The BBC Micro conversion of Ultimate‘s classic Jet Pac looks pretty chunky, graphics-wise, but plays well enough.
The ZX Spectrum version was smash hit when it was first released in 1983, and all the other conversions seem to lack the charm of the original. This one is no exception.
Created by Design Design and first published by Crystal Computing in 1983, Invasion of the Body Snatchas! is a super-hard Defender clone for the ZX Spectrum.
Continue reading Invasion of the Body Snatchas!, ZX Spectrum
If you can stop laughing at the amateurish loading screen for a few minutes you might find a reasonable conversion of Konami‘s infamous Green Beret arcade game here. Emphasis on the word “might“…
The MSX conversion of Costa Panayi‘s Highway Encounter was coded by Pedro Sudon in 1985. It is possible that the game was only ever published in Spain on the MSX since the only versions I can find are in Spanish.
Green Beret is a classic old school run-and-gun arcade game that was developed and manufactured by Konami in 1985. The game was called “Rush’n Attack” in some territories, which is a play on words of “Russian attack” due to its Cold War setting.
Based on Carol Shaw‘s classic vertically-scrolling shooter, but not created by her, River Raid II is a more challenging and slightly more complex take on the River Raid concept.
Called Gunner’s Heaven in its native Japan, Rapid Reload is a run-and-gun scrolling shooter with amazing 2D graphics, massive amounts of destruction, and lots of tough boss battles. It was developed by Media.Vision and published by Sony.
Rapid Reload was first released for the PlayStation in 1995 and made an immediate impression with gamers, predominantly because of the action-packed gameplay and the sheer amount of on-screen carnage. Outside of arcades, little had been seen on this scale before – at least in terms of the amount of stuff going on on-screen. You only have to play the first level to know what you’ve got in store when you play Rapid Reload.
Quarth is a brilliant mixture of Tetris and shoot ’em up and was first played in arcades in Japan in 1989. Outside of Japan it is known as “Block Hole“, which – let’s face it – is a stupid name, so I’m sticking with the original name, Quarth.
The 1987 conversion of Ikari Warriors is bit of an “auteur piece” on the ZX Spectrum. What I mean by that is: one guy made it on his own. He programmed the game; created the graphics, and did the sound. That man was David Shea, and the truth be told: he did an excellent job of it – managing to squeeze in most of the arcade game‘s features. Which is pretty impressive on a Spectrum.
This Commodore 64 conversion of SNK‘s classic arcade game, Ikari Warriors, is considered to be one of the best vertically-scrolling shooters on the system. It was programmed by John Twiddy and published by Elite Systems in 1986.
The King of Grabs 