Namco‘s Galaga – the sequel to Galaxian – came out in 1981 and was an immediate hit with gamers.
Gone were the days of Space Invaders and rigid attack patterns – the baddies in Galaga danced around the screen; made circles, and flew around in distinct and fluid attack patterns. It was new and it was revolutionary!
Moon Cresta was released by Nichibutsu in 1980 and was extremely popular in arcades.
It is another colourful, fixed-screen shooter, this time with a scrolling starfield to give the impression of movement.
Galaxian is an iconic video game from the golden age of gaming history.
In fact, Galaxian was Namco‘s response to Space Invaders. It came out in 1979 and enthralled gamers with its hypnotic but brutal gameplay. Which it still does, to this day.
Rendering Ranger: R2 is a rare run-and-gun game from the end of the life of the Super Nintendo. It was published by Virgin Interactive in Japan only in 1995. Which is strange for a German game…
Jeremy Smith and Peter Irvin‘s groundbreaking Exile first came out on the BBC Model B in 1988 and was later converted to other systems.
The Amiga AGA version of Exile was handled by Audiogenic and came out in 1995.
Jeremy Smith and Peter Irvin‘s groundbreaking Exile first came out on the BBC Model B in 1988 and was later converted to other systems.
The Amiga OCS version of Exile was handled by Audiogenic and came out in 1991.
The BBC Micro version was the very first version of Jeremy Smith and Peter Irvin‘s classic Exile, released through Superior Software in 1988.
Sub-titled “Tau Ceti II“, Pete Cooke’s stunning Academy is a brilliant mission-based surface shooter that combines great presentation and atmosphere, with interesting use of light – quite radical for a humble ZX Spectrum.
I’m going to use the Japanese and North American name for this game – Star Fox – rather than the European name (Star Wing, which was chosen because the name “Star Fox” was apparently too similar to a German company called “StarVox”!).
Todd’s Adventures in Slime World is a game developed by Epyx and first released on the Atari Lynx in 1990.
This Megadrive/Genesis version came later – in 1991 – and in my mind is better than the original, because you can see more of the play area in this version (because the graphics are higher resolution), and there’s also simultaneous split-screen play.
Continue reading Todd’s Adventures in Slime World, Megadrive/Genesis
