Written by Costa Panayi and published by Vortex Software in 1985, Highway Encounter was out of the ordinary. Essentially you were clearing a path for a group of dalek-like robots as they travelled blindly down a diagonal highway. All manner of obstacles had to be removed from their path and it wasn't always as straightforward as you'd at first imagine.

Costa managed to work some devious puzzles into the game that involved setting up whole chains of events to remove certain objects. Should one of your train of Vortons (as the daleks were called) collide with any of the obstacles though, they were destroyed and when they were all gone you had to re-start the level - which was often.

Road sweeping wasn't your only worry though. Each level was also populated by alien invaders that trundled down the highway towards you and these had to be taken out before progress was possible. The combination of puzzle and shoot 'em up action was blended together faultlessly. The game was addictive, intense and tough. Costa was elevated to the ranks of programmer stardom for Highway Encounter and subsequently coded Alien Highway Encounter (the obvious sequel) and the mostly overlooked Gremlin classic Deflektor (the subject of a future Great Videogames…).