Popular games for platform Sinclair ZX81
3D space shooter
To clear the level, you must destroy all the UFOs while avoiding falling bombs and blocks. Blocks cannot be destroyed by your own bullets, but will disappear if hit by an enemy bomb.
A maze game made by Jeff Minter from Llamasoft. The maze was a cube, and you could go through holes in the floor and ceiling as well as left and right
Released in 1982, Adventure B: Inca Curse is the second in a series of eight interactive fiction adventures made by Artic Computing. The aim is to explore an Incan temple in order to find golden treasures. There are eight treasures and only six items can be carried in the inventory, so the correct treasures must be collected in order to leave the temple with the maximum score.
Subespaço is a bundle that includes three space-related games developed by Ciberne Software
You have to take the keys and go to the exit, avoiding enemies.
A reboot of the Game and Watch title Helmet, with Palo T as the protagonist.
Croaka-Crawla is a clone of the arcade game Frogger where the player must control a frog and get him to the other side of a road and river. The game is viewed from above and the first thing to cross is a busy road full of traffic scrolling across the screen. You can move left, right or forward as you dodge the traffic to reach a river bank. Once the road has been survived then a river must be crossed by jumping on logs or the backs of turtles that scroll across the screen as well. Once you reach the other side of the river you must jump into a gap and occasionally a baby frog or flies appears for extra points. If you get hit by a vehicle, fall into the river, or touch the sides of the screen then you lose one of three lives. Before the game you can change the speed of the game (1-100) with 1 being the fastest.
A Pac-Man clone for the ZX81 with 16k memory expansion module and for the ZX Spectrum
Artic Computing's take on Reversi
"Sam Mallard: The Case of the Missing Swan" is a short film noir adventure on the go with 15 different locations to explore and a fantastic 8-bit Jazz noir sound-track.
ZX Compendium is a collection of six games and programs that contains: Alien Intruder: During a long space voyage to Earth, you have been woken from cryogenic suspension to find, to your horror, the rest of the crew devoured by an alien lifeform. To prevent yourself being the next item on the menu you have decided to collect enough essential supplies before escaping in a shuttle. The game is a text adventure with some graphics where the screen is split into two. The top half shows a map of one of the three levels of the ship with your location and the aliens if on the same level as you, a map showing your immediate surrounding area and any exits, and finally the supplies you need to collect which are oxygen, cells, water and food. The bottom half of the screen has text describing your current location and you type in commands with the keyboard to interact with each location. If you enter a location with the alien then you die but if the alien enters your location then you need to deal with the situation. Wumpus Adventure: A text adventure that allows one to four players to move around an area hunting for creatures called a Wumpus to kill. Before you start the hunt you have a number of options and they are, choice of caverns (Novice, Random Cave Pattern and Professional Hunter), number of players, and if you hunt to the death or kill a certain amount of Wumpus. The actual game sees text on the screen describing each location of a player and the current player types in commands to interact with their surroundings. Each player gets one move before the next player has a turn. The players are armed with five arrows but more can be collected, and as well as Wumpus there are other creatures like Goblins and giant serpents that need to be dealt with. Numerology: A program that allows you to enter your name and birth date to receive a reading about your personality and find out your lucky number, colour and day of the week. Hangman: Based on the pen and paper game, you can compete against the computer or another person as you try to guess a word without being hanged. A word is generated and you have to select a letter at a time to try to make the word. If you guess a correct letter then it appears in the word but get one wrong and a man being hanged on a scaffold starts to appear. The computer has two levels (1-2) to choose from. Hieroglyphics: You have to decipher 39 Hieroglyphics by placing a letter or a vowel combination under the correct symbol and the computer will give you a word to help you decipher them. You must be careful in your guesses though because each wrong guess sees trapped explorer Wullie Makeit's tomb slowly fill with sand. Movie Mogul: A management game where with a limited budget you have to buy a script and attempt to make a movie and make a profit with it. After buying a script you decide which type of movie to make as well as hiring a director, actor and actress. You decide on each day of filming how much money to spend on various options watching your budget levels decrease. Once you have completed filming you are given a final score as a profit or loss for the finished movie.
