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Adventures
| 221 B Baker St. | Datasoft Inc. | [top] | |
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Based on the board game of the same name, this pits up to four players against each other in a race to solve mysteries set in Victorian London. After picking a character (Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson, Irene Adler, or Inspector Lestrade), players select one of the thirty available mysteries and read its case file in the game's manual. The case file presents the particulars of the case, mentions the people involved, and explains what the players need to deduce to win the game. Solving the mysteries entails moving around London (the game board) via a roll of the dice, entering locales to collect clues, and then piecing the clues together. Among the fifteen locations available are a pub, a park, and a bank, and each location is brought to life with voice synthesis. Each location will have a clue, but not all clues will be useful. Before solving the case, players must visit Scotland Yard for a badge. Players might also want to use a badge to lock a location with a useful clue, requiring other players to detour to the locksmith. Once a player believes they have solved the case, they must return to Baker Street and answer a quiz. If the player is incorrect, the other players can continue. | ||
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| Acheton | Jon Thackray, David Seal and Jonathan Partington / Topologika | [top] | |
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This is a large adventure in the Colossal Cave style.
Acheton predates most published adventures barring Colossal Cave (by
which its authors were inspired) and Zork (the original Vax version).
Trek through a giant dungeon in this early, influential classic. There's
a huge mystery at your fingertips, and you'll unravel using an amazing
200 unique objects. Groundbreaking graphics and addicting gameplay abound
through the game's 400 levels, each of which is packed with gruesome
enemies and hidden secrets. Perhaps the first adventure game written outside the U.S. (c. 1979), by several guys working in the mathematics department of Cambridge University, England. "Acheton" is an enormous cave game, whose name is a confection of "Acheron" (the river that dead used to cross in order to get to Hades) and "Achates" (minor character in Virgil's "Aeneid"), based around exploration and collecting treasures. Thackray and Seal devised one of the earliest adventure-design systems (which although basically an assembler was influential on for instance the modern design system "Inform") and it was publically used on the Cambridge IBM mainframe ("Phoenix") until the mid-1990s. Acornsoft, then the software arm of Acorn Computers Ltd., also based in Cambridge and with strong links to the university, published a conversion of "Acheton" to the BBC Micro, on two 100K floppy discs (one containing the game, one containing hints) and was later ported to the PC. In 1999, it was made freeware. |
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| Adventure Construction Set | Electronic Arts | [top] | |
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Create your own graphic adventures with ACS which allows you to customize a tile-set, maps, and objects to create in-depth adventures, reminiscent of the early Ultimas. There are several pre-made adventures as well as several "toolboxes" (each a different genre) to aid in adventure creation. It has a heavy emphasis on monsters and statistics. As a tool for creating dungeons, it was very advanced for its time. Though the graphics and sound are simple, there is a lot of room for customization. In addition to a myriad of design choices, the program offers a "create random adventure" feature that is perfect for everyone with limited patience. Once an adventure is created, you can create a "stand-alone" executable to give out to your friends. | ||
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| Adventure Game Toolkit (AGT) / Generic Adventure Game System (GAGS) | Mark J. Welch, David Malmberg / Softworks | [top] | |
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The Adventure Game Toolkit is software that supports the development of adventure games. It was a revision on Mark J. Welch's GAGS (Generic Adventure Game System), which was a computer programming tool for creating “text adventure” games for MS-DOS computers. GAGS was released as “shareware” in 1985 and enhanced several times in 1986 and 1987. In 1987, David Malmberg made substantial enhancements to the Generic Adventure Game System, which was renamed the Adventure Game Toolkit (AGT). Over the next few years, many additional features were added to AGT, and versions were released for MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows, the Apple Macintosh, the Commodore Amiga, and the Atari ST. From 1987 through 1992, AGT was distributed by Softworks of Mission San Jose, California. The final version of AGT, known as the “Adventure Game Toolkit Master’s Edition,” includes some graphics and sound capabilities. The final version of AGT is version 1.7 and it's now freeware. AGT was originally built for DOS but has also been compiled for Microsoft Windows, Macintosh, Amiga, and others. More than 100 different text adventure games have been designed by game authors around the world using GAGS and AGT. | ||
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| Airball | MicroDeal | [top] | |
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You have been turned into a ball of air with a slow leak by an evil wizard. You must find the Spellbook and the ingredients for the spell. Without these, you will never turn back into a human again. Considering the enemies and obstacles that stand in your way, it will be no small task. It's a unique strategic adventure for gamers of all ages and quite addictive too. | ||
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| Asterix And The Magic Carpet / Asterix im Morgenland | Coktel Vision | [top] | |
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The game is based on famous comics, animations and movies series about brave independent Gauls, who drink magic power potions and fight with Romans. This time Asterix and Obelix fly on the magic carpet to India with Cacofonix, whose song can make rain for the friendly Indian villagers. But during the travel, he loses his voice. Now Asterix and Obelix have to find the cure for Cacofonix' voice and rescue Princess Orinjade, who will be sacrificed by evil Hoodunnit if it isn't raining. During the game you watch the static cartoon scenes and choose the answers to progress in your travels. Sometimes you need an action, so it is action sequences in the game, for example, to defend the village from the robbers, etc. | ||
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| Au Nom de l'Hermine [Fr] | Edith Perrinet, Anne Durand / Coktel Vision | [top] | |
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Would you like to know what a 5th grade student needs to learn about a castle? This offers software scripted on a castle background where you visit the different parts of the castle, discuss or disagree with the inhabitants. The software offers you a series of tables. You interact with the avatars in front of you. Your lord has given you 80 crowns and you will spend them to get more knowledge or when you are lost. Once you have finished your visit, the app offers to place the different parts of the castle in their place. The graphics in EGA are colorful and quite neat. They have pleasantly aged. The year is 1249, and Senor Angerran, in whose service we are happy to be, entrusts the faceless and nameless protagonist with an important and unexpectedly spy mission: Senor Godri from the neighboring castle went on a crusade, leaving one husband and wife on the farm, - and our suzerain came to the profound conclusion that this is the most suitable moment for the perfidious attack. However, to organize a successful attack, you must first find out some information about the enemy: that's what we are required to draw up a plan of the castle and differentuate the size of its garrison, the civilian population, the presence inside the well and the amount of reserves, allowing the inhabitants to withstand a siege for months, and along with the thickness and height of the walls. To conduct this reconnaissance operation, we put 80 ecu at our disposal - and one day before sunset. So, early in the morning we find ourselves in front of the entrance to an alien castle, bustling with life and inhabited by various characters, always ready to chat with a stranger in pure modern French and tell all the details about their daily activities: a knight and a squire, a blacksmith and a cook, an archer and a troubadour, peasants -surfs and guards from the garrison. In total we are waiting for a dozen locations and three dozen characters, including several overlapping in occupation. Including in terms of musical design: the medieval melody accompanying the splash screen with a bird's-eye view of the castle, performed by PC Speaker, to put it mildly, is not particularly impressive; in the future, the sound effects appear only as an indication of the correct or incorrect of the answers given by us - just like in many other educational games from Coktel Vision. Upon returning to Senor Angerran, we will need to “draw” him a plan of the castle, that is, correctly place the letters on the image from that screensaver indicating the location of the donjon, chapel, curtains, etc., and then enter the answers to five key questions. Depending on the completeness and adequacy of the information provided, we will receive a message about a successful or unsuccessful attack completing the game - and at the same time the opportunity to see the correct options. | ||
