Popular games for platform Sinclair ZX81

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.

3D space shooter

Drawn by a gravitational beam you have to find a way to the main control room in order to free your space ship.

20 Years on from the Spectrum game Amusement Park 4000, the Zeddy gets a conversion of the 16K Spectrum follow-up Fun Park for Chroma-enabled ZX81s. So much has been crammed into this game; amazing colour and graphics courtesy of Jarrod Bentley, more visitors and options. There are more rides than Amusement Park 4000, and AI and strategy is more sophisticated than the 16K Spectrum version of Fun Park. You've never seen a ZX81 game that looks and plays like this.

An obscure compilation consisiting of six games for the ZX81.

Night Gunner is a shoot'em up set in World War II for the Sinclair ZX81.

Endurance is a motorcycle racing simulation game released in 1985 for the Amstrad CPC and Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Up to five players compete in turn-based races across various tracks, managing speed, endurance, and strategy. The game features alternating turns and was praised for its realism and challenge.

Bank Robber is a variant of Commodore's Money Wars. The player controls a man who has to move money from the bank to his home. The bank is located on the left side of the screen while the home is located on the right side. The buildings can however only be entered when their doors are opened. From the sky, meteorites are falling and the player has to avoid being hit by these while moving across the screen. Getting hit means a life is lost. Other things falling from the sky are pills that give an extra life when eaten and bricks that when caught builds or repairs one of three protection buildings (similar to the shields in Space Invaders). At the end of the game the player gets a ranking depending on the amount of cash that has been collected.

After failure on your last mission and recovering in hospital growing a new arm and leg, you have had time to find and study the base of the Cosmic Guerillas, the Black Star. The location is a huge industrial complex on an asteroid and when you have fully recovered you are going to attempt to destroy it. Now fully recovered and your Svelgian Raider craft rebuilt and modified you are flying over the base looking for the valley containing the energy ducts. After one run you prepare yourself to fly down the valley again and finally destroy the base. The game is a 1st person shooter where you fly down the valley and using your sight drop bombs on the energy ducts that you pass. You can speed up or slow down your craft and you are able to move your sight left or right. Below your sight is a small radar and this shows any ships flying behind you. On the sides of the main playing area you can see a timer counting down, amount of bombs, fuel levels, power, speed and score. The faster you travel the more power and fuel you use.

Bumper 7 is a collection of seven games and programs which includes: Repeat 20: Based on Simon but instead of colours you get numbers. The computer gives you a sequence of four numbers which you then copy. If correct then the computer will add a number on to the sequence for you to guess. Ski Slalom: You must control a H and move it left or right to go in between gates that move up the screen. Paper Stone & Knife: Based on the game Rock, Paper, Scissors, you must decide whether to use Paper, Stone or Knife to beat the computer's choice. Paper beats Stone, Stone beats Knife and Knife beats Paper. Snowflake: You must catch snowflakes that fall down the screen. Patterns: This a program that lets you watch patterns appear on the screen. Banco: Based on the card game Punto Banco and the idea is to get the nearest to nine. Sketch: A program that allows you to draw shapes and pictures with a cursor.

Byter is a Pac-Man clone. You control a mouse, moving about a maze and attempting to eat all the dots while avoiding monsters. If you touch a monster then you lose one of three lives but if you collect one of four dollar signs then you can eat the monsters for a short time.

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.

You are marooned on a strange planet and have to repair your space ship in order to get back home.

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.

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

Tenseiryuu: Saint Dragon is a side-scrolling shoot 'em up video game originally released as a coin-op by Jaleco in 1989. It was converted to several home computer platforms by Storm Entertainment in 1990.

Artic Computing's take on Reversi