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.

Unlimited Software / Sega 1989
Genre: Sport, Action
Rating: 4/6
Language: English
Licence: Commercial
System: PC

Remember those old coin-ops where you sat in a cage that rocked with you as you raced a car? The first one I came across and was immediately fascinated with was called Outrun. You were racing a Ferrari Testarrossa through cities, along beaches and over mountains. The sound, video and chair movement were so realistic that even before I sat in a real car, I knew how to drive (or so I thought). Outrun for PC is the best Sega could do to convert the original game.

J. Gamon 1984
Genre: Action
Rating: 2/6
Language: English
Licence: Commercial
System: C64

Alright, this is definitely a weird one. You play a policeman 'driving' through town on a unicycle, with a blue rotating light attached to his helmet. Your only weapon is a truncheon which can be thrown either straight or up. Don't worry, it always comes back like a boomerang.

Mastertronic 1986
Genre: Action
Rating: 4/6
Language: English
Licence: Commercial
System: Plus/4

P.O.D. - Proof Of Destruction. A game in which you're indestructable? Great idea, will take advantage of that immediately! Nah, nah, you can't hurt me, evil monsters! Oops? What was that 'boom' sound? Aw, crap - look for yourself what happened :( This is a fraud! It clearly said 'Proof Of Destruction' on the box. I demand my money back!

SSI 1994
Genre: Strategy
Rating: 6/6
Language: English
Licence: Commercial
System: PC

A classic of turn-based strategy games which became the basis for a long series of similar games. But none of them could match the quality of the original.

You can surely question to take World War II as the background for a game but that´s not going to be discussed in this review. Instead let´s move on o the game itself: The player, a high-ranking general, takes control either of the Allied or Axis forces. There are single scenarios and whole campaigns which mostly are based on historical battles.

Elite 1985
Genre: Action
Rating: 3/6
Language: English
Licence: Commercial
System: C64

Paper delivery is a common way of increasing your pocket money. At least I guess it is in the USA. This game is the ultimate simulator of this thrilling job. You can use it to evaluate if this job suits your abilities and interests or for training purposes to improve your service.

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.

Graftgold / Hewson 1990
Genre: Action
Rating: 4/6
Language: English
Licence: Commercial
System: Amiga

Graftgold never really made the big leap away from 8 bit systems. Although they created many great games on the Atari ST and the Amiga, the revolutionary and original things they had done were a thing of the past. In fact, they even 'remade' their most popular classics. Uridium got that treatment later, but for Paradroid, they at least had the humility not to call it Paradroid 2.

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.

Peter Leahy 1998
Genre: Action
Rating: 4/6
Language: English
Licence: Commercial
System: PC

Parashooter - one of the two games I never managed to make a screenshot of! Highly promising slogan, eh? Well, it does show some technical sophistication on the programmer's side at least. Or it could be my inability to use Windows where this game runs in...