I’ve never been a “gamer” in the modern sense. I’ve played video games for as long as I can remember, but it’s never been a huge obsession for me. However, I do enjoy relaxing with a good game from time to time, wasting a few hours exploring lost lands, building civilizations, battling teams for the top spot, or gunning down enemies who’ve slighted me in some weird way.

My first experience of video games came courtesy of a ZX Spectrum 128k. Through rose tinted glasses, I have fond memories of inserting the cassette tape, typing “load” and pressing play. Then, going off to do something else for 20 minutes while it loaded.

But, for me, gaming really became interesting when my parents brought home our first Amiga.

Disk based games that loaded in minutes. Graphics with more than 8 colours. 16bit audio. It was fantastic. And, while I played on various consoles of the era (the Sega and Nintendo offerings of the early 90’s, specifically), I loved my Amiga and spent hours playing The Settlers, Superfrog, Project X, Frontier: Elite 2 and many more. And so, with that, I thought I’d write up a little blog post of some of the games I’d forgotten about that kept me entertained throughout my childhood. I’ll be skipping over many well known games, because these forgotten gems are worth remembering.

Zool

Zool was a ninja ant or gremlin or something. Zool, and it’s follow up, Zool 2, were platform games along the Mario / Sonic lines, but with it’s own twist on the genre. For example, Zool could grab power ups, one of which created a shadow double of himself, allowing you to double your firepower, and reach different areas.

It was insanely difficult, especially in later levels (of which there were 7, I believe) and it was soaked, and I mean soaked in product placement – Chupa Chups branding was plastered all over the sweets / candy inspired levels, which seemed normal at the time.

I must have spent hours playing Zool and Zool 2, and it was easily one of my favourite games.

Cytron

Cytron was a really unique, top down shooter / puzzle game from Psygnosis software of Liverpool (later, a part of Sony). It was set in some sort of dystopian future, inside a giant factory where all the robots have gone berserk. You play as Cytron, a futuristic tank bot who packs quite the punch. You navigate through the maze like levels of the factory, solving puzzles, destroying rogue bots and collecting powerups and things to upgrade your tank and weapons.

Cytron’s unique twist was that Cytron was actually two tanks in one; Cyt, and Ron. Usually, they were combined, but sometimes you needed to navigate narrow passages, in which case you could switch to Cyt or Ron. While doing this, the other one would encase itself in armour and remain where it was. While separated, you could switch between the two smaller tanks, or you could park them next to one another and re-combine them back into Cytron. If one got destroyed while separated, then you were stuck with just the other half. Unfortunately, this meant half the puzzles became unsolvable.

It was a lot of fun to play, though. But, like many games of the era, simple didn’t mean easy. It was nightmarishly difficult. The enemies moved so fast, and you needed to be incredibly precise and quick with your aim to get anywhere.

Pushover

Here’s one I wish they’d remaster.

Pushover was a domino style puzzle game. You played as an ant, G.I. Ant, in fact. And you were sent down an anthill to retrieve packets of Quavers for Colin Curly, the Quavers mascot. To do this, you had to navigate almost 100 levels of domino based platform puzzles, but there was a twist.

So, your little ant could pick up and carry dominos up and down platforms and such, as much as he wanted. However, he only had the strength to push once per level. So, if a domino didn’t fall, you failed the level. There were also a number of “power” dominos, each with a special ability. For example, one would keep tumbling instead of simply falling. Another would float to the ceiling and then continue to tumble until it struck another domino. And, another would split in half and, well, I can’t remember what it did after that.

Again, the product placement was insane. Everything was Quaver based. But the puzzles were unique, fun and challenging. I honestly think this game would be huge if it were remastered and released today on a platform like the Switch.

Brutal Sports Football

This was so much fun.

Brutal Sports Football was an American Football style game, set in the future, where teams competed in a league, but the twist being that a large part of the game was maiming and killing members of the opposing team. Matches are won when you either score more goals by the end of the game, or kill 6 out of 7 opponents.

The game itself was a little quirky, and unresponsive at times, but for the most part it played well and was great fun to play against your friends. Think of it as Streets of Rage, pretending to be Madden NFL, and you’ll be almost there.

The Humans

While everyone was busy loving Lemmings, Cheshire based Mirage Multimedia released The Humans. It was a very similar game – you navigated a platform-like level by manipulating and assigning specific roles to individual cave-man humans to solve puzzles and traps. Unlike Lemmings, however, you could control each human individually.

You start with a tribe of humans (I can’t remember how many) and for each level, you are given a set number of humans to complete it (between 3 and 8). If one dies, he’ll be replaced by a new one from your tribe, if you have any left. Along the way, you can rescue other humans to replenish your tribe.

The puzzles were all similar to the Lemmings “reach the exit” types, but obstacles ranged from simple gaps that need bridging, or platforms that you need to build a human ladder up to, all the way to having to kill dinosaurs or fend off other tribe members.

It was a slower paced game than Lemmings, but it was a lot of fun. I believe there were a number sequels released too, but the original one is the one I remember fondly.

Cruise for a Corpse

Cruise for a Corpse is a point and click adventure game set on a pleasure yacht owned by a wealthy businessman. You play the role of Raoul Dusentier, a French police inspector who is a guest on the boat. Shortly after you arrive, your host is murdered and you begin an investigation.

Feeling like a Poirot novel, the story moves along using a time based mechanic. Certain actions can only be performed at certain times, people move around the ship and new evidence crops up here and there as you explore and investigate.

It used a unique rotoscoped animation style and the soundtrack was brilliant; perfectly capturing that 20’s / 30’s feel. I’m pretty sure you can play this on a modern PC using SCUMMVM, so if point and click adventures are your thing, I’d highly recommend you give it a go.

Dreamweb

Another point and click adventure, only with a difference. This is a top down adventure game with a dark, disturbing theme. If you’re a fan of psychological thrillers, this will be right up your alley. You play the role of Ryan, a young man who’s slowly descending into psychosis, set in a cyberpunk world, not too dissimilar to Blade Runner.

It features all of the usual puzzles you’d find in an adventure game, just with a dark twist. It even featured a gratuitous sex scene which earned it an 18 certificate, although it was a tiny pixel sprite game running at 640×480 at best, so it was hardly graphic. But, then again, Mortal Kombat also caused moral outrage a few years later, too, so there you go.

Alien Breed

Last on my list is a better known one, but probably one of the best top-down shooter games ever made. Alien Breen, and it’s sequels, bore a very close resemblance to the Alien films in both setting and alien design.

You play as a marine, either solo or in co-op mode with a friend, and you’re sent to an alien infested ship or space station for some reason. And then you have to navigate the levels of this ship / station, finding powerups, new weapons, ammo and health packs along the way, while clearing out the aliens in your path.

The game would get progressively harder as you went, throwing more and more aliens at you at once which made it quite difficult, but a really good laugh in co-op mode, where you could just about keep up. Usually.

Later on, they made a 3D version, which played a bit like a Doom game, but it was absolutely terrible. But, the top down, 2D games are still worth a play even today.