In Sega‘s 1984 arcade game, Future Spy, you fly an F-15 jet fighter across an isometric landscape, shooting down enemy aircraft while at the same time dropping bombs on ships, submarines, and ground forces.
Tag Archives: Sprites
Peter Pepper’s Ice Cream Factory, Arcade
This obscure 1984 arcade game is a spin-off from Data East‘s classic 1982 hit, BurgerTime, in that it features Peter Pepper, the burger-dropping chef from that game. In Peter Pepper’s Ice Cream Factory, though, he is again navigating various screens of platforms and ladders, except this time he is trying to push scoops of ice cream into cones, as well as trying to take out chasing enemies by pushing or throwing ice cream at them.
Chip Factory, Commodore 64
Chip Factory, by Supersoft, was first released for the Commodore 64 in 1984 and is a BurgerTime variant that at least tries to do something different with the concept of dropping objects down a series of platforms and ladders.
Chiller 2, Commodore 64
Chiller 2 is a homebrew Commodore 64 release based on the Mastertronic game, Chiller. It was created by Andy Vaisey and first released in 2020.
Chiller, ZX Spectrum
The 1985 ZX Spectrum version of Mastertronic‘s Chiller was coded by Richard Wright, and is pretty much the same as the original C64 version, except that it doesn’t have any music (which was probably a good thing, from a legal standpoint), and the graphics are even worse.
Chiller, Commodore 64
Chiller is a simple platform game set over five different screens, and the aim is to rescue your girlfriend who is located in a haunted house at the end of the game. You jump around and collect ‘magic crosses’ to transition to the next screen. An energy bar indicates the player’s health. Touching enemies, or red mushrooms, depletes health, and collecting pink mushrooms increases it. If the bar reaches zero it’s game over – you only have one life.
Kid Icarus, NES/Famicom
Developed by Nintendo R&D1 (with assistance from Tose Co. Ltd.), and first released for the Famicom Disk System by Nintendo in 1986, Kid Icarus is a cult classic scrolling platform game that is known for its high level of difficulty. The original Japanese title for the game is “Hikari Shinwa: Palthena no Kagami“. An NES cartridge version, with a different ending, an English language title screen and staff credits, was released in 1987.
Venture, Arcade
Flimbo’s Quest, Commodore 64
Flimbo’s Quest is a scrolling platform shooter that basically recycles the gameplay from the classic C64 game, Hawkeye. Designer/programmer Laurens van der Donk was a member of demo scene coders Boys Without Brains (who created Hawkeye), which explains the connection. From what I can tell, though, van der Donk was not involved in creating Hawkeye, so I’m not entirely sure how or why Flimbo’s Quest came to be.
Galaxian, ColecoVision
The Galaxian conversion for the ColecoVision was first released in 1984 by Atarisoft, and it is a decent port of the classic 1979 arcade game from Namco. A secret message in the game credits James D. Eisenstein for writing the graphics and program (he also dedicates the game to his then wife/girlfriend, Jeneane).
The King of Grabs 