Gridrunner

One programmer, a few weeks and an insane pace that gets your heart pounding. Gridrunner is the legendary shooter by Jeff Minter, which he created for the Commodore VIC-20 almost overnight and which became one of the first big hits for this small home machine.

The game is unabashedly inspired by the arcade Centipede, but drives its principle to even more frenzied revolutions. You move around a grid, shoot at segmented centipedes rolling down from above and at the same time must fend off threats coming from the sides, where dangerous pods pulse along the edges. The pace is relentless, the space cramped and every moment of inattention ends in an explosion. It's a pure reflex arcade without a story, just you and ever-growing chaos.

Gridrunner was written in 1982 by Jeff Minter, the eccentric British developer and founder of the Llamasoft label, famed for his love of llamas, yaks and psychedelic aesthetics. For the standards of the time it was a surprisingly fast and polished game, showing that even the modest VIC-20 with minimal memory could get gripping arcade action going.

The commercial success of Gridrunner helped launch Minter's career, and Llamasoft became one of the iconic British game labels of the eighties. The game received a number of ports and sequels, and Minter returned to its motifs throughout his career, most recently in modern variations for contemporary platforms.

It's precisely this purity and raw speed that make Gridrunner a title that ages surprisingly well. It needs no bells and whistles, just a grid, a centipede and your reflexes pushed to the edge.

Why play it: A frenzied, pure arcade from the cult Jeff Minter that squeezed an unexpectedly addictive adrenaline experience out of the little VIC-20.