Skyhawk - Commodore VIC-20 - 1983

Skyhawk is decent shoot ‘em up for the VIC-20.  If it looks familiar it was because it was written by Steve Lee who programmed Falcon Patrol for the Commodore 64.  The display is similar to Defender in that you view a portion of a long, scrolling wraparound play area and have a radar image showing the positions of the enemy and your bases.  You fly a vertical take off/landing aircraft and your aim is to shoot down as many enemy aircraft as you can before your bases are destroyed.  The enemy planes fly in two at a time and seemingly drop bombs at random. You only have a finite amount of fuel and missiles available but these can be replenished by landing at one of your bases. The enemies can be shot down from behind or head-on.  It is very satisfying destroying them head-on and flying through their explosion.

The game has colourful graphics, fast scrolling and decent sound effects.  It also features inertia so you can’t just stop quickly to turn around or land.  Not a bad game for the humble VIC.

You can land at these bases to replenish fuel and missiles...

...if they're not destroyed first.

Although fictional, the houses could easily have been plucked from the Falkland Islands.

Miner 2049er - Commodore 64 - 1983

An early platform game and apparently an inspiration for Manic Miner, Miner 2049er takes place over 10 levels set in Nuclear Ned’s abandoned uranium mine.  The plot involves your character, mounty Bounty Bob, searching the mine for a murderer called Yukon Yohan (they love these double initial names).  To progress through the game you need to ‘claim’ each platform on each screen by walking over it, thus making it a solid colour.  Once you have walked over all the platforms on the screen you progress to the next level.  There are creatures roaming around the platforms which kill on contact and various items to collect.  You can pick up the items for bonus points and once collected they cause the creatures on the screen to smile for a short time.  While they are smiling they can also be picked up for further points.  As well as losing a life by touching the creatures, lives can be lost by falling too far or running out of time – the time limit can be quite strict on some of the levels.

Definitely a playable, sometimes frustrating game that has stood the test of time although as with most games of this era you need to look behind the basic graphics and sound.

The final level.....or is it?

Just a quick word about something that really, really irritates me with games like this and with this game in particular. Well, not so much the game itself but the plot that was written for it.  In the instructions you are given a back story and a goal.  You get through the 10 levels to complete the goal and what happens?  Do you get a congratulations screen? A short animation? Bonus points?  No, you get unceremoniously dumped back at the first level again.  What happened to Yukon Yohan?   What’s the point of going to the trouble of writing a plot for a game and how to complete it if it’s never ending and can’t ever be finished?  I was seriously pissed off when I ran over the last piece of platform on the final level and expected something to happen.  Grrrrr.

The whole game......

Mined-Out - Sinclair Spectrum - 1983

Mined-out is a neat puzzle game in which you have to cross various minefields on order to, according to the instructions, rescue Bill the Worm!?! 

You (whatever ‘you’ are) start at the bottom of the screen and have to work your way up to a break in the fence at the top.  The game is a little reminiscent of Minesweeper in that it tells you the number of mines that are above, below and either side of your character at any one point.  It doesn’t keep the number flagged up so making it slightly trickier. There is safe zone at the very top and bottom of the screen where there are no mines but these are the only guaranteed safe places there are.  You can also gain extra points for rescuing some weird looking ‘damsels’ on the way.

Although the graphics and sound are crude (it was written in BASIC after all) Mined-out is a good game and almost as addictive as Minesweeper itself.

Seriously, who really cares about a worm?

Oh dear, I muffed it