# Favourite 80s Home Computer Games?



## AlexH (Sep 17, 2021)

The passing of Sir Clive Sinclair got me thinking about gaming in the 80s and how much fun it was. It was the Amstrad CPC for me, though many of the games were the same as Spectrum. I played a ZX Spectrum too and generally preferred the Amstrad renditions.

Some favourites:

Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge (Top Gear on the SNES is a brilliant update of this, music-wise too)
Chase HQ
Skiing
Grand Prix Simulator 2
BMX Simulator 2
Super Stock Car
Daley Thompson's Decathlon
Fruit Machine Simulator 2 (for some reason)
World Soccer League
Treble Champions

Starquake
Fantasy World Dizzy
Dynamite Dan (mainly for the catchy rendition of Rondo Alla Turca)
Tubaruba (another catchy theme tune - a similar game to Dynamite Dan actually but more fun thanks to the jetpack and the humour)
Cauldron II

Knightlore
Knightmare (as a kid, I could never get past the second room)

The Colour of Magic

Beach Head II
Smash TV
Operation Gunship
Hostages (the graphics and music seemed awesome for the time)

Raffles (so basic but responsible for lots of massive jump scares)
Oh Mummy
Super Pipeline 2
Breakout
Locomotion

Ghostbusters II (I loved that you could choose a Beetle as the car)

I played so many games - I love how games were shorter back then compared to these days! I'll have forgotten loads. There were great compilations like "We Sold A Million."

Even when my bro' and I eventually had a NES, we still regularly played the Amstrad.

Some of the games are still very playable today too. We played Super Stock Car, Skiiing and Locomotion one recent Christmas. I also played They Stole A Million for the first time and found it compelling. You hire a team, plan then execute jewellery shop break-ins!

Games are still being made for these old computers too. Vespertino is one that seems to push the Amstrad CPC beyond its limits. Orion Prime looks like an awesome horror point-and-click adventure.

Away from home computing to consoles, the greatest game of the 80s was Super Mario Bros. 3!

One of my favourite games on Switch (it's on other consoles too) is Downwell. It's very 80s retro and looks ZX Spectrum-inspired.

Did anyone hand-code games out of magazines or the computer manuals?  My mum typed a few up for us, but I remember typing up some of Advanced Lawnmower Simulator. I played around with BASIC code a bit too.


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## paranoid marvin (Sep 17, 2021)

Some great suggestions there. I'm not so sure about the Amstrad versions being superior. In the right hands, the Amstrad could produce games with colourful graphics and great sound, but more often than not they were lazy Spectrum ports with terrible sound and jerky scrolling.

I think my fave speccy games were Atic Atac, The Wild Bunch, Quazatron and R Type;  but there were many, many more.

And yes, the 80s were definitely the best time for playing games both at home and in the arcades.


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## AlexH (Sep 17, 2021)

Some ports were lazy, for sure.

Atic Atac was actually remade for the CPC and C64 last year and looks great on both.


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## AllanR (Sep 17, 2021)

I had a C64 but only found a few games I liked. Archon, Mule, and Heart of Africa are the one I remember.
Roommates of mine played Space Taxi endlessly. (I can hear it...arrg)



AlexH said:


> Did anyone hand-code games out of magazines or the computer manuals?


I got my first word processor this way.


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## hitmouse (Sep 17, 2021)

Spectrum games:

Ant Attack

Attic Attack, Sabrewulf, Pssst!, Jetpak, and most especially Head Over Heels.

Manic Miner I have never playedanything as much as I played that. Transformative.

Ground Attack by Silversoft. A basic Scramble clone on the Spectrum. I finished it after a week.

Android II. Brilliant maze game. Hard to imagine how the graphics were so immersive from the perspective of 2021, but they were. Panayi went on to write Tornado Low Level




Psycalypse and Zip Zap.

Knot in 3D

various Defender clones. Defender was the hardcore gamers arcade game. Really hard to get basic proficiency. 

