hm I never understood how to use archive.org I don't understand how you download files

It helps I still have alot of magazines from the 1980s ;-)

Plus you can find a lot of old magazines on archive.org.

well, lucky you to still remember the games in magazines. I don't remember a single one !

I didn't had any system which load from tapes, my Amiga was floppy and it wasn't that long (maybe because I was playing mainly tycoon games and the game was fully loaded at start so no more loading ingame)

Still, trying to find a way to play games for lvlup, it's not easy when you don't know anything about any system (even on Amiga, I know the games by title or picture but never give them a shot because well, I'm too much into tycoon and job simulators stuff. I can also vanish in a openworld RPG for hundreds of hours lol)

I find I want to try out games I saw in the magazines of the day but could never have as a child. Modern games interest me a lot loss. Even though they are so much better.

Also, when games were loaded from tape it took a while - you were less likely to swap between games because you had to wait!

yeah but we know that is mostly due to fact that we cannot afford that many games back in time. In my case, I could afford 1 or 2 games per year on Amiga (not counting the copied ones) and I remember I was spending a lot of time to choose the one I wanted to buy because it has to be good so I can play it for months. Most of them were never completed because they were really hard, and as of today I'm not able to go as far as I was back in time. Maybe I should train more but with all the games available now for free thanks to emulation), it's hard to stay focus on a single game for months.

Thank you!

Thanks!

Eighties games were HARD!

Voting yes

VOTING : ##### Y E S #####

I know this game, don't remember the title but it's something like Ramses Tomb or Pyramid maybe.
This game is more like Lode Runner, there is only one way to complete the levels, if you make a mistake, you will find yourself locked with no other choice than dying on purpose.

Ebony Castle is a flip-screen platformer for the BBC Micro. The game appeared as a type-in listing in the May 1986 issue of BEEBUG magazine. It was written by Jonathan Temple, who also produced a number of games as type-in's, mostly in BEEBUG.

In this game, you play the role of a serf who has been imprisoned in the Ebony Castle by the evil Necromancer that you were attempting to defeat. To escape, you will need to find all the coloured keys scattered around the rooms that open all the coloured doors. It is not that easy though, as the castle is littered with huge spiders and some very large gaps that require quite precise positioning to clear. There are also icy ledges where you cannot stop your movement, so when you come across these you will have to master your timing expertly to survive.

For a type-in program from a magazine, this game looks very good. The levels look very good with good use of colour. Unfortunately it is very hard! This is one of those games where you need the patience of a saint to hone your skills in order to become good enough to progress and I admit I do not have the time these days. The spiders move very quickly, giving you very little margin for error to get by them. So far I've only managed to get one key - the red one - and the difficulty level is frustrating, but somehow I keep picking this up every now and then. I'm determined to get a second key one day!

This run was made on the 16th March 2025 using the BeebEm emulator on PC. The final score was 5,000 points.

Time stamps:
00:30 Game Over screen from previous run.
00:32 Failed run starts.
01:09 Failed run ends.
01:10 Second failed run begins.
01:51 Second failed run ends.
01:54 Start of scoring run.
02:04 First life lost.
02:29 Red key collected, red door disappears.
02:50 Second life lost.
03:07 Third life lost. Game Over! Final score 5,000.