Tag:
retro games
- Punch and kick your way through a rabble of bad dudes in a simple scrolling beat-’em-up. Mark Vanstone shows you how Kung-Fu Master Kung-Fu Master hit arcades in 1984. Its side-scrolling action, punching and kicking through an army of knife-throwing goons, helped create the beat-’em-up genre. In fact, its designer, Takashi Nishiyama, would go on … Continue reading →
- Raspberry Pi’s own Mac Bowley shows you how to make the beginnings of a top-down driving game inspired by 1983’s Spy Hunter. Spy Hunter The 1983 arcade classic Spy Hunter put players at the wheel of a fictitious Interceptor vehicle and challenged them to navigate a vertically scrolling road, destroying enemy vehicles. Here, I’ll show … Continue reading →
- Learn how to code a simple Boulder Dash homage in Python and Pygame. Mark Vanstone shows you how. Boulder Dash Boulder Dash first appeared in 1984 for the Commodore 64, Apple II, and the Atari 400/800. It featured an energetic gem collector called Rockford who, thanks to some rather low-resolution graphics, looked a bit like … Continue reading →
- TL;DR: we made a fully automated luxury gay space communist type-in-listing book. Buy it now and get it in time for Christmas. Back in the dawn of time, in the late 1980s, I grew up on a diet of type-in computer game listings. From the BBC Micro User Guide, to The Micro User magazine, to … Continue reading →
- Learn how to create the turn-based combat system found in games like Pokémon, Final Fantasy, and Undertale. Raspberry Pi’s Rik Cross shows you how. In the late 1970s, high school student Richard Garriott made a little game called Akalabeth. Programmed in Applesoft BASIC, it helped set the template for the role-playing genre on computers. Even … Continue reading →
- Guide a frog across busy roads and rivers. Mark Vanstone shows you how to code a simple remake of Konami’s arcade game, Frogger. Frogger Why did the frog cross the road? Because Frogger would be a pretty boring game if it didn’t. Released in 1981 by Konami, the game appeared in assorted bars, sports halls, … Continue reading →
- It was one of gaming’s first boss battles. Mark Vanstone shows you how to recreate the mothership from the 1980 arcade game, Phoenix. First released in 1980, Phoenix was something of an arcade pioneer. The game was the kind of post-Space Invaders fixed-screen shooter that was ubiquitous at the time: players moved their ship from … Continue reading →
- Raspberry Pi’s own Rik Cross shows you how to code your own Columns-style tile-matching puzzle game in Python and Pygame Zero. Columns and tile-matching Tile-matching games began with Tetris in 1984 and the less famous Chain Shot! the following year. The genre gradually evolved through games like Dr. Mario, Columns, Puyo Puyo, and Candy Crush … Continue reading →
- Replicate the physics of barrel rolling – straight out of the classic Donkey Kong. Mark Vanstone shows you how. Nintendo’s Donkey Kong Donkey Kong first appeared in arcades in 1981, and starred not only the titular angry ape, but also a bouncing, climbing character called Jumpman – who later went on to star in Nintendo’s little-known … Continue reading →
- Learn how to code a sprinting minigame straight out of Daley Thompson’s Decathlon with Raspberry Pi’s own Rik Cross. Daley Thompson’s Decathlon Released in 1984, Daley Thompson’s Decathlon was a memorable entry in what’s sometimes called the ‘joystick killer’ genre: players competed in sporting events that largely consisted of frantically waggling the controller or battering the … Continue reading →