Tag Archives: difficult

Rick Dangerous, Amiga

Rick Dangerous is a cartoony Indiana Jones parody that was written by Simon Phipps, co-founder of Core Design, with graphics by Terry Lloyd. It was published on various 8-bit and 16-bit home computers by Firebird Software in 1989 and was generally well-received.

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Metro-Cross, Arcade

Metro-Cross is a scrolling race/action game in which you control a character known as “The Runner“, who must cross the finish line on a course full of obstacles, before the timer reaches zero. It was developed and distributed into arcades by Namco in 1985.

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Fart Escape, Commodore 64

Released by Picaro Games in 2018, Fart Escape is a humorous, free to download and play homebrew title that is a variation on the Angry Birds style of gameplay, except that you control a guy who propels himself into the air using only the power of his own ‘trouser trumpets’.

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Zero Wing, Megadrive/Genesis

The English language Sega Megadrive conversion of Toaplan‘s Zero Wing has gone down in history as one of the (unintentionally) funniest games of all time. The intro sequence (which was created for this version of the game and does not appear in the arcade original) features some of the most hilariously bad translations of all time, including the now iconic sentence “All your base are belong to us“, which became a meme in the early 2000s.

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Zero Wing, Arcade

Zero Wing is a side-scrolling bullet hell shooter developed by Toaplan and distributed into arcades by Namco in Japan and Williams Electronics in North America in 1989.

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Montezuma’s Revenge, ColecoVision

Originating on Atari 8-bit home computers in 1983, this ColecoVision port of the pioneering platform game, Montezuma’s Revenge, was developed and published by Parker Brothers in 1984.

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Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders, FM Towns

Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders is the second SCUMM game from Lucasfilm Games (aka LucasArts), after Maniac Mansion, with game development led by David Fox, and with Matthew Alan Kane as co-designer and co-programmer. It was originally released for the Commodore 64 in 1988, and this enhanced FM Towns port was published in Japan in 1990 by Fujitsu. The game is playable in both English and Japanese.

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Raiden Densetsu, FM Towns

Released in Japan as “Raiden Densetsu” (“Legend of Raiden“), but with a title screen that calls it “Raiden Trad“, this is an authentic port of the Seibu Kaihatsu arcade game Raiden, but with a few extra options.

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Viewpoint, FM Towns

Originally released as an arcade game on Neo Geo MVS hardware, Viewpoint is an isometric bullet hell shooter originally developed by Aicom, ported by Sammy and published by Ving for the FM Towns in 1993. It obviously takes inspiration from Sega‘s Zaxxon, but its aesthetic owes more to Irem‘s R-Type.

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Chaos Strikes Back, FM Towns

Chaos Strikes Back is a continuation of the classic Role-Playing Game, Dungeon Master. It’s a sequel – but not the sequel – to the first game, and was originally released as a stand-alone expansion disk on the Atari ST. On the FM Towns it was published on CD-ROM by Victor Musical Industries in 1990, and there’s a bit of faffing around to do before you can actually start the game*. Thankfully you can at least do this in English as there’s an option to play in that language.

*= Before you can play Chaos Strikes Back you must either create a new party (by entering the prison and choosing from the available portraits), and then save it to a new 720Kb floppy disk; or load a set of characters from a pre-existing FM Towns Dungeon Master save. You then need to enter the CSB portrait editor utility program and then click on ‘Make New Adventure’ to activate and save a new Chaos Strikes Back file to the disk. Only then will you be able to load and start the game…

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