Popular games for platform Sinclair ZX81

The ZX Spectrum port of Boulder Dash.

The first football management simulator, many of the hallmarks of the incredibly complex games which exist in this genre today are found in embryonic form here. Club finances, player transfers, basic tactics, and perhaps most importantly of all, excellent white noise crowd sounds when your team scored.

Tournament Tennis is an early tennis game featuring or even creating many conventions that would become standard features in later tennis simulations. Matches can be played at quarter-final, semi-final or final level - winning at one level automatically moves the player to the next one. They can last for 3 or 5 sets, with a player requiring a 2-game lead to win a set, though a tie-break comes in at 6–6 in all but the final set.

A Defender like (right only) side scrolling shooter. You are equiped with a laser to shoot enemies and a few super bombs destroying all enemies. While fighting of enemies you have to rescue prisoners on the ground by flying close to them (whatch for gravity pulling you down). This "high-resoluation" game runs on a standard ZX81 with a 16K memory expansion module.

Amazônia is a remake of the original Aventuras na Selva, rewritten in Assembly with more locations, more complete descriptions of each scenario, and new dangers for the player.

A space invaders clone. Plays the same as the original.

Airline is an economic strategy game, with the player taking the role of a Chairman for L-AIR, an air company whose business starts off with £3 million. He has 7 years to increase his net assets to £30 million. The player can charter, buy or sell aircraft, as well as managing staffing, maintenance and insurance. Situations in game (like hijacks, air crashes and sabotage) and costs (of fuel and aircrafts, tax demands etc.) are realistic. The graphics are simplified, made ​​up almost entirely of tables and texts.

Jungle Maths is an educational game for multiple sytstems. The player must travel through a jungle to reach their home base and safety. To do this, they must correctly answer 10 math questions. A map tracks the player's progress. If the player answers incorrectly, they could fall in a pit, sink into quicksand, or have other animated maladies befall them. Five incorrect answers, and it's game over. Options include numbers from 10 to 1000, subtraction or addition, negative numbers, and time to answer the questions.

You control a base on the bottom of the screen moving left or right, and you have to blast or avoid falling meteors with your laser over five waves. As you avoid or blast the meteors, you also have a panic button which removes all meteors on the screen but using this reduces your bonus. A wave ends when your base is hit and you move to the next wave but with the meteors falling faster. Before you start the game, you can select three levels of difficulty, Slow, Fast and Expert.

Munchees is a Pac-Man clone where you must move around a maze to clear it by eating all the dots. As you eat the dots you have to avoid ghosts and if you touch one then you lose one of three lives. There are power-pills that can be eaten and these allow you to eat the ghosts for a short time. You have a choice of how many ghosts on the maze (1-4).

Namtir Raiders is a fixed screen shoot 'em up. The objective is simply to shoot down as many enemy raiders as possible and save the earth. There are four waves of enemies and each wave has a different kind of enemy. The movement of the ship is a bit different from other shoot 'em ups. Rather than having keys for up, down, left and right, they here lead to diagonal moves (for example up and left, down and right). The player has five lives and earns more when all four waves have been completed. Once they have the game starts over with the first wave. A difficulty level between one and three can be chosen before the game begins. The higher levels run at a higher pace.

QS Asteroids is a fairly basic conversion of the original arcade game. The action starts immediately after loading (no title or options screens here) and players finds themselves in a space ship in the middle of the screen with numerous asteroids passing by. To control the ship, two keys are used for rotating it, one for shooting and another for thrusting it forward. Shooting can be done in eight directions. On an unmodified ZX81, the ship is represented by a number which changes with rotation (For example 0 means it's pointing up, while 4 is down) and the asteroids are o's, while users with a QS CHRS board get graphics more similar to the arcade original. The player starts with three ships and after 10,000 points a bonus ship is given. Asteroids appear in waves. The first one has two large ones and the number increases with each new wave.

Thro' The Wall also Scramble is a double games pack that contains: Thro' The Wall: A Breakout clone where you control a bat on the bottom of the screen moving left or right, to hit a ball upwards and remove bricks above. If the ball goes past the bat then you lose one of three lives. There is a choice of the speed of the ball and they are Normal, Fast and Superfast. Scramble: You view your craft from the side as it flies from left to right horizontally constantly, and you must avoid or shoot ground installations and enemy craft with your missiles. You can use a smart bomb to destroy everything on the screen but you only have one and if you hit the ground or any enemy then you lose one of three lives. You have the choice of ten speeds (1-10) with one being the fastest.

