Written by Bill Williams (the writer and designer of Sinbad and the Throne of the Falcon, among other games), for the Atari Program Exchange, and first released in 1982, Salmon Run is a clever, and uniquely different, video game based upon the life cycle of a fish – a salmon, specifically – that is trying to swim upstream to its spawning ground.
Tag Archives: pioneering
Re-Bounder, Commodore 64
Re-Bounder is the 1987 sequel to the brilliant ball-bouncing game, Bounder. It was once again developed and published by Gremlin Graphics and this time features both horizontally and vertically-scrolling gameplay, whereas the previous game scrolled only vertically.
Rocky Super-Action Boxing, ColecoVision
Developed and published by Coleco Industries in 1983, Rocky Super-Action Boxing is based on the 1982 film, Rocky III, and was the first licensed video game based on the smash-hit series.
Awesome Golf, Atari Lynx
Developed by Hand Made Software and released exclusively for the Atari Lynx by Atari Corporation, Awesome Golf is a classic golf sim that both impressed critics and sold very well when it was first released in 1991. And it remains an excellent golf game to this day.
Dungeon Master, Apple IIgs
The 1989 Apple IIgs conversion of FTL‘s Dungeon Master was created by the original developers and is therefore a perfect port of this classic Role-Playing Game. The game requires a minimum of 1MB of RAM to run, like the Amiga version, and a processor running at 2.8MHz or above makes it playable at the right speed.
Forbidden Forest, Commodore 64
Created by Paul Norman for Cosmi Corporation, Forbidden Forest is a legendary survival horror game from 1983 in which you play an archer trying to avoid attacks from a variety of hostile creatures inside a sprawling forest.
Dragon’s Curse, PC Engine
Dragon’s Curse is the American TurboGrafx-16 conversion of the classic Sega Master System game Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap. It was ported by original developer Westone and published by NEC in 1990 in North America and Hudson Soft in Japan in 1991. In Japan the game was confusingly released as “Adventure Island” (not to be confused with Hudson Soft‘s own Adventure Island series), and has a short intro sequence not seen in the American version.
Super Chase: Criminal Termination, Arcade
Super Chase: Criminal Termination was first released into arcades by Taito in 1993, followed soon after by a Super Nintendo version called “Super Chase HQ“. It is an enhanced sequel to the classic Chase HQ, and Special Criminal Investigation, and features viewpoints that change, depending on where you are in the game, and what vehicle you’re driving. In fact, this moving camera feature has been so well implemented by the developers that it really enhances the dynamism of the exciting car-chase gameplay.
The Eidolon, Commodore 64
The Commodore 64 version of Lucasfilm Games‘ The Eidolon came out just after the Atari 8-bit original, in 1985. The game divided critics, but in my opinion it is an atmospheric and unusual cave exploration game, with weird-looking monsters and scary-looking dragons, and is still worth playing today.
Virtua Cop, Arcade
Virtua Cop is an arcade lightgun shooter developed by Sega AM2, directed by Katsunori Itai and supervised by Yu Suzuki. It was first released into arcades by Sega in 1994.