“H.U.R.G., High-Level User-Friendly Real-Time Games Designer”, is a program that enables you to create games. It is a menu-driven program, which was relatively new at that time, and it enables people with little or no programming knowledge to make their own games.
“Melbourne Draw” is one of a couple of graphics toolkits that were created for the ZX Spectrum in the early 1980s. It was launched to widespread publicity, with “Crash” magazine saying that ‘”Melbourne Draw” stands out clearly as a professional tool”.
The tastefully named “Penetrator” was one of Beam Software’s earliest games. Designed for the ZX Spectrum by Philip Mitchell and Veronika Megler the game is a clone of Konami’s popular 1981 arcade game “Scramble”. A sideways scrolling shooter “Penetrator” recreates “Scramble”’s challenges of flying and shooting…
“Rock’n Wrestle” (known as “Bop’n Wrestle” in the US) was one of the first games to have 3D movement through space. The game allowed for single or dual player modes, using the joystick or the keyboard supporting twenty-four wrestling manoeuvres.
Samurai Warrior: The Battles of Usagi Yojimbo”, is based on a successful comic book by Stan Sakai. The hero is an anthropomorphic rabbit named Miyamoto Usagi, living in seventeenth-century Japan. Usagi is a masterless samurai (a ronin), who wanders the land, occasionally taking up work as a bodyguard.
“Sherlock” is a 1984 text adventure developed by Philip Mitchell and Beam Software. It was published by Melbourne House. The game is based on the famous Sir Arthur Conan Doyle books featuring the super sleuth Sherlock Holmes, fiction’s most famous detective. You take the role of Holmes, assisted by Dr. Watson.
“The Hobbit” was one of the first major games produced in Australia, and is considered a classic text adventure. In 1985, it was voted number 1 in Sinclair User’s ‘Top 50 Spectrum Software Classics’.
“The Way of the Exploding Fist” was one of Beam Software’s best-selling games, and reached number one in Europe. It was one of the first ‘beat-‘em-up’ games for the home computer and the first multi-move beat em up. Jordan Mechner’s “Karateka”(1984) which came out just before “The Way of the Exploding Fist” was basically punch and kick. The game offered an unprecedented sixteen karate moves, which allows for strategic game playing and complexity.