Tag Archives: overhead

Hover Bovver, Commodore 64

The original Commodore 64 version of Jeff Minter‘s Hover Bovver is just as niggly and annoying as the Atari 8-bit version, which was released as the game’s “evil twin” in 1983.

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Saturn Bomberman, Sega Saturn

The Saturn‘s version of Bomberman is one of the best Bomberman games available, with perfect-bomb-dropping gameplay and beautiful, colourful 2D graphics that retain the look and feel of the Super Nintendo and PC Engine classics, but with a slightly modern twist. Well, modern for 1997, when Saturn Bomberman was first released.

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The Legend of Oasis, Sega Saturn

The Legend of Oasis is the Saturn-exclusive sequel (and prequel) to Beyond Oasis on the Megadrive/Genesis. It’s also known as “The Story of Thor 2” in some territories. The game was developed by Ancient and published by Sega in 1996.

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Snare, Commodore 64

Snare is a game show of the future where the contestant puts their life at risk trying to crack the secrets of a deadly maze inside the temporal cavity of a dead billionaire’s garden. The game was written by Rob Stevens and was first published by Thalamus in 1989.

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Bionic Commando: Elite Forces, Game Boy Color

Developed by an American company, called Nintendo Software Technology, Bionic Commando: Elite Forces is the only game in the Bionic Commando series to be developed and published by Nintendo (and not the franchise owner, Capcom). It first came out – exclusively for the Game Boy Color – in the year 2000, and is a sequel to Bionic Commando on the Game Boy.

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Ranarama, ZX Spectrum

Steve Turner‘s classic Ranarama originated on the ZX Spectrum in 1987. The game is an overhead Gauntlet derivative where you play as a frog (actually a wizard’s apprentice, called Mervyn, whose botched spell has turned him into a frog), who must fight his way through various levels of a maze, defeating warlocks and taking their runes.

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Stainless Steel, ZX Spectrum

In Stainless Steel you are Ricky Steel – a teenage superhero with a flying car called ‘Nightwind‘ – on a mission to defeat the android troops built and controlled by the evil Dr. Vardos. What that basically means is that you have to drive/fly and shoot your way through a variety of overhead scrolling levels, collecting fuel to constantly top-up your ever-diminishing life bar and avoiding bullets like the plague.

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Strontium Dog: The Killing, ZX Spectrum

Quicksilva‘s second attempt at a Strontium Dog video game in 1984 – released the same year as the awful Death Gauntlet on the C64 – is only marginally better than their first attempt.

The Killing, on the ZX Spectrum, was written by Paul Hargreaves and once again sees you playing mutant bounty hunter Johnny Alpha, trying to survive a gauntlet of hostility on an alien planet. This time, though, he’s voluntarily participating in a contest where vicious murderers fight to the death for cash, in a tournament called “The Killing“.

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Rogue, Atari 8-bit

I was hoping that the Atari 8-bit version of Rogue might be better than the other 8-bit versions (or at least a balance between the awful C64 version and the half-decent Amstrad version), but I was hoping for too much – especially as it’s another Mastertronic “special” (ie. a good example of a publisher not giving a sh*t about what they released).

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