Breakout 3 is based on the arcade game Breakout but instead of the bat on the bottom of the screen, the bat is on the left side of the screen. The aim is to hit bricks on the right of the screen to make them disappear but if you let the ball past the bat then you lose one of three lives. Before the start of the game you can choose whether to play with one or two bats, and playing with two bats has them parallel to each other a small distance apart. There are also three types of games to play and they are: Practise Game: A normal game with the choice to choose the speed of the bat (1-4) with 1 being the slowest. Progressive Game: Every time you hit the ball it speeds up and also removing a set of bricks makes the ball faster. Acceleration Game: The ball will speed up for every 10th brick disappearing and it speeds up when all the bricks have been removed.

Fortress of Zorlac is a shoot 'em up with some similarities to Yars' Revenge. The player's objective is to rid the galaxy of a dreaded alien called Zorlac. Zorlac is positioned on the right side of the screen and is protected by a fortress consisting of three rotating walls as well as four indestructible stationary guns. The player starts out at the left edge of the screen but can move around in all directions. To be able to hit the alien the player first has to blast a hole through the three walls. It is made harder by the constant movements of both the rotating walls and the alien. At the same time the player has to avoid being hit by the defense guns which automatically lock in on the player ship. As the game goes on the fortress slowly moves toward the player who gets less space to dodge the enemy fire. Once the player has been able to hit Zorloc, he gets enraged and the game moves on to the next level that's played at a higher speed. The player scores points by destroying the walls of the fortress and for hitting the alien. Points are awarded based on the skill level chosen before a game and the player's distance from the edge of the screen. Hitting the alien is worth fifty times more than destroying a block in the fortress. The player has access to five ships and once they have all been destroyed the game ends.

Damper/Glooper is a double games pack that contains the following: Damper: A city in the jungle is losing it's power due to Leeches on the grid. In this maze game you must move along the grid and damp the dotted lines which turns them solid. As you move around the grid, Leeches also move about and if you touch one then you lose one of three lives. Glooper: A Pac-Man clone where you have to move about a maze to eat all the dots while avoiding three creatures moving about the maze. If you touch a creature then you lose one of three lives but there are power-pills that can be collected and this allows you to eat the creatures for a short time.

Get the frog from the bottom of the screen to the top. You'll cross a road with trucks and cars and then you'll cross a river with logs and crocodiles.

Sim of a catering business.

3D Monster Maze is a computer game developed from an idea by J.K.Greye and programmed by Malcolm Evans in 1981 for the Sinclair ZX81 platform with the 16 KB memory expansion. The game was initially released by J. K. Greye Software in early 1982 and re-released later the same year by Evans' own startup, New Generation Software. Rendered using low-resolution character block "graphics", it was one of the first 3D games for a home computer, and the first game incorporating typical elements of the genre that would later be termed survival horror. 3D Monster Maze puts the player in a maze with one exit and a hostile monster, the Tyrannosaurus rex. There, the player must traverse the maze, from the first-person perspective, and escape through the exit without being eaten.

A Pac-Man clone for the ZX81 with 16k memory expansion module and for the ZX Spectrum

Piramide Inca is a game for the ZX81 where your mission is to explore one of the sacred pyramids of the Incas where, according to an ancient legend, one of their greatest chiefs was buried along with all their fabulous treasure.

Comboio Espacial is a game for the Sinclair ZX81, where you must protect your convoy by destroying enemy ships and avoiding hitting the space mines.

You have to defeat the Lords of Chaos in this action adventure.

ZX Asteroids is based on the arcade game where you are a craft sitting in the middle of the screen surrounded by large asteroids moving about the screen. You have to blast all the asteroids, and when one is shot then it splits into smaller asteroids and keeps repeating the process until the asteroid has gone. You can turn your craft left or right 360 degrees but you can also move forwards. Occasionally an alien craft will appear and when shot gives you bonus points. If you are hit by an asteroid or the alien craft then you lose one of three lives. Two players can play and each player takes it in turns when the other player loses a life and there are five levels of play (1-5) with one being the easiest.