Grasspin is a 1983 arcade game created by British developer Ashby Computers and Graphics Ltd. A.C.G., as they were known, were the team behind the famous Ultimate Play the Game brand and this is one of the games they made before launching Ultimate.
Tag Archives: Obscure
Saturn, Arcade
Saturn is an early arcade game created by Ashby Computers and Graphics (A.C.G.) for Jaleco. A.C.G. – if you didn’t know – was the trading name of the developers of the famous Ultimate Play the Game series of video games.
Blue Print, Arcade
Blue Print is a strange arcade maze game developed by Ashby Computers and Graphics (A.C.G.). It was licensed to Bally Midway in North American and European markets, and Jaleco in Japan, in 1982. A.C.G. would later became famous for their Ultimate Play the Game home computer games (Atic Atac, Sabre Wulf, Knight Lore, et cetera), and became even more famous as Rare (Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, et cetera).
Cataclysm, Archimedes
Cataclysm is an obscure action puzzle game on the Archimedes that involves channelling water from plugged-up vats in the top of a vertically-scrolling level, into a drain at the very bottom. Which you do by controlling a jet-pack-wearing guy who can manipulate objects to make the water take a certain route through the scenery.
Quarth, Arcade
Quarth is a brilliant mixture of Tetris and shoot ’em up and was first played in arcades in Japan in 1989. Outside of Japan it is known as “Block Hole“, which – let’s face it – is a stupid name, so I’m sticking with the original name, Quarth.
Ninja Baseball Bat Man, Arcade
This excellent arcade fighting game from Irem was originated in Irem‘s North American office but programmed by Irem Japan and first came out in 1993. It apparently sold well in Japan, but didn’t do so well in the United States, so is considered quite rare in the West.
Nightbreed, ZX Spectrum
Nightbreed is a relatively obscure movie license from Ocean Software, based on the Clive Barker film of the same name (which was based on his 1988 book, Cabal). It was designed and programmed by Chris Kerry and Mark Rogers.
Chris Kerry you might remember from Jack and the Beanstalk and Monty Is Innocent infamy; Mark Rogers had programmed a number of games by this point, including Avenger and Run the Gauntlet.
Hydra, Arcade
Hydra is a relatively obscure arcade action game featuring an armed powerboat that is chasing wanted criminals along twisting waterways in order to intercept and recover various stolen artefacts from them.
Leprechaun, Arcade
Ugh… Now this is a turkey of a game if ever I saw one… Created by Tong Electronics in 1982, Leprechaun is a dour collect ’em up that was designed for children but in fact offends their intelligence.
In fact: it would probably offend everyone now, except for those people who want to play the worst video games of all time, in which case it is probably mana from heaven…
Gunple: Gunman’s Proof, Super Nintendo
Gunple: Gunman’s Proof was developed by Lenar and published by ASCII Corporation in 1997. It was one of the last games to be released for the SNES and was only ever released in Japan. An English fan translation does exist, though, which means that non Japanese speakers can enjoy this wonderful game.
In essence, Gunple could be described as ‘Zelda with guns’ or a ‘Wild West Zelda‘, because – graphically – the game does have a lot of similarities to Nintendo‘s classic A Link To the Past. In fact: some of the background graphics, in my opinion, appear to have been lifted from the aforementioned Zelda game, which in reality is no bad thing.
The King of Grabs 