Lutter is an obscure-but-interesting combination of platform game and maze game, but with RPG elements – like levelling – also thrown into the mix.
You play the titular Lutter, a knight of the realm on a quest to rescue the princess from a maze-like castle of platforms, ladders, doors and monsters.
Otocky is a cute and colourful side-scrolling shooter with a unique and interesting take on the subject. It was developed by SEDIC for ASCII Corporation and first published in 1987.
You see, rather than firing bullets, you throw balls at enemies to destroy them. And you can throw the balls in eight directions, so in effect you can shoot at enemies behind you (and above and below you) too.
Fire Rock is an obscure-but-interesting platform game that was released for the Famicom Disk System in Japan in 1988.
The game features a jittery main character who jumps and climbs around a cave-like environment.
Esper Dream is a superb real-time, combat-based Role-Playing Game for the Famicom Disk System. It was developed by Konami and released in Japan in 1987.
Released into arcades in 1985, TwinBee is a cute, vertically-scrolling shooter that is much more challenging than it looks.
The original ZX Spectrum version of Monty On The Run is a real improvement over its predecessor, Wanted: Monty Mole.
Wanted: Monty Mole on the Commodore 64 is somewhat different to the ZX Spectrum version, although it does try to follow the spirit of the original.
You play as Monty, a mole who must explore a huge mine in search of, well, coal.
Sega‘s 1991 arcade release, Cotton: Fantastic Night Dreams, is a strange-but-cute side-scrolling shoot ’em up featuring a young witch on a broomstick, called Cotton.
Doomsday Castle is the 1983 sequel to The Pyramid.
It again features ‘Ziggy’ – the guy in the floating gun turret – and again features simple, single-screen shooting action.
Fantasy Software released two games in 1983 featuring a character called ‘Ziggy’, and this game – The Pyramid – was the first of them.
The Pyramid is a simple, single-screen shooter, with you playing as Ziggy – inside a floating gun pod – who must escape from a gigantic pyramid.
The King of Grabs 