Gwiezdne Imperium
1988, ZX Spectrum

Gwiezdne Imperium is a Polish game, and a rough translation of its title means Star Empire. It was released back in the Eighties on a short lived Komputer label (Komputer itself was a pioneering magazine dedicated to - you guessed it - early computers).

It's a 2-player (up to 5) only game, no AI here, so you'll either have to convince somebody to give it a go or play against yourself.

Gwiezdne Imperium can look quite daunting at first, but its principles are really simple and resulting gameplay can be quite interesting. It's more of a puzzle-strategy than a real space empire builder. Here's a quick guide:

-circles and arrows represent planets and fleets
-white colour means neutral planets and fleets
-planets can "shoot" at surrounding fleets, and spawn player fleets
-"R" - amount of turns per player (relative to the number of planets a player owns) -keys: "W"-choose, "R"-move, "O"-rotate fleet "S"-shoot, "K"-end turn. Plus cursor keys to move.

The aim of the game is to conquer all planets. You'll need to spawn fleets and try to aim them towards neutral fleets and planets (while your opponent does the same during their turn). In theory that's how you capture things in this game. We say "in theory' because while it seemed to work well for a while, later on some strange things started happening, like odd chain moves and planets disappearing. Perhaps it was buggy code, emulator flaking out...or some strange gameplay rules were actually causing this weirdness.

Gwiezdne Imperium: unfortunately no AI to challenge a solitary player, but you should definitely give it a go if there's a friendly, puzzle-liking OI around.

The Circuit
1986, SEGA Master System

The Circuit (aka World Grand Prix in the US) is a racing game from SEGA. It was originally released in the arcades as GP World - one of these bizzare sprites-on-live-video Laserdisc games. This port (?) is completely differnt though since it's good ol' pixels all over.

The cars are Formula-esque and zoom around a few different tracks - or should we say against different backgrounds, because there's not much on the road sides. The game has got decent, fast gfx, and plays reasonably well. Unfortunately the other cars aren't real opponents, just some randomly generated obstacles, so it's more of a time-attack than a race.

This simple facts puts a big dent into what otherwise is a quite competent racer. As it is though, we had more fun messing around with the track editor than actually racing.

The editor is super simple to use and it can be quite amusing trying to put together the most convoluted track possible, and then ride on it.

Overall, The Circuit is a decent racer, good for a quick spin and some fun with track editor, but is ultimately let down by the lack of ability to compete with other cars.