Tag Archives: shooting

Gunfright, Amstrad CPC

The Amstrad CPC received a conversion of Ultimate Play the Game‘s Filmation II game Gunfright in 1986 and it unfortunately suffers from the same problems that the previous Amstrad Filmation II conversion (Nightshade) did, namely: colour issues and slowdown problems.

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Underwurlde, Commodore 64

The Commodore 64 version of Ultimate‘s classic Underwurlde was developed by Softstone and published by Firebird in 1985. It is a faithful recreation of the Spectrum original.

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Secret Commando, Sega Master System

Known in North America as “Rambo: First Blood Part II” (complete with movie licensed characters), and “Ashura” in Japan. Also known as: “Not-So-Secret Commando“, since this is an unsubtle clone of Capcom‘s classic 1985 arcade game, Commando (and SNK‘s 1986 game, Ikari Warriors – since it has a simultaneous two-player mode and level designs that echo that game). Joking aside: it’s a pretty good clone of Commando, although it does play rather slowly.

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Outlaws, Commodore 64

Outlaws was released by Ultimate Play the Game in 1985 for the Commodore 64. It is a side-scrolling action game with a Wild West theme, with a main character riding a horse, trying to shoot outlaws and protect a local town over a variety of different stages.

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Imhotep, Commodore 64

Written by Manuel Caballero, Imhotep is a 1985 Commodore 64 release from Ultimate Play the Game. It’s an ancient Egyptian-themed, auto-scrolling shoot ’em up where you ride on the back of a bird, over pyramids and palm trees, shooting stuff and avoiding enemy bullets.

If you manage to get further into the game you’ll also encounter underground platforming levels; walking levels where you either have to jump over pits or throw rolling barrels into other barrels that are rolling towards you. There’s also a river section on a coracle.

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Santron, Commodore 64

Santron is a Christmas-themed vertically-scrolling shoot ’em up created by Sarah Jane Avory and first released for the Commodore 64 in 2019.

Sarah programmed the game and created all the graphics and sound herself, and it is very good. Santron is actually a variation of Sarah‘s previous game, Neutron.

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Neutron, Commodore 64

Neutron is a vertically-scrolling shoot ’em up created by Sarah Jane Avory and first released for the Commodore 64 in 2019.

It was created for the 2019 RGCD C64 16KB cartridge game development competition, and is actually a re-coding of a game Sarah created in the 1980s but that went unreleased (because the publisher she was tied to at the time went out of business, before the game’s release), and was eventually lost (she regrettably threw away the disks with the source code after moving house years later).

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Starquake, BBC Micro

Steve Crow‘s classic Spectrum game, Starquake, was converted to the BBC Micro by Kenton Price and published by Bubble Bus in 1987.

Graphically, the game is rather chunky because it uses a low-resolution screen mode (presumably so that more colours can be used on-screen at the same time), but the gameplay is mostly the same as the original.

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Saturn, Arcade

Saturn is an early arcade game created by Ashby Computers and Graphics (A.C.G.) for Jaleco. A.C.G. – if you didn’t know – was the trading name of the developers of the famous Ultimate Play the Game series of video games.

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Commando Arcade, Commodore 64

Created by Nostalgia in 2015, Commando Arcade is a reworking of the original C64 Commando port by Elite, but with completely new graphics, sound, and levels. So, rather than it being written from scratch, the game was built around the framework of an existing game.

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