International Karate was released in 1986 by System 3 Software.
It was written by Archer MacLean and was one of the first beat ’em ups – ever – to actually feel like a decent game to play and not a ridiculous slug-fest.
Tag Archives: Two-Player
Games that two people can play simultaneously.
Speed King 2, ZX Spectrum
A budget motorbike racing game, created by Derek Brewster in 1987 for Mastertronic.
Speed King 2 is the sequel to… well, nothing, because there’s isn’t a Speed King 1, as far as I can tell. Was there a prequel to this? If there was, I can’t find it… Maybe Brewster was trying to make a sequel to Full Throttle? Because Speed King 2 does look a bit like it. I dunno.
Bonanza Bros., Megadrive/Genesis
Bonanza Bros. is a split-screen, two-player, side-scrolling action game that first appeared in arcades in 1990. A number of home conversions followed although none were better than this Sega Megadrive/Genesis version which was released in 1991.
Ikari Warriors, Arcade
SNK‘s famous arcade shooter, Ikari Warriors, was released in 1986 at a time when many Commando clones were saturating the market, but managed to stand out against the competition.
Contra: Hard Corps, Megadrive/Genesis
Contra: Hard Corps is Konami‘s attempt to recreate the thrills and spills of the legendary SNES game, Contra III: The Alien Wars (aka Super Probotector), on the Sega Megadrive/Genesis, and – to be honest – it falls a little short of its SNES cousin.
Combat, Atari 2600
Combat was designed by Atari, Inc. and first released for the Atari 2600 in 1977 and was the pack-in game for the system until 1982 (meaning: you got a Combat cartridge with the console, upon purchase).
It was one of the first home video games I ever played (probably the same for millions of others) and it enthralled me. Yes, Combat is very simple by today’s standards, but in 1977 it was a revelation and was much cloned by other developers.
Rainbow Islands, PC Engine
The PC Engine version of Taito‘s classic arcade game Rainbow Islands was only made available on CD-ROM, so you had to have a CD compatible PC Engine to play it.
[That was: until emulation was invented…] 🙂
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.
Unirally, Super Nintendo
DMA Design‘s excellent Unirally was re-named as the more boring “Uniracers” for North American audiences, although I’m sticking to Unirally as my preferred title for this website.
The Chaos Engine, Megadrive/Genesis
Developed by The Bitmap Brothers and published by Renegade Software in 1993, The Chaos Engine is an overhead scrolling shooter for one or two players.
The King of Grabs 