Firebird 1986
Genre: Action, Puzzle
Rating: 3/6
Language: English
Licence: Commercial
System: Plus/4

Don't worry, this is not a cheesy game revolving around a horse and an annoying child (I'm watching too much TV). This Fury is a Lode Runner version with a small twist. Instead of searching for treasure, the player is put in the role of one of the few survivors of an atomic war. Like the others, he lives underground to avoid death from radiation. However, there are also evil mutants in these caverns who must be destroyed (it's "us or them" apparantely). So the objective is not getting rich, but killing the mutants.

Kalisto / Mindscape 1993
Genre: Action
Rating: 5/6
Language: English
Licence: Commercial
System: PC

Fury of the Furries is one of the best platform games of the time. You control small, lovely, furry balls with hands and feet, called Tinies. The objective is to overthrow 'The Wicked One', who has captured the king and turned all other Tinies into mindless beasts.

Rainbow Arts 1988
Genre: Action
Rating: 3/6
Language: English
Licence: Commercial
System: C64

Aaah...Gauntlet! Probably one of the most popular games ever to populate the face of this earth. The moments when 'blue wizard needs help' made me lose a huge amount of time on my good ol' C64.

Deutscher Bundestag 1994
Genre: Strategy, Action
Rating: 3/6
Language: Deutsch
Licence: Freeware
System: PC

This is a very special promotial game. It doesn't advertise a product or some company. It doesn't tell you 'buy this'. Or in fact, it does the latter. But in another meaning: it's political propaganda! And it does try to convince you to 'buy' all the stuff which is said there...

Steve Metcalf / Alternative Software 1993
Genre: Action
Rating: 3/6
Language: English
Licence: Commercial
System: C64

You know, there's one thing I haven't done since I started bugging you with my CBM-nostalgy. I haven't told you about any of those good-old-da...sorry, good-old-shoot'em'up-s. Which is a wonder since that's one of the things C64 was famous for:) and certainly not for the likes of LUnix and Geck/A65.

Opera Soft 1987
Genre: Action
Rating: 5/6
Language: Castellano
Licence: Commercial
System: PC

Goody is about a thief in search of a big bank to clean. An easy job if the streets, buildings, sewers and everything between his hideout and the place were not as filled with dangers.

Similar to another classic Opera's game this is mainly action oriented. It's a platformer where you must make good use of your weapon and legs to reach the end of the game.

Blue Byte / Ubi Soft 1989
Genre: Sport, Action
Rating: 5/6
Language: English
Licence: Commercial
System: Amiga

The strangest thing happened with my floppy disk of this game. It would stop loading in the middle of the booting process. I thought it was hopelessly broken - wrong. All I had to do was take the disk out of the drive and put it in again, and it would continue loading as normal. Of course, this happened several times every time I loaded the game, so playing became quite a piece of work. Even with several years of university behind me, I still can't figure out a logical explanation for this behaviour. An unsolved mystery of computer science.

Imagine / Konami 1986
Genre: Action
Rating: 3/6
Language: English
Licence: Commercial
System: C64

A (heavily deformed, if the title screen is to be believed) US elite soldier taking out a complete army on his own to free prisoners of war. Rambo? Yes, that's the general idea, just multiplied to even more bizarre levels of (non-) realism. Green Beret's gameplay is about as original as its setting. It's a standard sidescroller, with the player's sprite trying to reach the far right side of each level (and a final fight waiting there).

Dynamix 1992
Genre: Adventure, Action
Rating: 3/6
Language: English, Deutsch
Licence: Freeware
System: Amiga

Loud-mouthed American Jake "Lucky" Masters who served in the first World War owes the businessman Lomax lots of money. Quite conveniently, Lomax' daughter who works as a nurse to help the poor rural population of China has just been kidnapped by some local warlord. Jake seems to be the right man to come to the rescue.

Rauser Advertainment 1993
Genre: Simulation, Action
Rating: 0/6
Language: Deutsch
Licence: Freeware
System: Amiga

I've always had a soft spot for promotial games. With some ironic distance, they're mostly very funny: unvoluntarily humor galore. The uncoolest companies trying to get their useless products into the concious of young people. That's of course not easily done. Medicine against rheumatism suddenly turns hip, politicians become MTV-compatible stars. Or the promoted product doesn't turn up at all. Hilarious!