Popular games for platform 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
QS Scramble is a clone of the arcade game Scramble. It's a side-scrolling shooter where the player controls a space craft flying over the surface of an alien planet. Movement is limited to moving up and down and there are two weapons to attack with: forward going missiles and bombs that are dropped onto ground targets. Five missiles can be fired at a time and three bombs can be dropped at a time. Targets include aliens that swoop down from above and rockets that launch from the ground. On the ground there are also fuel dumps. The game goes on until the player has lost all three lives or the fuel runs out.
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.
Pac Rabbit is a Pac-Man clone where you take the role of a rabbit and you move about a maze eating all the dots to clear the maze. As you eat the dots you must avoid the hounds that are hunting you but you can eat magic carrots which enable you to eat the hounds for a short time. If you touch a hound then you lose one of ten lives. There are six mazes split into two parts, Rabbits Revenge and Run Rabbit Run and you can choose the speed of the game (0-9) with zero being the fastest.
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.
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
Aventuras na Selva is a text-based adventure developed by Renato Degiovani and published by the magazine Micro Sistemas.
Centopeia is a shooter game where you are the operator of the earth's defense bases, with the mission of frustrating the attack of the terrible fleet of space centipedes that want to conquer our planet.
Stinger is a tank-shooter with several enemies, levels, power-ups and items to pick.
Shuriken is somehow inspired by Pac-man and Pengo.
Galaxians is a clone of Galaxian. The player's goal is to destroy a matrix of enemy spaceships which is gradually descending on the screen. Single ships will sometimes leave the formation and bombard the player with multiple shots. There's only a single scenario with a single type of spaceship. The process repeats itself when a squadron is completely eliminated, but the difficulty increases.
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.
Text adventure with an overview of surrounding rooms for the ZX81 with a 16K memory expansion module. The game allows you to set some parameters (like amount of food and arrows, but also the dungeon layout) before starting.