Robert and Trevor Figgins‘ isometric action/puzzle game, Bobby Bearing, originated on the ZX Spectrum but is arguably slightly better on the Amstrad CPC.
The game features the titular character, Bobby, who is a smiling ball bearing who can roll around, fit through holes, push things, and… erm, not much else. He does have character, though.
This 8-bit interpretation of the much-loved laserdisc arcade game was developed and published by Software Projects in 1986 and it is an exercise in frustration from start to finish.
Dragon’s Lair is actually a conversion of a Coleco Adam game that was published at the tail end of 1984. Software Projects acquired the license to convert it to home systems in the UK and made two games out of it.
Dennis Caswell‘s classic Impossible Mission was released for the Atari 7800 in 1988 and it is a decent adaptation of the Commodore 64 original.
This handheld conversion of Tehkan‘s Bomb Jack arcade game is a decent translation of the bomb-collecting classic. It was developed by New Frontier and published by Infogrames in 1992.
The Game Gear has a surprisingly good conversion of World Class Leaderboard in its library. It was programmed by British company Tiertex and published by Sega in 1991.
Anyone who knows golf games will know Leaderboard – created by Bruce and Roger Carver of Access Software – because it was one of the first really good golf games ever made for home computers. It has a very simple but effective control system that makes its easy to play and understand. All versions of Leaderboard use this two-bar, two-press control system, including this conversion on the Game Gear.
The Game Gear has a surprisingly good conversion of the classic Atari arcade game, Marble Madness, in its library. It was coded by Steve Lamb and published by Tengen in 1992.
The Game Boy had Tetris and the Game Gear had Columns, although – frankly – Columns isn’t nearly as good as Tetris… Columns was published for the Game Gear by Sega in 1991 and is based on the 1990 Sega arcade game of the same name.
Micro Machines 2: Turbo Tournament is the even better sequel to the excellent Micro Machines. It is a single or multiplayer overhead racing game where you race different types of toy vehicles on a variety of miniature courses.
Continue reading Micro Machines 2: Turbo Tournament, Game Gear
Created by Jose Pereira, Miker, and Mariuszw in 2016, this Atari -8-bit homebrew conversion of Ultimate‘s Pentagram is not a bad effort overall. It seems to run slightly faster than the ZX Spectrum original, although it’s probably fair to say that it also inherits its shortcomings.
One of the better Atari 8-bit homebrew Ultimate conversions, Gunfright was ported by Mariusz, Jose Pereira, Emkay and Saul Cross in 2017. It plays pretty much the same as the ZX Spectrum original and looks similar to the Commodore 64 homebrew release of 2017. In fact there may be a connection between them since one of the people who worked on the C64 port also worked on this.
The King of Grabs 