Games you played the most with friends?

[Lee Bee]

Which multiplayer games got loaded up the most with mates/family? What do you think are the best 'crowd-pleasers'?

For my two main pals and me, our go-to multi-player game was Chaos. Guaranteed fun!



I also remember playing Double Dragon quite a lot with another buddy:

[AndyC]

Coming from a big family, Chaos was definitely a winner. As was CRL's Formula One (we also had Endurance but never seemed to get on with that despite it being basically the same thing).

Double Dragon was always a good choice too, played that loads with my sister. Even though we were both rubbish at it.

[Lee Bee]

Now this is a nice conversation. Not just recalling games, but whom we played with. Do share, folks!

[Nitrowing]

CRL's Formula One

This was the only multi-player we were happy with

[Oloturia]

Alo Bao! One of the best obscure games from Italy!
Every time I played with my friends, we had some races, despite the flickering and the overall simpleness of the game.

[Frankie]

My mates, sometimes up to 5 including myself had tournaments on Match Day I. Those were the days

[Juan F. Ramirez]

My mates, sometimes up to 5 including myself had tournaments on Match Day I. Those were the days

Same here. Lot of fun with friends playing the 2 players mode.

Another, Commando, to see who went further.

[akeley]

Me and my best friend (R.I.P Pusin) were both broke and before we could finally afford our Spectrums we would haunt one sailor-dad (ie rich) dude who had a +2, which in itself was a status symbol. We went there at least a few times a week but, strangely, I don't recall playing any multiplayer games. We'd just take turns on the likes of Renegade or Marauder.

But later on I found one other nerdy friend who had a ZX and somehow we got into Battle 1917. I'm pretty sure it was my first multiplayer experience (and in a way also a roguelike one).
The hot seat games would get quite heated (pun unintended) and we'd cuss'n shout at each other while watching. I suspect it was too much for his mom, because some time later the invites have stopped.

[WallyX]

My best mate and I spent a lot of our time on Target Renegade and Rampage. What better way to spend the school holidays than beating the crap out of bikers, thugs and creating carnage as a team.

Within our family we did like Formula One by CRL. I don't know exactly what was so engaging about that game but it was good competitive fun. Frantically grabbing the joystick when it was your turn in the pit stop and then watching the cars fly by while watching the stats, cheering for your eventual win, or mulling in disappointment. That game was great and probably deserves a nomination in the Game of the Day thread.

[Van_Dammesque]

Gauntlet, Silkworm Emyln Hughes and Target Renegade.

[Vampyre]

Either Gauntlet or Bubble Bobble.

[Lee Bee]

My best mate and I spent a lot of our time on Target Renegade and Rampage.

Oh yeah, the three of us played Rampage a lot, too! Terrific fun!

Gauntlet

YES! I'd forgotten how many hours we spent playing the Gauntlet games, too!

[worcestersource]

Yep, same here too: Gauntlet, Target Renegade and Bubble Bobble. Also games like Colony, in which we took turns to keep the game going.

Other games that spring to mind are Pi r squared, Geoff Capes, Manic Miner, Cauldron, Wizball and Action Force II. There were probably loads we played with our mates, both at our house and theirs.

[g0blinish]

back to 9x

Target:Renegade
A.T.F.
Gunfright(pause helps to kill bandit)

[Nick]

Batty
Battleships
CJs Elephant Antics - although from what I remember, the second player used to get left behind and get bumped back onto the screen

[Wall_Axe]

Lords of chaos player vs player

[worcestersource]

Laser Squad! Had to go out the room!

[Andre Leao]

Formula One and Brum Brum

[PeteProdge]

Very much Gauntlet, myself and my brother on keyboard controls, which had the unfortunate effect of occasionally triggering the 'symbol shift lets you walk through walls' cheat mode (which we did not know about at the time).

Another huge one is Bubble Bobble. That was made for two-player fun. I don't trust anyone who doesn't like Bubble Bobble.

Then there's the simultaneous play option in Batty. Great for making friends/enemies. Quite a blame game.

I want to say ATV Simulator, but as far as I can recall, that was taken in turns, not really a simultaneous playing experience, but that was quite a big one.

And of course, The Greatest Game Of All Time On Any System. Played that with quite a lot of people well into the early 90s, including one guy who was keen not to be seen as a 'nerd', so would secretly drag out his SAM Coupe and play a game with me half an hour (and he'd almost always thrash me at it) before all our other mates would turn up for a night of Amiga gaming on his new Amiga 600. (Which would be hours of Sensible Soccer, followed by the second-rate Street-Fighter-2-aping Body Blows which I was unexpectedly the best at playing.)

[Climacus]

Sabre Wulf.

Tons of hours.

[Oloturia]

Oh yeah, the three of us played Rampage a lot, too! Terrific fun!

Rampage was the perfect three-gamers. Played a lot on the Spectrum, on the Amiga and even the arcade.
On the Amiga I used to play with two friends of mine. One of them unfortunately died in a car crash a few years later, he was 19. Me and my other friend didn't play Rampage any more.
The sorrow is still tied to that game, even if eventually sometimes I play it on the MAME.

[akeley]

I don't trust anyone who doesn't like Bubble Bobble.

Hah, indeed, playing it should be included into a Citizen Test, voting rights, or some such

[Lee P]

I don't remember playing 2-player games that much. Maybe the odd game of Rampage or Target Renegade on my mate's 128. Whenever I played games with school mates or my cousins it was usually "you have a go, then I'll have a go", or sometimes "I'll be Head, you be Heels".

[TheMartian]

Now I recall Gauntlet. It was fun but also sometimes would lead to us bickering because we would go in different directions and put the other in a difficult situation.

(BTW, in my emulator I'm mapping the extra gamepad buttons to Gauntlet's magic keys...)

Also Decathlon. A friend destroyed a joystick because he was running the 110m and he was knocking all the hurdles, and I was like "up!" and he just pulled the joystick and chopped it off the base...

Barbarian, but I was scared of chopping heads off.

Galactic Games, the worm race was fun.

Rampage!

[Turtle_Quality]

Many weekend afternoons spent playing CRL Formula 1 but I think 2 player action games were not as common as on consoles like the Atari VCS. I wouldn't really count taking turns to play Asteroids or some other shmup as that always seemed a bit pointless.

PSS light cycles was fun 2 player. There was another decent Tron clone with arrows moving around the screen but I can't remember the name and I don't think we had a Clone Wars poll for Tron.

Surprised no-one mentioned Way of The Exploding Fist yet

Spy v Spy was intriguing but I never really got the hang of it

Match Point gave a pretty good 2 player game.

Ping Pong had nice music but the gameplay wasn't to match point standards.

After that my memory failed me so I checked this site for games tagged as 2 player versus, surprisingly none of the above were tagged. Bomb Munchies was though - I played Dyna Blaster a lot multiplayer on the Amiga and still do when I have a get together with friends. If Bomb Munchies were around at the Spectrum's peak it would have been around the top of this list.