Written by John Hollis and first published by Quicksilva for the 48K ZX Spectrum in 1983, Time-Gate was the first Spectrum game I ever played and is a simple first-person space shooter – basically a Star Raiders clone with a few differences.
Tag Archives: shoot em up
Dropzone, NES/Famicom
Archer MacLean‘s classic side-scrolling shooter, Dropzone, was converted to the NES/Famicom by Eurocom Developments and it is an excellent adaptation of this fast-moving Defender derivative.
Gorf, ColecoVision
A rare home port of Nutting Associates‘ famous 1981 arcade game, Gorf. Rare because the original developers licensed both Space Invaders and Galaxian for inclusion in the original Gorf, which restricted its reach in home markets (because anyone wanting to release the game on another system would also have to license both games to make it legal).
Cylon Attack, BBC Micro
Programmed by Doug Anderson and published by A&F Software in 1983, Cylon Attack is an early cockpit-based space shooter for the BBC Micro that still plays quite well today.
Blue Lightning, Atari Lynx
This arcade-style, third-person combat flight game was developed by Epyx and released exclusively for the Atari Lynx in 1989. Blue Lightning was actually a launch title for the North American release of the Lynx.
Canyon Warrior, ZX Spectrum
Canyon Warrior is a vertically-scrolling shoot ’em up written by Ste Cork and published by Mastertronic in 1989. The game came out very late in the ZX Spectrum‘s life, which is probably why it’s technically quite impressive (for the Spectrum).
Fantasy Zone, Game Gear
Also known as Fantasy Zone Gear, this handheld conversion of the 1986 arcade game was first released in 1991 and was developed by Sanritsu and published by Sega.
Doom, Super Nintendo
The Super Nintendo conversion of id Software‘s classic Doom was developed by Sculptured Software and published by Williams Electronics in 1995. It uses the Super FX chip to help render the 3D graphics, but in truth: even with the extra processing power it’s a pretty poor effort.
Vortex, Super Nintendo
Vortex is a 3D shoot ’em up developed by Argonaut Software and published by Electro Brain in North America, Sony in Europe, and Pack-In-Video in Japan in 1994. It is one of the few games (other than Star Fox, Stunt Race FX, Yoshi’s Island, Doom, Dirt Trax FX, Winter Gold, and Star Fox 2) to use the Super FX co-processor chip to allow for faster 3D graphics than the vanilla SNES is capable of.
Fort Apocalypse, Commodore 64
The Commodore 64 version of the classic Atari 8-bit helicopter shooter, Fort Apocalypse, was ported by Joe Vierra and published by Synapse Software in North America in 1982. US Gold published the game in Europe slightly later.
The King of Grabs 