There’s a lot of early arcade games out there that don’t get the love and attention they deserve — but Hamster’s Arcade Archives series has been going a long way to bring a lot of these forgotten classics back from the dead.
Traverse USA from Irem is a great example. I’d never heard of it before, but it’s actually a lot of fun. Combining top-down racing with some simplistic vanishing point dodge ’em up action, it’s a delight to play — and surprisingly addictive!
Ever wanted to play a puzzle game that featured the smiling face of John Major? I thought not, but we’re going to anyway.
Ego is an interesting puzzle game based on a game that claims to be related to the classic Repton series, but which isn’t really. You control an elephant-like thing as he attempts to reassemble digitised photos of minor celebrities and public figures from the mid-’90s. And it’s surprisingly fun!
There are some people out there who, if you tell them that it’s “impossible” to do something, will do their best to do it anyway — and often prove that original naysayer completely wrong.
Such was the case with Livewire, a type-in machine code listing for Atari 8-bit that came about when ANALOG magazine’s Tom Hudson overheard someone saying that it would be possible to do a good version of Tempest on the Atari 8-bit. Challenge, as they say, accepted — and overcome with aplomb.
After my woeful performance at Video Checkers, I must confess I was kind of dreading Video Chess a bit. But things ended up going rather better than I imagined.
Turns out the special “Beginner” level available in the game is perfectly attuned to a strategically challenged moron like me — and I think I might have actually learned a thing or two about how to play more effectively along the way, too.
Mario Tennis for the Nintendo 64 is my favourite Mario Tennis game. Subsequent installments have, to me, overcomplicated things somewhat — so it’s been a pleasure to return to this one thanks to the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack.
Providing straightforward but mechanically interesting arcadey thrills, Mario Tennis for Nintendo 64 is Virtua Tennis with an added layer of cartoony accessibility atop it. Even those who aren’t into sports — like me — can have a good time with this one, particularly if you bring some friends along to join the fun!
You like Berzerk? Then you’ll probably like CBS Software’s K-Razy Shoot-Out — though this is more than just a straight clone of the arcade classic.
Instead, it presents you with increasingly challenging shoot-outs against armies of robots — all against the clock. In the tradition of the very best arcade games out there, it’s extremely simple to learn, but tough to master. And very, very addictive!
I am bad at checkers, or draughts as we call it over here, but I’m not going to turn down a chance to play an early game by Carol “River Raid” Shaw.
In fact, legend has it that Carol Shaw’s Atari 2600 version of Checkers put Activision’s similar effort to shame by such a significant degree that she was offered a job with the company. And the rest, as they say, is history. Now in commemoration of such a heartwarming story, enjoy my terrible attempts to beat the lowest difficulty level on a 41-year old video game adaptation of a very simple board game.
I love Moon Patrol, but it’s actually been quite a while since I played it seriously — and I’ve never spent that much time with the arcade original.
Still, all it took to get me interested in playing again was some discussion of the Atari 8-bit version (and its dodgy moon buggy sprite) on the 1200XL Podcast — after that, I was ready with my PayPal account to download the Arcade Archives version on Switch, marking what I suspect is the beginning of a worrying addiction. But oh well.
We’ve reached the end of our second spell (no pun intended) with Epyx’s wonderful Temple of Apshai Trilogy; this time we take on the final part, Curse of Ra, on the Atari ST.
Westwood’s 1986 port of Temple of Apshai Trilogy for Atari ST is one of the more convenient and enjoyable ways to play the game. The mouse controls and menus work well, the ability to get the room descriptions with the tap of a key is wonderful — it would have been nice to have the treasure descriptions, too, but I guess there was only so much text they could squeeze in!
The meaning of “platform game” has changed quite a bit over time; back in the earlier days of home computing, however, it had quite a distinct meaning. And Jumpman Junior from Epyx was pretty much a textbook example.
You have a single screen at a time. There are platforms and, often, ladders — hence the genre also being known as “platforms and ladders”. You have a thing to do — usually “collect all the thingies” or “get to the top”. And there are things trying to stop you — including the very environment you’re clambering all over! All of this is true for Jumpman Junior. And it’s still a highly enjoyable game today!
