The ColecoVision port of Bill Hogue‘s pioneering and influential Atari 8-Bit platform game, Miner 2049er, was programmed by Mike Livesay and published by Micro Fun in 1983. It is an excellent game, but it is arguably way too difficult for its own good.
Tag Archives: influential
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.
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.
Forgotten Worlds, Arcade
Forgotten Worlds is a classic Capcom arcade shooter from 1988, with simultaneous two-player coop, a rotational aiming system, and intense bullet hell action set across a landscape of the desolate Earth in the 29th Century.
Maniac Mansion, NES/Famicom
The NES/Famicom version of Maniac Mansion was developed and published by Jaleco in 1990 and is still worth playing today. It’s a fine port of a great game and translates well enough to Nintendo‘s machine that it arguably plays even better than the C64 original (although many will cry “Sacrilege!” to that).
The Oregon Trail, Apple II
The Oregon Trail is a classic Apple II strategy/adventure game where you play as settlers travelling in a covered wagon on The Oregon Trail in 1848. As you might imagine, the trail is hostile and survival on it is brutal, so you have to prepare for your trip in advance by buying food, clothes, ammunition, spare parts, and oxen to pull your wagon.
Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!, NES/Famicom
Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! was developed by Nintendo R&D3 and was first published by Nintendo in 1987. It is considered by many to be one of the greatest boxing video games ever made, with well-animated cartoon-style characters and an intuitive and responsive control system.
WipEout 2097, PlayStation
The 1996 sequel to the original WipEout, WipEout 2097 was released as WipEout XL in North America and Japan, but I’m sticking with the name that the developers intended – not what the US marketing dingbats decided they would call it… WipEout 2097 was not initially intended to be a sequel to WipEout, but an add-on pack, but this was later changed as the game approached its release date.
WipEout, PlayStation
Developed and published by Psygnosis in 1995, WipEout is a futuristic racing game, set in the year 2052, where you compete in an Anti-Gravity (AG) Racing League piloting dart-like vehicles that float above the ground and zip around tortuously-designed race tracks against similar opposition.
Wolfenstein 3D, Atari Jaguar
id Software‘s classic first-person shooter, Wolfenstein 3D, was ported to the Atari Jaguar by John Carmack and his by-then-famous band of merry programmers and artists, and – unsurprisingly – it’s an excellent conversion. The game was published by Atari Corporation in 1994.
The King of Grabs 