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| Beyond Zork: The Coconut Of Quendor | Infocom | [top] | |
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You are but a lowly peasant who has to deal with the hard times that have fallen upon the Southland of Quendor. The enchanters have all vanished without the slightest trace and order has all but disappeared. Undesirables and monsters walk the streets. You find yourself tested at every turn, with every success, your strength and powers grow. Will you be able to get find the fabled Coconut of Quendor? This game signified a notable departure from the standard format of Infocom's earlier games which relied purely on text and puzzle-solving: among other features, Beyond Zork incorporated a crude on-screen map, the use of character statistics (attributes of endurance, strength, dexterity, intelligence, compassion, and luck) and levels, and RPG combat elements. The player explores the Southlands of Quendor somewhat aimlessly at first. Soon, however, a task is bestowed by The Implementors, a group of godlike creatures jokingly based on Infocom's game designers. The Coconut of Quendor, an incredibly powerful artifact that embodies the whole of Magic, has fallen into the claws of an incredibly foul beast: an Ur-grue. Rumored to be the spirits of fallen Implementors, Ur-Grues can surround themselves in a sphere of darkness that only sunlight can pierce. The player must recover the Coconut from this monster's grasp or face the unthinkable consequences. The onscreen map shows the room the player is in relation to the surrounding rooms. In addition, game navigation can be accomplished via mouse clicks on the map. Some other features previously unseen in Infocom's games include semi-randomized combat and area maps in which the same set "rooms" appeared in game-dependent random configurations. | ||
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| Border Zone | Marc Blank / Infocom | [top] | |
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The only spy game from Infocom, Border Zone is a "compartmentalized" game similar to Shogun, although the chapters don't have to be played in order. The premise is classic spy intrigue that will be familiar to Raymond Chandler fans, centered around an attempt to prevent an important assasination in the fictitious country of Frobnia. In a neat departure from most games, the three chapters are played from different perspectives: in Chapter 1, you play a businessman, who has been given a document with the details of the assassination, and your job is to sneak it out of the country. In Chapter 2, you play the wounded agent who gave the businessman the document, and your goal is to escape from Frobnia. In Chapter 3, you play an American double-agent who must prevent the assassination without blowing his cover. In another departure for Infocom, all three chapters are played in real-time, i.e. the story will go on without you if you take too much time deciding what to do. While this adds a lot to the game's atmosphere and realism (after all, James Bond himself only has split seconds to evade the bullets), this makes for some very difficult puzzles that you are not likely to solve the first time through. This means that you will have to restore the game several times before figuring out the right sequences of moves. Fortunately, the game's on-line hintbook provides gentle nudges to the right direction, and you can slow down the game's clock by typing SLOW if you find it too frustrating. Like Plundered Hearts, Border Zone features several different endings in addition to the "optimal" one. Zork creator Marc Blank does a great job of creating an interlocking "big-picture": events in each chapter relate to those in others, and by the time you finish all three, you will gain a complete understanding of the story. Characters are well-developed, and the quality of writing is excellent throughout. Highly recommended for all IF fans, but heed the "Advanced" level on the box - this isn't an easy game you can finish in one sitting. | ||
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| Bureaucracy | Douglas Adams / Infocom | [top] | |
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This might be the best parody game ever made. Bureaucracy is a hilarious game written by Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy creator Douglas Adams. The plot is simple enough: you have just moved to a new town and must get your bank to acknowledge your change of address form before embarking on your all-expense paid trip to Paris. That the game is something special is obvious when you open the box - freebies, which are Infocom's hallmark, are among the best you'll ever see: everything from the Popular Paranoia magazine to four copies of Beezer Card application will make you laugh out loud even before you install the game. Once you do, you'll be treated to a rollercoaster ride of a plot that contains more twists and turns than Adams' zany novels, seeing your on-screen alter ego suffer Bureaucratic mishaps that range from missed flight connections to surly waitresses. The puzzles are as difficult as any other Infocom game (it was written by the same guy who invented the Babel Fish puzzle, after all), but they do follow some logic no matter how twisted it may be (how you dispose of the stew on the airplane is one good example). There are many well-developed characters who represent some of the most annoying people you meet in real-life, from the delivery man to Random Q. Hacker. Bureaucracy, quite rightly, has become the standard by which almost all tongue-in-cheek games about real life are measured, and has been imitated many times but seldom equalled. | ||
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| Castle Ralf | Douglas Associates, Inc. | [top] | |
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This is a shareware interactive fiction. The background story: While driving out on holiday, you get lost in the middle of nowhere, when suddenly your tire has a puncture. Remembering a driveway just before the tire blew, you return to it, and guess where it leads? Right, to Castle Ralf. (Reminds me of Rocky Horror Picture Show, that.) The game starts with you trying to enter the castle. Once you did it (this won't be too difficult, but will cut off the way back), you'll quickly find that Castle Ralf is quite big and peculiar, extending onto three floors and a basement, including a Grand Central Closet and a sauna. You'll find some keys, enough burnt pizza for 87 people and a gigantic cheese, a video game called "Chiwawars!" which you can play, but also some technical puzzles which you will have to solve, designed by the castle's slightly eccentric owner, some Dr. Bellefleur. It features an innovative user interface: Besides typing your commands the traditional way, you can also select verbs with the cursor keys. This comes with a simple but well-done parser which understands some unusual and/or useful words, like IT, MAP (which gives you a map of the places you visited so far -- interactive fiction with automapping!), SMELL or COGITATE (which may or may not give you some hint). You can also use multiple commands, as " N. W. S. GET BEANS". The game's puzzles are quite challenging, but logical. As you will die a lot, you should SAVE often. The texts are short and to the point, being often quite funny and even a little Zorkian. They thus manage to convey a unique atmosphere while you are exploring the vast castle and try to solve Bellefleur's devious mechanical puzzles. | ||
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| Countdown To Doom | Peter Killworth / Topologika Software Ltd. | [top] | |
