But I wanted to point out a few lesser known titles that I think are really worth mentioning.
Exhibit A:
Earth Orbit Stations (E.O.S.) by Karl Buiter. It was made for both Apple II and Commodore 64. It's a space simulation game where you run your own space program - for the next 50 years (from 1987 onward). You raise money and construct space stations (chemical labs, construction plants, shuttle ports) and explore planets. It's apparently based on NASA's plans as they were known back in the 1980s and the technologies and economic models under development at the time.
Sounds pretty cool and deep - the kind of game you can just pick up and play as many times as you want for as long as you want. I love games like that.
Exhibit B:
Demon Stalkers, also from 1987 and developed by Micro Forté out of Canberra, Australia.
At first blush, Demon Stalkers is a blatant clone of Gauntlet. But supposedly it doesn't have the same level of enemies so it becomes more of a search game than a hand-cramping action game.
It also only has 2 character choices: hero or heroine.
But what's super cool about this game is it comes with a Dungeon Construction Set so you can make your own levels!
Apparently it was successful enough to warrant a sequel called Fire King, but I've yet to hunt that title down. Fire King apparently lets you choose one of six characters, and involves a lot more that just running around and shooting everything Robotron-style.
Sounds pretty cool. Anyone here ever played these, or Fire King? They sound really bad ass to me.The game has been compared to Gauntlet, with its top-down view and endless enemies spawning from monster generators, but differs in that it contains more plot and puzzles than the typical hack and slash game.