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PC Games 1988


Home Computer Games of 1988



This is a curated list of PC games that came out in 1988. The PC games are listed in alphabetical order. Both 8-bit and 16-bit games are included. I will expand on this list in the future.

The left two-thirds of the header image shows PC and ST/Amiga games, the right third C64 games.

In the sphere of arcade-action 1988 was the breakthrough year for the Amiga in that four coinop-quality games were released the audiovisuals for which had never been heard or seen on home computers before, yet the Amiga game catalogue of 1985-88 still cut a poor figure when set against the Commodore 64 game catalogue of 1985-88. Thus, one would not be inclined to shelve their C64 any time soon.


Having blitzed the field in 1987 the C64 of 1988 hosted seven apex-level coinop shooters whereas the Amiga, Atari ST and IBM PC each only hosted one -- and only Hybris on the Amiga evoked coinop-quality. However, ST/Amiga hosted three top-tier 3D shooters that C64 hardware would not have been able to handle.


Let us go into more detail via a table that compares the C64 shooter catalogue of 1985-88 with the ST/Amiga equivalent. Note that you can read about the shoot 'em ups tabled below in Commodore 64 shoot 'em ups and Amiga Shoot 'em ups.

Note that not all of the games listed in the ST/Amiga column were available on ST and Amiga (by 1988). The ST/Amiga column is a combined listing. If I append [ST] that means the game was available on ST but not on Amiga. And vice versa if I append [Am.]. If neither ST nor Amiga is appended that means the game was available on both ST and Amiga. On the other hand, bolded C64 shooters are ones that neither ST nor Amiga would ever get. Lastly, I bolded the best ST/Amiga shooters (up to and including 1988) that C64 would never get.

C64 Shoot 'em ups 1985-88 ST/Amiga Shoot 'em ups 1985-88
Alien Syndrome (ACE, 1988) Amoeba Invaders (LateNight, 1987) [Am.]
Alleykat (Braybrook, 1986) Atax (Ramware, 1988) [Am.]
Armalyte (Cyberdyne, 1988) [*] Delta Patrol (S. Spanburg, 1985) [Am.]
Bulldog (Gremlin, 1987) Eliminator (Linel, 1988) [FS3D]
Commando (Elite, 1986) Garrison (Digital Dreams, 1987) [Am.]
Crazy Comets (Martech, 1985) Gauntlet (Adventure Soft, 1987) [ST]
Delta (Thalamus, 1987) Goldrunner (Microdeal, 1987)
Garrison (Digital Dreams, 1988) Hybris (Cope-Com, 1988) [Am.]
Gauntlet (Gremlin, 1986) Insanity Fight (Linel, 1987) [Am.]
Gradius (Konami, 1987) Into the Eagle's Nest (Pandora, 1987)
Gryzor (Ocean, 1988) Iridon (Kingsoft, 1987) [Am.]
Hades Nebula (Paranoid, 1987) Menace (DMA Design, 1988)
Hunter's Moon (Thalamus, 1987) Operation Wolf (Ocean, 1988)
IO: Into Oblivion (Kinetic, 1988) Phalanx (Digital Artists, 1987) [Am.]
Ikari Warriors (Elite, 1988) Phalanx 2 (Digital Dreams, 1987) [Am.]
Iridis Alpha (Minter, 1986) Phantom Fighter (Emerald, 1988) [Am.]
Katakis (Rainbow Arts, 1988) Plutos (D. Johnston, 1987)
Lightforce (Gargoyle, 1987) Protector (Paradox, 1986) [Am.]
Mega-Apocalpse (Martech, 1987) Pursuit to Earth (PowerHouse, 1988) [Am.]
Operation Wolf (Ocean, 1988) Return to Genesis (Firebird, 1988)
Paradroid (Braybrook, 1985) [**] Scorpio (Kingsoft, 1988) [Am.]
R-Type (Electric Dreams, 1988) Skyfox (Dynamix, 1986)
Rambo (Platinum, 1986) Skyrider (Creation, 1988) [ST]
Rambo 3 (Ocean, 1988) Sidewinder (Synergistic, 1988)
Robocop (Ocean, 1988) Star Goose (Logotron, 1988)
Salamander (Imagine, 1988) Starglider (Argonaut, 1987) [WF3D]
Sanxion (Thalamus, 1986) Starglider 2 (Argonaut, 1988) [FS3D]
Starglider (Argonaut, 1986) [WF3D] StarRay (Logotron, 1988)
Task 3 (Cybernetic, 1987) Swooper (Golden Games, 1987) [Am.]
Terra Cresta (Imagine, 1986) Thrust (Silverbird, 1988) [ST]
Thrust (J.C. Smith, 1986) Typhoon (Kingsoft, 1987)
Uridium (Braybrook, 1986) [***] Uridium (Graftgold, 1987) [ST]
Zamzara (Hewson, 1988) Virus (D. Braben, 1988) [FS3D]
Zynaps (Hewson, 1987) Xenon (Bitmap Bros., 1988)
Bedlam (Beam, 1988) Xevious (Probe, 1987) [ST]
Cybernoid (Cecco, 1988) Xtron (RDS-Software, 1986) [ST]
Flying Shark (Catalyst, 1987) Zynaps (Microwish, 1988)
Hawkeye (Thalamus, 1988) R-Type (Images Design, 1988) [ST]
Sky Shark (TAC, 1987) Alien Syndrome (Softek, 1988)
Into the Eagle's Nest (Pandora, 1987) Time Bandit (MichTron, 1985) [ST]