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One of Topologika's last IF titles, Countdown to Doom is a fun "light" science fiction game set on the planet of Doomawangara (no, I'm not making this up). Despite the name, the planet is actually a very dangerous place - so dangerous, in fact, that no explorer has ever returned from their journeys to tell the tales. Until you, of course. After a crash-landing, you must find various mechanical parts needed to repair your ship before the planet's atmosphere corrode it away. The game utilizes Topologika's standard parser, including the notorious lack of EXAMINE command and the inability to recognize many synonyms. Despite such limitations, Countdown to Doom is still an eminently playable game that features many creative puzzles and aliens from the fertile mind of Peter Killworth. Which is to say that they are very difficult to solve, and suffer from a certain degree of "guess-the-verb-in-designer's-mind" syndrome. They are all logical, though - something that can't be said for some early Topologika games e.g. Philosopher's Quest. The parser also sports some improvements, such as the inclusion of on-line hints, and a bigger vocabulary. Overall, Countdown to Doom a good challenge for IF experts or fans of Level 9's Silicon Dreams trilogy. Definitely not recommended for novices or anyone who is easily frustrated. It also leads in quite nicely to Return to Doom and Last Days of Doom, two further games in the series. The PC version was expanded from the Acornsoft cartridge version by about 50% when republished by Topologika. In 1999, it was made freeware. | ||
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| Deja Vu: A Nightmare Comes True!! | ICOM Simulations, Inc. / Mindscape, Inc. | [top] | |
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Deja Vu was the first game ever made by ICOM, the makers of such famous adventure games as Shadowgate and Uninvited. It featured mouse support, a multi-window interface, and bitmapped graphics at a time when text-based interactive fiction was the norm. In Deja Vu your character wakes up in a toilet stall of a sleazy pub with no memory of who you are or what you're doing there. To make matters worse, you soon stumble upon a very dead corpse upstairs with three bullets buried in him. Sure enough, you find there's a gun in your pocket with three bullets missing. From there you have to figure out what happened and who you are before whatever is happening to your brain turns you into a mindless vegatable. To make matters worse the cops would very much like to have a word with you about that stiff. Puzzles are somewhat difficult due to the fact that only about half of what you can carry are actually useful. The game gives you only a vague sense of what to do next, so the illusion of non-linearity is effective. The periodic flashbacks are a nice touch as they advance the story. There IS a time limit, so save often! In 1991 a remake of this game was made for Windows 3.x, featuring improved graphics, interface and ability to save. In 2015, a MacVenture Series PC release contained both the original Macintosh 128k black and white, and Apple IIGS 4-bit color versions. In 2017, 8-bit Adventure Anthology: Volume I was released with remakes of Shadowgate, The Uninvited and Déjà Vu with a new 8-bit style menu, beautifully composed chip tunes and the most outstanding ‘old TV’ effects you’ve ever seen. | ||
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| Demon's Forge | Mastertronic Group Ltd. | [top] | |
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The first adventure game Mastertronic released is one of the most difficult adventures ever, with its extremely unforgiving puzzles and frequent deaths. For killing the king's guards, you have been sentenced to the Demon's Forge, a deadly maze you must get out to earn your freedom form the king. Puzzles are logical, but they are very difficult, so be warned. | ||
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| Don Quijote [Sp] | Dinamic Software | [top] | |
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La Mancha, Spain, April of 1605... You are Don Alonso Quijano, a Manchegan nobleman (hidalgo, more concretely) of the XVI century, whose soft spot is the cavalry novels. Everything goes more or less fine in your house, until one day your madness reaches the culminating point: you decide to take the arms and go out to travel through La Mancha. You obtain a shield-bearer, Sancho Panza, who, although not being the best on the field, will help you in the hardest situations. From this very moment you will be participant of the most incredible adventures you have ever imagined. Winds, hills, forests and inns will be witnesses of your craziest ideas such as attacking mills or challenging fierce lions, but before that, you must equipe yourself like a brave cavalier. Your final objective, like in the novel, will be to find your beloved and infinitely appreciated, Dulcinea del Toboso. | ||
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| Eden Blues | ERE Informatique | [top] | |
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Eden Blues is a neat action/adventure game from ERE, French developer known for making quirky titles. In this real-time adventure you are a prisoner of jail guarded by droids. And you know the roster of their duty: some of them are on beat by day, some by night. You have to find the way out of labyrinth using your legs and a knack to bash the doors out. Your health decreases with time, and you must find the bottles to recuperate. When you are bashing the door, your physical endurance decreases and you must find a food to restore it. In the game you'll also find the coins for coffee dispensing machines, but beware of talking portraits and other traps. The game is fun, but the adventure elements are not integrated nearly as well as OCEAN's classic The Great Escape. Your constantly decreasing health (from languishing in prison too long, perhaps?) adds the sense of urgency for the entire game, but fortunately those bottles are not so hard to find. Mapping is a must in this game, otherwise you might find yourself back to where you were before, with no more bottles to pick up. The only thing in the game that can be called "puzzle" is the need to observe the droids' movement patterns. Even with interesting new objects you will find every few screens, Eden Blues is simply neither as fun nor original as ERE's other classics. Play The Great Escape instead if you want an escape-from-the-prison action game. | ||
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| El Enigma de Aceps [Sp] | Ace Software / Acessa | [top] | |
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This is a Spanish adventure game in which you must travel to the Cafax pyramids and Aceps, in pseudo-3D, to unravel the mystery of the curse of the pharaoh Aceps I. If you're new to the conversational genre, graphic references are as important as the written descriptions, with each room having its corresponding screen. The Amstrad CPC version has a digitized voice that accompanies us throughout the adventure. | ||
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| Forteresse [Fr] | Loriciels | [top] | |
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This is a graphical adventure game by a prolific French developer. It boasts digitized photos as location graphics, as well some digitized speech. The interface is icon driven with the actions like "go", "pick up" and "use" combined on the panel on top of the screen, which was made similar to Star Trap by the same company. There's no text prompt and no parser, the game text with the occasional choices is displayed on top of the picture. The game is set in medieval times, in the year 666, where Lord Angkor's daughter, Gwendolyne was kidnapped and imprisoned in a castle and locked in a suit of heavy armor, which is shown on the screen all the time. Your goal is to find the right keys to unlock the suit part by part, until the fair lady is free from her burden. But only one key can be carried at a time. It also features several labyrinths as game puzzles. | ||
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| Giant Killer | Topologika Software Ltd. | [top] | |
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The first software that the educational/interactive fiction/adventure game publisher Topologika released was Peter Killworth's classic text-only Maths game. The BBC Micro version sold in thousands to teachers and parents who wanted youngsters (8 to 14-ish) to think about Maths in a picture-free, problem-solving environment. It was rapidly followed by Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC and PCW, Atari and PC incarnations. It's just what young mathematicians need in today's over-structured and often demoralizing National Curriculum. It was later made available as freeware. | ||
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| Guild of Thieves, The | Magnetic Scrolls / Rainbird Software | [top] | |
