Tag Archives: Graftgold

Ranarama, ZX Spectrum

Steve Turner‘s classic Ranarama originated on the ZX Spectrum in 1987. The game is an overhead Gauntlet derivative where you play as a frog (actually a wizard’s apprentice, called Mervyn, whose botched spell has turned him into a frog), who must fight his way through various levels of a maze, defeating warlocks and taking their runes.

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Rainbow Islands, Amstrad CPC

Graftgold‘s conversion of Rainbow Islands on the Amstrad is a decent port of the brilliant Taito arcade game. It was published by Ocean Software in 1990.

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Dragontorc, Amstrad CPC

I didn’t know that Dragontorc existed on the Amstrad until recently and was pleasantly surprised to find out that it did. Dragontorc is one of my all-time favourite ZX Spectrum games and it translates well to the CPC, flickery graphics included.

Dragontorc was designed and programmed by Steve Turner (of Graftgold fame) and is a sequel to the game Avalon, both of which feature a levitating mage called Maroc on a quest to defeat the forces of evil.

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Bubble Bobble also featuring Rainbow Islands, Sega Saturn

Bubble Bobble also featuring Rainbow Islands was coded by British developer Probe Entertainment and published by Acclaim in 1996. It was also released for the PlayStation, PC MS-DOS and Windows, but I’m just covering the Sega Saturn version here because they’re mostly identical.

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Uridium 2, Amiga

Uridium 2 is the sequel to Andrew Braybrook‘s classic Commodore 64 shooter, published on the Amiga in 1993 by Renegade Software, and it really is quite excellent.

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Steve Crow’s Classic ZX Spectrum Games

Game designer Stephen J. Crow made some seminal games for the ZX Spectrum, starting with Laser Snaker in 1983 and Factory Breakout in 1984 for Poppy Soft.

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Avalon, ZX Spectrum

Steve Turner‘s 1984 release Avalon is a groundbreaking adventure game with pseudo 3D graphics, released only for the ZX Spectrum.

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Rainbow Islands, Amiga

Graftgold‘s Amiga conversion of the legendary Rainbow Islands is pretty much flawless… Well, if you discount the three secret hidden worlds the developers had to ditch when they discovered them… And the lower resolution, compared to the arcade original.

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Uridium, Atari ST

Andrew Braybrook‘s classic C64 shooter, Uridium, was given a 16-bit release courtesy of Joe Hellesen and Mindscape in 1986.

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