Tag Archives: shoot em up

Metroid: Zero Mission, Game Boy Advance

There are two Metroid games on the Game Boy Advance. One is an original game, called Metroid Fusion, and there’s also this one: Metroid: Zero Mission, which is a remake of the original Metroid.

It was first released in 2004 and features modernised graphics and gameplay, but the same core gameplay as the 1986 original.

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Psytron, ZX Spectrum

Psytron is an early shoot ’em up released for the ZX Spectrum by Beyond Software, who published it in 1984.

It’s a futuristic “base defence” game in essence, with you playing through six different levels trying to fend off alien invaders on a 10-screen landscape – the “Betula 5 Installation”.

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Tau Ceti, PC

The PC MS-DOS version of Tau Ceti was coded by Derek Baker at Comtec and published by CRL Group (Thunder Mountain in North America) in 1987.

It features gaudy, four-colour, CGA graphics, but is otherwise the Tau Ceti we know and love.

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Tau Ceti, Atari ST

The 1986 Atari ST conversion of Tau Ceti – by Ron De Santi of Comtec – is much faster than the 8-bit versions and therefore more challenging. And what a brilliant challenge it is!

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Tau Ceti, Commodore 64

John Twiddy‘s C64 conversion of Pete Cooke‘s classic space shooter is arguably even better than the Spectrum original.

Graphically it’s a little chunkier, but the extra colours make a difference.

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Penn & Teller’s Smoke and Mirrors, Sega CD

Penn & Teller’s Smoke and Mirrors is a “legendary” game that never came out…

Originally planned for a 1995 release on the Sega CD, Smoke and Mirrors was due to be published by Absolute Entertainment but they went out of business before the game’s release and it therefore sank without a trace.

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Conqueror, Archimedes

Conqueror is a 1988 release from Superior Software, designed and programmed by Jonathan Griffiths. It’s a 3D tank game that was released as a sequel to Zarch – and it uses the same game engine.

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Star Fighter 3000, Archimedes

Also known as “Star Fighter” in some quarters, Star Fighter 3000 is a game from Fednet Software, published by Krisalis in 1994.

It’s a third-person shooter with relatively primitive 3D graphics, in a similar kind of style to Nintendo‘s Star Fox.

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Cannon Fodder, Archimedes

The Acorn Archimedes conversion of the classic Cannon Fodder is pretty much identical to the Amiga original, even down the music, which is not always the case with Cannon Fodder conversions.

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