Yai ar Kung Fu

Emlyn Hughes Soccer


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## AlexH (Sep 17, 2021)

Android II! That's the kind of blast from the past I was hoping for. For some reason that's made Atomsmasher come to mind.

I liked Sabrewulf too. I don't think I ever played Manic Miner. I definitely didn't play Head Over Heels. It looks great on Amstrad - maybe I should try it out.


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## hitmouse (Sep 17, 2021)

You can get practicLly any speccy game for  free download from some very nerdy emulator sites, though I think the most famous games are available for Java-type download, including Head over Heels.


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## hitmouse (Sep 17, 2021)

You can get practicallyany speccy game for  free download from some very nerdy emulator sites, though I think the most famous games are available for Java-type download, including Head over Heels.

Crash magazine is also available in its entirety.


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## paranoid marvin (Sep 17, 2021)

AlexH said:


> Android II! That's the kind of blast from the past I was hoping for. For some reason that's made Atomsmasher come to mind.
> 
> I liked Sabrewulf too. I don't think I ever played Manic Miner. I definitely didn't play Head Over Heels. It looks great on Amstrad - maybe I should try it out.




Yes , HoH was a great version done for the Amstrad.


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## paranoid marvin (Sep 17, 2021)

hitmouse said:


> Spectrum games:
> 
> Ant Attack
> 
> ...




Some great suggestions there. Costa Panyani was a legend when it came to isometric games , and for me his greatest was Cyclone, in which you control a helicopter battling an unseen 'enemy' in the cyclone. Great graphics, and great wind effects as the cyclone gets nearer; do you try to rescue one more package, or land and ride out the storm? One of many tactical decisions to make.

And I agree with Defender, and insane number of controls spread across the arcade panel to get to grips with. But masters of the art like Jeff Minter could play like Mozart on a piano.

And EHIS - what an amazing game. So many new things in this game, it really was a revelation. Most people said that Match Day II was the pinnacle of soccer games on the 8 bits, but for sure it was Emlyn Hughes.

Pssst! What a wonderful little game, one of my favourite ultimate titles. So simple, yet so addictive. 

Yes HoH was a amazing , massive game. But incredible to think that to complete it you had to do it in one sitting with one set of lives. That in itself made it almost impossible. But back then completion  wasn't the most important thing, as you knew that you were unlikely to finish many (even if they had a finish to them). Just strolling around trying to get as far as you could. Isometric Batman by the same chap was also great fun.


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## paranoid marvin (Sep 17, 2021)

hitmouse said:


> You can get practicallyany speccy game for  free download from some very nerdy emulator sites, though I think the most famous games are available for Java-type download, including Head over Heels.
> 
> Crash magazine is also available in its entirety.




Crash was aces back in the day, and I remember going down to the news agents waiting for the next months copy, the best of course being the bumper Christmas edition and deciding which ones you wanted on the big day (NEVER let your parents choose!)

Zapp! was also good , although it didn't have ol' Looney Jetman chasing the Eye of Oktup. I never got to read Amtix though having not owned an Amstrad, but all the Newsfield publications were great.


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## hitmouse (Sep 17, 2021)

Good grief. It is nice to find souls that inhabited the same universe as me in the 1980s

I am not sure that it is possible to comprehend the visceral thrill of the 16 bit 80s video arcade from the perspective of  2021. Being good at Defender, with its ridiculous buttons was almost up there with being the lead guitarist in Iron Maiden in terms of glory and kudos (girlfriends were an abstract concept). The only thing that came close was being good at Robotron.


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## Foxbat (Sep 18, 2021)

The only game I remember playing on the ZX81 was some kind of moon landing game. It was (I think) the letter B as the landing module and you had to land it on a moonscape made up of the letter A. 

I also remember spending many hours playing Xenon on my Atari ST. I can't remember what platform I had it on but Pipemania is a game from way back then that still blows many of today’s games out of the water.


