The Unregarded, Home Systems Edition.

[F-ZeroOne]

So a little while back I started a thread called "The Unregarded", about overlooked arcade games from the glory days. Unfortunately my memory appears to have exhausted its reserves at the moment as far as the arcade scene goes, but I thought... well, why not home systems? Consoles, computers, even those mechanical games with wind-up motors and springs. As with the previous thread, rather freewheeling and no real restrictions other than preferably stuff that just doesn't tend to get covered much these days.

The game that sparked the idea for this unfortunately I can't remember the name of. It was a vector based exploration game, set in a kind of city. If you encountered a guard, they were bitmap based and you had a limited time to shoot them. It may have had the word "Sector" or "City" in the title. Any ideas?

I was recently reminded of "Codename: M.A.T" and its sequel "Codename M.A.T II". As I recall, they were pretty good takes on the "Star Raiders" style of game, and reviewed pretty well back in the day but never seem to get any coverage now:





One day, someone will write a thesis on why ants seem to have been such a feature of early 8-bit home gaming. Icons Designs "Colony" is a case in point. This could be argued to be a very early entry in the popular "farm sim" genre. I originally thought this was Imagines "Pedro", another game with ant protagonists and farming (or at least gardening):

[F-ZeroOne]

Continuing the ant-based theme, on the Commodore 16 or Plus 4, "Fire Ant":



Not ants but flies (or possibly winged ants?), "Amaurote" on the ZX Spectrum. This one might be a bit better known:

[F-ZeroOne]

A game I loved on the ZX Spectrum, "Advanced Tactical Fighter" (which on that system had a futuristic grid style landscape). This is the Amstrad CPC version as the Spectrum videos I've found don't really seem to show the game off:

[Whiteball]

Continuing the ant-based theme, on the Commodore 16 or Plus 4, "Fire Ant":

I remember Fire Ant on the C64.

I also remember a Thunderbirds game that was a decent puzzler with different sized ships being used to work around obstacles. Don't recall it getting to much coverage after the initial reviews but it was actually an ok game in it's day.

[F-ZeroOne]

"Tornado Low Level" is pretty well known on the Spectrum, though I'm not sure its follow-up "Cyclone" is quite as famous:



And, yes, my contributions will probably be fairly Speccy-heavy. Guess which home computer I had?

[Whiteball]

Cyclone does look good for it's time. Never had a speccy and didn't see this back then.

Don't have any real connection or fascination with helicopters but for some reason always loved games with them.

To name a few at randon off the top of my head:
Choplifter
Tiger-Heli
Rescue (Stern arcade game)
Desert Strike
Zeewolf
plus many more before, after and inbetween them.

[F-ZeroOne]

I'd never heard of Sterns "Rescue" before, I'd like to know which came first - that or "Choplifter"!

[rowan]

I absolutely loved Purple Saturn Day on the Amiga.
Cool music too.

Somehow I got into it enough to figure out all the minigames.
I got into the Ring Pursuit first but eventually I think it was the Brain Bowler I liked best, where you are duelling the opponent to try to help electrons around a circuit or something.

[F-ZeroOne]

A bit later in my computer gaming life, "Simulcra" on the Atari ST. Never knew it had such an illustrious programming team!:



The weird and wonderful "Archipelago":



And Epic Megagames "Zone 66" on the PC (intro to this one may be mildly NSFW and also harrowing!):

[Foozwah]

I have fond memories of playing Archipelago on the Amiga - it had a bit of the vibe of The Sentinel about it (only flatter, haha).

[F-ZeroOne]

Finally! The mystery game that I started this thread off by mentioning - Martechs "Catch 23", a vector graphics based exploration game similar to the much more famous "Mercenary":

[F-ZeroOne]

This might be a bit better known now as "Retro Gamer" covered it a little while back, but the uniquely looking and uniquely playing "Gravity" on Atari ST:

[F-ZeroOne]

Its been quite a while but the dusty memory banks were re-energised by, not for the first time, the "Retronauts" who happened to mention "Into The Eagles Nest" on a recent episode. I remember it seemingly being pretty popular and well reviewed at the time but it seems it have been gradually almost forgotten...

[Whiteball]

Thought Into the Eagles Nest on the C64 was brilliant. I really liked the bigger chunkier graphics and although it was a 'push-scroll' screen it was quick and worked well.

The Amiga version on the other hand was unfortunately like a lot of conversions from the lesser machines. Should have been miles ahead but more often than not they where far inferior and almost like a completely different game. The 'feel' just wasn't there most of the time.

[F-ZeroOne]

And thanks once again to Kim Justice for reminding me of what was definitely not a great game but one which I still managed to have fun with back in the day, Games Workshops "Battlecars". Whatever happened to that company, I wonder... I was completely unaware of Julian Gollops - yes, that one! - involvement before now.