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30 |
Starquake |  |
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| Action-adventure game from Stephen Crow, a programmer who tended to take concepts originated by RARE and expand upon them. Starquake was his most original and enduring title. The game has you playing as an alien named Blob as he sets down on an unstable planet that's ready to blow at any minute, the only way to stop this catastrophe is to find the items needed and take them to the planet core to stabilise it. Blob has the unique ability of being able to create temporary platforms to stand on, and can also ride on a special floating platform if he can find it. The game starts off daunting, but perseverance pays off, and as soon as you've found the planet core you can make a note of the closest teleport terminal's password and can from then on always teleport straight there. The game is a fast and furious experience that really grows on you over time. | |||||
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29 |
Bomb Jack |  |
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Great arcade port from Elite Systems of the playable little platform game made by Tecmo. In the game you jump from platform to platform (or glide by tapping the button) collecting bombs and avoiding the enemies. Responsive controls and precision gliding were always the game's main strength, and they were transferred to the Spectrum excellently, along with some carefully designed, detailed and clean background graphics. |
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28 |
Robocop |  |
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| One of the highest selling games in Britain during the 80s, Robocop reportedly stayed in the sales charts over here for over a year! The game itself is a methodical run n' gun title with a variety of mini games interspersed between levels (this set-up proved so successful that Ocean started using it in most of their subsequent licence games). The game is smooth and polished, and follows the movie pretty well too. | |||||
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27 |
Nether Earth |  |
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| Nether Earth is an RTS where you build robots that you can order to take bases or attack the enemy. Each base you take adds new build options and upgrades to your forces. Nether Earth is a pioneering game for the real-time strategy genre. Given that its such an early game the AI can be a little clunky at times, but this doesn't offset the game's overall significance. | |||||
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26 |
Knight Lore |  |
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| Definitely the early RARE's most important release. Knight Lore is a highly influential, and revolutionary isometric adventure game where the aim is to explore the non-linear world doing platforming feats and solving puzzles to collect items that need to be brought to a central cauldron room. Due to a curse you become a werewolf during the night and this effects the way in which the enemies react to you. The game not only transferred many of the 2D platforming mechanics into an early pseudo 3D environment, it also pioneered many staples of the action adventure genre, providing a clever marriage of the two gameplay types that was held together with an intuitive gameplay structure that worked. Like many revolutionary games the gameplay is rough around the edges, but Knight Lore (and its later isometric brethren) set the stage for much of the early 3D platformers on later consoles like the N64. | |||||
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25 |
The Great Escape |  |
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| This is an original isometric adventure game loosely based on the famous prisoner of war movie. The game has you trying to escape from a prison camp by using items you find throughout the camp. Everything needs to be planned out in advance as you need go through your daily routine and show up for role call (if you don't do anything the game automatically takes you through the routine), lest the prison guards discover that you're up to something. Its an ambitious game with lots of atmosphere, and is generally pretty fair too (though one necessary item requires you to have the eyes of a hawk). Great game and a real benchmark for the genre. | |||||
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24 |
Sentinel |  |
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| This is an odd and highly original first person puzzle game where the aim is to avoid the gaze of the sentinel whilst slowly teleporting yourself up to the top of the mountain, at which point you can absorb the sentinel and move on to the next level. This is another game that has piles of atmosphere, with a sort of solemn and eerie feel permeating the whole experience. | |||||
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23 |
Vulcan |  |
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| The most in-depth of the strategy games on Spectrum and one of the stand-outs of its genre from the 80s. Vulcan has you taking part in the North African campaign of WWII, its a turn-based strategy game where you move your troops around strategically to take or hold areas. The game was one of many excellent strategy games on Spectrum made by R. T. Smith, a man who would later go on to becoming an important contributor to much of the Total War series. | |||||
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22 |
Super Hang-On |  |
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| Excellent motorbike racing game ported from the arcade. As with most of these types of games the main goal is to keep ahead of the timer, whenever you hit a check-point it increases the remaining time. The game does a good job of recreating both the feeling of speed, and a real feeling of weight to the bikes. It contains a good variety of courses and moves fairly smoothly too. | |||||
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21 |
Fantasy World Dizzy |  |
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| The Dizzy games were a series of action adventure titles where you played as the titular hero Dizzy as he navigated tricky platforming jumps and solved puzzles by picking up and using objects. This series was actually huge in Europe at one stage leading the original game to have countless sequels and spin offs. This, the third game in the main series added a bunch of improvements, the main one of which was improved item management, and a bigger focus on story and humourous dialogue, with Dizzy being joined in the game by his family, the yolkfolk. The game is a funny, intuitive title full of charm. | |||||
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