Tag Archives: Retro Gaming History

Popeye, Arcade

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.

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Mortal Kombat 3, Arcade

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…

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Mortal Kombat II, Arcade

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.

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RoadBlasters, Arcade

Released into arcades in 1987, RoadBlasters is a legendary driving/shooting game from Atari Games. It is, however, a little tricky to control…

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Golden Axe, Arcade

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?

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Journey, Arcade

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”.

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Narc, Arcade

Created by Williams Electronics in 1988, Narc is a side-scrolling run-and-gun shooter that attracted a lot of controversy when it first came out.

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Arcade Special

The video game arcades of the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s were very special places. They were where the majority of innovation was taking place in the video games industry, and over those three decades countless classic video games were released into these dingy, constantly noisy places for friends to crowd around and play. Video game arcades were social places where all kinds of different people hung out.

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Match Day II, ZX Spectrum

Match Day II is the 1987 sequel to Match Day. It was again coded by Jon Ritman and published by Ocean Software.

The graphics in Match Day II were created by Bernie Drummond (who famously made Batman with Ritman in 1986), and could be described as “more characterful” than in the previous game. One thing is certain, though: the players in Match Day II definitely have Eighties haircuts!

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Match Day, ZX Spectrum

Although it’s pretty laughable now, Jon Ritman and Chris Clarke‘s 1984 football game, Match Day, was a groundbreaking Spectrum game for the time.

Match Day wasn’t the first football video game ever made, but it was one of the first to at least make a reasonable attempt to translate the sport into something playable.

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