Thus, the C64 2D shooter catalogue of 1985-88 mopped up, wrung out and hung up to dry the ST/Amiga 2D shooter catalogue of 1985-88. However, being much more powerful computers ST/Amiga were able to host early and historically significant flat-shaded 3D shooters, which I have denoted with [FS3D]. ST and Amiga only had one king-tier 2D shooter each by 1988 whereas C64 had over one dozen god-tier shooters by 1988. I did not factor in 1982-84 C64 shooters because ST/Amiga were not yet released.

Imagine going up against an all-star line-up that includes Delta, Hawkeye, Hunter's Moon and Sanxion by Thalamus. And on top of that add Armalyte, Bedlam, Gradius, Katakis, IO, Paradroid, Salamander and Uridium.

In addition, C64 Cybernoid, Gauntlet, R-Type, Zynaps and Uridium were far superior to the ST versions (and C64 Cybernoid and Zynaps were far superior to the Amiga versions). Unlike the ST, the Amiga never got the original Gauntlet or the original Uridium. And Amiga R-Type by Factor 5 -- which was better than C64 R-Type -- came out in 1989. Indeed, it was mostly the Germans that put the Amiga into shooter contention -- Germans of C64 vintage.

It is important to note that ST/Amiga were still emerging in 1988, but you can see the mountain they had yet to climb to reach C64 heights. However, when all was said and done not even the Amiga truly dethroned the C64 in coinop-style shoot 'em ups -- not in terms of raw gameplay and historio-technological impact, at any rate.

[*] ST/Amiga Armalyte is a different (and inferior) shooter.
[**] ST/Amiga got Paradroid 90 five years after C64 Paradroid.
[***] Amiga got a Uridium game seven years after C64 Uridium.

286 EGA Was Behind in 1988


In 1987 the Atari ST had proven its capacity to host vertical super-scrollers, but it was much harder to code horizontal super-scrollers on ST. The quest to bring horizontal super-scrollers to ST was undertaken by British assembly coders of 1988, but such could only be achieved in playfields of reduced size.

Coders took up the challenge because the ST displayed in colorful hires whereas the C64 had been displaying in non-vibrant lores; that is, people wanted to see vivid hires super-scrollers on their new 16 bit micros. By 1993 one dozen full-screen and multi-directional super-scrollers had graced the Amiga, updating at 50 Hz and displaying in 32 or more colors -- with parallax -- but the ST pretty much peaked at Turrican 2 of 1991.

