Popular games for platform Sinclair ZX81

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.

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

Piramide Inca is a game for the ZX81 where your mission is to explore one of the sacred pyramids of the Incas where, according to an ancient legend, one of their greatest chiefs was buried along with all their fabulous treasure.

You're being attacked by giant birds! You must shoot the bird right between the eyes in order to defend yourself and score points.

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.

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.

You have to defeat the Lords of Chaos in this action adventure.

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!

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.

A Defender like (right only) side scrolling shooter. You are equiped with a laser to shoot enemies and a few super bombs destroying all enemies. While fighting of enemies you have to rescue prisoners on the ground by flying close to them (whatch for gravity pulling you down). This "high-resoluation" game runs on a standard ZX81 with a 16K memory expansion module.

Chase is somehow similar to Gnome Robots but in real-time game and with several items and power-ups.

A reboot of the Game and Watch title Helmet, with Palo T as the protagonist.

An illustrated text adventure game for the ZX Spectrum and 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.

Scram - 81 is a clone of the arcade game Scramble which is viewed from the side with the screen scrolling left to right constantly. You have to fly a spaceship above the surface of a planet bombing ground targets while shooting or bombing missiles with your laser. As you fly, your fuel level decreases but you can bomb fuel dumps to increase it. If you hit a missile or the surface then you lose one of three lives.

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.

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.

3D space shooter

3D Grand Prix (for the ZX81 with 16K memory expension module) is a racing simulator with a first person view. You race against others on random generated track. You have to accellerate, brake, steer and switch (6) gears.

Subespaço is a game for the Sinclair ZX81 where you are the commander of the subspace ship Pegasus and your mission is to dismantle the enemies' supply network, depriving them of their vital supplies.

You have five days to escape from the Oracle's Cave and gather as much treasure along the way as possible.

The game is cleared when all the stars are taken. The cracked floor disappears when you pass over it, so you can only pass through it once.