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Psion

“Hungry Horace” offered gameplay based of the popular arcade game “Pac-Man”, it was celebrated as the first arcade game for the Spectrum. It was one of the few Spectrum games that were also available in ROM format. It formed part of the “Horace” series, which included “Horace Goes Skiing” and “Horace and the Spiders” and the unpublished “Horace to the Rescue”. Horace is apurple blob with arms and legs, who wanders around a maze, eating everything and avoiding the park guards, who are out to capture him. He is able to momentarily scare the guards, making them vulnerable, by ringing a bell in the maze. Once Horace is able to escape capture and leave the maze, he moves to the next, more challenging level. “Hungry Horace” was programmed by William Tang, but Alfred Milgrom was responsible for the design of the inimitable Horace an artful creation of character using minimum grid available . Through Melbourne House’s relationship with Sinclair, the “Horace” games would come boxed with the ZX Spectrum, making them often the first games that many people played on their home computers.

Psion

Backgammon for the ZX81 with 16K memory expansion module or for the ZX Spectrum.

Krome Studios Melbourne, Psion, William Tang, Sinclair Research, Investronica

In 1983, Tang produced the third title in the series, Horace and the Spiders. This was primarily a platform game with the Horace sprite retained from the first two games. The first level sees Horace climbing a hill while jumping over spiders. The second level involves crossing a bridge by swinging on spider threads. The third level is the final confrontation with the spiders – he must create holes in the web, luring the spiders into the holes to fix them and consequently jumping on them. Unlike the earlier two titles, this game was only released for the ZX Spectrum. The first stage of this game shared similarities with both Pitfall and the Colecovision game Smurf: Rescue in Gargamel's Castle, whilst the third platform stage is essentially a Space Panic clone.

Psion

Fantasy Games is a double games pack containing the following adventure games: Perilous Swamp: Deep in a Perilous Swamp, your quest is to find and rescue a Princess held captive by an evil Wizard before escaping out of the swamp. You are presented with a map of your surroundings and text tells you any objects you can see. As you move around the swamp you will encounter various creatures who you can fight, run from or bribe (if you have enough treasure). If you choose to fight then you decide how many combat strength points to use. Spells can be found and used to help you on your quest. Sorcerer's Island: Similar to Perilous Swamp, this time you are on an island and you must attempt to leave it. One difference is you can encounter people like the King of the Dwarves and the Grand Sorcerer himself to help you.

Mikro-Gen Ltd, Psion, Sinclair Research

Thro' The Wall also Scramble is a double games pack that contains: Thro' The Wall: A Breakout clone where you control a bat on the bottom of the screen moving left or right, to hit a ball upwards and remove bricks above. If the ball goes past the bat then you lose one of three lives. There is a choice of the speed of the ball and they are Normal, Fast and Superfast. Scramble: You view your craft from the side as it flies from left to right horizontally constantly, and you must avoid or shoot ground installations and enemy craft with your missiles. You can use a smart bomb to destroy everything on the screen but you only have one and if you hit the ground or any enemy then you lose one of three lives. You have the choice of ten speeds (1-10) with one being the fastest.

Psion

Match Point is a tennis video game released in 1984–1985 for the Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum and Sinclair QL by Psion and other publishers and, under the title Tournament Tennis, on ColecoVision , Commodore 64 and MS-DOS by Imagic. It was also published for Thomson TO7, Thomson MO6 and Thomson MO5 under the title Super Tennis. Some editions for Atari ST, Commodore 64 (on cartridge) and DOS used the simple title Tennis.