One or two exceptions aside (e.g., the Uridium conversion), EGA action games were quite the laughing stock in 1988. Gobsmacking to behold is the difference in graphics-quality between EGA and ST/Amiga versions of SegaAM2's Super Hang-On and Speedball and Xenon by The Bitmap Bros. EGA could only display 16 colors from a palette of 64 whereas the ST could display 16 from 512 and the Amiga 32 from 4096 (as standard), but the bigger problem for EGA was that not many PC coders were able to scroll screens smoothly in EGA -- certainly not horizontally, much less multi-directionally.

It is worth noting that the C64 was super-scrolling multi-directionally at 50 FPS back in 1985 whereas the Amiga first super-scrolled multi-directionally at 50 FPS in 1989, EGA at 20 FPS in 1991 and VGA at 50 FPS in 1993. In fact, Amiga super-scrollers were never beaten by PC super-scollers within a relevant time-frame. As a rule, PC super-scrollers of 1991-93 lacked parallax layers and smooth sky gradients as well, whereas Amiga variants could display both without breaking a sweat.

The C64 had hosted over one dozen king-tier super-scrollers by 1990 whereas the Amiga had hosted one score by 1994.

Note that "multi-directional" scrolling refers to 8-way scrolling: up, down, left, right and diagonally in four directions. And "super-scrolling" refers to scrolling that is smooth, fast and/or variable-rate.

Super-scrollers constitute a specific but elite game-type that stems back to Williams' Defender of 1980, which is the God-king of all games. Thus, while barely acknowledged by the mainstream super-scrollers are of great historio-technical significance.

In 1988 i808x and i80286 EGA arcade-action games were not competitive with ST/Amiga equivalents. In fact, it was actually C64 VIC-II that caused ST/Amiga owners to shudder from time to time. This was because C64 custom chips were being tapped by the best in the business; that is, grandmaster coders, graphicians and composers with 8-bit pedigree stemming back to the dawn of 8-bit micros. As such, C64 VIC-II had beaten i808x/286 and CGA/EGA black and blue from 1982-89 whereas the ST beat 286 EGA from 1985-89 and the Amiga beat 386 VGA from 1988-92, which was when the C64 grandmasters got onboard with Jay Miner's Alienware. Post-1992, it depends on the exact type of action-game we are talking about, but the Amiga generally held the fort against 486 VGA until the mid-90s.

That said, PC EGA of 1988 nonetheless flexed with six all-but-flawless flight sims and a trio of top-notch adventure games two of which were developed by LucasFilm. Of C64 origin, they would lead to three consecutive PC-first LucasFilm winners over the next few years, culminating in LucasArts' Monkey Island 2 of 1991.

SSI's Pool of Radiance of June of 1988 was the first computer game to computerize TSR's AD&D 1st Edition ruleset of 1977-79. However, PoR should have been an Amiga-native game. Even an ST-native PoR would have been preferable to i808x EGA as lead. I mean, at least the ST featured eight times the palette range of EGA as well as hardware mouse cursor as standard, which would have been far superior to the key-driven "menus" and cursor key movement of i808x EGA PoR which, in terms of controls and display, evoked the early 1980s. To be sure, as is evidenced by FTL's Dungeon Master of 1987 the Gold Pox aka Gold Slop games of 1988-93 would have been better off with ST as initial lead. In terms of controls and display PoR was grossly outdated upon its release, but SSI's ignorant U.S. PC market did not seem to notice whereas the more discerning U.K. and European ST/Amiga markets would have deemed such graphics and controls to be unacceptable for a native ST/Amiga PoR.

Home Computer Game Audio of 1988


Audio-wise, Roland's MT-32 MIDI Synthesizer and AdLib's Music Synthesizer of 1987 were only emerging in that Sierra On-Line's King's Quest IV of September would become the first PC game to support AdLib and Roland via the professional compositions of William Goldstein, which would standardize such audio on PC by virtue of King's Quest's popularity.

