Broforce is a satirical, side-scrolling run and gun shooter, with superb pixel graphics, and I can’t recommend it highly enough!
It’s a ‘modern retro’ game, in that: it’s a modern game (it came out in 2015), trying to look retro, and it works fantastically well. Broforce is so much fun to play…
Tony Crowther‘s 1988 tribute to Commando and Ikari Warriors, Fernandez Must Die is a scrolling shooter with military overtones.
The Commodore 64 conversion of Defender of the Crown is a celebrated retro gaming classic. Apart from loading times, there’s little to fault about it.
Raid Over Moscow was a controversial release for Access Software in 1984. The game depicts a fictional nuclear war scenario between the USA and Russia and involves US forces fending off nuclear attacks, then flying into the Russian capital to attack what is supposed to be The Kremlin.
Denton Designs made this smart little POW game for Ocean Software in 1986.
It basically re-enacts the risky life of being a Prisoner of War during the Second World War, with a planned escape being top of the list of things to do.
Raid on Bungeling Bay was Will Wright‘s first ever video game and it was released for the Commodore 64 by Brøderbund in 1984. Will Wright – in case you didn’t know – was a co-founder of Maxis and also designer of SimCity and The Sims.
Another excellent Hijong Park retro tribute game – this one possibly his best so far – Steel Alcimus is an overhead helicopter shooter with either twin-stick joypad, or keyboard and mouse controls. I played it with mouse and keys and found the control system to be really quite ingenious.
General Chaos is a memorable multiplayer strategy/action game, developed by Game Refuge Inc. and published for the Sega Megadrive by Electronic Arts in 1993.
The game is basically a real-time, single-screen tactical action game, with two teams of soldiers fighting it out for overall domination. You can either take on the computer AI, or another person, and must capture your opponent’s base to win the game.
Based on the Paul Hardcastle pop hit of 1985, 19 (“nnnnn-Nineteen“), 19 Part One: Boot Camp is a multi-event action game that is supposed to portray the training phase of a Vietnam solder’s experiences.
Armor Battle is a multiplayer tank combat game for the Intellivision that was released in 1979.
Considering its age, Armor Battle could be considered to be quite ahead of its time; particularly in terms of graphics. The isometric viewpoint, showing buildings, trees, rivers, lakes, and bridges, is a perfect setting for a tank battle – much more so than the simple mazes seen in Atari‘s Combat (a direct rival to this game at the time).
And – like Atari‘s Combat – Armor Battle is a two-player only game. There is no ‘Artificial Intelligence’ controlling enemy tanks, so – if you don’t have a friend to play with – the game is extremely boring.
With two players, though, the game comes alive. Each player has two tanks each but can only control one at a time. You can switch between them with a button press. Matches become a game of cat and mouse, with players taking cover behind trees and buildings and waiting for that opportunity to pounce. The first player to destroy fifty opponent tanks is the winner.
Of course Armor Battle is very limited, but we are taking about a game that was developed in 1978 and released in 1979, so we shouldn’t be too hard on it. For the time – and for what it is – Armor Battle is classic two-player console game.
More: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armor_Battle
