Melbourne House 1988
Genre: Action
Rating: 3/6
Licence: Commercial
System: Amiga

Regardless of what kind of game it is and how good or bad it is, this game wins the price for the greatest game name ever hands down: Aaargh! Just imagine going to the games store and demanding Aaargh! Or phoning a game retailer to order it. The possibilities of cool situations are endless.

Archer McLean 1988
Genre: Sport, Action
Rating: 5/6
Licence: Commercial
System: Amiga

How can one improve International Karate? Hard question. Most changes and additions would just screw the concept up. Everybody knows examples of great first parts of a series which got spoiled completely in the sequel.

Level 9 Computing 1988
Genre: Adventure
Rating: 4/6
Licence: Commercial
System: Amiga

Sir Lancelot, the Brave - rescuing Prince Herbert from being married against his will and rescuing Sir Galahad from having sex with a castle full of virgins between sixteen and nineteen and a half... sorry, wrong story. Lancelot bases itself on Le Morte d'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory, making it a slightly more serious take on the subject matter. Not that you'd guess from looking at the very Pythonic box cover.

Tecmo 1988
Genre: Action
Rating: 4/6
Licence: Commercial
System: Amiga

Silkworm represents a pretty popular genre on the Amiga. There were tons of similar games in which you were either flying, driving, walking or whatever and simply shot everything that came into sight. And this is almost everything that needs to be said about this particular game! The enemies are well done.

Bitmap Brothers 1988
Genre: Sport, Action
Rating: 5/6
Licence: Commercial
System: Amiga

Although there were quite a lot "simulations" of real team sports like soccer in the Amiga's days, it seemed to be nearly impossible to port such tactical games with so many players to the computer. Most companies simply didn't care and published almost unplayable sports games. But there were also the smart ones like the Bitmap Brothers who thought a bit about different concepts! The result was Speedball, the summit of team sports games.

ERE 1988
Genre: Puzzle, Action
Rating: 3/6
Licence: Commercial
System: Amiga

Some games are so weird that you can't help wondering what kind of drugs the designers have been taking when they came up with this. Spidertronic is such a game.

You control some kind of futuristic 'bio-mechanical' spider which - for whatever reason - is walking over isometric platforms somewhere in outer space (?). Some of the squares have a different colour than the usual blue. These have to be picked up and can be used to repair (?) the way to the next level. Only one coloured square can be carried at the same time, and the order of the colours is important.

Microstyle 1988
Genre: Sport, Simulation
Rating: 4/6
Licence: Commercial
System: Amiga

Before he began to make "serious" racing sims like Formula 1 Grand Prix, Geoff Crammond created this Amiga classic. It is set in a fictional (or let's say I hope it is fictional) Stunt Car league. There are four divisions and the player of course starts in the fourth. In each division there are two courses on which all three drivers (of the division) have to race against each other in head-to-head duels. Points are awarded for the best lap and the winner. At the end of the season, the best driver of each division gets to the higher division, while the last one is relegated.

Infogrames 1988
Genre: Action
Rating: 3/6
Licence: Commercial
System: Amiga

Do you also sometimes have these incredibly positive memories about a game? Always thinking back how great it was and how you would love to play it again? Doesn't happen at all to me for the simple reason I still have all my games and keep playing them constantly - no misleading emotions.