Otherwise, for the average PC gamer of 1988 PC audio mostly consisted of bleeps and blurps from the Internal Speaker, aka "The Beeper" -- a literal piece of crap in comparison to C64 SID, let alone Amiga Paula.

The idea that many 1988 PC games sounded like King's Quest IV and that most PC gamers owned such audio hardware in 1988 -- that is naught but pathetic PC-gamer romanticism that stems from retroactive envy of SID and Paula.

I say retroactive because most heyday PC gamers were entirely ignorant of SID and Paula back in the day: observe for example the present-day solemnity with which they remember the bleeps and blurps of their Beeper  -- what a laughing stock!

It was Bob Yannes' SID of 1982 that caused people to realize, en masse, that computer games could feature proper music, not just cinematic graphics. And Glenn Keller's Paula of 1985 took that to the next level. -- Computer Game History.

LucasFilm would subsequently employ AdLib, Roland and 1989's Sound Blaster in Indiana Jones and SoMI of 1989-90, thereby popularizing professional game-audio on PC and raising PC-game audio expectations significantly.

In comparison to SID and Paula, only a handful of PC owners had AdLib synthesizers in 1988-89; and one could count the good games that employed AdLib audio on one hand. Moreover, 100,000 AdLib owners by January of 1991 was still small-time in comparison to SID/Paula circulation, which was in the millions. C64 owners were purchasing games for their SID compositions by as early as 1985; that's how good SID and its composers were: SID composers sold C64 games by reputation.
 
1988 audio composed for the Amiga's built-in 4-voice Paula of 1985 and the C64's built-in 3-voice SID of 1982 also impressed. By 1988 C64 SID audio had been harnessed to great effect by Chris Hülsbeck of Germany, Jeroen Tel and Charles Deenen of the Maniacs of Noise of The Netherlands, and the likes of David Whittaker, Ben Daglish, Rob Hubbard, Martin Galway, Mark Cooksey, Richard Joseph, Dave Lowe, Jonathan Dunn and Jas C. Brooke of Britain.

In 1988 Paula and the Atari ST's built-in 3-channel Yamaha YM2149 outputted some great synthesized speech, sound effects and sampled tracks, such as can be heard in ERE Informatique's Captain Blood, which featured an audible alien language and a rendition of Jean-Michel Jarre's Ethnicolor of Zoolook.


The most famous in-game SID tunes of 1988 were Chris Hülsbeck's composition for C64 Katakis, Jeroen Tel's for C64 Cybernoid, Jonathan Dunn's for C64 RoboCop and Matt Gray's for C64 Last Ninja 2.

The most famous in-game Yamaha/Paula tunes of 1988 were Dave Lowe's composition for ST/Amiga IK+, Source's for ST/Amiga Super Hang-On, Paul van der Valk's for Amiga Hybris and David Whittaker's for ST/Amiga Xenon and Speedball. Note that ST/Amiga Captain Blood music is loader-only. Super Hang-On also featured good loader music on ST/Amiga.

Can anyone cite a single synthesized sample of electronica in a PC game from 1985-88? Could a single Rock track be heard in a PC game from 1985-88? Can anyone cite deep booming explosions, crackling lightning and whizzing projectiles in a PC game from 1985-88? How many PC gamers do you think were taking their big-box PCs into their living rooms and hooking them up to big-screen TVs and expensive stereo systems in 1988? Remember that C64s, STs and Amigas were practically portable micros.

At any rate, suffice it to say that from 1985-88 ST/Amiga audio had achieved a lot more than PC audio of that same time-frame -- and yet Paula audio had not yet been pushed to the halfway mark. Composition-wise and in terms of sampled sound effects Paula would contend with AdLib and Roland of 1987 -- and Sound Blaster of 1989 -- well into the early 90s.

It's not what audio hardware can do in theory, it's what composers have actually done with it that counts. And SID, Paula and the YM2149 were banged hard for years before PC-game audio gained traction.

