Tag Archives: clone

The Amazing Adventures of Mr. F. Lea, Arcade

The title of this obscure 1982 arcade game from Pacific Novelty Manufacturing is bad enough, but the gameplay is hilariously “wacky” too. Well, it is kinda crappy, but does have some curiosity value. Mostly because some of the minigames found within are derivative of other famous video games.

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Marble Madness: Deluxe Edition, Amstrad CPC

The ‘Deluxe Edition‘ of Marble Madness was released the same year as The Construction Set‘ edition and it contains a new set of screens to play through, plus the Construction Set editor, and the ten screens from the earlier release. It’s still complete and utter garbage, though…

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Marble Madness: The Construction Set, Amstrad CPC

The Amstrad CPC version of Melbourne House‘s 1986 release of Marble Madness is more or less identical to the ZX Spectrum version, but with a bit more colour. It was coded by the same author – John F. Cain – and suffers from the same problems as the Spectrum version.

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Marble Madness: Deluxe Edition, ZX Spectrum

The ‘Deluxe Edition‘ of Marble Madness on the Spectrum was again written by John F. Cain and published by Melbourne House in 1986, and it contains a new set of screens to play, as well as the ten screens from the previous release, plus the Construction Set editor, as a separate load on side ‘B’ of the cassette.

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Marble Madness: The Construction Set, ZX Spectrum

Written by John F. Cain (who also made Booty, Moonlight Madness and Super Dragon Slayer on the Spectrum), and published by Melbourne House in 1986, the ‘official’ Marble Madness on the ZX Spectrum bears little resemblance to the classic arcade original.

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Bay Route, Arcade

This terrible pun of a title (meant to ‘parody’ the word Beirut, the capital city of Lebanon) was developed by Sunsoft and distributed into arcades by Sega in 1989. It’s a one or simultaneous two-player Contra clone scrolling through a futuristic warzone.

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Master of Darkness, Sega Master System

Also known as “Vampire: Master of Darkness” in some regions, this overt Castlevania clone was developed by SIMS and published by Sega for the Master System and Game Gear in 1992. Some consider it to be the best of its kind on the Master System.

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Repton 3, Archimedes

The Acorn Archimedes version of Repton 3 is an excellent port of the 8-bit BBC Micro original, with enhanced graphics, responsive controls and a raft of extra levels not seen in the original. From what I can tell it was the only part of the Repton series that was ported to the Archimedes, which is fine because it’s probably the best game in the series.

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Towers: Lord Baniff’s Deceit, Atari ST

Towers: Lord Baniff’s Deceit was first released for the Atari ST by JV Enterprises in 1993. It is a first-person RPG in the style of Dungeon Master, with tile-based movement and real-time combat.

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