Written in just three days and released to the public domain by The Mad Scientist of Hokuto Force, Slide! is a Commodore 64 puzzle game based on those pocket slider games in which you must rearrange a picture or a sequence of numbers or letters by moving tiles horizontally or vertically in a grid.

The game contains 39 numbered tiles, which are sorted randomly and must be rearranged so that the first tile (1) is in the top left-hand corner and the last (39) is at the bottom-right. Fortunately, there's no time limit, but the number of moves you take is recorded. When you've completed the puzzle, the only challenge is to finish it in fewer moves during your next go. Because I'm not very good at this sort of game, it took me so many moves that I'm too embarrassed to have it in print. Needless to say, a child would probably do better (you could say that the time it took me to complete it matched the time taken to write it), but it's a fun and (if you're like me) frustrating challenge, and it shows what you can achieve in just a few days if you put your mind to it.

Get hold of this production by pointing your web browser at tinyurl.com/Slide-C64.

The Canada-based Commodore VIC-20 developer Ghislain has released Theater Of War II: The Pacific, in which you take charge of the Imperial Japanese Navy to battle against American forces during the summer of 1942. The task, therefore, is to rewrite history using the unexpanded VIC (Geek fact: the VIC was actually launched in Japan in October 1980 as the VIC-1001, before it was rebranded as the VIC-20 for the North American, European and Western markets, except for Germany where it was called the VC-20) to guide the Japanese army to success using your tactical and strategic knowledge.

The aim is to get your army to San Francisco harbour where the final battle takes place. Visit tinyurl.com/VIC-Theater-War-Two for more information about this excellent production.

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Heroes Of Magic is a new dungeon crawling affair for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum in 48K mode (or "USR 0" on some 128K machines), created by Spanish developer Josep Coletas Caubet. You take on the role of either a wizard or a sorceress, and your task is to find the mystical staff from the eerie Shadow Wood, which is home to all unsavoury types of creatures that must be fought if you cross paths.

The game is mostly written in Sinclair BASIC, so it can be a little slow, but don't let this worry you because this sort of thing tends not to be a fast-paced affair requiring razor-sharp reactions.

If you have fond memories of such games, go to tinyurl.com/Heroes-Magic-Spec.

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Platform: Atari XE/XL
Website: www.tinyurl.com/Joes-Adventure

Released in 2005, Joe’s Adventure is an explorer-style platform game with some similarities to the popular Rick Dangerous, which was released in 1989 by Firebird Software. Our hero and tomb raider Joe stumbles across a map that suggests that the lost pyramids of Egypt aren't lost after all, and may be full of treasure and everything that an explorer of lost, ancient treasure desires.

Entering the spooky catacombs in hope of fame and fortune, you must guide Joe around the chambers, avoiding the roaming nasties and collecting gold and other priceless artefacts. There are deadly spikes to avoid, which can be difficult to spot, but with a little trial and error the map is easy enough to learn.

Despite some small flaws in the game engine (mostly to do with collision detection), there’s a lot of fun to be had with this production. It's time to put your favourite Indiana Jones-style explorer hat on and go in search of ancient 8-bit treasures.