Readers are encouraged to focus on actual in-game audio, not the potential of hardware specifications. 32-voice Roland, 11-voice AdLib and 11-voice Sound Blaster versus 4-voice Paula, 3-voice SID and 3-channel Yamaha -- those names and numbers don't say all that much in a vacuum. Listen to the in-game audio and you will know which computer had the best-sounding games in the late-80s.
 
That said, 1988 was a breakthrough year for PC, ST and Amiga audio in that some of the best compositions yet heard came out. It is also arguable that SID audio peaked in composition-quality in 1988, but not in quantity.

Home Computer Memory of 1988


RAM-wise, three expanded memory managers (EMMs) were released for PC in 1988: Microsoft's EMM386, Quarterdeck's QEMM-386 and Qualitas' 386 MAX. Microsoft also released SMARTDRV disk-caching in 1988, via MS-DOS 4.01.

PC games of 1988 required between 256K and 512K of free conventional memory, and it wasn't until 1992 that PC games regularly adhered to the LIM EMS memory specification of 1985-87. In 1990 and 1991 EMS was sometimes employed to facilitate sampled sound in games that supported such via Sound Blaster.

In September of 1990 a whopping 2 megs of EMS memory was recommended for Wing Commander and in December of 1991 a monstrous 4 megs was recommended for Falcon 3.0.

On the other hand, most 1988 ST/Amiga games required 512K of RAM and some could employ 1 meg of RAM in order to reduce diskette drive access frequency. By the end of 1987 the vast majority of serious ST/Amiga gamers had upgraded to 1 meg of RAM.


Only a few ST/Amiga games of 1988 required 1 meg of RAM to run, but several of them had extra features and/or fully loaded into RAM on 1-meg ST/Amigas. Thus, hard disk drives were not missed by ST and Amiga gamers in 1988. Once such games had loaded into RAM, they could be played over and over again without wait-states. In addition, disk-swapping was not a big deal for ST/Amigas in 1988 because most ST/Amiga games were not big at that point. Thus, neither was there a pressing need for external 3.5" diskette drives in 1988.

20-60 meg hard disk drives were available for ST/Amiga in 1988, but the vast majority of ST/Amiga games were not installable to hard disk drive. Most big non-action PC games were installable to hard disk drive in 1988, but many smaller PC games ran straight from 3.5" diskettes or 5.25" floppies.

Consult IBM PC for distribution media comparisons.

The Standouts of 1988


In my estimation the standout computer game releases of 1988 are as follows (alphabetical enumeration):

  • Discovery Software's Arkanoid of February on Amiga is one of the best coinop conversions of all-time -- on any platform. Arkanoid 2 was also released on Amiga in 1988.
  • Dan Phillips' Armalyte, Manfred Trenz's Katakis and Doug Hare's IO: Into Oblivion on C64 are three of the best shooters ever made. All three would appear in my top-5 all-time shooters based on the fact that they do so much with so very little.
  • RGS's Carrier Command on ST/Amiga melded multi-vehicle command and real-time strategy into a 3D simulation.
  • Mr. Micro's Elite brought Bell & Braben's GOAT game to ST/Amiga.
  • Peter J.M. Irvin & Jeremy C. Smith's Exile on BBC Micro is one of the best games ever made.
  • MicroProse's F-19 Stealth Fighter on PC became the biggest and best flight sim yet seen.
  • Thomas Hertzler's Great Giana Sisters on Amiga became the first 16-bit platform game to scroll at 50 FPS.
  • Martin Pederson's Hybris was the first Amiga shooter of coinop quality.
  • Archer Maclean's IK+ on ST/Amiga became the best versus Fighter on Western home computers.
  • Bob Dinnerman's JetFighter on PC employed interpolated cockpit views that pre-date virtual cockpits.
  • William Goldstein's King's Quest IV compositions harnessed the emerging PC synthesizers of 1987, AdLib and Roland.
  • Michael Powell's Powerdrome on Atari ST trail-blazed real 3D racing.
  • Steve Kelly's Speedball on M68K was the first native 16-bit sports game that wowed people.
  • Jez San's Starglider 2 on M68K was ground-breaking in terms of solid-filled 3D rendering speed.
  • Zareh Johannes Super Hang-On on ST/Amiga is one of the best coinop conversions, one of the best sprite-scalers and one of the best arcade racers to appear on home computers.
  • Søren Grønbech's Sword of Sodan on Amiga employed the biggest sprites outside of coinops.
  • Ocean Software's RoboCop became the biggest blockbuster game yet seen on 8-bit computers.
  • Bob Pape's R-Type and Mike Lamb's RoboCop on ZX Spectrum stand as two of the best all-time coinop ports.
  • Firebird Software's Virus brought David Braben's cutting-edge 3D-shooter to PC and ST/Amiga.
  • Borland released Turbo Assembler for x86 MS-DOS.


