Tag Archives: early

Frenzy, ColecoVision

Frenzy is a 1984 conversion of the 1982 arcade game of the same name, which in turn is a sequel to the maze shooter, Berzerk. The ColecoVision port was developed by Stern Electronics, who made the original arcade game, and is therefore very authentic to that game. In fact: it’s even better than the arcade game, because it’s less archaic, more playable, and is more varied.

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Fortune Builder, ColecoVision

Fortune Builder is a business simulation game that was developed by Circuits and Systems, Inc. and published by Coleco Industries in 1984. Alongside Utopia on the Intellivision, from 1981, it is one of the earliest examples of a resource management video game. Fortune Builder pre-dates SimCity by five years, and is more complex – at least in some respects.

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Donkey Kong Jr., ColecoVision

The famous sequel to Nintendo‘s classic Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr. sees the roles reversed in this cute platform game, in that this time it’s Mario (aka Jumpman, as he was known back then) who is the protagonist, and Donkey Kong who has been kidnapped and must be rescued. This time, by his son, Donkey Kong Junior.

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Cabbage Patch Kids: Adventures in the Park, ColecoVision

Cabbage Patch Kids: Adventures in the Park is an action/platform game based on the Cabbage Patch Kids toys that were popular in the mid-Eighties (and are still available to this day). It was first released for the ColecoVision in 1984.

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Alcazar: The Forgotten Fortress, ColecoVision

Alcazar: The Forgotten Fortress is a dungeon-crawling action game, designed and coded by Tom Loughry with graphics by Keri Longaway (nee, Janssen), and first published by Activision for the Coleco Adam and ColecoVision console in 1985.

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The Hobbit, PC

The 1983 MS-DOS version of Beam Software‘s classic text adventure, The Hobbit, allows you to choose between 40 or 80 column display for the text parser, and whether you want to play the game with pictures or not.

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Kaboom!, Atari 2600

Another simple Atari 2600 game with compelling gameplay: Kaboom! is a 1981 Activision game where you must catch falling bombs (dropped by what looks like a burglar, but we’ll call him The Mad Bomber) onto a set of bats, without allowing any bombs to hit the ground below you.

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Frank N Stein, Amstrad CPC

Frank N Stein on the Amstrad CPC is more or less the same as the ZX Spectrum original, except that the colours are different in this, and the Amstrad version has a really good high score table (which the original doesn’t). It was first published by PSS and Amsoft in 1985.

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Frank N Stein, ZX Spectrum

Frank N Stein is a simple Manic Miner-style platform game based on Mary Shelley‘s classic horror story, Frankenstein. It was written by Colin Stewart and published for the ZX Spectrum by PSS Software in 1984.

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