Vintage gaming community.
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Fort Apocalypse
The Tail of Beta Lyrae
Mercenary
Rescue on Fractalus
Ballblazer
The Eidolon
Alternate Reality: The City was revolutionary for its time, but I don't think it's stood the test of time.
There was a leaked beta of a The Last Starfighter game which was great. It was later released as Star Raiders II, but I liked the beta version.
Blue Max - biwing ww1 airplane, isomorphic bombing and shooting through the country side.
Pharoh's Curse - Dungeon delver with traps, walking dead enemies, and infuriating bird
Pitfall
digdug
Archon - Battle Chess ! (playing solo isn't great or hard. Two Player is a blast)
Pole Position
Chopperlifter
Chopperlifter
Choplifter.
I spent a lot of time playing Miner 2049er, which was a pretty fun platformer of the time.
I also remember some interesting twists on classics, like K-razy kritters was similar to space invaders. There was also a space shooter called K-star patrol
We also had a homemade cartridge with a game called Spark Bugs. It was a challenging one
I was lucky enough to grow up on this system and there are some absolute bangers out there:
Mission: Shark (or Misja on the European continent): arguably one of the best games on the systems. Silky smooth animation, great gameplay loop, fantastic music. Janusz Pelc at his best.
Rescue on Fractalus: fantastic foray into faux-3D. You'll never forget the first time you picked up your first "pilot"...
H.E.R.O: finely balanced, a great time killer.
Encounter: far beyond it's years, the precursor to open world games
Fred: another J Pelc masterpiece. Great platformer.
Star Raiders II: beautiful shooter. The space shoot em' ups of today can trace their combat gameplay directly back here.
Lode Runner: one of the best and smoothest implementations of this game, along with...
Chuckie Egg: the original and best.
Zybex: a competent shooter with some of the best chiptunes you'll ever hear.
Blinky's Scary School: bastard hard, but full of British humour.
Fort Apocalypse: fantastic shooter, with stunning graphics and a blue doppelganger helicopter that will give you nightmares.
Rally Speedway: takes the top down racer formula, tightens the controls, makes it prettier, and gives you a level editor too. Brilliant.
River Rescue: River Raid but better, and if you disagree then you're entitled to your wrong opinion.
Have fun!
I already played lode runner and HERO actually HERO is one of my favorite 2600 games so i had to check the Atari 8 bit version
Berzerk and Wizard of Wor are both fantastic fun.
There’s also a homebrew port of Bosconian, which gets my vote for one of the most underrated arcade games of all time.
I never played it, but want to recommend "Alley Cat (Synapse Software 1983)" for Atari 800, as you are a cat too.^^ It looks interesting and seems to be a "Hidden Gem" (oh boy its been a long time since I used this forbidden word).
Dragster has the best split-second gameplay of any 2600 game.
That's the Atari 2600, but the poster asks about the computer systems with a keyboard, similar to Commodore 64: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_8-bit_computers
Astounding!
I managed to completely miss the 8-bit line, or it was minimally promoted in Australia.
Thanks for filling in the gap from 2600/7800 until the ST.
Computer was the key word. The 2600 was an 8-bit machine, too, but it wasn't a general purpose computer.
Super Breakout was my favorite paddle controller game due to the sound randomization, and Imagic's Demon Attack did some groundbreaking graphics on the platform. As far as ports of arcade games, Phoenix was pretty good. Adventure is iconic.
Joust, Jumpman, Lode Runner, and Prince of Persia were good on at least some 65xx machines of that time.
The Zaxxon port is quite good, and I also have fond memories of F-15 Strike Eagle.
M.U.L.E. is great
Barnstorming: fly a plane through barns.