Tag Archives: maze

Wall Street, Arcade

This weird arcade game was developed and manufactured by Century Electronics in 1982. It features two distinct stages: one where you have to bounce falling stockbrokers into an ambulance using a trampoline, and a second where you have to collect money inside a maze of chasing tanks.

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Alien 8 Retrospec Remake, PC

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.

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Knight Lore Retrospec Remake, PC

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.

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Martianoids, MSX

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.

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Martianoids, Amstrad CPC

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.

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Martianoids, ZX Spectrum

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.

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Pentagram, Commodore 64

Ultimate Play the Game‘s isometric platform adventure, Pentagram, was never officially released for the Commodore 64, so fans took it upon themselves to convert it themselves, some thirty years after its original release. This port was released in 2017 by Rod & Emu.

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Pentagram, MSX

Pentagram was released for the MSX in 1986, and it’s not really an Ultimate game, in truth, because it wasn’t written by the original Ultimate team; it’s a US Gold game. It’s not a bad game, though, even though it doesn’t have the flair or humour of an authentic Ultimate game.

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Alien 8 MSX2 Remake, MSX

This 2009 homebrew remake of Ultimate Play the Game‘s classic Alien 8 was created for the MSX2 by Manuel Pazos and Daniel Celemin. The graphics have obviously had a serious make-over and look beautiful, but the gameplay seems to be the same as the original, with noticeable (some might say “game-crippling”) slowdown.

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Alien 8, Atari 8-bit

This Atari 8-bit homebrew conversion of Ultimate Play the Game‘s Alien 8 was created by Fandal, Miker, and Emkay in 2013. It wasn’t written from scratch, though; it was ported from the BBC Micro version (according to various sources online), but unfortunately it doesn’t play as well as the Beeb version. It has a fundamental flaw that completely ruins the game…

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