The menacing title tune is also quite memorable (a classical piece by Sergei Prokofiev). Hear it here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1yo... 3/3
It's not a very deep game, but it is pretty well liked. A lot of the reason for the game's good reputation is probably the music, especially Rob Hubbard's loading tune which became known as Thalamusik. 2/3
YouTube video by Rolf R Bakke
Sanxion (1986) Another one from Sanxion, a neat if somewhat repetitive horizontally scrolling shoot 'em up from Thalamus and Finnish coder genious Stavros Fasoulas. The gimmick here is that you also have an overhead view lets you see enemies before they enter the screen proper. 1/3
Crazy Balloon (1983) A very early arcade-style game from the time where a lot of commercial Commodore 64 games were single-developer affairs. You guide your (crazy) balloon through a series of single-screen caves, avoiding the walls and various enemies. 1/2
The graphics are big and bold, but they're not exactly smooth. Still, it's a pretty well regarded game that packs a lot of varied challenges into a relatively small world. There's even a massive fruit machine to play around with. 3/3
This one is an action adventure where you have to search for hearts, keys and other items on a series of interconnected screens. It's got a neat foreground/background feature which gives the screens a bit of depth, and there are some simple puzzles to solve. 2/3
Popeye (1986) This is not based on Nintendo's arcade game (which is great both in the arcade and on the Commodore 64), but is a distinct Popeye game released by Macmillan Publishers' game publishing subsidiary (rebranded Piranha Games the same year). It was ported from the ZX Spectrum. 1/3
Sachs was also (solely) responsible for the well known SereneScreen Marine Aquarium screensaver from around the year 2000 ish. You can read up on his story in this article. 3/3
We spoke with pixel artist and programmer Jim Sachs about everything from Defender of the Crown to virtual aquariums.
The graphics were pretty impressive for a 1984 title, and in fact the background picture was created by manually typing in hex values for each pixel on the screen. The game was created by Jim Sachs, who'd later go on to do the graphics in Amiga classic Defender of the Crown. 2/3
Saucer Attack (1984) One of those games that everybody had in their colletions of pirated Commodore 64 software. It's a pretty simple shooting gallery type game where you have to defend Washington D.C. from invading saucers and prevent them from blowing up famous landmarks. 1/3