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Successor of Commodore blockbuster The Pawn, Magnetic Scrolls' Guild of Thieves improves upon its predecessor in almost every respect, although the charming tongue-in-cheek humor of the first game is somewhat muted here by a much stronger emphasis on puzzle solving than plot development. Which is not to say that the plot in this is lacking - it is just average. The game casts you in a role of an apprentice thief who must steal an array of valuables to prove that he is worthy of an entrance into the guild of his profession. Tasks start out small - pilfering small objects here and there - and culminate in the robbery of the Bank of Kerovnia. Anyone who wished that The Pawn's were longer and more puzzle-intensive will have a field day with Guild of Thieves. The game serves a plethora of many, many more diabolical puzzles than The Pawn, many of which require both perfect timing and ingenuity to solve. This is definitely not a game anyone can finish in a sitting (unless you can survive days perched on a chair, eating food with one hand and typing with another). The game also offers many enhanced features, most notably the advanced parser which understands a lot more useful verbs. The "goto x" command, for example, will bring you to a location you have been before automatically by taking the shortest possible route. You do not need to draw maps anymore, unless the geometry of the landscape is crucial for solving some puzzles. Of special mention is the gradual increase in difficulty that, in a way, serves as a "tutorial" for beginners. The first treasures can be found and removed easiliy, but the difficulty of the puzzles gradually increases. Anyone who manages to rob the Bank of Kerovnia at the end can be proud with good reason. Overall, this is a great game, especially if you like puzzle-intensive adventures without much attention to plot (similar to Zork). Anyone looking for a more plot-intensive game should play The Pawn and even Jinxter first and save this difficult challenge for later. In 1991, Virgin Interactive released The Magnetic Scrolls Collection Vol 1, containing new versions of The Guild of Thieves, Corruption and Fish! that took advantage of the Magnetic Windows engine. In 2017, a Remastered version was released by Strand Games adapted for modern PCs and mobiles, with a vastly improved UI. Features include: Touch-Text Commands; Tap "links" in the text to perform commands without typing; Game specific word suggestion; Tap suggested words from the word bar during input to save time; Sidebar Inventory; All your things are conveniently listed in a sidebar - Drag and drop to use them or to apply them to things in the main text; Dynamic Map - No need to draw out the map, we do it for you. As you explore the game, the map page will expand. Tap any previous room on the map to "fast-goto" that location; Quickly navigate with a handy compass gadget. It shows the available exits at all times, simply tap to move. The new facilities make the original game fun and entertaining to play on modern devices. No more dead ends; the remaster has multi-level undo, save/load game and automatic undo from dying. There's also the original artwork, the animated artwork and new music from the original artist John Molloy. | ||
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| Indiana Jones in Revenge Of The Ancients | Angelsoft, Inc. / Mindscape, Inc. | [top] | |
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You're world-famous explorer Indiana Jones, in search of a lost civilization in one of the earliest computer game licenses of the hit movie ever made. The premise in Revenge of the Ancients somewhat parallels the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark, although fortunately with enough differences so as not to spoil anything for fans of the movie. Hack your way through the steaming, tangled Mexican jungle. Fight off the onrush of vertigo as you grope through the treacherous, tunnel maze in the treasure-laden Tepotzteco Pyramid. Tighten your grip as you dangle from the wing of an airborne World War I DeHavilland. Whatever it takes, INDIANA JONES, you must stop the cruel Nazi, Plebinheim, and his SS thugs from unleashing the power of the Mazatec Power Key against the world. Vicious bats, venomous snakes, marauding bandits - even for the daring INDIANA JONES, this is going to be tough. The game is a cliff-hanger similar to Angelsoft's earlier Dick Francis, only a bit inferior due to lack of as many real-time puzzles. Still, it stands as one of the best Angelsoft releases, and Indiana Jones fans will immediately recognize both the physical puzzles (most of which must be solved in a certain number of turns) and riddle-based ones. | ||
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| Jinxter | Magnetic Scrolls / Rainbird Software | [top] | |
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Aquatania has recently become the land of misfortunes, due to a group of plotting witches. The task of finding five charms and a magic bracelet to put things right falls on you. And you need a change of luck, because events in this game often emphasise the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. You get hit by a car, fall a great height, sprayed with cheese sandwich and more. Being the guinea pig in this strange world will drive you insane - if this jinxed land doesn't do it first. Jinxter is an interactive fiction with graphics title that takes a realistic world of people and situations, and then plays with the boundaries to create a strange and puzzling world. Characters are all getting on with their own tasks, and getting them to help you is usually a case of making sure something's in it for them. Dialogue aims to add a comic touch to proceedings. Puzzles can often be solved in multiple ways, but the most obvious way is not always the correct one. Due to the presence of a Guardian, you can't actually die. This third adventure from MagneticScrolls continues the company's reputation as one of the most inventive creators of interactive fiction. The game's contents included an assortment of items that rivals Infocom's in terms of "freebie" quality: a floppy disk containing the game, a copy o f a fictional newspaper called "The Independent Guardian" which doubles as a game manual, a standard registration form, and a beermat. Literally, the game is simply brilliant. All the descriptions of places, things, people and events are long, some taking several on-screen pages. All of them are written with tongue-in-cheek humor that fans of the Monty Python will appreciate. The parser is much improved over the already excellent one used in previous games, and understands multiple sentences, pronouns, "all" and "except" constructions, and more. The puzzles, as usual, are very imaginative, and there is no maze in sight - a great feature common to all Magnetic Scrolls games that really attests to their mastery of the genre. In 2019, Jinxter Revived was released by Strand Games which restored and improved the game and adapted it for modern devices, with a vastly improved UI. Features: Ten new illustrations for locations; Touch-Text Commands - Tap "links" in the text to perform commands without typing; Game specific word suggestion - Tap suggested words from the word bar during input to save time; Sidebar Inventory - All your things are conveniently listed in a sidebar with icons. Drag and drop to use them or to apply them to things in the main text; Dynamic Map - No need to draw out the map, we do it for you. As you explore the game, the map page will expand. Tap any previous room on the map to "fast-goto" that location; Compass Rose - Quickly navigate with a handy compass gadget. It shows the available exits at all times, simply tap to move; Ambient Sounds - Some locations have background sounds, making them more realistic. The new facilities make the original game fun and entertaining to play on modern mobiles. No more dead ends; the remaster has multi-level undo as well as save/load game. | ||
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| Karma [Fr] | Loriciels | [top] | |
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This rare French adventure has very elegant, very stylized, images which contributes heavily to create a very surreal atmosphere. However, it only has 4-color CGA graphics. Karma is an evil planet with various monsters where a man has crash landed. However, Karma was not like this before...technology has put nature out of harmony. Your role is to find a temple that will bring you the truth about what happened, and for that you need to convince the samurai and other characters equally improbable. Each adventure is different because at the beginning, the engine generates a different planet Karma. Then, the trips are just like dialogues. This game differs greatly from traditional adventure games. The manual has provided the time was considered succint. The game included the ability to press 'H' on keyboard if you were playing the game at work so if the boss arrived, he'd only see an Excel spreadsheet on the computer. | ||
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| Kingdom Of Hamil | Jonathan Partington / Topologika | [top] | |
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An ambitious fantasy IF that is captivating yet frustrating at the same time, Kingdom of Hamil is a cliché regain-your-rightful-throne game done right: with plenty of good writing, atmosphere, and even some plot development-- a rare thing indeed for a Topologika game. Hamil also differs from other Topologika titles in that it is actually more user friendly. While the game is still as hard as IF goes, there are many more clues and hints that an astute player will be able to see (or read between the lines). This makes solving puzzles a less frustrating experience. It is also not as long as some Topologika titles (e.g. Acheton), making it more manageable. I especially like the mathematics-inspired puzzles that require both deduction and some math skills to solve - they are very clever, and quite memorable. Overall, Kingdom of Hamil is a fun game that is much more accessible than many of Topologika's offerings, although the parser is still very inflexible compared to Infocom's. In 1999, it was made freeware. | ||
