Released by Interceptor Software in 1984, Trollie Wallie is a scrolling platform game featuring a weird mouth on legs, called “Wallie“. It’s actually the sequel to Wheelin’ Wallie which came out through Interceptor earlier that same year.
Tag Archives: 8-bit
Wheelin’ Wallie, Commodore 64
Wheelin’ Wallie is a side-scrolling Pac-Man-like game where the aim is to eat dots along a course that scrolls from left to right, while trying to avoid the many hazards being thrown at you.
You play as “Wallie“, a disembodied head floating on a wheel than rolls on the ground. Collision with any object loses you a life, as does falling down a hole in the ground. You can trundle left and right as the screen automatically scrolls, and you can also move Wallie‘s head up and down, and that’s about it. Moving objects sometimes fly across the screen and must be avoided at all costs.
Nobby the Aardvark, Commodore 64
Nobby the Aardvark was the final Commodore 64 release for Thalamus – a company that made its name on the system – way back in 1993. It’s a fun platform/maze game with an energetic lead character and was developed by Genesis Software, with Thalamus producing.
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.
Hawkeye, Commodore 64
Hawkeye is a scrolling run-and-gun platform shooter developed by Boys Without Brains and published by Thalamus for the Commodore 64 in 1988. It is considered to be one of the best C64 releases of all-time, with simple gameplay, attractive graphics, and memorable music by Jeroen Tel.
Beach Head, Apple II
The Apple II conversion of Bruce Carver‘s classic Beach Head was coded by Bryan Brandenburg of Sculptured Software Inc. and first published by Access in 1985, two years after the originals were released.
Beach Head, Atari 8-bit
The Atari 8-bit version of Bruce Carver‘s classic Beach Head came out simultaneously with the Commodore 64 version, so both are considered “the originals”, although this version was co-coded by Kevin Homer so technically could be considered a conversion.
The Dark, ZX Spectrum
The Dark is a rare first-person shooter on the humble ZX Spectrum, written by Russian coder Oleg Origin. It was originally released under the title of Quake in 1997, and was then re-worked and re-released by the original author as The Dark in 2016.
Stunt Car Racer, BBC Micro
Geoff Crammond‘s brilliant Stunt Car Racer was ported to the BBC Master (the enhanced 128K version of the BBC Micro), in 2019 by Kieran Connell and The Bitshifters Collective, and it is an excellent homebrew port of the classic racing game.
Stunt Car Racer, ZX Spectrum
The ZX Spectrum version of Geoff Crammond‘s classic Stunt Car Racer was converted by Pete Cooke, the same guy who programmed the brilliant Amstrad version. It was published by Micro Style in 1989 and came in 48K and 128K versions. The 128K version obviously had more features and that’s the version I’m showing here.