Classic Replay

Part one of a chronological view of the consoles and games I've played over the years. Please click on video below... 

Thrust is an easy game to describe, it's like Asteroids mixed with a splash of Moon-lander. You can tell from the word go that the guts of those classics have been well and truly assimilated, whilst retaining their addictive qualities. Visually, Thrust is less than interesting, I remember it having a half decent loading screen, but that was your lot. If you were willing to forego a little colour and didn't mind a bit of light thinking, Thrust was a real treat. Graphically it's very simple, you guide a spaceship where Gravity can work for or against. At first, it starts out easy, but on later stages, you've got to actively and precisely use the ship's thrust in order to prevent crashing into the scenery. I can't remember why you have to do all this, but the story mentioned something about the resistance planning a massive attack on the Intergalactic Empire, ring any bells? Anyway, your mission was to fly in, grab the Klystron pod and escape in two pieces. Be...

Super Monaco GP is a cherished gaming memory of mine. It was loosely based on the famous street race in Monaco and for a while, probably my favourite racing game. Super Monaco GP put you behind the wheel of the stupendously famous Ferrari V12 641, the very car that Alan Prost and Mansell once whizzed around in. I was really good at this game, would play it for weeks, if not months on end. In fact, I still play it today, more-so on the Mega-CD, as that was the version to feature CD-quality sound, music and voice overs. You were presented with three game modes, Arcade, World championship and Free Practice. In the arcade mode, a qualification lap would quickly establish your position on the grid. Then it was onto the starting line. Everything looked the same, only in this mode you had to contend with a position indicator, once you made it near the front, you pretty much needed to hold that position, otherwise, it was game over. It wasn't long before I completed the arcade mode a...

A while back I interviewed Bill Harbison, one of the chaps responsible for the likes of ChaseHQ and Batman... two of my favourite 8-bit games. I thought I'd lost the interview due to a system failure. Here it is, recovered from my now dead hard drive . So, how did you get into the games industry? I had owned a ZX Spectrum for quite some time back in 1988 and, as well as playing games, I was interested in creating art simply for the delight of seeing my work on a television screen. I progressed to taking pictures from arcade games and mocking up a screen of what that game might look like on the Spectrum. After comparing my screens to actual Spectrum conversions I thought that mine were as good or maybe a little better than the ones I'd seen, so with that in mind I targeted a few software companies with my work. After about a year of trying and almost ready to give up, I was offered a position at Ocean Software Ltd in Manchester. What are your fondest memories of...

Released: 1982 Company : Commodore Is it any good? It’s seen by many as the ultimate 80’s computer. The C64 came with a whopping 64K of ram, a screen resolution of 320x200 with 8 selectable colours from a palette of 16. The 8581 (SID) sound chip was very sophisticated for the time, and very popular for both MIDI and programming on a budget. Noticeable flaws were with the attribute system. It placed minor limitations on a number of colours displayable within any 8x8 pixel square. Despite this, the 64 is still an excellent games machine. Killer titles include Commando, Bounder, Ghosts & Goblins, Green Beret, Wizball, Sentinel, Bubble Bobble, Armalyte, Creatures, IK+ and many many more. A chap called 'Chris Abbott released 'Back in time compilations many years back, and since then many people have dedicated their time and support in order to insure the SID chips survival. All can be found at http://www.c64audio.com/      ...