Tag Archives: pioneering

Wizard’s Lair, ZX Spectrum

Steve Crow‘s colourful and fun Wizard’s Lair is clearly a tribute to the brilliant Ultimate Play The Game title Atic Atac. It has the same overhead viewpoint, similar gameplay and graphics and sound effects.

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Stop The Express, ZX Spectrum

Stop The Express is an early ZX Spectrum game – created by Japanese developer Hudson Soft and first released in 1983 – and is a simple action game where the aim is to traverse the train carriages, from right to left, in order to reach the engine and to stop the out-of-control train.

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The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, PC

First released in 2015, CD Projekt Red‘s The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is a third-person, open world Role-Playing Game that is based on a series of novels by the Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski.

Obviously it is the third instalment in the series (and last, according to the developers), and in it you play a monster-hunting detective badass called Geralt – a Witcher; a carrier of two swords (one steel, for killing humans, and one silver, for killing monsters); and a superhuman solver of problems with acute senses and no emotions.

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Tetris, Game Boy

It would be remiss of me to celebrate the Nintendo Game Boy and not mention Tetris.

Tetris was the ‘pack-in’ game with the original black and white Game Boy, and probably helped sell a few million units in itself.

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Castlevania II: Belmont’s Revenge, Game Boy

Castlevania II: Belmont’s Revenge was first released in 1991 and is the sequel to Castlevania: The Adventure on the Nintendo Game Boy.

Castlevania II makes much better use of the Game Boy‘s hardware than its predecessor, and is considered to be one of the best titles on Nintendo‘s monochrome handheld.

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Metroid Prime, GameCube

The fifth game in Nintendo‘s famous “Metroid” series, and the first to use 3D graphics, Metroid Prime follows the well-worn gameplay path of the earlier Metroid games (that is: have all your equipment; lose all your equipment; have to find all your equipment again) and again sees you playing as Samus Aran, a female ex-soldier with a powered exoskeleton.

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Laser Squad, ZX Spectrum

Another Julian Gollop classic – Laser Squad was one of the earliest squad-based tactical combat video games, released in 1988, and was originally developed for the ZX Spectrum (and later converted to various other systems).

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Asteroids, Arcade

Released in November 1979, Atari‘s Asteroids was an instant hit with gamers.

It featured a vector graphic-based, black and white display, with a player-controlled triangular ship, moving in space and firing at moving rocks.

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Civilization, PC

Sid Meier‘s Civilization is a classic turn-based strategy game first released by MicroProse in 1991.

Since then it has been re-made and re-released many times, such is the allure of its classic gameplay.

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