Les Pyramides d’Atlantys
(Microïds, 1986)
Somewhere underneath the Atlantic Ocean lies the mysterious lost city of Atlantis, and an expedition has been sent out to find it – but where should you start searching? Well, if you dive in your submarine to the deepest area of the ocean, you’ll come across a whale that will give you some coordinates. There you’ll find an entrance to a cavern, and if you explore it, you should find a large crystal that will activate a network of pyramids, which you can use by landing your submarine on top of a pyramid, enabling you to explore more caverns. Navigating your submarine around the caverns is initially frustrating as you try to get used to the pseudo-3D layout and keep crashing into scenery. Once you get the hang of it, the game becomes rather interesting, and the graphics are quite pretty as well.
Pyramydya
(Bug-Byte, 1986)
Narud Pendaryn is searching for a magical chest within Pyramydya, but in order to locate it, he must find four pieces of a stone tablet, and then find a model of the pyramid so that the hieroglyphics on the tablet can be translated. The pyramid consists of an enormous maze full of monsters which you can either avoid or shoot, but you only have a limited supply of ammunition. There are also lots of other trinkets which merely increase your score. The game is obviously inspired by the works of Ultimate Play the Game (in particular, Sabre Wulf), but although the graphics are colourful, exploring the pyramid becomes a bit dull, and overall, the game lacks sophistication compared with Ultimate’s games.
See also: Darkwurlde.
Watch a YouTube video of this game by:
XeNoMoRPH.
Python
(Chip, 1986)
This is a clone of the coin-op game Nibbler, where you manoeuvre an ever-growing snake around a maze eating pills. The trick is to eat all the pills without becoming stuck in the maze and crashing into yourself! There is also a time limit on each level, so you can’t wait and think for too long. Thankfully, if you lose a life, you won’t have to restart the entire level. The graphics and sound effects are pretty basic, although there’s some nice music to listen to on the menu. With thirty levels to munch through, this should keep you occupied for a while.
Python Pete
(Optyx, 1986)
Python Pete is hungry, and you must guide him around ten levels of a garden, eating the fruits and avoiding the walls and the poisonous mushrooms. Yes, it’s a snake game. This effort is mostly written in BASIC, and it really shows. The graphics are rather crude, although they do the job, and the music (if it deserves to be called that) is awful. The game would be quite enjoyable if it wasn’t for the very unresponsive controls; by the time you’ve pressed a key to change direction, Pete has crashed into one of the walls. Some of the fruit is tucked away in tight corners, so the game needs to be responsive – and it isn’t. This game feels more like one of those type-in listings that featured in some of the CPC magazines in the mid-1980s, and that’s where it should have belonged.