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## Rodders (Sep 18, 2021)

In the 80's my Dad had a market stall at Dagenham that sold computer games. I never really played them, but I remember platform games being very popular at the time. Games such as Football Manager was a big seller for us and some of the early flight simulators, i never got it. We tried playing text only adventure games like The Hobbit, but we were really terrible at it.


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## paranoid marvin (Sep 18, 2021)

Foxbat said:


> The only game I remember playing on the ZX81 was some kind of moon landing game. It was (I think) the letter B as the landing module and you had to land it on a moonscape made up of the letter A.
> 
> I also remember spending many hours playing Xenon on my Atari ST. I can't remember what platform I had it on but Pipemania is a game from way back then that still blows many of today’s games out of the water.



The ZX81 had (at best) a rudimentary graphics capability, no colour and no sound. Often the 'graphics' in a game would be letters or numbers representing cars/spaceships/aliens etc. Yet the gameplay was still there, and skilled programmers could still perform wonders. 3D Monster Maze is probably the best example of a programmer far exceeding the known limits of the machine.


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## Astro Pen (Sep 18, 2021)

Commander Keen


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## Toby Frost (Sep 20, 2021)

Head Over Heels was very impressive for its time. I remember laughing helplessly at the "Crap Games" page in Your Sinclair, which included a version of Advanced Lawnmower Simulator set on the moon. 

There was a game called Rebelstar 2 that was a primitive turn-based thing, which I loved. Also, there was a strange game called Plexar that had a  mysterious picture on the cover. And New Zealand Story. I also had a thing called The Boggitt, which was a parody of The Hobbit, and was incredibly frustrating.


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## HareBrain (Sep 20, 2021)

Blimey, no one's mentioned _Elite_?

Other favourites (C64) were _Paradroid_, _Iridium, Twin Kingdom Valley, Tir Na Nog_. There was also a half-decent WW2 strategy game called _Theatre: Europe _that occupied many happy/frustrating hours.


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## Venusian Broon (Sep 20, 2021)

HareBrain said:


> Blimey, no one's mentioned _Elite_?



We weren't posh enough for a BBC microcomputer - which is the machine I most link with _Elite - _hence a total Elite-hole in my young life. (Could you get it for a C64?) 

Hell, I never saw a C64 in the wild. Though I did know someone who had a Vic-20.

For the speccy 48, I remember playing _Football Manager _a hell of a lot. The agony of waiting through all those blocky animations trying to score a goal.


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## HareBrain (Sep 20, 2021)

Venusian Broon said:


> (Could you get it for a C64?)


Oh yes, and it played _The Blue Danube _when you docked. Sometimes the music almost drowned out the horrible scraping noise as you dragged your craft along the docking bay walls.

It was also available for the Spectrum 48k, though, so I don't know why you didn't have it.


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## Venusian Broon (Sep 20, 2021)

HareBrain said:


> Oh yes, and it played _The Blue Danube _when you docked. Sometimes the music almost drowned out the horrible scraping noise as you dragged your craft along the docking bay walls.
> 
> It was also available for the Spectrum 48k, though, so I don't know why you didn't have it.


I was probably put off the game by years of smarmy rich kids telling me my spectrum was cheap junk


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## BAYLOR (Sep 20, 2021)

Venture


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## Betok_Haney (Sep 20, 2021)

I remember walking past a Radio Shack in a mall when I was young, seeing The Sands of Egypt on a TRS-80. They let you play around with it, and I would play and play and play while my mom shopped. That was all it took to hook me into computer gaming for the next 40+ years.

I got a C64 as my first home computer, and fell in love with the blue screen. I remember these games dominating my time:

The Cosmic Balance - which was a LOT like Star Fleet Battles, a table top game my friends and I played a lot at the time
Test Drive
Impossible Mission
Spy Hunter
Pool of Radiance
The Bard's Tale
The Wargame Construction Set
Lemmings
Summer Games - I would always play the Soviet Union, lol
Zork
Temple of Apshai
Hacker
Airborne Ranger
Leader Board Golf
Raid on Bungling Bay


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## AlexH (Sep 20, 2021)

Elite is another classic I didn't play. It is mentioned in that song I mentioned in the Clive Sinclair thread.

