Long Train running

Go loco with these Eighties train games

Super Locomotive 1982

■ The original inspiration for Loco, this may well be new to you as it’s thought only 20 machines made it into UK arcades. It adds traffic lights to the track-switching gameplay and is worth tracking down, or looking up on Youtube, if only to compare and contrast with Tony’s work.

Loco-motion 1982

■ Konami reimagined one of those old slide puzzles as a series of train tracks and tasked you with keeping you engine on the right lines to pick up passengers and avoid crashes. An intriguing puzzler that was converted to many home micros of the day.

Stop The express 1983

■ Infamous for its mangled ‘Congraturation! You Sucsess!’ end of level message, this has our hero dashing along the top of a moving train, dodging enemy fire, in classic action movie style. It’s fun for five minutes or so, and then you’ll want to take the title literally. [Awww, I really like it - Ed]

The Train game 1983

■ This ZX Spectrum game caters to your inner Fat Controller as you aim to keep up to three trains running safely and collecting passengers by judicious switching of points. It begins simply enough but stress levels soon reach Southern Rail franchise proportions.

Southern BELLE 1985

■ Usually cited as the first 3D steam train simulator, a sadly neglected genre in the modern era, this casts you as the driver and fireman of an engine on route from London over to Brighton. HS2 this certainly isn’t, but we do enjoy the strangely hypnotic demo mode.