Designed by the same guy who created Tetris (Alexey Pajitnov), Knight Move is a weird kind of puzzle game, with a bouncing chess piece knight who can only move in that funny ‘L’ shape that a knight moves in a real game of chess.
The knight must collect hearts by landing on top of them on the same square on the board.
HAL Laboratory‘s Eggerland is a brilliant overhead puzzle game that is also known as The Adventures of Lolo on the Nintendo Entertainment System.
Gottlieb‘s classic arcade game Q*bert was first released in 1982. It delighted gamers with its quirky mix of cube-jumping and ‘painter’-style gameplay.
Another timeless classic video game that originated on the BBC Micro in 1986.
Geoff Crammond‘s The Sentinel is a strategic game of ‘hide and seek’ – played-out on a chequerboard-like surface over which a being called The Sentinel watches.
It says “copyright 1989” on the title screen, but Klax actually made it into arcades in June 1990. Klax is a real-time puzzle game – for one or two players – with falling tiles that you must catch, then drop, into a small trough at the bottom of the screen.
Peter Liepa and Chris Gray‘s classic Boulder Dash was first released for the Atari 8-bit in 1984 (the Commodore 64 version came later).
Boulder Dash is one of those games that is very simple, but also very clever. Not to mention: extremely devious. In some levels, if you put a foot wrong, you’re toast and must re-start.
Paul Shirley‘s classic isometric puzzle/adventure game, Spindizzy, originated on the Amstrad CPC, but is also quite excellent on the Atari 800.
I’m a big fan of the game Bubble Ghost and this Amstrad CPC conversion is up there with the best of the 8-bit versions.
Pete Cooke‘s brilliant puzzle game Brainstorm was converted by David Kirby to the Commodore 64 and published by Silverbird in 1987.
Known in Japan as Jigsaw Party, and in the West as Pieces, this 1994 Super Nintendo game is an intriguing and compelling mix of Tetris and jigsaws. Which might sound as dull as hell, but it’s actually surprisingly good.
