Designed and programmed by Stavros Fasoulas in 1986, Sanxion is a classic side-scrolling C64 shoot ’em that is remembered for being challenging, and for also being a slick piece of coding.
It was also the very first game released by Thalamus, who went on to publish some of the best games in C64 history.
Also known as Defender II, Stargate is the 1981 sequel to Williams Electronics‘ Defender, which was released earlier the same year.
Stargate was designed and programmed by Eugene Jarvis and Larry DeMar of Vid Kidz, for Williams, and it features the same superfast blasting action as Defender, but with subtle differences.
Originating in arcades in 1984, Flicky is a super cute bird-collecting platform game by Sega that relies heavily on gravity, inertia, and jumping to provide the challenge.
The aim of the game is simple: you play a blue bird who must collect up the small, yellow chicks (the “PioPio“), and avoid contact with the cats (the “Nyannyan“) on your way to taking the chicks home (the door you came in through). The quicker you do this, the more bonus points you get.
Simple. Or at least you might have thought so…
Released into arcades by Nintendo in 1983, Mario Bros. is a one or two-player platform game featuring Mario and Luigi as the main characters. Incidentally, this was the first time Luigi ever appeared in a video game.
Mario Bros. was designed by Shigeru Miyamoto and Gunpei Yokoi – two of the lead creators of Donkey Kong, of which this game is a follow-up.
Nintendo‘s 1982 arcade game, Popeye, was somewhat ahead of its time, and also in some respects as archaic to play as a Game & Watch.
It was ahead of its time in the way that it used a relatively high screen resolution (512×448), which results in quite detailed, high res sprites that are unusual for the time.
Unfortunately the same can’t be said of the background graphics, which look like something designed on an Atari 2600… In fact: Popeye is a weird mix of graphical resolutions, but this weirdness doesn’t affect the gameplay at all.
Mortal Kombat 3 was co-developed by Midway and Atari Games and was released into arcades by Midway in 1995 and it continues the fine Mortal Kombat tradition of outraging anyone without a sense of humour…
Released a year after the original Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat II took arcades by storm in 1993, with its mix of beat ’em up action and absurdly violent parody.
Released into arcades in 1987, RoadBlasters is a legendary driving/shooting game from Atari Games. It is, however, a little tricky to control…
Sega‘s classic Golden Axe is a scrolling beat ’em up first released into arcades in 1989. It is fondly-remembered, often re-released, and has been converted to many other systems.
What’s so good about Golden Axe, then?
This infamous 1983 arcade game from Bally Midway is a bizarre multi-stage action game where you play members of the prog rock band, Journey, trying to retrieve their instruments “from the dangers of the five galaxies”.
The King of Grabs 