Another game I've remembered enjoying is Pro Powerboat Simulator. Codemasters had a lot of success with these 'simulator' games.

Feud is another I loved. You played a sorcerer fighting his evil twin. It inspired a short story in more recent years.


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## HareBrain (Sep 20, 2021)

Jeez, I just remembered dungeon-crawler _Telengard_. So _that's _what happened to 1983. Anyone else?

"The Gnoll steals your armour."


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## Foxbat (Sep 20, 2021)

What I remember about Elite was how hard it was docking until you managed to save up for a docking computer. I think I had it on the Atari ST. Another one that I enjoyed was Midwinter. Very rudimentary 3D landscapes but with good gameplay.


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## HareBrain (Sep 20, 2021)

Ooh, how did I forget _Lords of Midnight_?

Was there ever a more satisfying reward for hours and hours of strategising in front of one's crappy 14" bedroom TV than a screen, blank but for the words "Ushgarak has fallen. Victory to the Free"?


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## paranoid marvin (Sep 20, 2021)

HareBrain said:


> Blimey, no one's mentioned _Elite_?
> 
> Other favourites (C64) were _Paradroid_, _Iridium, Twin Kingdom Valley, Tir Na Nog_. There was also a half-decent WW2 strategy game called _Theatre: Europe _that occupied many happy/frustrating hours.



Quazatron was the Speccy version of Paradroid, this time played isometrically rather than top down. Both games were great in their own ways.

Yes, Theatre Europe was a brilliant little war game (as long as you turned off the crappy shoot 'em up bits that came with the C64 version). If I recall correctly, NATO could only 'win' if they held off the Warsaw Pact offensive for 30 turns. One quite unique thing was that to use nuclear weapons, you needed a password. To get it you had to dial a telephone number that came in the game packaging, and when you dialled a pre-recorded voice message gave you the password.


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## paranoid marvin (Sep 20, 2021)

HareBrain said:


> Ooh, how did I forget _Lords of Midnight_?
> 
> Was there ever a more satisfying reward for hours and hours of strategising in front of one's crappy 14" bedroom TV than a screen, blank but for the words "Ushgarak has fallen. Victory to the Free"?



Lords of Midnight and Doomdark's Revenge. How I wanted to get into those games, but I never could. I had friends who had strategies and drawn out maps of locations of friends/enemies and items. But for some reason it never clicked with me.


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## HareBrain (Sep 20, 2021)

paranoid marvin said:


> Yes, Theatre Europe was a brilliant little war game (as long as you turned off the crappy shoot 'em up bits that came with the C64 version).


That last bit rang no bells with me, and I now realise I got the wrong name. I meant _Crusade in Europe _(a hex-mapped division-level strategy playing from D-Day to Berlin). I don't know where I got _Theatre Europe _from, as I don't even remember hearing of it, but if it was popular I guess I must have done.



paranoid marvin said:


> Lords of Midnight and Doomdark's Revenge. How I wanted to get into those games, but I never could.


Funnily enough I loved LoM but never took to DD. I think it was just too big in scope.


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## Foxbat (Sep 21, 2021)

HareBrain said:


> Ooh, how did I forget _Lords of Midnight_?


Still available (currently for free) on GOG








						The Lords of Midnight
					

Mike Singleton's '84 classic Adventure Strategy game, brought to and updated for Windows.




					www.gog.com
				



Mike Singleton was the brain behind both this and Midwinter. I wonder what he would have produced nowadays?


