The Atari 2600 conversion of tank battle game Battle Zone (aka Battlezone) is considered to be a decent port of the classic 1980 arcade game, but I’m not entirely convinced…
Tag Archives: early
Spellbound, ZX Spectrum
Not the excellent David Jones Magic Knight adventure game from Mastertronic Added Dimension, but the atrocious Q*Bert clone from Beyond Software.
Rocket Roger, Commodore 64
Rocket Roger is a scrolling action game written by Steve Evans and published by Alligata Software in 1984. In it you control the titular Roger who must fly around using a jet pack and collect crystals from a series of underground caves. The crystals are needed to power your spaceship and you need to collect 99 of them to escape the planet.
Alien, ZX Spectrum
Developed by Concept Software and published by Argus Press in 1984, this adaptation of the classic 1979 film, Alien, is arguably the first serious video game based on the Alien series (I certainly wouldn’t describe the Atari 2600 version of Alien as ‘serious’).
Psychedelia, Commodore 64
Psychedelia, by Jeff Minter of Llamasoft, is not a game but a “light synthesizer” – a program that turns input (either from a person via a joystick or keyboard, or from a sound input) into graphical on-screen patterns. Psychedelia was first released in 1984 and was one of the first “light synthesizers” ever made; certainly ever to be made available commercially; and it was the seed that led to the Winamp visualisation plugin craze of the late 90s/early 2000s, and to the evolution of light synthesizers or “sound-to-light” technology in general.
Metagalactic Llamas: Battle at the Edge of Time, ZX Spectrum
Ported by Chris Clark of Salamander Software and first published in 1984, Metagalactic Llamas: Battle at the Edge of Time is a straightforward conversion of the VIC-20 original, but with a couple of tweaks here and there.
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Metagalactic Llamas: Battle at the Edge of Time, Commodore 64
The 1984 Commodore 64 version of Metagalactic Llamas: Battle at the Edge of Time was converted by Aaron Liddiment for Llamasoft and is pretty much the same as the classic VIC-20 original, except with better graphics and arguably better sound.
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Traxx, ZX Spectrum
The ZX Spectrum version of Jeff Minter‘s Traxx was published through Quicksilva in 1983. It was written by Salamander Software for Llamasoft and, to be honest, it’s not a very good game at all.
Traxx, VIC-20
First released for the VIC-20 in 1983, Traxx is a simple maze game where you have to connect boxes together using red lines. It’s another early Jeff Minter game that is only partially successful.
Metagalactic Llamas: Battle at the Edge of Time, VIC-20
The original Metagalactic Llamas: Battle at the Edge of Time first came out for the VIC-20 in 1983. The Commodore 64 version was a later port, in 1984.
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The King of Grabs 