The Dragon 32 port of Jeff Minter‘s Laser Zone was coded by Lee Barnes for Salamander Software and first published in 1983.
Tag Archives: conversion
Matrix: Gridrunner 2, VIC-20
Matrix: Gridrunner 2 was confusingly re-titled as “Attack of the Mutant Camels” on the VIC-20 in North America. The suits in charge of this re-naming fiasco insisted that the title from one of Llamasoft‘s older games be used, instead of “Matrix“.
Well: f*ck them, I’m calling it “Matrix: Gridrunner 2” in light of a lack of some common sense here…
Headbanger’s Heaven, VIC-20
First released in 1982 through Llamasoft, Headbanger’s Heaven is arguably Jeff Minter‘s worst game, although that said: it’s still reasonable fun to play. I did read that the game originated on the ZX Spectrum and was converted to the VIC-20. Whatever possessed them to convert it is not clear, though…
City Bomb, ZX Spectrum
City Bomb is a conversion of the super-simple Llamasoft VIC-20 bomber game, Blitzkrieg, to the ZX Spectrum. It was first released in 1982.
Snapper, BBC Micro
Snapper is Acornsoft‘s 1982 tribute to Pac-Man on the BBC Micro. It was written by Jonathan Griffiths and is considered to be one of the best unofficial Pac-Man clones ever made. On any 8-bit system.
Dragon’s Lair, Atari ST
Released for the Atari ST, Amiga, Mac, and DOS, ReadySoft‘s 1990 adaptation of Don Bluth‘s classic laserdisc arcade game Dragon’s Lair relied on a small army of artists to painstakingly convert the video frames into 2D hand-drawn art, which was done for the entire game.
Worms, Sega Saturn
The Sega Saturn version of Team 17‘s classic Worms is pretty much identical to the PlayStation version, which is great because that makes it a special game. It makes it a brilliant party game for up to four players.
Beach Head, Apple II
The Apple II conversion of Bruce Carver‘s classic Beach Head was coded by Bryan Brandenburg of Sculptured Software Inc. and first published by Access in 1985, two years after the originals were released.
Stunt Car Racer, BBC Micro
Geoff Crammond‘s brilliant Stunt Car Racer was ported to the BBC Master (the enhanced 128K version of the BBC Micro), in 2019 by Kieran Connell and The Bitshifters Collective, and it is an excellent homebrew port of the classic racing game.
Stunt Car Racer, ZX Spectrum
The ZX Spectrum version of Geoff Crammond‘s classic Stunt Car Racer was converted by Pete Cooke, the same guy who programmed the brilliant Amstrad version. It was published by Micro Style in 1989 and came in 48K and 128K versions. The 128K version obviously had more features and that’s the version I’m showing here.