Tag Archives: Retro Gaming History

Galaxian, Arcade

Galaxian is an iconic video game from the golden age of gaming history.

In fact, Galaxian was Namco‘s response to Space Invaders. It came out in 1979 and enthralled gamers with its hypnotic but brutal gameplay. Which it still does, to this day.

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Doom, PC

id Software‘s hit shooter, Doom, blew the roof off the gaming world when it was first released in 1993.

It was the first First-Person Shooter that moved really fast and smoothly, and gave you a real sense of ‘being there’ when you played it.

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Bubble Bobble, Arcade

Taito‘s Bubble Bobble first came out in arcades in 1986. Its colourful, jolly, platform action proved a sensation among gamers, and it has since gone on to earn “legendary” status in the retro gaming community.

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SimCity 2000, PC

The very first version of SimCity 2000 was released for Apple Macintosh by Maxis in 1993, followed soon after by a PC MS-DOS version.

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International Lode Runner Day

In celebration of the late Doug Smith‘s iconic platform game I’m going to be publishing a series of screenshots of twelve (count ’em) different versions of Lode Runner, in a single day. Today, in fact.

We could call today “International Lode Runner Day”. 🙂

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The Legend of Zelda, NES

1986 saw the release of the original The Legend of Zelda on the NES, although it wasn’t on cartridge – it was on floppy disk. Specifically: for the Nintendo Famicom Disk System (FDS).

A cartridge version, with battery backup-up saves, was released in North America in 1987.

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Dynamite Dan, ZX Spectrum

Rob Bowkett‘s 8-bit platform game became an instant hit on the ZX Spectrum when it first came out in 1985.

Dynamite Dan had groundbreaking graphics (for the time) and was seen as a “Jet Set Willy-beater” by some. One thing is for sure: it had (still has) a lot of character. Especially in the main sprite of Dan.

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H.E.R.O., Commodore 64

The Commodore 64 version of John Van Ryzin‘s 1984 classic H.E.R.O. plays just as good as the Atari 2600 original, although the graphics are a little messier.

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H.E.R.O., Atari 2600

John Van Ryzin‘s popular H.E.R.O. (Helicopter Emergency Rescue Operation) first made its appearance on the Atari 2600 (aka Atari VCS), via Activision, way back in 1984.

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