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| Knight Orc | Level 9 Computing, Ltd. / Firebird Licensees Inc. | [top] | |
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Level 9's breakthrough game and the game that first showcases its new robust engine, Knight Orc was one of the first games to give a voice to a villain: in this case, you play an orc named Grindleguts, who was abandoned by his buddies after a night of (what else) partying. The orcs, caught unawares by a troop of human knights, arrange for a "Contest of Champions" to take place in the morning. They tie our anti-hero Grindleguts to a horse and give him a lance to defend himself. Then the trouble begins in earnest, as you must deal with one urgent life-or-death situation after another, and it is quite some time before you are free from gut-wrenching time constraints to deal with puzzles at a more leisurely pace. The puzzles, jokes, characters and parser are all up to par with the best that Infocom had to offer. I suspect that this game did not receive the props that it should have due to its subject manner - playing the "bad guy" didn't really become in style until Syndicate. While Grindleguts is a greedy, violent, angry little pit he is also a character worthy of our respect. Especially among the piles of spods he's running around with. I suspect that the background characters in Knight Orc are set to mirror the kind of individuals we (the gaming community) can't - in theory - stand or relate to in real life. Jocks, girls, urchins, soldiers... when that lot are in our world (a game) they should, naturally, be considered the outsiders. Knight Orc describes them with as much distaste as we normally get in "their" environments. If you take the time to enjoy this game - to smell the roses - Knight Orc will return your attention with an incredible amount of pleasure. Arguably the best game from Level 9, and a must-have. | ||
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| Kobayashi Naru | Mastertronic | [top] | |
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One of the strangest adventure games ever made, Kobayashi Naru (despite the misspelling on the box as Kobyashi Naru) has an innovative interface (choose a verb among icons and specific noun from the description of the scene to make sentences) but an incomprehensible plot (similar to Mastertronic's earlier Shard of Inovar). The game, which takes place on an alien planet, hardly makes any sense at all, especially because of the strange words like "klam" that you'll often hear in the game but have no idea of their meaning. Fortunately, easy puzzles help save the game from being an exercise in frustration. Play it only if you are curious about how convoluted a game can get. | ||
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| Legend Of The Sword | PSS / Silicon Software / Rainbird | [top] | |
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Legend of the Sword is a well-written fantasy adventure that was revolutionary in many ways for its time despite its being relatively unknown: fluid mouse support, on-screen map, compass rose, and some RPG elements such as random encounters and passage of day and night. The find-the-magical-sword plot is typical, but well-written. With engaging puzzles and many locations to explore, this is one of Rainbird's finest underdogs, and much better than its sequel Final Battle. | ||
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| Leisure Suit Larry in The Land Of The Lounge Lizards | Sierra On-Line | [top] | |
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First introduced in Softporn Adventure, Larry Laffer became the star of a funny
series of adult point-and-click adventures with sexual situations aplenty. This was one
of the first completely graphical adventure games with 16 color EGA graphics. It used the Adventure Game Interpreter (AGI) engine and was later remade with VGA graphics in 1991.
Larry is a 38-year old virgin. After leaving behind his geeky life, he decides to visit
the sinful city of Lost Wages, experience what he hasn't lived before, and find the
woman of his dreams. Locations within the city include a casino-hotel, a disco, a
convenience store, a cheap vegas-style wedding chapel, and Lefty's Bar. Larry's quest
involves four women: a prostitute (which leaves Larry's need for love unsatisfied),
Fawn (a material girl of low moral fibre), Faith (a faithful girlfriend of someone
that is not Larry), and Eve (Larry's girl for this game). The game is realistic in that
the player has to take care of his money, which is spent whenever he travels with taxi
or buys things. A way to augment the amount, is to play in the casino Black Jack or
slot machines which is obligatory at least twice during play (perhaps the most infamous
sequences in the game). Because of the nature of the game, it featured an age
verification system, which consisted of a series of questions to which the authors
reasoned only adults would know the answer. Today, the game is regarded as the first
adult graphic adventure and the first comedy game for the PC. Sierra management was
unsure about how the game might be received and released the game without a publicity
or advertising budget. Many of the large computer chain stores refused to sell it,
finding the content unacceptable for their customers. Unsurprisingly, its first-month
sales were lower than any new Sierra product launch in years. However word-of-mouth
quickly spread. By year's end, it became a critical and commercial success, being
named the Software Publishers Association's "Best Fantasy, Role Playing or Adventure
Game of 1987" and selling over 250,000 copies.
Also see: #Leisure Suit Larry 1 VGA Remake |
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| Lurking Horror, The | Dave Lebling / Infocom | [top] | |
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This acclaimed horror text adventure was inspired by the horror writings of H.P. Lovecraft and wriiten by the co-writer of Zork. The game starts with the player trying to finish a term paper at G.U.E. Tech, a large MIT-like American University. The player has braved a snowstorm to travel to the school's computer lab to work on the report. The document is now mangled beyond repair, however; with the help of a hacker, the player finds that the file has been partially overwritten by the School of Alchemy's files. Although the game begins as a quest to try to salvage the term paper, alarming events soon unfold, revealing a powerful evil within the school's depths. What began as a mere snowstorm has strengthened into a full-force blizzard. Much of the campus is deserted and covered in snowdrifts, rendering walkways impassable. The only accessible avenues are steam tunnels and a small complex of buildings. In the course of unraveling the mystery, the player encounters demons, zombies and sinister references to a recent campus suicide. Failing to set things right in the hidden passages beneath the school will result in a literal fate worse than death. The Lurking Horror was one of Infocom's first titles to feature sound. Creepy sound effects would play at appropriate times in the game in an effort to intensify the horror atmosphere. This marked one of the only major additions to the Z-machine with the exception of graphics; traditionally, Infocom had scorned such changes in favor of expanding the parser capacity and overall size of game files. | ||
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| Maniac Mansion | Lucasfilm Games | [top] | |
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Maniac Mansion has become known among video game players and programmers for
its highly-acclaimed gameplay and its introduction of new ideas into gaming, including
multiple possible endings, multiple user-selectable characters with significantly
different abilities, and critical clues contained in numerous cut scenes. At the
start of the game, the hero, Dave Miller, finds that his girlfriend, Sandy Pantz, has
been abducted by Dr. Fred Edison, and sets out to save her, with two of his friends.
The player could select the friends from a group of six, and the game would play
somewhat differently depending on which friends were selected. The game was a parody
of the horror B-movie genre, featuring a secret lab, leftover tentacles, and an evil
mastermind. Unlike most adventure games, Maniac Mansion had several possible playable characters. The player controls Dave and two other characters, chosen from six
additional characters, each of whom has their own distinct skills and quirks. It was
notable for its multiple possible endings, depending on which characters the player
used (and which ones survived) and what those characters did. It was the first game
to use the SCUMM engine. In 1989, an enhanced version of Maniac Mansion with higher
resolution EGA graphics for the PC was released. It also spawned a very popular
sequel called Day Of The Tentacle and was even an animated tv series than ran for
several years.
