Choplifter

When piloted by yours truly, you don't want to get to this chopper...

Source // Wikipedia

With a title like Choplifter, there can't be too many things that I'll be tasked with, in what I assume will be my helicopter. For a simple concept though, I'm a little bit surprised to see it ported to so many home consoles after its initial release on the Apple II. I don't know why I am surprised though, because simple concepts do well seemingly anywhere.

It is a good job Choplifter was a success too, because I've got to dive into those ports to play it. The Apple II version looks like helicopters in space, which kind of defeats the point of using helicopters, rather than spaceships. The gameplay however is like Lunar Lander meets Defender, which is something I can get behind - providing the ports hold up against the original.

Ultima I

From darkest dungeon to deepest space!

Source // Wikipedia

I've come across only one game from the Ultima series in my time so far, and that was watching a play-through of Ultima VII on YouTube. I know its an RPG series, set in ye olden times, so I assume that Ultima I is just a stripped down, graphically lacking version of Ultima VII. I mean that sounds fair, right?

Eamon

Who said everything should be handed to you on a plate? You want graphics with your fantasy adventure games? Better start imagining them...

Source // Wikipedia

"That's probably a pretty impressive hand drawn dragon for the time, actually". It's such a strong image to represent Eamon in fact, that this is what 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before Your Die chose to represent the game too. Perhaps a picture of text based gaming above a block of text about text based gaming is too much text. Whatever the case, my only expectation from this game is that there will be a lot of text.

But my first impression was actually one of 'oh, wow, what?', as I discover that Eamon was designed to be built upon by any Tom, Dick and Harry that wanted to create role playing adventures for people to play on their apple ]['s, with a list of hundreds of offerings from the community to pick and choose from.

Not only that, but I find that the platform is still being developed for, and that you can freely download a deluxe edition, which includes all the bells and whistles that decades of fan innovation and interest has brought.

There is, then, no excuse to not dive right in.