Steve Turner‘s classic Ranarama originated on the ZX Spectrum in 1987. The game is an overhead Gauntlet derivative where you play as a frog (actually a wizard’s apprentice, called Mervyn, whose botched spell has turned him into a frog), who must fight his way through various levels of a maze, defeating warlocks and taking their runes.
Tag Archives: Steve Turner
Rainbow Islands, Amstrad CPC
Graftgold‘s conversion of Rainbow Islands on the Amstrad is a decent port of the brilliant Taito arcade game. It was published by Ocean Software in 1990.
Dragontorc, Amstrad CPC
I didn’t know that Dragontorc existed on the Amstrad until recently and was pleasantly surprised to find out that it did. Dragontorc is one of my all-time favourite ZX Spectrum games and it translates well to the CPC, flickery graphics included.
Dragontorc was designed and programmed by Steve Turner (of Graftgold fame) and is a sequel to the game Avalon, both of which feature a levitating mage called Maroc on a quest to defeat the forces of evil.
Astroclone, ZX Spectrum
This 1985 release from Hewson Consultants is basically a futuristic variation of the classic Avalon/Dragontorc games by Steve Turner. It uses similar presentation and game mechanics to those games, with a central character moving around pseudo 3D rooms, exploring and solving puzzles.
Bubble Bobble also featuring Rainbow Islands, Sega Saturn
Bubble Bobble also featuring Rainbow Islands was coded by British developer Probe Entertainment and published by Acclaim in 1996. It was also released for the PlayStation, PC MS-DOS and Windows, but I’m just covering the Sega Saturn version here because they’re mostly identical.
Continue reading Bubble Bobble also featuring Rainbow Islands, Sega Saturn
Avalon, ZX Spectrum
Steve Turner‘s 1984 release Avalon is a groundbreaking adventure game with pseudo 3D graphics, released only for the ZX Spectrum.
Rainbow Islands, Amiga
Graftgold‘s Amiga conversion of the legendary Rainbow Islands is pretty much flawless… Well, if you discount the three secret hidden worlds the developers had to ditch when they discovered them… And the lower resolution, compared to the arcade original.
Rainbow Islands, Atari ST
Thanks to British developer Graftgold the Atari ST has an almost perfect conversion of Taito‘s arcade classic, Rainbow Islands.
To all intents and purposes the ST version of Rainbow Islands is identical to the arcade original. Well, kind of…
Simulcra, Atari ST
Simulcra is a cool third-person 3D shooter set on a complex series of colourful courses.
The game was developed by legendary coding team Graftgold and is one of their least well-known releases, but also one of their best.
Zynaps, ZX Spectrum
Zynaps is a smart side-scrolling shoot ’em up, developed by Dominic Robinson, John Cumming and Stephen Crow (with music by Steve Turner), and published by Hewson Consultants for the ZX Spectrum in 1987.