The ZX Spectrum version of Poogaboo: La Pulga 2 – the sequel to the classic Bugaboo (The Flea) – was coded by the same guy who created the original (Paco Suárez), so plays similarly, and is also what I’d call an authentic sequel.
Poogaboo was only ever released in Spain – by Opera Soft, in 1991 – so is relatively obscure as Spectrum games go. I’m a big fan of the original Bugaboo, but hadn’t heard of this sequel until recently, so was pleasantly surprised by its existence.
Released by Visco Corporation as a Neo Geo-based arcade game in 1999, Captain Tomaday is a one or simultaneous two-player shoot ’em up, featuring a cartoon tomato with bionic fists.
Poogaboo: La Pulga 2 is the rather obscure sequel to the ZX Spectrum classic, Bugaboo (The Flea), aka La Pulga. It was written by the original author of La Pulga (Paco Suárez), and was published by Opera Soft, for PC MS-DOS, the ZX Spectrum, MSX and Amstrad CPC, in 1991.
Based loosely on the satirical (and frankly terrible) 1978 film of the same name, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes is an isometric platform/action game – in the style of Knight Lore – that was first published by Global Software in 1986.
Developed by Graphic State and published by Majesco/THQ in 2002, Dark Arena is a first-person shooter set in a futuristic environment where you are the only survivor of a team sent in to neutralise a bunch of Genetically-Engineered Organisms (GEOs) inside a top secret training facility.
When I first played Back Track, my instincts screamed at me that this was a terrible game. The graphics are messy; the enemies look awful; the explosions have a really bad horizontal raster-style visual effect; health packs are called “Band-Aids“; the weapons are unimpressive; the draw distance is masked with a solid black shadow, which is disconcerting; the environments appear flat, empty and uninteresting, and the premise of the game – to rescue kidnapped humans from inside tubes – doesn’t seem very exciting. BUT… I persisted with it and found Back Track to actually be quite absorbing and challenging, when I eventually got into it.
Published by Firebird in 1987, The Willow Pattern Adventure is an Asian-themed maze game that is actually an unashamed, almost carbon copy remake of the 1984 game, Treasure Island. Both games were created by Greg Duddle.
Based on the 1988 film of the same name, Willow is a platform action game developed by Capcom and distributed into arcades in 1989. The intro says: “A magnificent fantasy filled with love, friendship and adventure!“, but in reality the game is a violent hack-and-slash ’em up, and is some distance from “love, friendship and adventure”…
The Adventure of Little Ralph (aka “Chippoke Ralph no Daibōken“) is an obscure 2D action game, made exclusively for the PlayStation, developed by New Corporation and released in Japan only in 1999. The game has a serious reputation among PS1 fans ‘in the know’ as being one of the best import games available for the system. And I wouldn’t disagree with that.
Created by Denton Designs and published by Ocean Software in 1987, Double Take is a weird fantasy shooter/puzzle game, and is one of those games where – even if you read the manual – you’re still unlikely to know about what the f**k is going on! I spent a few hours recently trying to work this game out, and came away just as confused as when I started…
The King of Grabs 