Author Archives: Alex

Bubble Bobble has to be one of my favourite games of all time. I first played a demo of it on a cover tape for the Spectrum (on ACE magazine, there was a scandal you know, initially they accidentally put … Continue reading →

In 1976 a game called Breakout was released in the arcades by Atari that was oft copied over the next ten or fifteen years. I never played Breakout, I wasn’t out of nappies when it was released and I certainly … Continue reading →

Coming to the C64 rather late in it’s life meant that programmers had really got the hang of Commodore’s brown beast. Not only were the games technically proficient, in terms of graphics, scrolling, and music, but they were getting genuinely … Continue reading →

The format wars were already well under way in the 8-bit days, we just didn’t have the world wide web to sneer at other peoples choices of machines. I knew a few Speccy owners but I knew more C64 owners … Continue reading →

We’re finishing our sojourn into the Spectrum era with one of the most influential games of the late 80’s. You might not be familiar with the name Renegade but it was pretty much the director forbearer of scrolling beat ’em … Continue reading →

We’ve jumped back in time 3 years this week, from Batman’s 1986 to a very early Spectrum game called Penetrator that came out in early 1983. The amusing name was entirely lost on the 7 year old me as I was … Continue reading →

The loading screen for Ocean’s 1986 Batman game is rather misleading if you ask me. It shows, in the Speccy’s awesomely limited colour palette, a large muscular Batman holding up a manhole cover before jumping down in to the sewers … Continue reading →

I’d turned ten in early 1985 when my Dad bought home Way of the Exploding Fist by Melbourne House. It was without a doubt the first beat ’em up I’d played, the first of many in fact as it’s still … Continue reading →