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R-Type is a side scrolling shoot-em-up arcade game produced by Irem in 1987, first published by Nintendo on Arcade coin-op machines. The player controls a space fighter named the R-9 to defend humanity against a mysterious powerful alien life-form known as the Bydo. The game is made up of several sequential levels, with a boss enemy at the end of each.... 187

River Raid is a vertically scrolling shooter designed and programmed by Carol B. Shaw and published by Activision in 1982 for the Atari 2600 video game console. Viewed from a top-down perspective, the player flies a fighter jet over the River of No Return in a raid behind enemy lines. The player's jet can only move left and right - it cannot maneuver... 1094

Ocean's version of RoboCop for 8-bit machines loosely adapts the Data East arcade game, with stages inspired by those from the coin-op, but also entirely new gameplay elements. New challenges from the arcade include hostage scenarios: in these, seen from a first-person perspective, a criminal holds an innocent person. Moving crosshairs and firing precisely,... 145

RoboWarrior, known in Japan as Bomber King is an action puzzle video game developed by Hudson Soft, and co-developed by Aicom, making it their first NES game they worked on, and published by Jaleco for the Nintendo Entertainment System and the MSX. RoboWarrior takes place on an alien planet called Altile which was created by scientists as a solution... 44

Sharkey’s 3D Pool is an 1st person pool game, one of the first that introduces full 3D perspective, developed by Aardwark Software and distributed by Firebird/Microplay software in 1989 for home computers. The game featuring a fully-rotating table and variable viewpoint allowing for much more realistic shot-playing than the traditional top-down game... 24

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a side-scrolling platform game for the NES by Konami. loosely based on the 1987 cartoon series of the same name. The Ninja Turtles (Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Donatello) are on a mission to retrieve the Life Transformer Gun from Shredder, a device that could restore their sensei Splinter back to his human form.... 166

Tetris (The Soviet Challenge) is a tile-matching puzzle video game originally designed and programmed by Alexey Pajitnov in the Soviet Union on an Elektronika 60. This is the version ported to home computers by Mirrorsoft and Andromeda Ltd and distributed by Spectrum Holobyte in 1987. Tetris is primarily composed of a field of play in which pieces... 180

Titanic is an scuba-diving action game developed by Spanish software house Topo Soft in 1988 for 8-bit home computers ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC and MXS. The game was later ported on PC DOS with two extra stages, VGA graphics and AdLib sounds. Titanic is an exploration game which is divided into two parts. In the first part, you must find the Titanic... 64

Ultima III: Exodus is the third game in the Ultima series. Exodus is also the name of the game's principal antagonist. Released in 1983, it was the first Ultima game published by Origin Systems. Exodus features revolutionary graphics for its time, being the first computer RPG to display animated characters. Also, Exodus differs from previous games... 60

Vampire Killer (Akumajō Dracula) is a platform-adventure video game released by Konami for the MSX2 computer. It is a parallel version of the original Castlevania, which debuted a month earlier for the Famicom Disk System under the same Japanese title. Like in Castlevania, the player controls vampire hunter Simon Belmont, who ventures into Dracula's... 1791

Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord is the first game in the Wizardry series of computer role-playing games. This was one of the first Dungeons & Dragons-style role-playing games to be written for computer play, and the first such game to offer color graphics. It was also the first true party-based role-playing computer game... 121

Xenon is a 1988 2D vertical-scrolling shooter computer game, originally released for the Amiga and quickly ported to other platforms. Excellent graphics, catchy soundtrack, and gameplay turned the game into best-seller on Commodore 64 and Amiga systems, although the PC version much less well received. Like all great SHMUPs, Xenon features smooth controls,... 93

Ancient Land of Ys is the first installment of Ys, an action role-playing video game series developed by Nihon Falcom in 1987. The hero of Ys I is an adventurous young swordsman named Adol Christin. As the story begins, he has just arrived at the Town of Minea, in the land of Esteria. He is called upon by Sara, a fortuneteller, who tells him of a great... 80