Light Force is one of the best vertically-scrolling shoot ’em ups on the ZX Spectrum and it was published by Faster Than Light in 1986. It was written by Greg Follis and Roy Carter – the same guys who wrote the classic Spectrum games Tir Na Nog, Dun Darach and Marsport for Gargoyle Games.
The game is a fairly straightforward – if very playable – shooter, with smooth-scrolling backgrounds that have destructible elements, but it is so well presented that it’s hard not to be impressed.
Fortress on the BBC Micro is a bland and overly-difficult Zaxxon clone written by Matthew Newman and first published by Pace in 1983.
The Kristal is an obscure British adventure game based on an un-produced theatre play written in 1976 (called “The Kristal of Konos“), developed by Fissionchip Software and published by Addictive Games in Europe and Cinemaware in North America. The fact that Cinemaware picked up The Kristal for distribution in the US and Canada is a surprise in itself, as that kind of thing didn’t happen very often back in 1989 when this game was first released.
This rather obscure Prince of Persia/Another World/Flashback tribute was created by Hungarian developer Invictus Games exclusively for the Amiga 1200 in 1997. It was initially released on CD-ROM only, which is strange as the Amiga 1200 didn’t come with a CD drive, so players had to purchase an external CD-ROM drive or somehow transfer the game to a hard drive and play it that way. Invictus later re-released the game as freeware for Windows, in 2004, to coincide with the company’s 10th anniversary.
This sequel to Super Turrican was again created by German developer Factor 5 and was published by Ocean Software for the Super Nintendo in 1995.
Power Strike II is a re-titling of the second Aleste game on the Game Gear. It was again developed by Compile and published by Sega in Europe and Brazil in 1993. The original Japanese title was “GG Aleste II: Lance Bird“.
The Aleste series of shooters is well known on the MSX, Sega Master System and Super Nintendo, and on the Game Gear this spin-off is known as “GG Aleste” (or Power Strike in some territories). It was developed by Compile and published by Sega in 1991.
TimeSplitters: Future Perfect is a first-person shooter developed by Free Radical Design and published by Electronic Arts in 2005. It is the third game in the TimeSplitters series and was released for XBox (the version shown here), GameCube, and PlayStation 2.
Altered Space is a somewhat obscure isometric platform puzzle game that was developed by British developer Software Creations and released exclusively for the Nintendo Game Boy in 1991.
A trippy Asteroids tribute originally released for the Acorn Archimedes in 1993, Spheres of Chaos was re-programmed and re-released free for Windows and Linux by the original author, Iain McLeod, in 2012. And it’s still available to download for free from spheresofchaos.com – at the time of writing.
The King of Grabs 