Bat Cage is an action game where the player has to capture bats while fighting off other bats that try to rescue them. The playing field consists of a bat cage in the bottom and above it a bat flap around and there are also eight bat eggs bouncing around. The player controls a bar that can be moved around freely. It is used to capture the bat eggs which are taken to the bat cage where they can hatch. As soon as the hatching begins the bat at the top of the screen will attack and try to rescue the egg. The player then has to use the bar to fend it off. It works a bit similar to Breakout as the bat will bounce back up again when it makes contact with the bar. The player then scores points as long as the egg hatches. Ultimately the attacking bat will give up and retreat and the player can move on to the next egg that needs to be captured. As the game goes on the player will reach bonus levels and the number of attacking bats will increase. The game is over when the bats stay at the top of the screen and no longer attack when the player hatches his eggs. The game can be set to different skill levels (1-36) that alters the speed of the game.
Cassette 50 is a compilation of 50 games that was released for a variety of 8-bit home computers, albeit with different selections of games on different computers. The majority of games within the collection were programmed in BASIC and are widely considered to be of poor quality.
Maze Death Race is a Rally-X variant. The player controls a car and has to drive around a maze and collect a certain number of flags to complete a level. At the same time other cars chase the player's car and attempt to hit it. The number of cars are user defined in the ZX81 version and pre-defined in the ZX Spectrum version. In addition to chaser cars there are various traps on the roads that the player has to avoid hitting such as rocks, oil and ice. Unlike the original arcade game, in this version the player cannot use a smokescreen to confuse the chasers. Both versions allow the player to choose the speed of the AI cars. In the ZX81 version, it is also possible to choose if the car should have momentum while in the Spectrum version this is always the case.
Casca a Cobra is a strategy game where you need to chase a snake and eat its body up to the head.
You have to cross a park from S to F. While doing this you encounter various mini games. During these mini games you can loose the game or be send back to the beginning.
Never did like office parties... Christmas eve, and the staff at Macrobiology Industries Limited were having the usual office party, with all the usual hi-jinx and tears, but something very unusual was happening in the biohazard containment fridge. The predicted pandemic had never occurred, and so the fridge was full of unused swine-flu vaccines, but that night it jostled for space with the secretary's cucumber sandwiches and the boss's - sorry, not his, a friends - Viagra supply, all stored there for safe keeping until the party really got started. But the disco lights overloaded the generator, the fuses blew, the fridge shut off, and the staff all went their separate ways home to sleep off the excesses. January 2nd, happy new year! The security guard, first on site that morning, was slowly working his way around the offices and labs, tripping the fuse boxes back to life. He shook his head, bemused by the broken hinges on the doors, but the smashed containment fridge, and mucus-like stains on the walls and floor scared him enough to grab his SHARPS pistol, as strange things moved just out of sight...
If you ever felt sorry for the ghosts, the orphans they left behind, and wondered what would happen when Pac-Man became the ruling elite, then this is for you. Whilst researching to see if the ZX81 was capable of doing justice to an isometric game along the lines of Ant Attack! or KnightLore, Bob's Stuff coded a program to display a single height map of tiles, and it looked a bit like a maze. Along with the code examples, he'd also been experimenting with the graphics required for such a game, and produced a cute little ghost. An idea then began to germinate... a maze, and some ghosts? Why not try a scrolling isometric Pac-Man? He's still not sure if a full isometric game is possible (that's for another day) but a scrolling flat one certainly is, and he's really pleased with the results. It looks good, is fluid and responsive, and features most of the aspects of the original - including the (slightly bugged) A.I. and attack patterns. Having a ghost as the main character means that I've had to supplemented the concept of 'lives' for 'spirit' - I mean, a ghost doesn't have a life, does it? - which introduces a slight twist on how you play the game.
Chase is somehow similar to Gnome Robots but in real-time game and with several items and power-ups.
ZX Chess II is an improved version of ZX Chess I, a single-player chess game. In addition to the features of the previous version (custom board setup, printing etc.), the code enhancements include additional difficulty level, faster move calculation and an option for the player to ask the program to suggest a move.