Tag: RetroGamingPage 4 of 30

Ghostbusters – “You crossed the streams”

Games based on movies go back a long way, including in the UK’s games charts. Earlier in 1984, the charts played host to Richard Wilcox Software’s Blue Thunder,…

Underwurlde – “Scurrying slithering shadowy grave”

1983 was a good year for Ultimate. They released their first game Jetpac to much success earlier in the year. Then (after some other, less successful 16K games)…

Elite – “The Universe will open up before you”

The Universe, as has been observed before, is an unsettlingly big place, a fact which, for the sake of a quiet life, most people tend to ignore. […]…

American Football – “The tactical battle against the Opposing Team”

In 1984, the Los Angeles Raiders won Super Bowl XVIII. I had to look that one up. Despite that lack of American Football knowledge, though, I know something…

Sherlock – “Careful examination shows that the drawer has a false bottom”

When making The Hobbit, Beam Software and Melbourne House apparently knew they were onto a good thing. They decided early that they wanted to make another similar adventure…

Computer Scrabble – “Are you also using a Scrabble® board?”

In 1938 in New York, Alfred Butts invented Scrabble. Well, he invented Criss-Cross Words, a board game based on an earlier game of his called Lexiko. It was…

Daley Thompson’s Decathlon – “All ten events”

When The Activision Decathlon was released in the UK in summer 1984, it got a popularity boost from coinciding with the Los Angeles Olympics. People often want to…

The Activision Decathlon – “Let the games begin”

As we saw with Match Point, many game developers in 1984 had to go out of their way with hidden messages to get their names on record. In…

Full Throttle – “The best bike in the race”

There is a motorbike game for the Spectrum, programmed by Mervyn J. Estcourt and released by Micromega, which is beloved enough to have been the subject of remakes…

Match Point – “Strawberries and cream”

There’s an interesting challenge played out across adverts every time the football World Cup or the Olympics comes around. Those events’ official sponsors play a lot for their…