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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.

cf. Commodore 64 shoot 'em ups versus Amiga Shoot 'em ups.

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. 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 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.

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 SID, let alone 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.

1988 audio composed for the Amiga's built-in 4-channel Paula of 1985 and the C64's built-in 3-voice SID of 1982 also impressed. In 1988 C64 SID audio was harnessed to great effect by Chris Hülsbeck of Germany and David Whittaker, Ben Daglish, Rob Hubbard and Jon Dunn 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.

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.

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.

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 installallable 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 top-5 all-time coinop ports.
Firebird Software's Virus brought David Braben's cutting-edge 3D-shooter to PC and ST/Amiga.

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.

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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.