Written by Carol Shaw for Activision and published initially for the Atari 2600 in 1982, River Raid is an early vertically-scrolling shoot ’em up with simple graphics, challenging gameplay, and its own unique set of rules.
Tag Archives: aircraft
Advance Wars, Game Boy Advance
Advance Wars is turn-based tactical war game developed by Intelligent Systems and was first published in North America on September 10th 2001.
As everyone knows: the following day the world witnessed the horrific attacks on the World Trade Centre, and this tragic event resulted in the delay of Advance Wars being released to the rest of the world.
Pilotwings, Super Nintendo
Nintendo‘s famous flying game, Pilotwings, first came out in Japan in 1990, then the following year was a launch title for the North American and European releases of the Super Nintendo.
Pilotwings uses scaling and rotation effects (known as ‘Mode 7’ in some circles) to give a visual representation of the ground, with regular 2D sprites making up everything else, and it works extremely well.
Potty Pigeon, Commodore 64
Percy the Potty Pigeon (to give the game its full title) was coded by Tony Crowther and published by Gremlin Graphics for the C64 in 1984. It was a minor hit at the time.
Rescue From Zylon, Commodore 16/Plus4
Written by Mark J. Moore and published by Gremlin Graphics in 1985, Rescue From Zylon I would say is one of the best games ever released for the Commodore 16.
H.A.T.E., ZX Spectrum
Costa Panayi‘s final game on the ZX Spectrum was published by Gremlin Graphics in 1989. It is an isometric shoot ’em up in the mould of Zaxxon, and it is technically very impressive.
Tornado Low Level, ZX Spectrum
Tornado Low Level (aka TLL) was written by Costa Panayi and published for the Spectrum by Vortex Software in 1984.
It is a classic action flight game whereby you control a ‘swing-wing’ Tornado jet and must ‘hug’ the terrain in order to wipe out enemy targets.
Raid Over Moscow, Commodore 64
Raid Over Moscow was a controversial release for Access Software in 1984. The game depicts a fictional nuclear war scenario between the USA and Russia and involves US forces fending off nuclear attacks, then flying into the Russian capital to attack what is supposed to be The Kremlin.
Steel Alcimus, PC
Another excellent Hijong Park retro tribute game – this one possibly his best so far – Steel Alcimus is an overhead helicopter shooter with either twin-stick joypad, or keyboard and mouse controls. I played it with mouse and keys and found the control system to be really quite ingenious.
Looping, ColecoVision
The ColecoVision conversion of Venture Line‘s Looping is much easier than the arcade original, which is a relief because the original is mind-bendingly hard.