Popular games for platform Sinclair ZX81
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.
A ZX81 conversion of Ocean's Transversion, an early ZX Spectrum game. Simple, challenging and fun to play, this is a fast action game with support for the Chroma colour interface and a couple of joystick options. Features a demo mode and high score table
Bradford Walker-Smythe needs to find the perfect engagement ring to win the heart of his true love Tania when he asks for her hand in marriage. And so, to prove his devotion, he sets off to the Cornish mines in search of the perfect diamond...
A Pac-Man clone without the power ups.
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.
Em Busca dos Tesouros is a platformer developed by then 15-year-old Tadeu Curinga and published by the computer magazine Micro Sistemas.
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 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.
It's the year 2081 and servant robots have become commonplace, though too expensive for most people. In that same year, a large abandoned Sinclair warehouse is discovered with thousands of mint, working ZX81s and some genius decides to build a line of cheap and affordable robots using them: The Zeddytrons. Based on ZX81s and huge rampacks (by 2081, rampack science has advanced significantly) the Zeddytrons become massively popular and the world fills with them ... until the unexpected happens! Wobblying rampacks cause the Zeddytrons to malfunction and declare mankind an obsolete species! Your mission is to move through 50 waves, blasting Zeddytrons, avoiding undestructible Zeddyhulks and rescuing human survivors! You can control your player using AWSD to move and JIKL to shoot simultaneously in 8 directions. Otherwise, you can use OPQAM / Cursor / ZXPand+ Joystick to move and shoot by pressing fire and the direction in which you want to shoot. Good Luck!
Night Gunner is a shoot'em up set in World War II for the Sinclair ZX81.
The Tomb of Dracula is an arcade adventure where the aim is to explore vaults over various levels of Dracula's Tomb to find the Vampire's Treasure worth half a million pounds.
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.
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.
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.
Pinball recreates a pinball table where the aim is to keep hitting a ball to score as many points as you can with two flippers. The table is equipped with bumpers and letters spelling TIMEX, as well as two lanes that when entered give bonus points. There are also two outside lanes that when entered lose the ball and if the ball also passes the flippers then you lose one of five lives.
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.
Dodgems and Connect 4 is a double games pack that contains: Dodgems: You move a vehicle around lanes eating dots while avoiding another vehicle because if you hit it then you lose one of three lives. Your vehicle is always moving forwards but you can change lanes through openings of the lanes. Before the game you can select the speed of the game (1-9). Connect 4: A strategy game where a player either plays the computer or another player on a 7 x 6 grid dropping counters down each column. The idea is for a player to make a row of four counters in a vertical, horizontal or diagonal line to win the game.
Sim of a catering business.
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.
A compilation of 7 educational games designed for children between the age of 7 and 11: - Crash - Multiply - Train - Fraction - Add Sub - Division - Spelling