This conversion of the classic Knight Lore was ported to the 8-bit Atari by Krzysztof Dudek, Mario Krix, and Michal Radecki in 2008. And it’s another somewhat disappointing conversion, to be honest.
What I find frustrating about these homebrew conversions is how the programmers sometimes decide to change things to the detriment to the game, and don’t seem to realise that their choices are bad…
Altered Space is a somewhat obscure isometric platform puzzle game that was developed by British developer Software Creations and released exclusively for the Nintendo Game Boy in 1991.
Developed by Vicarious Visions and published by Activision in 2001, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 on the Game Boy Advance is one of those games that you’d expect not to work that well – being a handheld conversion of a popular and successful 3D game – but it actually turns out to be a fantastic game in its own right.
I’m sorry to say this because I love what Retrospec tried to do with this 2008 remake of Ultimate Play the Game‘s classic Alien 8, but the end result is unplayable, infuriating and flawed.
Some Retrospec remakes are very good, but occasionally they get it wrong and put something out that doesn’t really work. Knight Lore and Alien 8 are two Retrospec remakes of Ultimate games that just do not work as well as the originals.
Martianoids was released in 1987 on three different formats: ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, and this MSX conversion. All three are pretty much identical in terms of gameplay; they feature a robot, walking through nine sectors of a scrolling landscape, fighting off alien robots that are trying to destroy a computer you are defending.
The Amstrad CPC version of Martianoids is arguably slightly better than the ZX Spectrum version, because it has a couple more on-screen colours to play around with. It plays the same as the Spectrum version, but looks a little better. The scrolling and control responsiveness seem a little slower, though.
Ultimate Play the Game‘s 1987 release, Martianoids, is another US Gold attempt to recreate the thrills and spills of a genuine Ultimate game and failing miserably.
You can find some indication of this if you type “Martianoids longplay” into YouTube and seeing that there aren’t any videos. Almost every other Spectrum game has someone playing through it on YouTube; definitely every other Ultimate game, but not this one.
***CANNED GAME***
There is a story behind the Commodore 64 conversion of Bubbler, but to condense it into just a few sentences: the game was being converted in 1987 by an intermediary company for Ultimate, called Lynsoft, but was canned before release because it wasn’t fast enough.
The 1987 MSX conversion of Bubbler is arguably better than the Spectrum original because the speed is more consistent during play, which makes it more playable. In fact, it’s a game that borders on being superb, which is unusual for the later US Gold/Ultimate games which are generally considered to be inferior to Ultimate‘s earlier titles.
The King of Grabs 