Category: ChartedPage 3 of 57

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

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…

Monty on the Run – “Bon Voyage Monsieur Le Monty”

Manic Miner did not have very much to say about mining. Its name and ostensible theme came from Miner 2049er, but anything mine-related was incidental to all the…

Hyper Sports – “Six hyper-sporting events”

“Our accountant just couldn’t believe it. He thought we’d end the year with about £2,000 in profits”. So said Mark Butler, co-founder of Imagine Software, in a profile…

The Way of the Exploding Fist – “10th Dan”

Gregg Barnett was born in Swan Hill, Victoria, Australia. He moved to Melbourne for university and then joined software company Melbourne House in 1982. Up to then, his…

Soft Aid – “Feed The World”

“The games industry was in the ascendancy, but was still in the shadow of the music business in those days” said Rod Cousens, when reflecting on the events…