See also: #Maniac Mansion Deluxe |
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| Metropolis | Arcadia Systems, Inc. / Mastertronic Group Ltd. | [top] | |
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An excellent and very innovative parser-based adventure game, Metropolis is probably the first PC game in history that offers digitized voices through PC speakers (predating Sierra's Silpheed and Access' Mean Streets by a few years). In this futuristic game, you play a security agent for giant software corporation IC&D, assigned to investigate crimes that have been committed in Metropolis. Gameplay is similar to Sierra's early AGI adventures such as King's Quest 3: you type commands in plain English and maneuver your character around with cursor keys. Once you solve a crime, you will gain access to the "zoom tube" to another level of the city, where another crime awaits your sleuthing skills. There are 10 crimes in all, each one more difficult than the last. The parser is not up to par with Infocom games, but it is adequate. One of the game's innovations is that it allows you to communicate in spoken English, as opposed to "TALK TO MAN" or "ASK MAN ABOUT X" in most interactive fiction games. You can use phrases like "do you know where the disk is?" and "I would like to buy a disk please." The irony is that the game will often understand ONLY such sentences - simple ones such as "BUY DISK" will not work. In contrast to most adventure games, the crimes are solved mostly by asking the right questions, not by using items in your inventory. This makes Metropolis perhaps the world's first conversation-driven game, and the results are surprisingly good. The plot unravels at a good pace, and there are many futuristic gadgets to use, and interesting droids to talk to, that you'll likely forget about the absence of inventory-based puzzles. All in all, a wonderfully original, innovative, and captivating underdog that deserves much more than its obscure status. | ||
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| Meurtres en Série [Fr] | Hitech Productions / Cobra Soft | [top] | |
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Serial Murders is another game in the series of Murder On The Atlantic, Murders In Venice, and Murders In Space. A few miles from Guernsey, some crimes have devastated the Anglo-Norman tiny island of Sark. You play a detective charged with solving the murders, but you only have 8 hours to overcome the mystery. You'll discover clues in Celtic legends, treasure hunting, and a gold rush, all in real time. | ||
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| Mewilo [Fr] | Coktel Vision | [top] | |
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This is a 1st person point & click adventure game that plays on the Caribbean island Martinique. You, an expert in paranormal phenomena, arrive by ship at the town St Pierre on Martinique on May 7, 1902, a day before volcano Mount Pelée will erupt and destroy the town. You are invited by your friends, Geneviève and Michel Hubert-Destouches to investigate what is happening in their house, which seems to be haunted by a zombie. It's your task to find out what has happened and to find a way to let your friends live in peace again. With a "colibri cursor" you can click on a map to visit various locations on the island (thanks to your own paranormal abilities you can explore places as a colibri). By investigating/interrogating the player also learns about the history of the island (especially during an extensive multiple choice puzzle). Some of the puzzles require that the player types in the right answer. The game has a small inventory (with three slots) and a scoring system with a maximum of 99 points. It includes some animations, music and sound. It was published in a German and French version. The manual includes a short story by the Martinician author Patrick Chamoiseau and a calalou recipe; the package contains an audio tape by the Martinician band Malavoi. | ||
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| Moses: Old Testament Adventure #1 | Three Rivers Software / First Row Software Publishing, Inc. | [top] | |
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In this Christian adventure game, you assume the role of Moses, who must free his people, the Israelites, from slavery in Egypt. A text adventure, with optional graphics. Follows the book of Exodus very closely, and the "hint" feature usually directs you to read a particular passage. The game itself is quite short and relatively easy, with much of the important parts of the story presented as several screens of non-interactive text. Many of the early "puzzles" involve addressing places or people by name. Unintentionally funny at times. | ||
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| Murdac / Monsters Of Murdac | Jonathan Partington & Jon Thackray / Topologika | [top] | |
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Murdac (by Avon designers Thackray and Partington) sees you flying off to the ancient land of Murdac. Your mission? To discover its secrets with the help - if you can call it that - of the old, wily witch Duessa. True to the game's opening paragraph, "...in this challenging game you'll meet ogres, cannibals, the Old Man of the Sea, endless hours of trudging until you come across a beatifully laid out garden and a small stone hut - where the secrets of Murdac will begin to be revealed!" Murdac is in many ways a typical Topologika game: a "pure puzzle" adventure with hardly any plot development or character interaction. Puzzles are even more difficult than those in Avon, and requires the player to be very patient with a limited parser (which can't understand some simple verbs, e.g. EXAMINE), and be very observant of room descriptions, which usually contain a clue or two about the current puzzle. All in all, a fun dungeon romp that's worth a visit if you like Zork, although it is nowhere near as addictive. In 1999, it was made freeware. | ||
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| Nine Princes In Amber, Roger Zelazny's | Trillium Corp. | [top] | |
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This interactive fiction game is based on Roger Zelazny's fantasy novels Nine Princes In Amber (1970) and The Guns of Avalon (1972). The game begins with you as Prince Corwin forced to compete against your eight scheming noble brothers and sisters for the throne of Amber at the center of the one true world. Corwin must travel across the dimensions to this fascinating realm and from there rally forces against those who would oppose him. Unfortunately, things do not always proceed as planned. When you wake up, you know little of this, as you have been knocked unconscious and pummeled with drugs. All you have is the address of your scheming sister. The game is largely based around interaction with other characters, and can end in 40 different ways depending on how these work. It's one of the better Telarium games and as in the novel, you will travel from the real world into the fascinating fantasy world of Amber, where things are similar to our 20th century world, but imbued with subtle differences as only our minds can create. It deserves recognition for being one of the first (if not THE first) Telarium games to break the mold of action/adventure blend the company is known for. Instead of enduring another pointless maze or endure an action sequence, you will instead need to focus on how best to interact with your brothers and other characters to win their favor (or be rid of them, if they simply won't help). The parser, although still limited, is now expanded to understand a lot more communicative verbs, such as FLATTER, CONFESS, and CONTACT - all of which you need to use to win the game. Observing the personalities of other characters is therefore key to winning the game. And as icing on the cake, there are also several fun, non-maze mini-games: most notably the Mind Game which requires you to THINK of various objects, and the Pattern game at the end that will take a while to master. Overall, it is a fun, well-written, and enjoyable game that will please fans of the novels, although the lack of a good background story and plot development will confuse those who are not familiar with the series. | ||
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| Nord And Bert Couldn't Make Head Or Tail Of It | Jeff O'Neill / Infocom | [top] | |
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A collection of interactive short stories, all revolving around the common theme of restoring the town of Punster, and based on the idea that you can alter the nature of reality merely by engaging in wordplay with it. The concept is difficult to explain, so some examples from the game's sample transcript may illustrate it without giving away any of the actual story. You wake up, knocking over your alarm clock and a glass of water. The only way to avoid the debris is to get up on the wrong side of the bed. Asked to mail your father's tax return, you discover you can't find it. But that scruffy guy in the corner with the IRS tee shirt, who you're told is barely male can be transmogrified with the homonym "mail". The return isn't stamped? You can fix that by Spoonerizing your father's stone lamp into a lone stamp. And so on. To prevent this from becoming incredibly confusing, each short story deals with only one specific type of wordplay. The stories can be played in any order, except for Meet the Mayor, which must come last. The parser is a bit better than the usual Infocom one. Compass directions and mapping are dispensed with entirely, as the Status Line [i.e. Infocom's newsletter] constantly lists all the areas that you can travel directly to. As the maps are generally small (one story has only two locations), the map can be easily internalized in the player's mind. The puzzles are not the very best. The nature of such a game means that many of the puzzles will be of the "guess what the author is thinking" type. Also, since the puzzles don't necessarily build on each other, but often stand separately, you may finish a story only to be told that there were more things you could have done, and be forced to return later. However, since ALL versions of Nord & Bert have on-screen hints, there is no chance of getting permanently stuck. The real strength of the game is in its Writing and Atmosphere. The mood created is delightfully surreal, and the constant clever descriptions and responses make this one of the best "reading" text games ever produced. Text game players like to argue that well-written text produces more evocative images than graphic games do. Nord and Bert goes beyond this, not merely doing things BETTER than a graphics game could, but doing things that a graphics game could never do at all. Definitely one of Infocom's most underrated classics. | ||
