Tag Archives: Tribute

Hard ‘N’ Heavy, Atari ST

Hard ‘N’ Heavy was created either as a sequel to The Great Giana Sisters, or was originally a Giana Sisters game itself, such is the similarity between it and the aforementioned game.

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The Great Giana Sisters, Atari ST

The Atari ST version of the infamous The Great Giana Sisters is as good-looking as the original Mario game it is ‘satirising’. It is chunky and colourful and characterful, although gameplay wise it is not a patch on the Mario Bros. games.

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Gorf, Arcade

Gorf is an early arcade shooter that feels like a poor relative to many of its peers of the time.

It borrows most of its features from other games (one wave is actually called “Galaxians” although I do believe that the developers properly licensed it from Namco) and doesn’t bring anything new to the table in terms of gameplay, but it did pioneer one thing. And that is: in the use of synthesised speech. Gorf was one of the earliest video games to use it (and although clear, it is quite robotic).

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Zombi, Atari ST

A strange game, and Ubisoft‘s first ever video game release;  the Amstrad original coming out in 1986 and this conversion in 1990.

Zombi is a clear appropriation [ie. lift] of George A. Romero‘s classic 1979 zombie film, Dawn of the Dead, although I don’t think Ubisoft actually bought an official license for it. They just changed all the names of the characters…

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Penetrator, ZX Spectrum

Penetrator is a side-scrolling shooter, developed by Philip Mitchell and Veronika Megler (as Beam Software) and published by Melbourne House in 1982.

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Ultra Vortek, Atari Jaguar

My goodness, Ultra Vortek must rate as one of the worst beat ’em ups of all time!

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Starstrike II, ZX Spectrum

The sequel to Realtime Software‘s brilliant Starstrike 3D, Starstrike II is another excellent and groundbreaking first-person space shooter, only this time with impressive “filled” polygons, instead of the simpler wireframe graphics of the original.

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Starstrike 3D, ZX Spectrum

More than just a clone of Atari‘s arcade classic Star Wars, Starstrike 3D (or 3D Starstrike, whatever you prefer) is a wireframe, shooter masterpiece on the humble ZX Spectrum that really set the gaming world alight, back in the early Eighties.

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