Tag Archives: clone

Black Thunder, Commodore 64

I’m not entirely sure what to make of Black Thunder. It is a remake of Tony Crowther‘s previous game, Suicide Express, with slightly different graphics and released a year later by a different publishing house (Quicksilva).

Continue reading Black Thunder, Commodore 64

Suicide Express, Commodore 64

Suicide Express, published in 1984 by Gremlin Graphics, is a spin-off from designer Tony Crowther‘s previous game, Loco. It is a train game in the mould of the classic Sega arcade game, Super Locomotive.

Continue reading Suicide Express, Commodore 64

Arkanoid: Revenge of Doh, Arcade

Arkanoid: Revenge of Doh (aka Arkanoid 2) is the sequel to Taito‘s hit game Arkanoid and was released into arcades in 1987.

It takes the ‘bat and ball’ genre (aka the ‘Breakout‘ genre) to previously unheard of levels of both playability and difficulty, and it also managed to influence a lot of other games in the process.

Continue reading Arkanoid: Revenge of Doh, Arcade

Arkanoid, Arcade

Taito‘s Arkanoid was released into arcades in 1986 and did for bat and ball games (often referred to as Breakout clones) what Mario did for platform games. That is: revitalise them with new ideas and features.

Continue reading Arkanoid, Arcade

Pong, Arcade

Atari‘s Pong is a legendary black and white ‘bat and ball’ game from 1972, and was one of the earliest video game successes.

It’s basically a two-player table tennis simulation, with two ‘bats’ on either side of the screen, moving vertically to return a bouncing ball. If you fail to return the ball your opponent scores a point, and the first to eleven points wins.

Continue reading Pong, Arcade

Mr. Wimpy, Oric

It could be argued that the Oric version of Mr. Wimpy is better than the ZX Spectrum version. It does look slightly better graphically, but I think that a more diplomatic solution would be to say that both are as bad as each other…

Continue reading Mr. Wimpy, Oric

Mr. Wimpy, ZX Spectrum

Mr. Wimpy is an early ZX Spectrum game from Ocean Software, first published in 1984. It is based on (and licensed from) the Wimpy chain of restaurants – in particular their mascot: Mr. Wimpy. Wimpy restaurants were more widespread in the 1980s than they are today, but this was still a surprising release from Ocean.

Continue reading Mr. Wimpy, ZX Spectrum

Horace and the Spiders, ZX Spectrum

The third and final Horace game on the ZX Spectrum, written by William Tang and published by Sinclair/Psion in 1983.

Continue reading Horace and the Spiders, ZX Spectrum