A Scottish software firm has revived a cult computer game from the 1980s for the latest generation of mobile devices.

Edinburgh-based Black Company Studios, in partnership with BlissKiss Productions in London, has produced versions of Daley Thompson's Decathlon for Apple and Android mobile devices and tablets.

The original game – for Amstrad, Commodore and Sinclair Spectrum computers – was famous for the way players had to quickly manipulate buttons on the keyboard or waggle a joystick from side to side to make the athlete run faster, jump higher and throw further.

Chris Chapman, Black Company Studios director, said: "We'd all played the original game and had very fond memories of it.

"Our job was to take the original classic design and update it for modern platforms; to make it look and sound good without losing that 80s eight-bit era feel, and to find a way to translate the manic, keyboard-breaking button pressing into something that worked on touchscreen devices."

Until now Black Company Studios has mainly worked in collaboration with other development companies on titles ranging from third-person shooting game Crackdown 2 to fitness related Nike+ Kinect Training.

"Independent games development is a hard business, so we've tried to strike a healthy balance between working for larger teams on their games and developing our own apps and games in-house,"Mr Chapman said.

The game is available from the Google and Apple app stores.