Tag Archives: 8-bit

Star Wars, ZX Spectrum

This port of the classic Atari arcade game, Star Wars, on the ZX Spectrum, was developed by Vektor Grafix and published by Domark in 1987.

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Action Biker, Atari 8-Bit

Mastertronic‘s Action Biker was a well-known budget hit on the Commodore 64, and it was also released for Atari 8-bit home computers, in 1985. Both the C64 and Atari versions were bundled together as a dual release.

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Action Force II, ZX Spectrum

The sequel to the first Action Force, Action Force II is a game that I knew had reviewed well at the time of its original release (in 1988), so I was expecting good things from it. Having never played the game before, I sat down and gave it a go, but was disappointed with what I found…

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Action Force, ZX Spectrum

Developed by Gang of Five and published by Virgin Games in 1987, Action Force is a scrolling shooter set in the world of the Action Force toys by Hasbro/Milton Bradley (aka G.I. Joe toys in North America). Action Force was also released for the Commodore 64 and Amstrad CPC, although the Spectrum version is notably different to those versions.

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RoboCop, PC

The 1989 MS-DOS version of RoboCop is part conversion of the Data East arcade game, and partly does it own thing, with level structures that connect rooms above and below, with staircases that instantly flip the screen, rather than scroll it. The majority of levels do scroll horizontally, though, although the scrolling is very jerky.

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Shadow Skimmer, Commodore 64

Published by The Edge in 1987, Shadow Skimmer is an overhead scrolling shooter set on a large, maze-like spaceship. At first glance, the game looks a bit like Andrew Braybrook‘s Paradroid, but it plays much differently.

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RoboCop, Amstrad CPC

The Amstrad version of Ocean‘s RoboCop came out in 1989, and it is much like the Commodore 64 version, but with a smaller play window and chunkier graphics.

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C5 Clive, ZX Spectrum

C5 Clive, written by Barry Jones and published by Scorpio Gamesworld Ltd., pays tribute to (ie. satirises) Sir Clive Sinclair‘s infamous “personal automotive vehicle“, which was released onto the UK market as the Sinclair C5 in 1985.

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Gauntlet, NES/Famicom

The 1988 NES version of Gauntlet was developed and published by Tengen, and – surprisingly – it doesn’t feature the levels from the arcade original, but does its own thing instead.

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RoboCop, Commodore 64

The Commodore 64 version of RoboCop was first released by Ocean Software in 1988, and it is well-presented, but does have one major fault that I find completely puzzling…

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