As good as International Soccer is (well, isn’t), International Basketball is on a whole ‘nother level when it comes to playability…
Again written by Andrew Spencer for Commodore, International Basketball looks very similar to its predecessor but is leagues better, in terms of gameplay.
Andrew Spencer‘s International Soccer is a very early football game for the Commodore 64. And by “very early” I mean: 1983.
It stood out from other football games on the market at the time because it had a modicum of playability. You could at least take possession of the ball and have shots on target. You could at least kick the ball in the right direction…
Developed and published by HAL Laboratory in 1989, Pinball: Revenge of the Gator is a memorable handheld pinball game with a cartoony, reptilian theme.
Simply called Golf, this 1989 Game Boy title is a conversion of Nintendo‘s classic 1984 Nintendo Entertainment System game and gives a fantastic round of putting and driving on Nintendo‘s humble little handheld.
Bitmasters‘ 1993 title Championship Pool for the SNES is – I think – arguably the best pool game of all time. On any system.
No Second Prize is a 3D motorbike racing game from German developer and publisher Thalion, with mouse controls and an emphasis on fun, rather than realism.
Which suits me, because realism in these games can really become a problem when all you want to do is complete one lap of the course without crashing, but can’t seem to be able to do that.
Konami‘s 1983 arcade hit Track & Field broke new ground with its button-bashing gameplay.
It also broke a fair few cabinets along the way, with arcade machine operators having to repair the buttons on machines quite often, to keep them operative (and therefore earning money). A broken Track & Field machine was no good to anyone, and people tend to get carried away and hit too hard when playing this game.
PAM Development‘s 2003 release, Top Spin, was the moment when tennis games came of age and went full 3D.
From Match Point on the ZX Spectrum, via Super Tennis on the Super Nintendo, to this… Arguably the pinnacle of all modern tennis games.
Novalogic released a series of Comanche helicopter combat games in the 1990s. They began with the excellent Comanche: Maximum Overkill in 1992, and continued on with them until 2001.
World Class Leaderboard on the Commodore 64 is one of my favourite games of all time, but I’m not really much of a golf fan. This goes some way to demonstrating just how GOOD this game is.
The King of Grabs 