Tag Archives: shoot em up

Judge Dredd, ZX Spectrum

This second attempt at a Judge Dredd game on the Spectrum was developed by Random Access (the development team at The Sales Curve) and published by Virgin Games in 1990, although there is some debate about how widespread the game’s release actually was.

Was the game even properly released, or was it cancelled and some copies leaked out? Few people seem to have had a copy and it only recently turned up on game preservation sites. There were reviews in most of the major magazines at the time, although this doesn’t indicate whether the game was released or not.

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Strontium Dog: The Killing, ZX Spectrum

Quicksilva‘s second attempt at a Strontium Dog video game in 1984 – released the same year as the awful Death Gauntlet on the C64 – is only marginally better than their first attempt.

The Killing, on the ZX Spectrum, was written by Paul Hargreaves and once again sees you playing mutant bounty hunter Johnny Alpha, trying to survive a gauntlet of hostility on an alien planet. This time, though, he’s voluntarily participating in a contest where vicious murderers fight to the death for cash, in a tournament called “The Killing“.

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Strontium Dog and the Death Gauntlet, Commodore 64

Strontium Dog and the Death Gauntlet for the Commodore 64 was the first properly-licensed video game based on a 2000AD character. It was coded by Stephen Kellett; co-designed by Mark Eyles, and published by Quicksilva in 1984.

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Outlaws, PC

Developed and published by LucasArts in 1997, Outlaws is a first-person shoot ’em up set in the Wild West. The graphics are cartoony and the music is very much inspired by Ennio Morricone‘s classic The Good the Bad and the Ugly soundtrack, which gives it a distinct atmosphere that made it stand out against many of its peers of the time.

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Turrican, Amstrad CPC

Rainbow Artsclassic C64 shoot ’em up, Turrican, was converted to the Amstrad by Probe Software, and it demonstrates how to do this kind of side-scrolling run-and-gun shooter on the CPC. Compared to something like Gryzor, Turrican is streets ahead in terms of presentation and playability.

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Gryzor, Amstrad CPC

In 1987 Konami released the hugely successful run-and-gun shoot ’em up Contra in arcades, and Gryzor is the localised European conversion of that game, published by Ocean Software in 1988.

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Doom 64, Nintendo 64

Developed by Midway Studios San Diego and published by Midway Games in 1997, Doom 64 is a sequel to Doom II that contains a single-player campaign, but no multiplayer.

In total there are 28 campaign levels and four secret levels. Monster and weapon graphics have been redesigned and are unique to Doom 64.

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Moon Cresta, ZX Spectrum

The Spectrum conversion of Nichibutsu‘s classic 1980 arcade game Moon Cresta was published by Incentive Software in 1985 and it is considered to be very good, considering the machine’s limitations.

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Light Force, ZX Spectrum

Light Force is one of the best vertically-scrolling shoot ’em ups on the ZX Spectrum and it was published by Faster Than Light in 1986. It was written by Greg Follis and Roy Carter – the same guys who wrote the classic Spectrum games Tir Na Nog, Dun Darach and Marsport for Gargoyle Games.

The game is a fairly straightforward – if very playable – shooter, with smooth-scrolling backgrounds that have destructible elements, but it is so well presented that it’s hard not to be impressed.

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Beach Head, Commodore 64

Beach Head is an infamous war-based action game created by Access Software and first published for the Commodore 64 and Atari 8-bit computers in North America 1983. It was later released by US Gold in Europe in 1984.

The game is set in the Pacific theatre of the Second World War and features five individual stages of combat, each based on a fictitious amphibious assault of an enemy island. You can play Beach Head at four difficulty settings.

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