-side floppy disks (six sides in total).

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Ultima: Warriors of Destiny, NES/Famicom

Ultima: Warriors of Destiny on the NES/Famicom was developed by FCI and first published by Pony Canyon in 1992. It is the fifth entry in the Ultima series and this console port is a simplification of the original game.

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Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny, Commodore 64

Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny was originally released by Origin Systems in 1988 for the Commodore 128, with a Commodore 64 version following in 1989. The game was remastered in 2020 by Drunella, to provide CRT (cartridge) and d81 versions for fastloading, although the graphics remain the same as the original (there are no enhanced graphics, like in the remaster of Ultima IV). The music from the C128 version of Ultima V has been included in the remaster, though.

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