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Another year has gone, and it's been another year of entertainment software for 8-bit machines. Specifically, gaming has been the main focus of the Retro Mart pages throughout the year for sure - and why not, when there was so much quality?

The year began well with the final release version of what was a world's first (for the Commodore 64 at least). The finished version of Artillery Duel, by Leif Bloomquist, was released early in January. This production could be played over a modern network. It required a compatible adapter for the old Commie (such as the RR-Net or FB-Net), and pitted two human-controlled tanks against each other. You then, in time-honoured fashion, set the angle and power of your shot, with the idea being to obliterate the other tank before it did the same to you. Think of it as a simplified version of Worms, but with tanks and a lack of weapons. On a C64. With Internet support. Oh, you get the idea.

Leif later released a networked 2D racer game for the popular technology with the aptly named NetRacer. This allowed up to eight players at once to play - now there's progress for you! Leif's homepage can be found over at home.ica.net/~leifb/commodore if you want to find out more.

The first decent game of the year (after the novelty of a networked C64 gaming), came from Bob Smith, and was for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Bob continued his Farmer Jack saga with a new, cute take on the arcade title Lady-Bug - now dubbed Farmer Jack And The Hedge Monkeys. Despite being very difficult, this and its follow-up Farmer Jack: Treasure Trove, have both proven popular with many Speccy fans. Using the World Of Spectrum's InfoSeek facility (www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseek.cgi) to search for 'Farmer Jack' will point you towards a demo of each in the trilogy. The cassettes are available from www.cronosoft.co.uk. Bob's best was yet to come though, which I'll tell you about in a moment.

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The Atari XE/XL range had a strong showing throughout the year too, starting with a port of a revered Speccy classic called Knight Lore. It was actually a port of the BBC Micro version (as the old Beeb is closer to the XE/XL than the Sir Clive's rubber-clad monster), just to be pedantic. XXL and others have recently formed the group Gr8 Software, which is a dedicated XE/XL publisher, with its most recent product, Hobgoblin, being available on cartridge in a professional-looking big colour printed box. The group currently resides on-line at gr8.atari.pl/joomla, and its members also frequent the Atari Age forums at www.atariage.com.

My personal highlight of the year was from Bob (Smith), with the sublime psychedelic blast-fest SpIATTR, for the 128k Speccy, again available from Cronosoft, with a demo available from www.bobs-stuff.co.uk. It has probably the best and shortest instructions for a game ever, reading simply "If it moves, shoot it. If it doesn't move, shoot it anyway. If it drains your energy, move!"

2008 was a year to savour for 8-bit fans, even for those supposedly less popular formats such as the Amstrad CPC, Commodore PET and VIC-20 with the VIC leading that particular pack). And as I look forward to 2009 (which I'll do in depth next issue), there doesn't look to be a slow-down in proceedings. Happy New Year!