Based on Carol Shaw‘s classic vertically-scrolling shooter, but not created by her, River Raid II is a more challenging and slightly more complex take on the River Raid concept.
Tag Archives: boats
Hydra, Atari Lynx
Hydra is a third-person powerboat action game with driving game mechanics and presentation, and it’s fair to say that it is mostly hated by people who play it. It’s not that bad though… It’s actually a conversion of an obscure Atari arcade game from 1990. This conversion was released on the Lynx in 1992.
Hydra, Arcade
Hydra is a relatively obscure arcade action game featuring an armed powerboat that is chasing wanted criminals along twisting waterways in order to intercept and recover various stolen artefacts from them.
Herzog Zwei, Megadrive/Genesis
Developed by Techno Soft and first published in 1989, Herzog Zwei is an early real-time strategy game, predating Dune II by three years. It is the sequel to Herzog on the MSX2 and it shares the same DNA as that game.
Urban Strike, Megadrive/Genesis
Urban Strike is the second sequel to Desert Strike, and the follow-up to Jungle Strike, and it improves on both those games in a number of different ways.
For starters: there are now indoor shooting sections, where you have to search for MIAs and POWs and free them. Secondly: this time you get to fly different helicopters, and thirdly: you also get to drive ground assault vehicles! Yippee! 🙂
Jungle Strike, Megadrive/Genesis
Jungle Strike is the 1993 sequel to the smash hit Desert Strike. It walks the same satirical/propaganda tightrope as the previous game, and is just as much fun to play.
Utopia, Intellivision
Utopia is probably the first ever Real-Time Strategy game ever made. It was designed by Don Daglow and was published exclusively for the Intellivision by Mattel in 1981.
Skull & Crossbones, Arcade
I hadn’t seen this 1989 arcade game from Atari Games before, until I played it recently, and even then I found it on the Commodore 64 first, then realised that it was an arcade conversion.
Skull & Crossbones has all the ingredients of a classic arcade action game, but – having played it extensively now – I can see why it failed…
Popeye, Arcade
Nintendo‘s 1982 arcade game, Popeye, was somewhat ahead of its time, and also in some respects as archaic to play as a Game & Watch.
It was ahead of its time in the way that it used a relatively high screen resolution (512×448), which results in quite detailed, high res sprites that are unusual for the time.
Unfortunately the same can’t be said of the background graphics, which look like something designed on an Atari 2600… In fact: Popeye is a weird mix of graphical resolutions, but this weirdness doesn’t affect the gameplay at all.
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.
