Popular games for platform Sinclair ZX81

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.

Developed by Salvacam, this is his own version of the classic game for ZX81, with two game modes, redefinable keys and pause. In arcade mode it changes screen when you do 10 lines.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

3D space shooter

Traffic is a flick-screen game where you have to move across lanes full of various vehicles for as many points as you can. The vehicles move left or right across the screen and you have to move upwards through gaps while avoiding getting hit by the vehicles or it is game over. If you move downwards then your score decreases. There are 3 skill levels and you can choose the speed of the game (1-255) with 1 being the fastest.

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.

First Steps with the Mr. Men is a Mr. Men video game for multiple platforms.

Get the frog from the bottom of the screen to the top. You'll cross a road with trucks and cars and then you'll cross a river with logs and crocodiles.

Software bugs are destroying Micro Mouse's programs and you have to help him to debug the software.

Game based on the notes of the Graf Spee expedition to South Atlantic Ocean.

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.

Aeroporto 83 is an action shooter game developed by Renato Degiovani and published by the magazine Micro Sistemas, it is considered to be one of the first Brazilian computer games to be commercially released.

Tournament Tennis is an early tennis game featuring or even creating many conventions that would become standard features in later tennis simulations. Matches can be played at quarter-final, semi-final or final level - winning at one level automatically moves the player to the next one. They can last for 3 or 5 sets, with a player requiring a 2-game lead to win a set, though a tie-break comes in at 6–6 in all but the final set.

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.