Not to be confused with the game City Fighter by Mastertronic, this was a simple arcade action game that was due for release on ZX Spectrum and C64 back in 1984 from Choice Software.
Sadly only the ZX Spectrum version seems to have been released, with the game’s developer David Bolton confirming that the C64 edition is currently lost (although he suggests on his webpage that it did). BBC and Lynx versions were to come soon as well, but these also seem to have been scrapped.
Hopefully it is something that he may stumble across one day on an old disk or tape and that we can arrange for it to be digitally preserved.
If you have a copy, please get in touch!
Contributions: Anonymous Contributor
Supporting content
Gallery
Creator speaks
David Bolton talks about the game via his website at https://www.dhbolton.com/articles/cityfighter-inlay.html
“Crossfire on the Apple II was a favourite game of mine. Cityfighter was a ripoff of Crossfire, and our (Colin Gordon and myself) first computer game at Choice. Colin wrote the Speccy version, I did the CBM-64. Both came out early 1984. Brendan (sorry I forgot your surname), a school teacher friend from Mensa who lived in South Belfast did the drawing.
What made it challenging was the 8 finger controls- 4 fingers moved the space ship (uip, down, left, right), while four fingers fired in the same directions. Ie you could move sideways and strafe up or down, or run away from enemies (or to them) while bnlasting in their direction. Try doing that with a joystick!”
Update history
23/10/24 – Added a creator speaks segment
From that ZX screenshot that looks similar to the game Crossfire.
Great spot! So a clone possibly of the Targ arcade game as well.