Tag Archives: maze

The House Jack Built, ZX Spectrum

The House Jack Built is the sequel to Jack and the Beanstalk. It was released the same year as Jack and the Beanstalk – in 1984 – and is a marked improvement on its predecessor.

It was again created by Chris Kerry, helped by his brother, Steve, and published by Thor Computer Software, based in Liverpool.

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Jack and the Beanstalk, ZX Spectrum

Jack and the Beanstalk is a ZX Spectrum game published by Thor Computer Software in 1984. It was written by Chris Kerry, assisted by his brother, Steve.

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Crystal Castles, Arcade

Crystal Castles is a legendary arcade maze game developed and published by Atari, Inc. in 1983. What made the game so good were: the trackball and jump button controls (which gave a good degree of freedom to make headway at pace) and the unusual isometric graphics (which drew on-screen in an unusual and interesting way).

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Neo Bomberman, Neo Geo

Every home console had to have a version of Bomberman, and the Neo Geo had one too.

Actually, technically that’s not true, because – while Neo Bomberman did get a Neo Geo release – it was only ever for the MVS (arcade system). It was never officially released for the AES (home system). So only ever appeared in arcades. And that was mostly just in Japan.

Neo Bomberman was sold into some countries outside of Japan, although when the game is played on a European system the text is displayed in Spanish and not English.

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Platoon, Commodore 64

Developed and published by Ocean Software and licensed from the 1986 Oliver Stone film of the same name, Platoon on the Commodore 64 managed to win over gamers and critics, back in 1987 when it was first released, with its atmospheric and varied gameplay.

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Alien 8, MSX

The MSX version of Ultimate‘s classic isometric action adventure, Alien 8, is almost identical to the ZX Spectrum original – including slowdown caused by sound effects playing and lots of on-screen movement.

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Halls of the Things, Commodore 64

The Commodore 64 has a version of Design Design‘s classic Halls of the Things and it looks and plays very similarly to the original Spectrum version. Which is no bad thing, because this is a challenging and fun little action game.

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The Staff of Karnath, Commodore 64

The first game in the Sir Arthur Pendragon series, The Staff of Karnath was released on the Commodore 64 in 1984 to some acclaim. Mostly because it was an Ultimate game, and in the eyes of many people (myself included), Ultimate could do no wrong.

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Eskimo Eddie, ZX Spectrum

This obscure 1984 release from Ocean Software is basically a clone of Sega‘s classic arcade game, Pengo, but with an extra level tacked-on at the beginning. Similar in many ways to Ocean‘s Mr. Wimpy, which was BurgerTime with an extra level tacked on at the start. As if it would confuse the copyright police… “These are not the clones you are looking for… It is a completely different game… Look… [waves hand like Obi Wan]”

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