Popular games for platform Sinclair ZX81
A compilation of 4 quiz games
Alerta Vermelho is a game where you need attack the enemy planet using the lasers and bombs you have and, at the same time, defend yourself.
Gunfight is an unofficial port of the classic Atari VCS game where a cowboy at either side of the screen, moving up and down for the Sinclair ZX81.
The classic Defenders (Atari 2600 and other platforms) but then in a first person 3D perspective. This game is to be run with a 16K expansion module. You fly over a planet and have a proximity radar indicating where (left-right) an enemy is. Your radar can show false hits when meteorites fall down. The enemies go down and you get points (250) if you shoot them before they reach the ground. The enemies will shoot at you and you will have to try to prevent being hit. If an enemy reaches the ground and can fly up and away again you loose points (50). You have a shield which can take take 10 hits. With either one of the keys q-t moves you left-down. y-p right-down. a-g left-up, h-newline right up. z-m shoots the laser. Using two keys at once allows you to move non-diagonal.
Stinger is a tank-shooter with several enemies, levels, power-ups and items to pick.
A compilation of 7 educational games designed for children between the age of 7 and 11: - Crash - Multiply - Train - Fraction - Add Sub - Division - Spelling
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.
Community Chest is based on the game Monopoly and is a smaller version of the game. You play the computer and try to make money without going bankrupt. The game has 16 squares with 13 squares named after London streets, Community Chance, Jail and a Go square. The street squares are split into six sets. Each player takes it in turns to throw a dice to move their counter and if a street square is landed on then the player has a choice to buy it if the player has enough money. If the player has brought a street to make up a set then houses can be brought and placed on the square. As the players move buying streets and a player lands on a street square owned by the other player then that player has to pay rent and the cost depends on how expensive the street is and if there are any houses on it. Landing on a Community Chance square reveals an incident and this can either lose or gain the player money. The Jail square forces the player to pay a fee and if a player passes the Go square then they receive £2000. A player will lose the game if they go bankrupt.
1K Games Pack is a collection of 11 games and programs on one tape. The collection consists of: Slot machine: You have 10p and you play a slot machine for 1p a go trying to get three numbers the same (10p) or the numbers add up to seven (5p). Etch and Sketch: This a program that allows you to draw pictures and shapes with a cursor. Slalom: Gates move down the screen and you have to align yourself to go through them without hitting them or missing them altogether. Catch me if you can: You must move an X to catch a O that moves about the screen. Space Pirate: You must attempt to dock your spaceship as it moves down the screen with another ship that moves left and right across the screen. Spacefire 1: You are on the left of the screen while the computer is on the right, firing bullets at each other attempting to hit the other player. Spacefire 2: Same as 1 but now the computer moves left across the screen. Car Crash: You must drive your car down the screen avoiding the other vehicles and the sides of the road. Man-Eating Budgies: You are on the top of the screen and Budgies move up the screen and you must avoid them while collecting their eggs. Maze: You are on the top of the screen and a maze moves upwards and you must navigate through it without hitting the walls. The Wall: You move right across the screen and you must remove every part of a wall that moves slowly upwards.
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.
A top down view space battle against the Klingons. You can rotate your ship and fire rockets to the Klingons but make sure not to hit them. After defeating all the Klingons you can use a wormhole to go the the next galaxy. You can configure the speed and whether the Klingons move or not and you have three ships at your disposal.
Games 1 is a collection of six games and programs which contains: Orbit: You control a ship orbiting a star and the further you are the slower you circle it. Also on screen is a piece of cargo orbiting the same star and you must adjust the speed of your craft by moving inwards and outwards to catch it. Sniper: A man appears on the screen in one of ten positions and you must press one of the number keys 1 to 0 where you think he is on screen. Meteors: You control a craft on the top of the screen and you must move left or right through a meteor storm that moves up the screen. Life: A program that was devised by J. H. Conway in 1970 and allows you to see a pattern come to life and hopefully grow. You place cells on a 16 x 16 grid and when you are happy with your placements you can let it come to life. Three cells adjacent to each other produces a cell, two or three neighbours, the cells survive and one or more than three cells, the cells die. Wolfpack: You control a ship on the top of the screen left or right, and you must drop a depth charge to hit a submarine below moving across the screen right to left. You only have one depth charge per sub and when the sub reaches the edge of the screen it has escaped. Golf: You must hit a ball into a hole at a random distance by selecting the range from 35 to 75.
A compilation of 6 games for a ZX81 with a 16K memory expansion module. Lunar Landing The lunar excursion module starts in a atable lunar orbit. You can control it to bring it a soft landing on the moon. Twenty One The card game of Twenty One Combat You are in a spacecraft equiped with 12 missiles with which you have to fight of aliens. Substrike Within a grid you have to fight of submarines using depth charges. Codebreaker A Mastermind like game Mayday You have to find a person lost in space (7x7x7 grid).
A Space Invaders clone where you control a craft at the bottom of the screen moving left or right, to destroy aliens in formation above dropping bombs on you.
Serra Pelada is a text-based adventure game developed by Renato Degiovani and published by the magazine Micro Sistemas, based on the peak of gold mining in Serra Pelada in the 1980s.
Chase is somehow similar to Gnome Robots but in real-time game and with several items and power-ups.
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.
Artic Computing's take on Reversi
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.
Mazogs is a maze video game developed by Don Priestley and published for the ZX81 by Bug-Byte in 1982. It was subsequently licensed by Softsync and published in the US for the Timex Sinclair 1000.
Arcade Action is a collection of five games which include: Overtaker: The aim of the game is to drive up the screen passing as many cars as you can in two minutes to get the highest score you can. You can move your car left or right, and increase your speed but you can't slow down and the faster you drive the quicker your score increases. If you hit other cars then you stop which also stops your score increasing. Missile Man: Based on Galaxians, you must move your craft left or right at the bottom of the screen to blast and destroy the aliens above moving left and right. The aliens will drop missiles on you and occasionally an alien will move down the screen. If you are hit by a missile or an alien then you lose one of three lives. Spacefighter Pilot: Your crippled Mothership is orbiting a planet but the planet residents are firing missiles upwards to destroy it. You control a crosshair at the top of the screen and you must move left or right and hit the missiles. If your Mothership is hit too many times then it is game over. Greedy Gobbler: In this Pac-Man clone you must move about a maze eating all the dots while avoiding ghosts who are out to kill you. If you touch a ghost then you lose one of three lives but there are four power-pills that can be eaten to allow you to eat the ghosts for a limited time. Extra Terrestrial: Your mission is to destroy the whole world before a timer reaches zero. You move across the screen to the right above a map of the world. Pressing keys 1 - 8 fires a missile and the number you press determines the range of the missile.