Ludography
Frightmare cover

1988 · Platformer

Frightmare

A multi-screen platform game developed by Floppy Electronics Ltd. for Commodore 64, PC and ZX Spectrum.

Released
1988
Platforms
Commodore 64Commodore C64/128/MAXMS-DOSZX Spectrum
Genres
Platformer
Developers
—
Publishers
—
Perspective
Side view
Themes
Horror
Country
United States

About

Frightmare is a platform game published in 1988 by Accolade under their Avantage budget label and in the UK by Cascade Games. It was released on floppy disk for MS-DOS, ZX Spectrum, and Commodore 64.

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

The game is a platformer where players control a character within a dreamworld trying to overcome a nightmare. Players encounter enemies including ghosts, ghoulies, and monsters and must avoid them by jumping and climbing around them, or must defeat them using a variety of weapons. Players progress through many screens across various levels to complete the game by advancing the alarm clock

from midnight to 8:12 A.M.

Reception

Richard C. Leinecker, reviewing the MS-DOS version of the game for Compute! magazine, noted that the game suffered from poor documentation containing numerous errors. The documentation also only explained how to use a joystick, although the game can be played with a keyboard.

He also found bugs such as the character sprite appearing out of position, either just above or below ledges and objects in the game. He speculated that the sloppy programming may be a consequence of trying to keep costs down for a budget title.

Releases by platformdates and regions as published

PlatformReleasedRegions
Commodore C64/128/MAX31 December 1988Europe · North America 31 December 1989
ZX Spectrum31 December 1988Europe
MS-DOS31 December 1989North America

Games like this

Collections1 collection

Platform libraries

Description adapted from its source, CC BY-SA 4.0.