Sensible Software‘s brilliant Cannon Fodder is possibly their finest hour.
From the hilarious intro song, to the compelling action of the main game – Cannon Fodder is about as much fun as computerised war, with little titchy men and a mouse could possibly be.
And here is the PC MS-DOS version of Bullfrog‘s classic Populous (1989), for comparison’s sake.
Bullfrog‘s classic ‘God game’, Populous, was first released on the Amiga in 1989. It broke new ground with its ingenious mix of real-time strategy and sandbox-style landscape-building.
Realtime Games‘ 1988 hit, Carrier Command, is a compelling mixture of 3D simulation and real-time strategy.
In it you take control of a futuristic, robotic aircraft carrier and must work your way through an island archipelago, taking control of each island and competing against a rival carrier.
Atari‘s 1980 arcade hit, Missile Command, is a frenetic and chilling race to destroy nuclear warheads raining down on your cities.
Nazca Corporation‘s infamous run-and-gun blaster – Metal Slug – was first released in arcades in 1996, before following as a cartridge on SNK‘s cutting edge home console the Neo Geo AES.
The spiritual successor to Smash TV (in the same way that Smash TV was the spiritual predecessor to Robotron 2084), and a brilliant overhead shooter with 360 degree blasting action.
Commando is a classic vertically-scrolling run-and-gun game, first released by Capcom into arcades in 1985.
Taito‘s superb Operation Wolf was one of the first arcade games to feature a machine gun with force feedback on the cabinet.
Soooo much better than the first Beach Head… Beach Head II is a balls-to-the-wall, digitised speech-laden action game that sees “The Allies” versus “The Dictator”. The game was developed by Access Software and first published in 1985.
