I'm disappointed in my apparent lack of knowledge on pre-DOS PC games. Never even heard of Chuckie Egg, Lords of Midnight, Head over Heels, 3D Deathchase, and Paradroid. Great list though. You guys also sold me on buying some of the older copies of the magazine, that SNES/Genesis issue is mine!
All five of those are interesting in their own ways, too.
Chuckie Egg is a very capable single-screen platformer; it does get a bit visually tedious when you compare it to Manic Miner where each screen had unique scenery, but great gameplay and variety, and unusual physics (the rebounding gets really fun when you get used to it!)
Lords of Midnight is one of those games that's ridiculously far ahead of its time. A massive first-person... what? Wargame? RPG? Kind of... both? Thematically somewhat derivative of LOTR,
fairly recently rereleased for PC and mobile.
Head over Heels is genuinely one of my favourite games ever. I've always had a soft spot for the Ritman/Drummond line of isometric platformers, and I do think HoH is the best. A nice line in scaling levels of 'victory', too; it's one thing to complete the game, but if you try to gather all five crowns too it's something like three times as large. There's
quite a nice indie remake available for free (Ritman's been very open-minded about copyright!). If you're from the US you
may be aware of
Monster Max on the Game Boy which was Ritman/Drummond bringing the same style to that platform.
3D Deathchase is... well, it's basically the speeder bike race from ROTJ, without anything copyright-infringing in it. It's pure arcade gameplay, games will often be quite brief, but it's a lot of fun.
Paradroid (And indeed the sequels/spinoffs, Paradroid '90, Quazatron and Magnetron) is a fun little maze shooter with a really nice 'grapple' mechanic allowing you to steal components from other droids, allowing for a lot of strategic variety in how you play it.