Pole Position II is the sequel to the smash hit arcade racing sim Pole Position, and it was developed by Namco and first released in 1983. The game was licensed to Atari, Inc. for North American distribution.
Tag Archives: early
Hard Drivin’, Arcade
Hard Drivin’ is a 1989 arcade game developed and manufactured by Atari Games. It allows the player to drive a sports car on a track that emphasises speed and stunts, and was one of the first driving games with a fully 3D polygonal environment.
SonSon, Arcade
SonSon is a scrolling platform shooter created by Capcom and distributed into arcades in 1984. It is loosely based on the Chinese “Monkey King” story from the novel Journey to the West. SonSon can be played single-player, or two player simultaneous co-op.
Fort Apocalypse, Commodore 64
The Commodore 64 version of the classic Atari 8-bit helicopter shooter, Fort Apocalypse, was ported by Joe Vierra and published by Synapse Software in North America in 1982. US Gold published the game in Europe slightly later.
Battle Zone, Atari 2600
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…
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.
Continue reading Metagalactic Llamas: Battle at the Edge of Time, ZX Spectrum
The King of Grabs 