I’m all set up for a Tron-filled weekend with the original Tron movie to watch and a portable Tron-based game called Light Cycle 3D!

The graphics in this game are just awesome and the game goes beyond the basic Tron games (at least the ones that I’ve played) in that you have tons of cool options besides just trying to block off your oponents. For example, you can speed up your car (you can also change the style and colour of your car), you can get shields that allow you to pass through walls, you can teleport, you can send your opponents’ screen view upside down (this is a network-capable game, but you can just play against the computer, too) and a slow-motion power-up. And that’s just some of the extra fun features in this game: check out the help file for a complete listing of all defensive and offensive power-ups that you can collect. This game is the best Light Cycle game I’ve ever played. It’s going to be a great Tron-weekend!

I stumbled upon a nice looking Scramble clone by Mersey Remakes called Scramble: Chrome. It has all the classic elements of the game but with modern background graphics and 3D spaceships. This game is for Windows and about 8 MB.

You can also find another portable Scramble remake here. This one features a simple classic background but with modern looking ships. This game is much smaller at 2.63 MB.

Z-Tack was an Atari game in which you tried to save the Earth from aliens who were hiding in underground caverns. I found this game initially a bit boring but when I couldn’t hit any aliens and kept getting killed every few seconds, I was up for the challenge. I’m actually a big fan of this game now. It’s really tough and hard to stop playing. There are around 6 levels that cycle through over and over getting tougher and tougher each time – as if the first screen wasn’t tough enough!

It’s a really small game too at 528 KB!

Download Z-Tack

A useful portable app to have on your flash drive is the Unstoppable Copier.

From the author’s website:

Recovers files from disks with physical damage. Allows you to copy files from disks with problems such as bad sectors, scratches or that just give errors when reading data. The program will attempt to recover every readable piece of a file and put the pieces together. Using this method most types of files can be made useable even if some parts were not recoverable in the end.

Pogo Joe was a Commodore 64 game similar in concept to Q*Bert. There’s a new take on Pogo Joe with a little bit of PacMan mixed in – called GoJoe Pogo. With swirling psychedelic backgrounds, evil clowns and a candy eating Pogo Joe who says, “Yummy!” every time he gobbles candy on each square.

Definitely original!

I started to learn how to play XiangQi last weekend, a really fun chess-like game. There is a cool online version of XiangQi; no plug-ins required, only a JavaScript enabled browser. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be searching for portable versions available for download as well.

Until then, if you want to learn how to play, you can check out Wikipedia and An Introduction to Xiangqi for Chess Players.

Here are two Robotron remakes from Mersey Remakes called R-Tronic and R-Tronic 2: Armageddon. The first R-Tronic game is around 7 MB and you have to shoot at all the invading robots. In R-Tronic 2: Armageddon, you shoot at robots while trying to rescue humans. R-Tronic 2 is about 10 MB. Both games are a lot of fun and are really well done. You can check out screenshots on the author’s web site: http://rtronic.merseyremakes.co.uk/.

I came across another excellent Galaxian remake called Carax. Like any Galaxian game, it keeps the adrenaline pumping and it has some new twists too! What’s neat with this version is that it’s a timed attack: you shoot as many Galaxians as you can during this time; every time you die, you loose 10 seconds but get to keep playing.

As if that isn’t enough to stress you out, the kamikaze Galaxians also launch a whole bunch cruise missiles while attacking, so you not only have to dodge the ships but also the missiles.

Also different from the classic Galaxian is that you get to move your ship vertically too, which is really helpful when trying to outmaneuver those crazy ships and missiles. In classic Galaxian, you only could shoot one shot at a time but with this version, there are no such limits – shoot as much as you can!

The graphics are excellent and surprisingly, this great game is only 1.35 MB!

An excellent Ms PacMan clone called Ms Blitzman is available to download here: http://www.incitti.com/Blitz/index.html. This Windows game is under 3 MB, comes with a level editor and has the option of being played in full screen or Window mode. Really well-made clone!

Freedroid is a Windows and Linux remake of a Commodore 64 game called Paradroid. In this game, you play a droid (the Influence Device) that has to seek and destroy robots on multiple decks by either shooting them or taking control over them by winning a subgame (hold down the space bar while close to one of the robots to enter the subgame). To move to another deck, you have to move onto the an elevator shaft and press the “e” key. The elevators look like this:

If you’re playing under Windows, make sure you download the SDL libraries and place them in the same directory as the Freedroid executable. The classic version, along with the SDL libraries, are just over 7 MB.

There is also another 3D RPG version of the game from the same site if you can’t get enough Paradroid - it’s over 100 MB though! You can find some screenshots of this version from the “Visuals” menu on the Freedroid site.