Bear Bovver was created by well-known coder Jon Ritman, with music by Guy Stevens, and was published for the ZX Spectrum by Artic Computing in 1983. It’s basically a BurgerTime clone, except you’re dropping batteries down a series of platforms, onto a car at the bottom of the screen, instead of burger buns and patties onto plates.
Tag Archives: bears
Planet of the Apes, Game Boy Advance
The Game Boy Advance version of Planet of the Apes is somewhat different, visually, to the Game Boy Color version, although it is basically the same game underneath. Graphically, the GBA version goes for a “digitised”, more realistic look, which I don’t think is as appealing as the pure 2D drawn look of the GBC version. It makes the game look more like an early ’90s Amiga game, which I think dates it significantly.
Planet of the Apes, Game Boy Color
Planet of the Apes for the Game Boy Color was developed by Torus Games/Visiware and was first published by Ubisoft in 2001. It is based on the 1968 film of the same name, which in turn was based on the 1963 book by Pierre Boulle. Actually, to be more accurate, the game follows the plot of the 1970 sequel, Beneath the Planet of the Apes, more closely than it does the first film, where Brent (played by James Franciscus) crash-lands on a post-apocalyptic Earth on a rescue mission to find Taylor (Charlton Heston), and eventually finds himself held prisoner in an underground city run by telepathic humans.
Tomb Raider III: The Adventures of Lara Croft, PC
Tomb Raider III: The Adventures of Lara Croft is the second sequel to the smash hit Tomb Raider and was developed by Core Design and published by Eidos Interactive in 1998.
The game follows archaeologist-adventurer Lara Croft as she embarks upon a quest to recover four pieces of a meteorite that are scattered across the world. Lara can explore five new locations: India, the South Pacific, London, Nevada, and Antarctica.
Continue reading Tomb Raider III: The Adventures of Lara Croft, PC
Tomb Raider II, PC
The 1997 sequel to the classic Tomb Raider, Tomb Raider II, was once again developed by Core Design and published by Eidos Interactive.
The sequel builds upon the good parts of the first game and delivers even more Lara Croft hi-jinks and agility. An enhanced version of Core‘s Tomb Raider engine was used to power the game world.
Tomb Raider, PC
The classic first adventure in the Tomb Raider series was developed by Core Design and published by Eidos Interactive – initially for the Sega Saturn – in 1996. Then PC MS-DOS and PlayStation versions followed soon after.
The game was a smash hit on the PlayStation and sold well on the PC too, making it something of a breakthrough title for Core Design, whose stature was greatly elevated with the success of the Tomb Raider series.
Spellbound Dizzy, ZX Spectrum
Also known as Dizzy V (five), Spellbound Dizzy was once again designed and coded by Big Red Software and was first published by Codemasters in 1991.
Spellbound Dizzy was the biggest Dizzy game yet, with 108 screens to explore, and it had a slightly different graphical style to previous games. Message windows were made to look transparent, with background graphics shown as dark blue on top of which text was overlaid, which is a neat little detail that works well. Dizzy himself looked the same though.
The Temple of Elemental Evil, PC
The Temple of Elemental Evil [ToEE] is a licensed Dungeons & Dragons RPG that was first released in 2003 by Atari. It is based on the Greyhawk campaign setting and uses the D&D 3.5 edition ruleset.
One look at The Temple of Elemental Evil and you’re going to think: “Baldur’s Gate“… Because it very much looks and plays like that particular game. That said: the game does have some heritage in the Fallout series, because Tim Cain (the lead designer on the original Fallout games) was also director of this.
Crystal Castles, Atari ST
The Atari ST – being an Atari machine – was renowned for Atari arcade conversions and Crystal Castles was one of the best on the system.
Toobin’, Arcade
Some old arcade games are instantly recognisable. Toobin’ – by Atari Games – is one of them.
It’s the only video game I can think of that utilises ‘kids floating down a river on a rubber tube’ style gameplay mechanics.