Cosmic Avenger

Word to the wise, steer clear of Minecraft if you plan on maintaining a gaming blog.

Another short review to keep the content flowing. This is Cosmic Avenger, a 1981 arcade game from Universal. Why do you care? Because it's the first side-scrolling shoot-'em-up ever. Yeah... I didn't realise either.

Space Dungeon

Classic Game Room is a bit hit-and-miss as far as i'm concerned. On one hand, it's nice to see obscure games and I do often enjoy their reviewing style. On the other, it's clearly aimed at a North American audience, doesn't often do its research and likes the Sega 32X. Nobody with sense likes the 32X.

But kudos to them for pointing out SPACE DUNGEON's existence, a 1981 arcade game by Taito. Its a Robotron 2084 clone released before Robotron 2084, and is arguably better than William's classic? Surely not!

Crazy Cars (DOS)

Look, I've found some tat. It's CRAZY CARS for DOS, circa 1987. Published by Titus, it's the first game in a trilogy, and it's a completely unremarkable and pointless title. Perfect for this blog then.

Rock 'n Roll Racing (Mega Drive)

A Super Nintendo classic, I'm sure you'll agree. So here's the Mega Drive version.

Released in 1994 by a pre-Warcraft Blizzard Entertainment, it's an... isometric racing game, and a good one too. Makes you wonder why the company only devote their time to RTSes and MMORPGs when they could be putting Monster Trucks on simple circuits to the plagiarized tones of Black Sabbath.

Zaxxon (Atari 2600)

Zaxxon is a bad game. Sure it looks nice for a 1982, but to me the constant struggle to negotiate the scenery and adjust the height of your ship makes the game almost unplayable. Despite this, it was brought to almost every system imaginable in the 1980s (I've briefly mentioned the DOS version in the past).

Of course the fun thing about that sentence is that some early 1980s consoles and computers were extremely basic in nature. Unable to render isometric graphics this Atari 2600 port has the player face forwards. Is it an impovement?

Korea Karate

I don't know if you remember, but when I was younger I had some strange fascination with Korea. I didn't really read up on much of the politics behind it at the time, just expecting a reunified state under Seoul's control. That's ignoring the "space" bit, though I suppose the concept of invading the universe is just as plausible as Homefront's invasion of the US to jeopardise FREEDOMS.

Today, KOREA KARATE for the Commodore 64. This is a completely awful game, not even worth a jump link to describe it in any more detail. You play as the man dressed in white, you walk forward to the shoddily programmed man dressed in red, you attempt to punch him, get kicked in the face, and die.

Korea Karate. This was sold to people and claimed to beat IK+. Just think about that for a second.