Popular games for platform Sinclair ZX81

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.

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.

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.

Artic Computing's take on Reversi

In what is possibly the most baffling text adventure ever devised, navigate a surreal landscape with the aid of the Pi-Man in an attempt to discover the (real world) location of a golden sundial. Originally published in 1982.

Early ZX81 game.

Stinger is a tank-shooter with several enemies, levels, power-ups and items to pick.

Shuriken is somehow inspired by Pac-man and Pengo.

Blow up as many boxes as you can before the guard sees you. Or play as the guard and try to find the saboteur.

O Aventureiro is a text-adventure where in search of an adventure, you clandestinely teleport aboard a cargo ship whose crew is made up of exotic beings from various planets. Your objective is to accumulate all the money you can by searching the ship's rooms.

A collection of 8 games 16KByte containing: Starship Trojan Your ship has been damaged by a meteor storm. In this adventure you have 70 hours to repair the damage before the next interstellar jump. Princess of Kraal Free the princess from the hidden chamber and fight of the monsters through tunnels, stairs and chambers. Startrek The galaxy is divided in 64 quadrants, every quadrant has 64 sectors. Spread around the galaxy are the Klingons, find and destroy them. Battle With your fleet of ships you fight against another fleet of ships by firing rockets and conquering their basises. Cube A simulation of a Rubic Cube. Martian Cricket An impossible cricket game that drives you into madness. Secret Messages Program to generate secret codes that can be exchanged with other ZX81 owners. Kalabriasz A game of carts.

You are marooned on a strange planet and have to repair your space ship in order to get back home.

Released in 1982, Adventure B: Inca Curse is the second in a series of eight interactive fiction adventures made by Artic Computing. The aim is to explore an Incan temple in order to find golden treasures. There are eight treasures and only six items can be carried in the inventory, so the correct treasures must be collected in order to leave the temple with the maximum score.

A text adventure game where the player controls a spy shot down while investigating an enemy stronghold.

Drawn by a gravitational beam you have to find a way to the main control room in order to free your space ship.

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.

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.

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.

Night Gunner is a shoot'em up set in World War II for the Sinclair ZX81.

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.