I was making daily posts to the Instagram page, and figured why not post the content here as well?
Randamn (1983) programmed by Ron Nepsund with art by Scott McTyre and Murleen Parnell, published by Magnum Software. I was immediately interested in this game just from looking at the artwork, lots of weird horror and sci-fi monsters rendered in shockingly high resolution for 8-bit. This game was based around the idea of a slot machine; you are trying to overcome the trial of the gods to become the new demigod of randomness, the “Randamn.” To do this, you progress through seven worlds, each with a different theme. There are seven stages each, where a lottery wheel spins to decide which monsters you face each round. Every world has different monsters, though many of them are reskins. The number of enemies increases each round, and if your luck is poor, you may get three or four of the most annoying ones at once, it can get surprisingly hectic. The real challenge, however, is the controls. Tap a direction to face it, tap again to walk very quickly in that direction, hit any direction to stop. It’s 1983, so the awkwardness is forgiveable, but there’s no room for fine movements, which makes the gunning feel clunky, as your shots come out at a very specific angle from your arm. If you’re interested in playing it (it is quite difficult), hunt down a modified version of the ROM. The programmer was a nut for anti-piracy and coded it to freeze at the title screen, which makes it impossible to run on an emulator. The version you’ll find on MyAbandonWare is not cracked, so I’d recommend finding the copy on Gallery of Undiscovered Entities, whose page for it includes a nifty interview with said programmer!
Taigen Moon Works 