Category: ChartedPage 3 of 57

A British history of popular video games, told one sales chart #1 at a time

Super Bowl XX – “This is the owner of the Chicago Bears speaking”

In 1986, Scanatron released a Commodore 64 game called The Double, made by Paul Barnard and Peter Martin. Taking after Football Manager, it put more of an emphasis…

The Way of the Tiger – “Please insert Pole Fighting”

The dawn rays of the sun greet you as you begin your preparations for the time of trial. Today you will become the youngest ever to challenge for…

Uridium – “Good zapping”

In 1988, Crash magazine interviewed Chris and Tim Stamper, previously of British home computer game titans Ultimate, and by then setting out as Rare. At one point, when…

HardBall – “Fastball ⬆️ Screwball ⬅️ Changeup ⬇️ Curveball ➡️”

In 1979 a group of four Atari programmers left and set up a new company. They felt that they weren’t getting their due for creating the games that…

Kung-Fu Master – “Martial arts experts and demons of every description”

In 1982, Takashi Nishiyama directed an arcade game called Moon Patrol, for Irem. It featured a moon buggy which moves constantly across a lunar landscape, where you have…

Rock’n Wrestle – “He knows all the moves”

The Way of the Exploding Fist was early enough and good enough to be ahead of the trend on martial arts and fighting games and to be a…

Yie Ar Kung-Fu – “Hot fighting history”

Ocean’s contract with Konami to port their arcade games under the Imagine label had quickly worked well with Hyper Sports. Even if it did end up competing with…

Rambo: First Blood Part II – “Among other great battle heroes”

He squinted to clear his vision, looking down the mound where Treasle lay flat in the brush. Christ, he had hit him. God, he had not wanted that,…

Commando – “Now rush the 2nd area”

1985 was quite a year for Tokuro Fujiwara. He had earlier started his career at Konami, joining from Osaka Designers’ College to do visual design work, initially without…

Winter Games – “Calgary, Ontario”

While the UK’s market for computer games grew rapidly from 1983, things were not going the same way with adjacent markets over in America. As former Action Graphics…