After the two rather excellent games of Flying Shark and Atic Atac we descend rapidly towards Number #77 in the Your Sinclair Top 100 and scream towards the arcade-puzzle game Gyroscope from Melbourne House.
Our second game from Melbourne House in the chart so far (the first being Sir Lancelot just last week), Gyroscope spun into existence back in 1985 looking and behaving surprisingly like Marble Madness, which even more bizarrely was also later published by Melbourne House in 1986.
On paper Gyroscope seemed like a virtual piece of cake, guide the said gyroscope from the top of the course to the bottom of the course. However it soon became apparent that this wasn’t the case, with numerous gaps, pitfalls, ramps both up & down with immediate walls and also the spectre of gravity on your back at all times.
Gyroscope though loved by a large number of people sits in my own personal Hell, with nasty transitions between screens, pitfalls just beyond said transitions that can cause instant death loops and difficulty curves which seem ridiculous for new players. I’m not a fan.
Originally published June 12, 2016. Updated June 30, 2023.
