Konami 1990
Genre: Puzzle, Action
Rating: 5/6
Language: English
Licence: Commercial
System: NES

Use your head to break some blocks, move others, while a few enemies try to be annoying to avoid you from solving the many platform puzzles which form this game.

It seems the main character, a walking moai, an Easter Island statue, goes in search of smaller ones with some kind of relation to it. But well, as if one cares with this kind of game, the only impact it have is that you should get them to finish the level, so each one always is the same, but not in the same way. Start somewhere around the place, make your way to them and then reach the big doors to finish the level.

Mindscape 1992
Genre: Action, RPG
Rating: 5/6
Language: English
Licence: Commercial
System: PC

You, as a knight of the druids, have been sent in a quest for the moonstone, which if finished will give you a place between the legends. In your adventure you will have to fight monsters, a dangerous dragon and three other knights, which can be controlled by up to three other players.

Midway 1993
Genre: Action, Sport
Rating: 5/6
Language: English
Licence: Commercial
System: PC

Playing Mortal Kombat is a pure pleasure. Or pain, depending how well you are doing. The game offers everything a lover of fighting games could wish for - fast paced action, tonns of moves, punches and kicks, all of which can get combined, decent opponents, each with special attacks and a lot of blood. In addition, some extras, such as small skill tests and the introduction of all characters makes the game very well rounded.

Activision 1986
Genre: Adventure
Rating: 5/6
Language: English, Deutsch
Licence: Commercial
System: C64

Famous detective Sir Charles Foxworth is taking a holiday on the Mississippi with his servant Regis. He's just taking a stroll around the upper deck of the ship when he discovers an open cabin door. Behind it: a dead man. As it turns out, the body of Raleigh Cartwright III. Sir Charles has three days to find the murderer, because then, the ship will reach New Orleans, giving the culprit a safe chance to escape.

Argus 1987
Genre: Strategy
Rating: 5/6
Language: English
Licence: Commercial
System: ZX Spectrum

Real-time strategies are one of the most popular genres these days, thanks to the addictive combination of resource gathering, unit building and tactical combat. However, very few people know that the beginnings of RTS gaming lie with the Spectrum. You may have heard of Herzog Zwei, a Sega Genesis game, which all Dune 2 bashers use with great pleasure to point out that the "first" RTS was not Dune 2. Herzog Zwei hit the shelves in 1989, three years before Dune 2. However, what most people don't know is that the first true RTS game came two years earlier, in 1987, on Spectrum. Its name was Nether Earth (a quick note: The Ancient Art of War by the Murry brothers was released in 1984, but while it featured real-time tactical combat, it lacked all the other aspects of RTS gaming).

Infogrames 1989
Genre: Strategy, Action
Rating: 5/6
Language: Francais, English, Deutsch, Castellano, Italiano
Licence: Commercial
System: Amiga

This game demonstrates the Amiga's superiority over almost every other system. It was also released for the C-64 and the PC. Both versions feature much worse graphics and sound. While this is quite logical for the C-64, it is quite surprising for the PC from today's perspective. Even though the game was ported to the PC much later, the graphics are still really bad. Not to mention the sound...

Software Dynamics 1994
Genre: Action
Rating: 5/6
Language: English
Licence: Shareware
System: PC

You might not believe it if you haven't lived through that period yourself, but screen savers were a profitable commercial market for a long time. One of the best-known companies living from this was Software Dynamics, and their prime product was called After Dark - the world's single most popular screen saver. Everybody knew the flying toasters back then.

Graftgold / Hewson 1985
Genre: Action
Rating: 5/6
Language: English
Licence: Commercial
System: C64

Deep in space, all the robots on a ship have gone mad, defying all human orders. The player has to 'clean up', destroying all the robots. Sounds like your average shooter? Then be prepared for a twist: You take control of a kind of 'meta robot' which will attach itself to any other robot to take control of its functions.

Marc S. Seter 1993
Genre: Action
Rating: 5/6
Language: English
Licence: Freeware
System: Amiga

Although the C64 classic had been remade on the Amiga by Graftgold themselves as Paradroid 90, this version had its rough edges. Paradroid II, a freeware remake of the original, came out a few years later. Hard to believe in these days of lawsuits, trademark, patent and 'intellectual property' trolling: The programmer got through with not only using the original name, but also with producing pretty much a carbon copy of the graphics and much of the gameplay.

Ratt 1989
Genre: Action
Rating: 5/6
Language: English
Licence: Commercial
System: Amiga

The genre of horizontal shooters had early been set with standards nobody dared to break anymore. Instead, the race for perfection was on - mainly in the arcades, but also on the computers and consoles of the time.