Tag Archives: Retro Gaming

Double Take, Commodore 64

Created by Denton Designs and published by Ocean Software in 1987, Double Take is a weird fantasy shooter/puzzle game, and is one of those games where – even if you read the manual – you’re still unlikely to know about what the f**k is going on! I spent a few hours recently trying to work this game out, and came away just as confused as when I started…

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Starglider, Amiga

Argonaut Software‘s Starglider, when it first came out, was a flashy release. It came in a big blue box, with a novella, a manual, and a single floppy disk. Magazines were raving about it, and I remember buying it… for the ZX Spectrum. LOL.

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Starglider, Atari ST

The Atari ST version of Argonaut Software‘s pioneering 3D shooter, Starglider, first came out in 1986 – a year before the Amiga version (for some reason – I don’t know why).

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The Sword of Hope II, Game Boy

The sequel to the first Sword of Hope, The Sword of Hope II was developed and published by KEMCO in Japan in 1992, but wasn’t localized and released into North America until 1996. Europe (and the rest of the world) didn’t receive a release of the game at all.

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The Sword of Hope, Game Boy

This first-person adventure/RPG was developed by KEMCO (a subsidiary of Kotobuki Engineering & Manufacturing Co.), and published by Seika Corporation in Japan, North America and Europe in 1989. In it, you play as Prince Theo, who is on a quest to challenge his insane, power-mad father for rule of the kingdom.

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Seal of the Pharaoh, 3DO

Seal of the Pharaoh is a first-person dungeon-crawler with a tomb-raiding ancient Egyptian theme. It was developed by System Sacom and published in 1994, exclusively for the 3DO, by ASK Kodansha in Japan and Panasonic in North America.

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Typhoon Thompson in Search for the Sea Child, Atari ST

Developed by Dan Gorlin Productions and originally released for the Atari ST by Brøderbund in 1988, Typhoon Thompson in Search for the Sea Child is a simple but brilliant shooter/collect ’em up with analogue controls.

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Stunt Car Racer, Atari 8-bit

Geoff Crammond‘s classic Stunt Car Racer was converted to Atari 8-bit systems by homebrew coders Fandal and Irgendwer in 2018. And it is an excellent port that plays identically to the C64 version it is based upon.

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Conan, Commodore 64

Datasoft‘s 1984 release, Conan, is a curious game. It doesn’t seem to be directly related to either of the two Conan films released in the early ’80s (although it does use artwork from the sequel, Conan the Destroyer), so my guess is that it was a quick cash-in on the popularity of Arnold Schwarzenegger by the developers.

The game was originally written for the Apple II by Eric Robinson and Eric Parker, and the Commodore 64 version was created by Ron J. Fortier and John Butrovich.

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RoboCop, Amiga

Ocean Software‘s Amiga port of RoboCop was fairly impressive when it first came out in 1989, but – playing it now – it hasn’t stood the test of time particularly well. It’s a scrolling run-and-gun shooter that is loosely-based on the Data East arcade game of the same name (although the arcade game and the home computer versions were developed in parallel).

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