Skiing: Looking like a man from 'Pages From Ceefax' it's downhill all
the way, in more ways than one, as you slalom between the posts and get to
the end of the course, the change in difficulty levels only increasing the
speed of the game, and even then it's not a great challenge.
Sky Jinks: Fly your plane to the right of the red pylons and to the
left of the blue, avoiding everything else along the way. That's about it,
really.
Space Shuttle: I never played this one back in the day as it always
seemed overly complicated. It's still the same, so I'll give that one a miss.
Spider Fighter: This is more like it - although it wasn't one of the
games I played in the '80s, it's a good fun and frantic shoot-em-up.
Stampede: A bit of cattle-rustling that's rather too simplistic as you
run along the field towards your herd, pressing 'X' to lasso them, but if you
overtake 3 cattle in total then it's game over. Not a great game.
Starmaster: A classic game from the time that I would play for days on
end. Teleporting to an area on your chart that has some enemy ships and then
take them on one at a time, although often they'll fire off a few shots,
some of which are unavoidable, before you can blast them back. Trouble is,
when their shots hit you end up losing your shields, laser guns, etc, which
causes obvious problems and soon you'll be dead. One strange thing, though -
the 'chart on' button (triangle) doesn't work when you're viewing the game
fullscreen, so you have to go back to the normal display, then show up the
chart and go back to fullscreen again (the chart can be cancelled while
fullscreen so the button *does* work then).
It's also possible to refuel and repair your craft at the appropriate stations
marked on the map.
Once a mission is successful, the game ends but at least you get a happier
tune (the first few bars, sort-of, of the 2001 Theme) rather than the funeral
march.
Tennis: A very 'cheap and cheerful' representation of the sport, the
games of which probably reached a peak for me with Match Point on the ZX
Spectrum in terms of playability. Since then, there have been better-looking
versions by a considerable margin, with named players actually looking like
who they're meant to be, but gameplay-wise they're still much of a muchness.
The 2-player version in this is an oddity as you play both sides as if they've
got a stick guiding them at the same time. Best to stick with the 1-player.
Thwocker: I have no idea what's going on, but I'm bouncing a
smiley-faced creature around a screen going down and down until I hit something
and then I stop... On further investigation, I seem to be losing a life each
time I hit something. Then, the penny drops further as I see I need to hit
certain musical notes, which are spaced few and far between in terms of the
particular one that I need. In the end, it's a stupidly-hard game so that's
me done with it.
So, a big selection but, overall, a number of the games do come across,
sadly, as rather dated.
Time hasn't been particularly kind to many of the old Activision games, and
many can be downloaded for free online anyway, but it's worth a look if you
have a hankering for the old days of the early '80s and want to play them on
the move.
I'd like the old classic, Video Pinball (albeit made by Atari themselves),
on the PSP. I once played that for three days solid on the same set of balls
back in the day.
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