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| Pharaon [Fr] | Loriciels | [top] | |
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An unusual adventure game that mixes interactive fiction, arcade, and puzzles. As a professor of archaeology at Washington University, we discover that an ancient Egyptian pharaoh named Acktheon had possessed 'the formula for antimatter' buried with him in his tomb - and out task is to get to that treasure before other colleagues, starting in Cairo and traveling to Giza and to Abu Simbel through the desert. Despite the limited palette (CGA in PC version), the game utilizes digitized pictures. The commands are to be entered using the keyboard, although some of them, the most commonly used, are represented also by icons that could be activated with the cursor keys. There are two mini-games present as well - a small 'Space Invaders' clone and a timed maze puzzle. | ||
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| Plundered Hearts | Infocom | [top] | |
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Plundered Hearts is one of the most underrated Infocom classics ever. Aside from the fact that it's set in an unusual (and very intriguing) setting (17th century Caribbean seas), the game is most notable for being the only Infocom game in the romance genre, and is therefore arguably the first computer game designed with women gamers in mind. This romance novel set in the 1600's has you having to rescue your father from the clutches of an evil island governor with the aid of a pirate captain who lights your fire. The writing feels very much like a Harlequin novel, with enough amusing puzzles and clever responses to keep a a non-romance-novel-reader interested to the end. The puzzles are a little easier than the standard Infocom fare, but generally interesting ones that can be reasoned or inferred. There are few "guess what the author is thinking puzzles". The game's strongest point though is in its characterization of you, the player, more than any other of Infocom's offerings. In most Infocom games, who YOU are is either unimportant or doesn't affect the plot much. Disguising your identity and altering your appearance is important in several places to elicit a desired reaction from other characters (not to mention avoiding some undesired reactions). It's one of Infocom's more underrated games. A very good blend of puzzle solving and story. | ||
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| Police Quest: In Pursuit Of The Death Angel | Sierra On-Line | [top] | |
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As opposed to Sierra's other popular series like King's Quest, Space Quest,
and Leisure Suit Larry comical adventures, Police Quest is a more serious police
simulation adventure. PQ1 was made to be as realistic as possible. So in order to
book the criminals you will have to follow strict police procedures, fail in this and the
criminals may walk. You play the role of Sonny Bonds, a rookie cop with a glorious
future waiting. You work at the main police station in Lytton, a quiet and friendly
town. Until the day when the druglord Jesse Bains decides to use the town as his
playing field. You get assigned the mission to haul him in and put him behind bars.
This game gives you an in depth view into the lives of real police officers, and it
is not an easy life. Sonny has the ability to patrol Lytton in his squad car. He
can roam freely through the city and chase down speeders and drunk drivers. Danger
lurks in every part of the town. A good tip is to save
often. The game might be difficult at first, but do not give up. It is a great
game, when you get the hang of it. It was created with the assistance of retired
police officer Jim Walls.
Also see: #Police Quest 1 VGA Remake |
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| Rescate [Sp] | Proein Soft Line | [top] | |
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This is a little known Spanish adventure which means Rescue. It's a conversational text adventure with CGA graphics (second palette). The peculiarity is that, by pressing F1, a list of apparently all available commands that is recognized by the game shows and can be used to successfully complete our mission. María Salcedo, a prestigious Spanish correspondent, who was stationed in Africa on a special mission, has mysteriously disappeared. According to the latest news, there is the possibility that she has been kidnapped by a revolutionary terrorist group that has been acting in the country in recent days. Her boyfriend has gone to Cape Town to find out what really happened. There is a flag with directions available at all times, with the additional advantage of being able to use the cursor keys to indicate the place to which we're going. Rescue is a fun adventure, with good graphics, and has a good speed at which events unfold. | ||
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| Robinson Crusoe [Fr] | Coktel Vision | [top] | |
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Based on the famous book, this graphical adventure plays much like a multiple-choice story book. You start out as Robinson, waking up on a deserted beach. Your main objective now is to survive in your new and unfamiliar environment. The vividly illustrated screens present you with multiple choices concerning your next action, interspersed with small flashes of animation. Your first objective is to rescue supplies from your sinking ship and to build a shelter, then to adapt to day-to-day life on the island, which might not be entirely uninhabited. Getting around the game is dependent on carrying out the correct actions in the correct order, or Mother Nature and other forces will meddle, eventually leading to Robinson's unceremonious death. Since the game is close to the original story, a copy of Daniel Defoe's book will serve as a useful cheating guide. | ||
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| Romantic Encounters At The Dome | MicroIllusions | [top] | |
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A novel and intriguing attempt to model real-life dating that doesn't quite pull it off, it seems like a perfect program for anyone who has been rejected by his or her date one too many times: as member of the exclusive Romantic Encounters club, here is your chance to court members of the opposite sex in hopes of satisfying your desires... temporarily. The game lets you play as either male or female, or read the thorough introduction to the game in "guest" mode. Each game session starts you in the reception area, where you are told of how many encounters are waiting for you, and in what room. Gameplay is familiar interactive fiction fare: the game's parser is adequate, and can understand complex sentences such as "MAKE A PASS AT THIS GIRL" or "WOULD YOU LIKE TO DANCE?" There is no puzzle to speak of, however, as all your time is spent in various rooms, trying to strike up conversation with different guests and trying to impress them enough to "score" (pun intended). Each encounter either ends with your desires being quenched, or rejection from your date, after which you end up again at the reception area and are given an opportunity to choose another encounter. Pressing "G" at the start also brings up a shortcut menu that lists all the encounters in the game, and all its variations and stages. This allows you to replay scenes that you failed earlier, or try a different move on the person. It is difficult to say whether Romantic Encounters is a "good" game. On the one hand, its concept is very unique, and the writing is usually above-par or even excellent in some areas. The game is also definitely very different from "X"-rated or even mild porn titles: even the most revealing descriptions are "R" rated at best, and the game never descends into tasteless descriptions of carnal acts. On the other hand, the seemingly intelligent parser is quirky, and is very picky on your syntax being the exact phrasing it is looking for. This means that, although each person you can date has different personalities, it is difficult to figure out what to type to yield the expected results, let alone what your date wants from you. This obscurity makes the game very frustrating at times, although the brevity (each date session lasts only about 15-20 minutes of play time) fortunately helps. Overall, it's a commendable attempt at a serious dating simulation. Still, as the only game of its kind (Tsunami's Man Enough years later is a lot more shallow), it is worth playing a few times for uniqueness' sake. Just don't expect it to help you become Don Juan overnight. If you are looking for a solid and much more logical life simulation, play Alter Ego or even Executive Suite instead. | ||
