Cosmic Avenger is a groundbreaking arcade shooter first released in 1981 by Universal. It was one of the first ever side-scrolling shoot ’em ups, and was released the same year as Konami‘s Scramble.
Tag Archives: Single-Player
Mario Kart 64, Nintendo 64
Mario Kart 64 is the successor to the brilliant Super Mario Kart on the SNES and the second game in the famous Mario Kart series. It was first published by Nintendo for the N64 console in 1996.
Legend of Mana, PlayStation
Legend of Mana is the fourth game in the Mana series. It was once again directed by Koichi Ishii and was published by Square on CD-ROM for the PlayStation only in 1999.
Marble Madness, X68000
The Sharp X68000 version of Atari‘s classic Marble Madness is pretty much arcade perfect – barring, of course, the trackball controls of the original arcade game. In fact: if you compare the graphics to the arcade game you might notice that they’re crisper and slightly higher resolution.
Barbarian, Atari ST
Palace Software‘s notorious Barbarian is a ‘sword and sandal’ beat ’em up with a knockout gimmick: you can decapitate your opponent with a well-placed sword stroke!
Granted: you have to time it correctly, and get the distance between you and your opponent right, but when you pull it off the head bounces off in hilarious fashion, before being finally getting booted off the screen by a gremlin.
Delta, Commodore 64
Designed and programmed by Stavros Fasoulas in 1987, Delta is a classic side-scrolling shooter with spaceships, sprites, and fast, furious action.
And: like Fasoulas‘s previous game, Sanxion, it’s also immensely challenging.
Sanxion, Commodore 64
Designed and programmed by Stavros Fasoulas in 1986, Sanxion is a classic side-scrolling C64 shoot ’em that is remembered for being challenging, and for also being a slick piece of coding.
It was also the very first game released by Thalamus, who went on to publish some of the best games in C64 history.
Thunder Blade, Arcade
Thunder Blade is a single-player helicopter combat game that debuted in arcades in 1987, courtesy of Sega. It combines overhead shooting sections with third-person, ‘over-the-shoulder’ shooting sections and it features lots of impressive graphical scaling effects on the buildings and enemies.
Skull & Crossbones, Arcade
I hadn’t seen this 1989 arcade game from Atari Games before, until I played it recently, and even then I found it on the Commodore 64 first, then realised that it was an arcade conversion.
Skull & Crossbones has all the ingredients of a classic arcade action game, but – having played it extensively now – I can see why it failed…
Stargate, Arcade
Also known as Defender II, Stargate is the 1981 sequel to Williams Electronics‘ Defender, which was released earlier the same year.
Stargate was designed and programmed by Eugene Jarvis and Larry DeMar of Vid Kidz, for Williams, and it features the same superfast blasting action as Defender, but with subtle differences.
The King of Grabs 