Tag Archives: American

Arch Rivals, Arcade

Arch Rivals is a classic basketball video game, developed and manufactured by Midway in 1989. It’s a two-on-two basketball game, and one that encourages players to hit each other to steal the ball.

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RoadBlasters, Arcade

Released into arcades in 1987, RoadBlasters is a legendary driving/shooting game from Atari Games. It is, however, a little tricky to control…

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Journey, Arcade

This infamous 1983 arcade game from Bally Midway is a bizarre multi-stage action game where you play members of the prog rock band, Journey, trying to retrieve their instruments “from the dangers of the five galaxies”.

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Narc, Arcade

Created by Williams Electronics in 1988, Narc is a side-scrolling run-and-gun shooter that attracted a lot of controversy when it first came out.

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Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, Arcade

Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back is the sequel to the timeless Atari, Inc. shooter, Star Wars, and it was first released into arcades in 1985. It is, of course, based on the classic 1980 film of the same name.

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SunDog: Frozen Legacy, Atari ST

Sundog is a sci-fi strategy/RPG/adventure game designed by Software Heaven (aka FTL – the makers of Dungeon Master), and is generally held in high regard. It originally came out on the Apple II in 1984, then later converted to the Atari ST in 1985.

I have to admit, though, that Sundog is a touch too archaic for my tastes. At least in terms of wanting to put hours into a game. The Atari ST version certainly looks better than the Apple II version, though.

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Descent, PC

Descent is a famous PC DOS shoot ’em up developed by Parallax Software and published by Interplay in 1995.

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Yars’ Revenge, Atari 2600

Written by Howard Scott Warshaw and published by Atari, Inc. in 1982, Yars’ Revenge is one of those old video games that plays a lot better than it looks, and is much more subtle that you might think upon first inspection.

In fact, it took me decades to actually ‘click’ with the game and finally be bothered to learn how to play it properly.

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Colony 7, Arcade

Taito‘s American division developed this vertical screen base defence game in 1981. Colony 7 owes quite a bit to Missile Command, if the truth be known, and was also probably the very first video game to feature “rip-off” micro-transactions too…

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River Raid, Atari 2600

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.

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