Tag Archives: pioneering

Street Fighter II: The World Warrior, Arcade

Possibly the best – and most influential – beat ’em up ever made, Capcom‘s Street Fighter II: The World Warrior is the second game in the Street Fighter series and the first in a long line of variations, enhanced editions and clones of Street Fighter II.

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Paperboy, Arcade

Atari‘s 1985 arcade hit Paperboy features an isometric road to cycle down and houses to throw newspapers at. It’s an attractive proposition for an arcade game. Especially when the game has real bike handlebars for steering, which the original arcade cabinets did.

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Space Harrier, Arcade

Developed by a team led by Yu Suzuki at Sega in 1985, Space Harrier is a super-fast third-person, flying-into-the-screen fantasy blasting game, originally housed inside a hydraulic cabinet in arcades. This would jerk around as you moved the control stick, giving you a feeling of movement as you played the game.

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Rainbow Islands, Arcade

Rainbow Islands: The Story of Bubble Bobble 2 is possibly Japanese game developer Taito‘s finest hour. On any system.

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Ballblazer, Commodore 64

Lucasfilm Games released Ballblazer upon unsuspecting audiences back in March 1984 (actually, on Atari 8-bit systems first).

The game is a futuristic one-on-one sports game, with two players battling it out, from inside the confines of a small, floating vehicle, called a Rotofoil.

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Half-Life 2, PC

Half-Life 2 was first released by Valve Corporation in 2004. It was such a giant leap forward for games in general – not just first-person shooters – that its reverberations are still being felt today.

Half-Life (one) is a brilliant game, but Half-Life 2 completely blows it out of the water.

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Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean, GameCube

Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean is a brilliant Final Fantasy-style, level-grinding RPG, initially released by Namco on the Nintendo GameCube in 2003.

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Jet Set Willy, ZX Spectrum

Here are all the screens from Matthew Smith‘s original classic ZX Spectrum platform game (and sequel to Manic Miner), Jet Set Willy. All 61 of them. Plus the ending after completing the game.

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