The run and gun genre dominated the charts of 1988 via big-name games such as Rambo, RoboCop, Cabal, Gryzor and Operation Wolf on the 8-bit micros, but the above-cited trio of horizontally-scrolling shooters on C64 were technically more impressive, as were the above-alluded-to trio of flat-shaded shooters on ST/Amiga.

In terms of deep and engrossing gameplay I would say that Realtime's Carrier Command on ST/Amiga and MicroProse's F-19 Stealth Fighter on PC are the strongest contenders to the 1988 throne. Carrier Command was more innovative than F-19 but F-19 was technically more impressive and offered much more replay value than Carrier Command. Thus, I am compelled to crown F-19 King of 1988.

Note that MicroProse's internal development division (MPS Labs) take out 1989-91.

***

Each entry below links to either technical overviews or reviews on the game. You can click an image and mouse-wheel up and down through the images.

List of 1988 PC Games




Best 1988 Computer Games: Awards



Publishers & Developers Founded in 1988


  • Delphine Software of France was founded in 1988 by Paul de Senneville and Paul Cuisset. Delphine developed ST/Amiga Bio Challenge of 1989, ST/Amiga Future Wars of 1989, ST/Amiga Operation Stealth of 1990, ST/Amiga Another World of 1991, PC/Amiga Cruise for a Corpse of 1991 and Amiga Flashback of 1992.
  • Core Design of the U.K. was founded in 1988 by nine ex-Gremlin Graphics employees. Core Design developed Amiga Chuck Rock of 1991, Amiga Jaguar XJ220 of 1992, Amiga Blastar of 1993, Amiga Banshee of 1994 and PC DOS Tomb Raider 1996.
  • DMA Design of the U.K. (Scotland) was founded in 1988 by David Jones. DMA Design developed Amiga Blood Money of 1989, Amiga Lemmings of 1991 and Amiga Hired Guns of 1993.
  • Krisalis Software of the U.K. was founded in 1988 by Tony Kavanagh, Peter Harrap and Shaun Hollingworth. Krisalis Software developed Amiga Soccer Kid of 1993 and Amiga Arabian Nights of 1993.
  • Mythos Games of the U.K. was founded in 1988 by Julian Gollop and Nick Gollop. Mythos developed Amiga Lords of Chaos of 1991 and PC DOS X-COM UFO Defense of 1994.
  • Simtex of the U.S.A. was founded in 1988 by Steve Barcia. Simtex developed PC DOS Master of Orion of 1993 and PC DOS Master of Magic of 1994.
  • Thalion of Germany was founded in 1988 by Erik Simon and Holger Flöttmann. Thalion developed Amiga Lionheart of 1993 and PC DOS Albion of 1995.

cf.

PC Games 1987 PC Games 1991 PC Games 1995
PC Games 1988 PC Games 1992PC Games 1996
PC Games 1989 PC Games 1993 Decade of 1990-99
PC Games 1990 PC Games 1994 PC Game Reviews

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