I'm afraid of no toast

If you don't currently suffer from any irrational fears, you may well develop some new entirely logical ones after playing Tony Crowther's Phobia, a uniquely stylised, claustrophobic headmasher of a shmup that will pilfer your precious sleep and haunt your waking dreams. Psychotherapy not included!

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Bondyman, Bondyman, does anything a Spider can

Loopy scientist, Dr Devious, operating under the influence of an unhealthy obsession with Picasso's cubist paintings has devised a gizmo that turns buildings, objects and even people into solid, useless cubes that then only serve to take up space and trip up unsuspecting pedestrians. To counter this gravely serious threat, the secret service drafts in their most trusted 007 impersonator, JJ Maverick. That's us for the purposes of Image Works' imaginative, single-screen puzzle-platformer, Devious Designs.

Deblocking the entire world, thereby saving humanity as we know it, entails shunting a series of Tetris-esque geometric shapes into translucent placeholder slots to formulate a pattern. Implement the configuration within a set timeframe without getting distracted by the picturesque, emblematic scenery and it's onto the next stage.

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We've got tonight babe, why don't you stay?

Today, games presented entirely through an artistic silhouette perspective are so commonplace they probably represent a genre in themselves. Back in 1991 when Jason Kingsley introduced us to the intriguing visual effect via his hack 'n' slash platformer, Blade Warrior, it was a genuine novelty. Featureless sprite outlines set against minimally tinted moonlit backdrops alone sufficient to make the title interesting. An artefact-gathering, spell-crafting provision further differentiates the attention-grabbing platformer, introducing a hint of RPG mechanics.

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Talkin' bout a revolution

Despotic mononymous nutjob, Fernandez, has overthrown the legitimate government of the Democratic Republic of El Diablo. As a fearless Commando substitute for hire, we're drafted in to oust him from his cushy self-appointed kingdom via a top-down, vertically scrolling shooter that takes inspiration from all the usual suspects... Ikari Warriors, Rambo, Gun.Smoke etc. Enhancements to the basic formula are evident in the provision of multiple modes of transport and the option to play cooperatively with a second player, splitting aiming and navigation duties.

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I want your nappy, your booties, and your tricycle

Just lately baby Nathan has been playing Lemmings a wee bit more than is advisable for his health. Despite the 'do not try this at home' warning label, the precocious Brat (TM) is determined to toddle over the precipice of his isometric, levitating playfield in honour of his lolloping, mop-haired, dopey heroes. Because there's no Dirt Devil for eradicating ground-in baby-splatter, we may as well have a dabble at keeping him on track and therefore alive and wailing. This we achieve by laying behaviour-modifying icons in Nathan's crawlspace to steer him to safety or otherwise encourage evasive action.

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Grab a seat. Enjoy the show. This is history.

Ten years on from the first Predator movie, the sequel's setting is dramatically shifted from the steamy Mexican jungle to LA suburbia. Arnie is nowhere to be seen so the future of humanity rests in the capable hands of disgruntled, veteran cop, Danny Glover. His normal routine revolving around nailing viciously unscrupulous Colombian and Jamaican drug cartels must be put on hold when the Predator, a technologically advanced alien hunter, puts in an appearance to terrorise the already underfire city.

Whilst nowhere near matching the success of the first movie, Predator 2 returned a moderate box office profit. Therefore was considered sufficiently popular to spawn an accompanying multi-format video game courtesy of Arc Developments. It's a cross-hair targeting shooter played in third-person mode given that we see our protagonist, Lieutenant Michael R. Harrigan, onscreen as a wireframe sprite. Whilst cleaning up the streets of LA en route to the Predator's ship we must sustain our armour by collecting top-ups and upgrade weaponry to improve our chances as the difficulty level escalates.

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The fifth prime directive

Assuming the role of the last surviving model of the mechanised Wolverine ED-209-alikes, it's our duty to rid the polluted New York streets of merciless Scavengers. Set in 2067, obviously, apocalypse is afoot in Arc Developments' multi-system arcade platformer-shoot 'em. Published in 1991 by Image Works (aka Mirrorsoft), Robozone was lucky to break loose from the Robert Maxwell debacle that led other games financed under the same label to plummet into obscurity along with the duplicitous shark at the top of the food chain.

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You mean you have to use your hands. That's like a baby's toy!

Back to the Future II will forever be remembered for tricking us into believing that one day we'd be ecstatically flabbergasted to find a hoverboard in our Christmas stocking. That in just 30 years time, cars would fly and everything - no matter how convenient and effortless it already was - would be automated, just for the hell of it.

I examine the fantastic, timeless (hoho!) movie and assess how successfully it was translated to the medium of 8 and 16-bit home computer gaming by Image Works in 1990.

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