Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders is the second SCUMM game from Lucasfilm Games (aka LucasArts), after Maniac Mansion, with game development led by David Fox, and with Matthew Alan Kane as co-designer and co-programmer. It was originally released for the Commodore 64 in 1988, and this enhanced FM Towns port was published in Japan in 1990 by Fujitsu. The game is playable in both English and Japanese.
Continue reading Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders, FM Towns
The FM Towns conversion of Taito‘s smash hit arcade shooter, Operation Wolf, is both an authentic port of the original, and also a playable and fun game that utilises mouse controls to great effect. It was first published by Ving in 1990.
The ZX Spectrum version of Taito‘s classic arcade shooter, Operation Wolf, was developed and published by Ocean Software in 1988.
***CANNED GAME***
The Atari 8-Bit version of Commando was developed by Sculptured Software for Data East in 1989, but unfortunately the game was never released. Thankfully a prototype still exists and is available online, which is good because this is one of the best 8-bit ports of Commando around.
The 1987 Apple II conversion of Capcom‘s Commando was developed by Quicksilver Software, Inc. and published by Data East in North America only, and it is a reasonable port although the play window is probably the smallest out of the all the versions of Commando I’ve played so far.
Unfortunately the BBC Micro version of Elite‘s conversion of Commando is an absolute travesty, with terrible graphics and horrible gameplay and the only thing it has in common with the arcade original is the name of the game and the basic scenario.
The 1987 MSX version of Commando was a Japan-only release through ASCII Corporation, and – the truth be told – it’s a pretty awful conversion.
If you’re searching for the game you need to look for the title “Senjō no Ōkami” [“Wolf of the Battlefield“], which is the game’s Japanese title, as you’ll not find it under the name “Commando“.
The 1986 NES version of Commando is a flickery mess to be honest, although that didn’t stop the game becoming a smash hit – selling over one million cartridges worldwide.
The Amstrad CPC version of Commando – published by Elite Systems in 1986 – is easy to write off, due to its chunky graphics and mostly featureless backgrounds, but it’s actually one of the better 8-bit conversions.
The Atari 2600 version of Commando was programmed by Mike Reidel and first published by Activision in 1985. Considering the console’s limitations this is a surprisingly good conversion of the vertically-scrolling shooter.
