Popular games for platform Sinclair ZX81
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.
USS-Enterprise is an unofficial strategy game based on Star Trek, where you are James Kirk, and your mission is to destroy all Klingon ships in the galaxy.
Early ZX81 game.
Ten 1K Games is a collection of ten games and programs that contains: Survival: A program that sees you sat on the screen watching bombs explode around you, seeing how long you can survive. Typing: A typing tutor that allows you to select the speed of the program before typing the letter or number that flashes on a keyboard on the screen. Reverse: A puzzle game where you have a row of mixed up numbers from one to nine and you have to select how many numbers to reverse to put the row in order. Night Rally: You move up a road and you have to move left or right to avoid hitting the sides. Airstrike: A plane flies above a target from left to right at different heights and you have to press P to try to bomb it. Crocodile Swamp: A plane flies above a target from left to right at different heights and you have to jump out and move left or right to land on the target. Missile Chase: A missile flies at the top of the screen and you control the speed (normal or fast) of an Exocet to intercept the missile. Moonlander: Your craft falls down the screen and you have to move it left or right to land on a landing pad. Music: A program that lets you listen to a tune. Invader Dodge: Invaders move downwards and you have to move left or right to avoid hitting them.
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.
Kids TV favourite Postman Pat aims to stamp his authority on the games scene by delivering a first-class licensed game. Your job is to guide Pat and his van around a particularly busy day of work.First you go to the post office where Mrs Goggins will give you the letters or parcel to be delivered.You will also have to help herding Peter Fogg's sheep, and do all this against a time limit. The game includes a rendition of the show's music, as well as two difficultly levels - according to the inlay the easy version is for children, and the harder one for 'the serious gamer'.
QS Defender is a side scrolling shooter that although it is inspired by it, lacks many features of the arcade game Defender. This version is constantly scrolling left to right and there is no option to turn around and move in the opposite direction. The player can move up and down, fire and use thrust to increase the movement speed forward. There is only one enemy type and each one killed is worth 100 points. Enemies appear in waves. At the start there are just a few but as the player progresses it gets more hectic with up to eight enemies on the screen at once. The player has nine ships. When getting hit the screen goes black for a few seconds before it starts again with a clear screen and one ship less. Once all ships are lost the game has to be restarted through basic.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Asteroids (Silversoft) is a clone of the Arcade version which sees your craft in the middle of an asteroid field and you must destroy all the asteroids to survive. The asteroids start off large and when you shoot one then it splits into two, and shooting an asteroid this size splits it into two again before being destroyed with another shot. Occasionally an alien craft appears moving across the screen and this can be destroyed for extra points. If you are hit by an asteroid or the alien craft then you lose one of three lives. You are able to turn your ship 360 degrees as well as move forward.
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.
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.
The first football management simulator, many of the hallmarks of the incredibly complex games which exist in this genre today are found in embryonic form here. Club finances, player transfers, basic tactics, and perhaps most importantly of all, excellent white noise crowd sounds when your team scored.
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 collection of 8 games for the ZX81 with 16K memory expansion module. Planetoids A clone of the Arcade classic Asteroids. Breakout A clone of the Arcade classic Breakout. Space Rescue You have to rescue 6 astronauts on the ground by steering a dropship through an asteroid field towards landing platforms. After landing and picking up one astronout you have to fly up through a field of enemy ships and dock with the mother ship. Draughts Play draughts against a computer opponent. Byte-man A Pac-man clone with three different mazes to complete. Dodgems Like pac-man you must eat all the dots. Dodgems is however made up of lanes (from outside to inside) and you can switch lane on the left, right, top or down side of the screen while always moving forward. Blitz You fly over a city and you have to bomb the building to clear a path for landing. You can go up and down and drop bomb. Buildings are rebuild and get higher as time progresses, make sure not to crash into one. Merchant You are a sea trader sailing from city to city buing and selling items. While sailing from one city to another you can encounter danger which make you loose cargo. You can buy more ships. The goals is to reach a capital of 1000000 florins.
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).
Three symbols appear in the centre of the screen as a vertical column and the player has to move them to one of 4 sets of 3 columns by pressing up, down, left or right. The idea is to build up lines of 3 matching symbols horizontally or diagonally to score points and gain a little time. The faster you make decisions the longer you will last, but the more mistakes you will make. The author's personal best score is 9600, can you beat that? Inspired by a video game popular in Belgian bars. Features a high score table and redefinable keys. Joysticks and Zon-X sound supported.
Inspired by the 1983 ZX Spectrum game.
A text adventure game where the player controls a spy shot down while investigating an enemy stronghold.