The Last V8

Also known as: N/A

Developer: Mastertronic

Released in 1985, the Last V8 actually takes in the far, distant future of 2008, seven years after the bombs fell and nuclear winter is beginning to pass. War has destroyed civilization as it once was, and the surface of the earth is a radioactive battleground. You take the role of a scientist who, rather than work on something that could help people or improve the situation, instead dedicated his time to building a car, the Last V8. In this game, your goal is to drive your car to the "sci-base" and get there before your radiation shields decay. If this was a racing game like OutRun, where you try to get to the goal in as fast of a time as possible, I would have probably really liked this game. Instead, the Last V8 is in a top-down perspective. Depending on who you talk to, this can be a good thing…but more commonly, it's seen as a bad thing. The roads that you drive on are narrow and unforgiving, and the controls don't really help. And quite frankly, neither does the fact that the track is only visible in the upper third portion of the screen, with the rest of the screen being taken up by the car dashboard and the game's logo. It takes a while to really get used to everything and survive beyond the first few turns. Once you get used to everything, it's not terrible…but I can't imagine that most players will have the patience to get to that point. Anyway, the Last V8 was a decent idea…unfortunately, it just didn't result in a decent game.

Review added: 07/24/2026

Lode Runner

Also known as: N/A

Developer: Broderbund

The Atari 8-bit version of Lode Runner wasn't going to set the world on fire in terms of visuals or graphics, but when it came to gameplay, it was absolutely fantastic. The goal of the game is to collect all gold chests in the level, at which point a ladder will appear, that you then need to reach and climb to advance on. The catch? You're not the only one picking up those chests. There are guards also wandering each stage and they are constantly following you and/or tracking you down…and they're intelligent. If they're above you, moving towards a ladder that you're moving towards, and you decide to change your direction in order to avoid them, they won't continue to that ladder to climb down and chase you. They'll also change directions, resulting in this game getting a bit frantic at times, if the guards begin to surround you. You can fight back, though. While you can't attack the guard, per say, you can dig in certain (but not all) types of ground, which will cause your pursuers to fall into it. When they fall, if they're carrying any gold, they drop it, giving you an opportunity to pick it up and get a good distance away before they're able to recover and fill the hole back up. It's a fun, climbing action game that requires you to think rather than simply move around and rack up points. To make everything even sweeter is that Lode Runner allows you to design and create your own levels to play in, too. It looks like you can save up to 151 different levels that you've designed, so once you've played the pre-made levels over and over, the fun doesn't need to end, so long as you've got the imagination to create more levels to collect gold in. Lode Runner was a fantastic game for its time, and quite frankly, it's still very fun today. One has to wonder if a copy of Lode Runner happens to be in those gold chests that you're trying to collect.

Review added: 07/25/2026