Popular games published by company Amsoft
Play is controlled with a joystick or arrow keys and an action button. One of the four cardinal directions is used to choose the pitch, and again to aim it towards low, high, inside (towards batter), or outside (away from batter). The same directions are used to aim the swing when batting. When fielding after a hit, the defensive player closest to the ball will flash to show it is the one currently under control. The four directions are then used to throw to one of the four bases. The game incorporates a pitcher perspective, often used in MLB broadcasts. There are also managerial options available. The player has a selection of pitchers to choose from. Each team member has his own statistics that affect his performance, and can be rearranged as desired. Prior to HardBall!s release, there were managerial baseball games available, such as Micro League Baseball but HardBall! was the first to integrate that aspect with the arcade control of the game action itself.
3D Grand Prix is a 1st person perspective driving game where you must race against various other drivers over five laps to win the race on a randomly generated track. You start on the grid and when the lights turn green you accelerate away changing up the six gears your car has. As you accelerate you need to keep an eye on your rev counter, have it too high and your engine will blow and it is race over. As you approach a bend you are told the recommended speed to take the bend and you are updated regularly the weather with updates. As you finish a lap the road surface becomes checkered indicating you can stop your car to use the pits.
You are far ahead in time, the year 2464 AD and your Space Time Machine has landed on an alien planet, and being of an inquisitive nature, you decide to explore it. You have been gifted with a special kind of power that aids you when you are exploring strange planets. You are able to mutate into the alien beings' form. On this mysterious planet of Ivorus, the beings are minute and flea-like with amazing jumping powers.However, during your exploration, you take an unexpected trip and fall down and down and down through a deep and dark pot hole into a strange cave. All around you are flesh-eating plants, not to mention a hungry pterodactyl...... You must elude these dangers, so utilise your jumping powers to ward off your enemies til you finally escape from the disatrous cave. No sooner are you safe, then disaster strikes again!. Down you go again, but this time the flesh eating plants have multiplied and they don't want you to escape. Good luck!.
Amsgolf is a computer simulation game of an 18 hole golf course. The main object of the game is to play the course of 18 holes in as few strokes as possible thus improving your handicap.
The Galactic Plague was developed by Indescomp in 1984 for the Amstrad CPC 464,467.
Airwolf, an advanced supersonic helicopter with stealth capabilities and a formidable arsenal, was designed by Dr. Charles Henry Moffet (David Hemmings) - a genius with a psychopathic taste for torturing and killing women - and built by the Firm, a division of the CIA (a play on the term "the Company", a nickname for the CIA). As the series begins, Dr. Moffet and his crew steal Airwolf during a live-fire weapons test. During the theft, Moffet opens fire on the Firm's bunker, killing a United States Senator and seriously injuring Firm deputy director Michael Coldsmith-Briggs III (codename "Archangel"). Moffet takes the gunship to Libya, where he begins performing acts of aggression - such as sinking an American destroyer - as a service for military strongman Muammar Gaddafi, who allows Moffet to keep Airwolf on Libyan soil.
The player guides Zippy, an X-shaped sprite, around a maze, viewed top-down, with solid walls, hazards and collectable rewards. The view of the maze scrolls randomly right, left, up or down. The object is for the player to survive for a period of time without making contact with either an edge of the playing area, represented as a brick walls, or hazards including water and spikes, all of which lose a life. If the player survives they receive a score bonus for completing the level and they proceed to the next level, which is a continuation of the maze, with less interval between scrolling steps and a shorter level duration. The first level lasts about two minutes, and by the seventh and final level this is down to about forty seconds. Points are awarded for collecting plums and clumps of grass, some of which are invisible. Completing a level of the game triggers a voice saying "Yippee!". On the ZX Spectrum release this was remarkable due to it overcoming the Spectrum's rudimentary sound capabilities. It was a very early use of digitized speech sound effects in home computer games.
Music notes have escaped throughout the world, and Jet-Boot Jack must collect them up. There are ten levels, the first five of which can be played from the main menu. Gameplay is platform-based, and largely involves progressing down the levels, using holes and moving platforms. Enemies hover over the holes, but these can be disabled by toggling the right switches. There are also timing-based hazards such as arrows emerging from walls and lazer beams - contact with any of these costs one of your five lives. You also lose a life if you run out of energy. Some levels vary the format by requiring you to simply collect every note on a single screen, which has regeneration points and one-way platforms.
The story has the solar system under threat from Myon invaders. MAT ("Mission: Alien Termination") is a teenager implanted with all the combined tactical skills of the planetary leaders. MAT pilots a prototype spacecraft, the USS Centurion, in an attempt to defend the system from the alien's all-out attack.[6] The game's action takes place in a realtime 3D representation of MAT's view from the ship. The player has access to forward and rear views, which switch automatically if the tracking computer is active. Threats come in the form of Myon Fighters which engage the player immediately, Cruisers which only engage at short range, and Starbases which also attack immediately but withdraw when their shields are damaged.[6] The player's ship can suffer damage. If the Centurion's energy is reduced to zero, it is destroyed and the game ends. The ships instruments, engines and weapons can also be damaged; these can be repaired if the ship docks at a planet.[6]
A side scrolling game with the Harrier aircraft.
The Lords of Midnight is an award winning adventure video game, written by Mike Singleton, and released in 1984 for the ZX Spectrum. Very well received from the beginning, it was soon converted for the Amstrad CPC and Commodore 64. The game featured an innovative 3-D effect that Singleton called landscaping, which served to bring the player into the game much more than usual. Lords of Midnight is often named with Elite as among the top role playing games of the 1980s.
Game based on the notes of the Graf Spee expedition to South Atlantic Ocean.
Alien is a 1984 strategy/adventure game developed by Concept Software and published by Argus Press Software. It was released in 1984 for the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum, and later ported to the Amstrad CPC in 1985.
Submarine simulator set in the North Sea during WWII.
The game is divided into a series of single-screen levels. The goal of the player on each screen is manipulate Blagger, a burglar, to collect the scattered keys and then reach the safe. The keys must be collected and the safe opened in a set amount of time. Blagger can walk either left or right, or jump left or right. The jumping action is in a fixed pattern and cannot be altered once initiated. Gameplay reduces to learning the best order in which to collect the keys, and correct timing of movements and jumping. Hazards Not all platforms are solid, some decay once Blagger has walked on them. Other platforms serve to move Blagger in a particular direction. Blagger will die if he touches cacti, one of the moving enemy obstacles of the level or if he falls a certain distance. The moving enemies vary from level to level, and include cars, aliens, mad hatters, and giant mouths. The movement of the enemies is of a fixed pattern, repeatedly travelling from one point to another and back again. The BBC and Electron versions feature floating 'RG's as hazards (R.G. being the initials of the programmer of those versions, R.S. Goodley).