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## HareBrain (Sep 21, 2021)

Foxbat said:


> Still available (currently for free) on GOG


I don't think I'd enjoy any of those old favourites now, though. A few years ago a friend gave me a joystick with several C64 games built in, including fondly remembered _Paradroid _and _Iridium_. It wasn't a great experience. Many things are better left as (sometimes inaccurate) memories.


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## CupofJoe (Sep 21, 2021)

I think my interest in computer games peaked at the original *Prince of Persia* and *SimCity*. There was a brief flirtation with the first *Wing Commander*, but few things could beat a giant monster trampling through my perfect society or doing a somersault to avoid a flying sword.


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## Foxbat (Sep 21, 2021)

HareBrain said:


> I don't think I'd enjoy any of those old favourites now, though. A few years ago a friend gave me a joystick with several C64 games built in, including fondly remembered _Paradroid _and _Iridium_. It wasn't a great experience. Many things are better left as (sometimes inaccurate) memories.


You’re probably right. I bought Lords Of Midnight a while back for a couple of quid and I’ve hardly looked at it. I think things like puzzle games stand the test of time better than others (e.g. Pipemania and D/Generation).

After a quick search, I found D/Generation HD on Steam. I’m tempted but I don’t do Steam. It gets fairly mixed reviews so maybe better left looking at it through the soft filter of nostalgia.








						D/Generation HD on Steam
					

A virus has escaped at Genoq HQ in London, and Derrida, the lead scientist at Genoq, has asked you to help save the day. Travel up through the Genoq skyscraper rescuing the stranded employees and putting an end to the escaped virus.




					store.steampowered.com


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## Pyan (Sep 21, 2021)

HareBrain said:


> Blimey, no one's mentioned _Elite_?


Yes! Got up to _Deadly_ on the Spectrum version. 



HareBrain said:


> Ooh, how did I forget _Lords of Midnight_?
> 
> Was there ever a more satisfying reward for hours and hours of strategising in front of one's crappy 14" bedroom TV than a screen, blank but for the words "Ushgarak has fallen. Victory to the Free"?



Another favourite.

_It is night, and Luxor is very invigorated. The Ice Fear is very mild. Luxor is very bold. He has with him the Moon Ring..._

I can remember_ Crash _magazine printing out the whole map for the Lands of Midnight, which I carefully cut out and stuck on a piece of cardboard.


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## Vladd67 (Sep 21, 2021)




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## J Riff (Sep 21, 2021)

i only remember..'Nightstalker' on Intellivision. And The Qix, at the arcades.


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## paranoid marvin (Sep 21, 2021)

CupofJoe said:


> I think my interest in computer games peaked at the original *Prince of Persia* and *SimCity*. There was a brief flirtation with the first *Wing Commander*, but few things could beat a giant monster trampling through my perfect society or doing a somersault to avoid a flying sword.




PoP's graphics looked pretty awful when on the page of a magazine, but you had to see them in motion to appreciate the beautiful fluidity of the movement (rotoscoping I think they called it).

Wing Commander was a good game , but required a beast of a PC to get working properly. I think that was the game that kicked start the drive for PC owners to have to continually upgrade graphics, processors and even sound cards to keep up with the latest releases.


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## paranoid marvin (Sep 21, 2021)

Pyan said:


> Yes! Got up to _Deadly_ on the Spectrum version.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




I assume it must have been one of Oli Frey's? If I remember rightly I think that the game claimed to have something like 100,000 different screens, something astonishing for the time? Not that there was a great deal of difference in the locations, but still enough to make the claim stand.

At the time it seemed like the closest we'd get to a proper Lord of the Rings adventure, which is why it disappointed me that I just couldn't get into it.


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## AlexH (Sep 21, 2021)

HareBrain said:


> I don't think I'd enjoy any of those old favourites now, though. A few years ago a friend gave me a joystick with several C64 games built in, including fondly remembered _Paradroid _and _Iridium_. It wasn't a great experience. Many things are better left as (sometimes inaccurate) memories.


