Popular games for platform 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.
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.
The ZX Spectrum port of Boulder Dash.
Backgammon for the ZX81 with 16K memory expansion module or for the ZX Spectrum.
A Pac-Man clone for the ZX81 with 16k memory expansion module and for the ZX Spectrum
Bob Smith's interpretation of Atari's 1979 arcade game 'Asteroids'.
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.
To clear the level, you must destroy all the UFOs while avoiding falling bombs and blocks. Blocks cannot be destroyed by your own bullets, but will disappear if hit by an enemy bomb.
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.
An unofficial port of Atari's Centipede made by Jeff Minter in the early years of Llamasoft.
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.
A unique platformer with twist. While being chased by a giant blob you need to gather fuel and a rocket on the right platform. After this you can fly, over water, to the left platforms to gather jewels. Given the capabilities of the ZX81 an wonderfull game in "high-res".
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.
Game-Pac is a compilation of two games and a dice rolling program. Greed is a dice game played against an AI opponent. The objective is to get the highest score by rolling two dice and adding the result of each roll. The game is played in ten rounds and when the player chooses to stop the score is added to the one of previous rounds. Rolling the starting value a second time leads to a crap out and all points of the round will be lost. Brain Teaser is a puzzle game similar to the board game Lights Out. The player is presented with the numbers 1 to 9 shown on a 3 by 3 grid. Numbers are either normal or inverse and the goal is to get an inverse 5 and all others as normal. The player can choose to flip any number but then also all adjacent numbers will be flipped. Super Dice is a program that simulates dice rolls. The player can roll up to five six-sided dice or one four-, eight-, ten-, twelve- or twenty-sided die.
Maze Death Race is a Rally-X variant. The player controls a car and has to drive around a maze and collect a certain number of flags to complete a level. At the same time other cars chase the player's car and attempt to hit it. The number of cars are user defined in the ZX81 version and pre-defined in the ZX Spectrum version. In addition to chaser cars there are various traps on the roads that the player has to avoid hitting such as rocks, oil and ice. Unlike the original arcade game, in this version the player cannot use a smokescreen to confuse the chasers. Both versions allow the player to choose the speed of the AI cars. In the ZX81 version, it is also possible to choose if the car should have momentum while in the Spectrum version this is always the case.
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.