Instant Dungeon - Roguelike Maze game for PC

Instant Dungeon is a cute little maze game available on both PC and the PlayStation Vita (via the PlayStation mobile section on the store) which features roguelike elements to keep things interesting. Created by lone developer Scott Mattot, Instant Dungeon keeps things incredibly simple by tasking you with little more than moving around a succession of randomly generated, top down mazes, avoiding the skeletons, vampires, zombies and other monstrosities, nabbing any treasures along the way and finding the key to open the exit door. As you progress deeper into the dungeons the light get more scarce, meaning danger could lurk around every corner.

Coin-Op Classics - Fast Lane (Konami)

Life in the fast lane

Arcade games of the 80's and 90's offer up some of my favourite gaming experiences. Simple, fast and addictive, the truly great games are easy to pick up and play, yet hard to master. They keep you coming back time and time again in order to beat your high score, thanks to tight controls, exciting gameplay and that essential risk versus reward factor that puts your skills to the test, yet leaving you with the feeling that you can do better next time. Pac Man set the trend way back in the year of my own birth, 1980, with Ms. Pac Man improving on it further. After the yellow dot munchers came an absolute wealth of clones and wannabees, desperate for a slice of the action. Few were able to match Namco's seminal series, but games that tried something slightly different with the formula were often even better. Fast Lane by Konami is one such game. 

Retro Review - Mean Arenas (Amiga / CD32)

The Running (Pac) Man

Top down Maze games are one of the oldest and longest running video game staples. When Pac Man sent everyone maze-crazy in 1980, there followed a decade long tsunami of clones, rip offs and cheap imitators, especially for the home computer systems of the time. With the advent of the 90's, it seemed that these simple arcade eat-em-ups had become stale and developers moved on, but there were a few notable exceptions. While the 16-bit consoles only received a few Pac Man inspired games; such as Zoom and Mr Do, Commodore's Amiga got its mitts on a fair few, thanks to its more homebrew nature, and cheaper disk based format. Most notable of these Pac Man spin-offs is Mean Arenas, which blends dot collecting and enemy avoiding with a deadly game show theme 'borrowed' from cheesy 80's action flick, The Running Man, or Robotron 2048 follow up, Smash TV.

Retro Review - Mopiranger (MSX)

The strangely titled Mopiranger is classic top down, arcade style game clearly based on the exploits of a certain yellow dot-munching circle. Coming out on the slightly obscure MSX system back in 1983, Mopiranger was one of many Konami titles to grace the platform, and contains the developer's usual high level of charm and playability.

REVIEW - Pac-Man Championship Edition DX + (XBLA)

Wakka Wakka Wakka

Still officially one of the best games on XBLA, as voted by me, Pac-Man Championship Edition DX (Phew!) is one the greatest updates to a classic game ever created, as well as being more addictive than the tastiest of crack rocks. I have ploughed many, many hours into the 2010 release, shunning such trivial necessities such as sleep and food in order to spend hour upon hour munching dots and ghosts to a psytrance soundtrack. Now, 3 years later, we have some fresh new DLC to devour like the gluttonous Pac-Man whores we all are.