I have less patience these days if part of a game seems unfairly hard. I like a challenging game if it doesn't seem unfair (Full Metal Furies being a recent new example I've played, which coincidentally is retro-inspired).

I have less patience these days for bad design, which sometimes makes things 'unfairly hard'. A lot of older games suffer with bad design compared to games today, but that's often because the medium has progressed. Some games were ahead of their time. I mentioned a few old games in my opening post that I enjoy to this day, and one I'd never played before (They Stole a Million, a strategy game).

Games seem less playable using a joystick to me too, perhaps because I got used to a controller pad. Playing using keys is still fun.

Retro games and pixel art is huge at the moment. I think that's largely due to nostalgia but also because designers have learnt from the past, so the games of today tend not to have the flaws of those that inspired them. The 16-bit era was the best for me in that many of the best games (e.g. Super Mario World, Sonic 2, Super Probotector/Contra III, Terranigma, Donkey Kong Country 2) are as playable as the best games today.

Downwell is the best new example of 8-bit-style graphics I've played:






It's outstanding, and the trailer doesn't do it justice. Also difficult, but not unfairly so. And it gives you the option to play vertically if you can rotate your TV/monitor.


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## paranoid marvin (Sep 22, 2021)

In the 1980s, you were lucky to find games that had an ending. Many just looped backed round to the beginning or had a simple 'you completed your mission, well done' message. Others that should have had endings didn't due to time constraints, and so they just became progressively harder to the point of making them impossible to get any further.

The most important thing back in the day was to make the game relatively easy to understand and to get into. If you were lucky, you might get to play the game in a computer shop before you bought it, and so the first couple of levels were the most important. Also absolutely vital back then was to get a good review in a computer mag such as Crash! , Zzap! YS or C+VG. With sometimes dozens (and in the case of multi-format mags several versions of the same game) review time would be limited.

Tbh I do think that generally most games gave the player enough play for their cash, even if they were unfairly balanced or cheated. When you had waited 5 minutes (or in the case of the Atari up to 30 minutes!) for your game to load, you were going to persevere and make the best of it - especially when pocket money constraints meant that it could be another 2-4 weeks before you could afford another.

But I think that the ultimate design in gaming came with the 16 bit SNES machine and the wonderful programmers at Nintendo. Games were so well designed and balanced that as the player was gradually opened up to new levels weapons/abilities/areas etc. their skills meant that they were equipped for the newer challenges. And before you knew it , you were adept at a game that you had only been a novice at really.

Games like Link to the Past, Super Marioworld, Pilot Wings etc. really were the pinnacle of gaming.

having said that, my favourite era will always be the Speccy and C64 and many of the games already listed on this thread. They may not have been the best for graphics, gameplay and sound, but their limitations stirred the imagination in ways that more modern games could never hope to achieve.


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## hitmouse (Sep 23, 2021)

Vladd67 said:


>


Ah yes. A game for those lucky buggers who could afford a 16k RAM pack.


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## Deke (Sep 24, 2021)

Biomenace. It was a sidescroller that I played as a young young kid in the early nineties, but I’m fairly certain it was originally made in the 80s. Better storyline than most modern RPGs lol.


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## AlexH (Sep 24, 2021)

paranoid marvin said:


> In the 1980s, you were lucky to find games that had an ending. Many just looped backed round to the beginning or had a simple 'you completed your mission, well done' message. Others that should have had endings didn't due to time constraints, and so they just became progressively harder to the point of making them impossible to get any further.
> 
> The most important thing back in the day was to make the game relatively easy to understand and to get into. If you were lucky, you might get to play the game in a computer shop before you bought it, and so the first couple of levels were the most important. Also absolutely vital back then was to get a good review in a computer mag such as Crash! , Zzap! YS or C+VG. With sometimes dozens (and in the case of multi-format mags several versions of the same game) review time would be limited.
> 
> ...


I don't remember being disappointed by a simple ending screen or loop to the beginning back then either. It felt like an achievement, whereas these days it'd probably annoy me. I want gratification!

