Saturday 6 May 2017

Frogger - (Sega, 1981) Frogger is a 1981 arcade game developed by Konami. It was licensed for North American distribution by Sega-Gremlin and worldwide by Sega itself. It is regarded as a classic from the golden age of video arcade games, noted for its novel gameplay and theme. The object of the game is to direct frogs to their homes one by one by crossing a busy road and navigating a river full of hazards. The Frogger arcade version is an early example of a game with more than one CPU, as it used two Z80 processors. By 2005, Frogger in its various home video game incarnations had sold 20 million copies worldwide, including 5 million in the United States. #fb #tweet #blog


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GridRunner - (Jeff Minter, 1982) Gridrunner is a series of shoot 'em up games written by Jeff Minter. The original Gridrunner was published for various 8-bit systems in 1982 and 1983 with Gridrunner 2 following in 1983. A third installation, Voidrunner was released in 1987. Confusingly, Gridrunner 2 was released in the US under the name Attack of the Mutant Camels, which was also the title used for a totally different game released the same year by Minter. The original game was written in a week. The series was revived in 2002 with Gridrunner++, for modern platforms, and followed by later games in the series. In August 2012, a Mac OS X port was released via the Mac App Store. #fb #tweet #blog


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Saturday 22 April 2017

Hunter's Moon - (Thalamus, 1987) Despite the game being a single ~64kb binary (many C64 games loaded each level separately from the storage device), the game world is large: there are 128 levels divided into 32 star systems. Along with The Sentinel, it is one of the best examples of the use of procedural content generation in early computer games. Each level takes place in a void with two-dimensional cities appearing as they are being built by "worker cells". The worker cells are indestructible but the bricks dropped by them can be temporarily destroyed using the ship's weapon. The goal of the game is to collect enough star cells contained inside the cities to get to the next level. By collecting enough star cells within a strict time limit (displayed in the lower score table) it is possible to skip the remaining levels in the current star system and pass on to the next, allowing skilled players to advance the game quicker. The game was well received, gaining a score of 92% in the well-known computer games magazine Zzap!64. According to the game's creator Martin Walker, Hunter's Moon was inspired by the children's game Spirograph. #fb #tweet #blog


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Quickshot Joystick! Who had one of these? #fb #tweet #blog #quickshot


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Friday 21 April 2017

IK+ (System 3, 1987) International Karate +, often abbreviated as IK+, is a karate fighting video game published in 1987 by System 3, originally for the Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC and ZX Spectrum. It has since been ported to a number of other platforms. The Commodore 64 version was released in the U.S. under the title Chop N' Drop. #fb #tweet #blog


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Hostages (Infogrames, 1989) Hostages is an action video game developed by New Frontier and published by Infogrames. It was released for the Acorn Electron, Archimedes, Atari ST, Amiga, Apple IIGS, Amstrad CPC, BBC Micro, Commodore 64, MS-DOS, MSX, NES and ZX Spectrum platforms in 1988. The game was released as Hostage: Rescue Mission in the United States and Operation Jupiter in France; the NES port was titled Rescue: The Embassy Mission. #fb #tweet #blog


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Gauntlet II (Atari, 1986) The gameplay is very similar to the original Gauntlet, a top-down dungeon crawl supporting up to four players. The biggest difference from the original game is that players can choose identical classes, instead of being limited to a particular one for each joystick; each player is differentiated by color. Thus, instead of having a "warrior", "wizard", and "valkyrie" (for instance), in Gauntlet II there could be a "red wizard", a "blue elf" and a "green warrior". In addition to the new "class" system, new level designs were added, including the possibility of encountering them in altered ways by having the playfield turned in steps of 90°. Other new features included the enemy "It", which upon contact would make a player "It" and draw all enemies towards him/her. The only way to release this curse is by touching another player or entering the exit, turning any level containing "It" into a fantasy filled game of tag. Other notable additions include the ability to ricochet shots off walls by means of a special pick-up, acid puddles that caused large, predetermined amounts of damage and a large dragon which would occupy multiple squares and require multiple hits to destroy. New level elements were also added, adding more variety to the original game. These included "all walls are invisible", "magic walls" which changed into monsters or items when hit, "stun tiles" which stunned the player, and fake exits. Another challenge in the game is the possibility to find a "secret room". This can be found by completing specific achievements within the level (e.g., "don't be fooled", means that you must find the real exit first). The secret room contains items such as food and magic potions (extra shot power, extra shot speed, extra magic power, extra speed, extra armor and extra fight power). This sequel was also the first to feature what is now known as the Gauntlet theme tune, which resembles a simplified Baroque fugue. #fb #tweet #blog


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