The Super Nintendo era is my favourite and it's largely due to the pickup and play nature PLUS challenge of so many of the games. Easy to pick up but often difficult to master. I think that kind of game has made a comeback, even in some AAA games like Breath of the Wild. I hate the tutorials in modern games that make you feel like you're playing a game, the stop-start nature of many games because of that, or obtuse things you need to know but you're not really told about. I do miss physical game manuals. But how Breath of the Wild eased me into its world felt seamless.


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## paranoid marvin (Sep 24, 2021)

AlexH said:


> I don't remember being disappointed by a simple ending screen or loop to the beginning back then either. It felt like an achievement, whereas these days it'd probably annoy me. I want gratification!
> 
> The Super Nintendo era is my favourite and it's largely due to the pickup and play nature PLUS challenge of so many of the games. Easy to pick up but often difficult to master. I think that kind of game has made a comeback, even in some AAA games like Breath of the Wild. I hate the tutorials in modern games that make you feel like you're playing a game, the stop-start nature of many games because of that, or obtuse things you need to know but you're not really told about. I do miss physical game manuals. But how Breath of the Wild eased me into its world felt seamless.




Yes physical manuals were great, and could be both informative and entertaining. I remember the Microprose guides being as thick as some reference books but with only the interesting things left in.

Paying £30 for a big box game with a decent manual, cover artwork and sometimes even free bonus gifts to get you in the mood for the game are a world away from what we get these days. I suppose it's like the difference between an LP and an MP3.


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## Rodders (Sep 25, 2021)

You still get those things, Marvin. You just have to pay an inflated price for them.


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## paranoid marvin (Sep 25, 2021)

Rodders said:


> You still get those things, Marvin. You just have to pay an inflated price for them.




Back in the day we were told that the high cost of games was partly down to the cost of cartridges/discs/tapes, cost of packaging , delivery and the cut taken by the retailer.

Strangely now all those things have been taken out of the equation, downloaded games cost just as much, if not more.


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## Vladd67 (Sep 26, 2021)

paranoid marvin said:


> Back in the day we were told that the high cost of games was partly down to the cost of cartridges/discs/tapes, cost of packaging , delivery and the cut taken by the retailer.
> 
> Strangely now all those things have been taken out of the equation, downloaded games cost just as much, if not more.


Back in the 90s I remember reading an interview with a game publisher who admitted the only reason they charged so much for games was because they could


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## paranoid marvin (Sep 26, 2021)

Vladd67 said:


> Back in the 90s I remember reading an interview with a game publisher who admitted the only reason they charged so much for games was because they could




Which I suppose is the truth of all commerce; goods are worth what people will pay for them. And at least now the vast majority of the money goes to the person who made it, which has allowed the indie scene to really thrive through sites like Steam and GoG. I wonder what cut those hosting sites take from the smaller programmers whose games they sell?


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## AlexH (Sep 26, 2021)

Accounting for inflation, games are much cheaper than they were in the 16-bit era and the biggest titles cost much more money to develop these days.

@paranoid marvin The cut taken by Steam is 30%, which reduces in increments based on game sales e.g. after about £7million, the cut reduces to 25%. 30% sounds a lot but is the industry standard.


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## Anthony Grate (Mar 2, 2022)

There was a game we owned for our IBM PC that had you competing in various events, ranging from cliff diving to caber tossing. For the life of me I can't remember the name of it.


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## paranoid marvin (Mar 2, 2022)

Ah, that would likely be World Games by US Gold/Epyx. My favourite from the series was Winter Games on C64.


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## Anthony Grate (Mar 3, 2022)

paranoid marvin said:


> Ah, that would likely be World Games by US Gold/Epyx. My favourite from the series was Winter Games on C64.


Yep! That’s it! Thanks for that. I saw some of the events I’d forgotten — weightlifting, bull riding, and a few others.


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