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| Shadowgate | ICOM Simulations, Inc. / Mindscape, Inc. | [top] | |
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Using the same graphical interface as Deja Vu, Shadowgate is an adventure game set in a fantasy world. Players take the part of an adventurer sent to the ancient keep of Shadowgate on a quest to find a mystic artifact known as the Staff of Ages and stop the evil Warlock Lord from summoning a horrific demon known as the Behemoth. However Shadowgate has become infested with the Warlock Lord's demonic minions, not to mention the castle's still functional booby-traps. Unlike Deja Vu, death comes at you suddenly, unexpectedly, and most of all OFTEN. Such simple acts as pulling the wrong switch or opening the wrong door can cause you to be skewered by a booby-trap or disemboweled by a monster. It's allso worth mentioning the fact that if your torch burns out (this happens quite regularly) and you forget to light a new one, you'll trip in the dark and break your neck. A Windows 3.x update to this game was created in 1991 and many years later ICOM came back as Infinite Ventures, and has updated the game to a Windows 95 version in addition to versions for mobiles. There was a sequel called Beyond Shadowgate but it was released only on the TurboGrafx 16 system. In 2015, a MacVenture Series PC release contained both the original Macintosh 128k black and white, and Apple IIGS 4-bit color versions. In 2017, 8-bit Adventure Anthology: Volume I was released with remakes of Shadowgate, The Uninvited and Déjà Vu with a new 8-bit style menu, beautifully composed chip tunes and the most outstanding ‘old TV’ effects you’ve ever seen. | ||
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| Shard Of Inovar | Mastertronic | [top] | |
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Another solid fantasy adventure based on the Kobyashi Naru engine, Shard of Inovar is a more traditional adventure. You are a royal wizard who must invoke various rituals to reconstruct the cairnrue, a magical barrier that protects the earth from pestilence that falls from the sky. The game's interface is basically identical to Inovar, but with additional verbs and more logical placement of verb icons (thank goodness). The puzzles are easy and fair, and the plot is interesting enough to warrant playing to the end. Overall, a pleasant adventure that doesn't offer anything new, but is competent at what it does. | ||
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| Sherlock: The Riddle Of The Crown Jewels | Challenge Inc. / Infocom | [top] | |
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Bob Bates' first game for Infocom (before the much better Arthur and his more famous role as the founder and designer of Legend Entertainment) showcases his talent in writing and attention to detail, but sadly falls flat as a game due to very obscure puzzles and lack of direction. In this game that follows in the footsteps of the world's mose famous fictional detective, it lets you play the role of Doctor Watson, Holmes' trusted companion. You have received an urgent summons from the Prime Minister that is, naturally, of national importance: the royal family's Crown Jewels have been stolen, and you have only 48 hours to solve the crime before the Golden Jubilee procession. Although the game consistently evokes Victorian London just as Holmes would have seen it, thanks to Bob Bates' intensive research and writing excellence, Sherlock doesn't really succeed as a game. For starters, the game's excuse for not letting you play the famous detective himself is a bit illogical: Holmes turns the investigation to you, Watson, because he wants to throw the villain off guard (riddles left at the scene of the crime include a direct challenge to Holmes, who suspects a deadly trap). Much of the game involves travelling all over London (and there are dozens of places you can go right away, adding to the confusion) to find similar objects whose use won't become apparent until the last portion of the game. The riddle which the thief left at the scene serves as the game's "meta-puzzle" and overall direction of what you should be doing next, but most gamers will probably find it too obscure. Most disappointingly, Holmes rarely interacts with you in the game, and since most puzzles resemble a scavenger hunt, there is no room for Holmes to display his legendary deductive powers. The game will probably appeal only to IF experts and die-hard Holmesians who can decipher a huge amount of obscure puzzles. For a more accessible Holmesian game (although admittedly not as true to his mythos), try Bantam's Another Bow or EA's Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes instead. | ||
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| Sidewalk / Renauld | Infogrames Multimedia SA | [top] | |
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You are supposed to take your girlfriend to the Live Aid rock concert tonight; unfortunately, thieves have stolen and dismantled your motorcycle. You realise this at 3pm, and must find and reassemble all the parts in order to arrive at your girl's home by 7.30pm. Fail, and she will go with the loathsome John instead. The game is a time-limited adventure, in which you must walk through the mean city streets, by directing the player sprite into, out of and across the screen. When you meet people you are told of their physique and job, and can interrogate them about your bike (resulting in set dialogues), run away, or fight. This results in a one-on-one beat 'em up element, with punches, kicks and a headbutt available. Your strength is represented by a glass of beer going from full to empty - when it's empty you are dead. There is a bar in which to recharge your energy (the dangers of riding a motorcycle after drinking alcohol have not been incorporated into this logic). | ||
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| Silicon Dreams Trilogy (Snowball, Eden, Worms In Paradise) | Level 9 Computing / Rainbird | [top] | |
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This is a trilogy of sci-fi games that is comprised of Snowball, Return to Eden, and The Worm in Paradise (released originally in 1983, 1984 and 1986 respectively). All three games follow the exploits of Kim Kimberly, the legendary secret agent and space pilot. In Snowball, you must stop a colony spaceship from crashing into the destination planet Eden. After reaching Eden in Return to Eden, escape the city of Enoch from false accusers and emerge a hero. Finally in The Worm in Paradise, you are called to investigate the government's dark secrets. The parser is a substantial improvement over the one used in Jewels of Darkness: despite the limiting verb-noun constraint, you can now type HELP to get helpful hints on various puzzles in the game and general gameplay information. Return to Eden is the best in this series, with good puzzles and well-written locations. Snowball has graphics for the first time, and the other two games have more graphics than before, and some longer text descriptions are added to all 3 games. | ||
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| Space Quest II: Vohaul's Revenge | Sierra On-Line | [top] | |
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What do you get when you mix a cowardly hero/janitor, overgrown apes, and an
evil plot to destroy Xenon with life-insurance salesmen? Why, you get Space Quest 2:
Vohaul's Revenge, the second game in the prestigious Space Quest series. It thrusts
you into the position of the space janitor from the first game. Though the player can
choose his or her own name, the default name is Roger Wilco. Apparently, Roger's glory
from saving Xenon in the first game has since faded, and after numerous attempts to
cash in on his glory, he has taken up a posting as a janitor on Xenon Orbital Station
4. A rather boring post for such a hero. Fortunately, things get a little spiced up
for our hero, as he is soon kidnaped by an evil villain named (here's where the
subtitle comes from) Sludge Vohaul. Never met him? If one will recall, the dying
scientist onboard the Arcada in Space Quest 1 was named Slash Vohaul. Sludge, his evil
deformed brother, is rather peeved at Roger for saving the day in Space Quest 1 and
destroying his weapon of mass destruction, the Star Generator. He decides to take
revenge on Roger Wilco and Roger's home planet of Xenon. The brave (brave meaning
cowardly) janitor is sentenced to live out the rest of his life doing hard labor on
the jungle planet of Labion, and Xenon is to meet a far more horrible fate - infestation
by door-to-door life insurance salesmen! Through circumstances beyond his control,
Roger manages to escape. Left alone on a backwater planet, he must find a way to escape
and stop Vohaul's dastardly plan.
Also see: #Space Quest II VGA Fan Remake |
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| SRAM [Fr] | ERE Informatique | [top] | |
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Sram (March in French backwards) was designed in 9 months by 3 people: father and son Serge and Ludovic Hauduc respectively and Jacques HEMONIC. Ludovic is responsible for the design development tools, using the only methods of programming for Amstrad in this period (Basic and assembler), which has compressed enough screens to keep them on a double disk (360K total). Graphics have also been designed by freehand joystick. Ludovic was also the author of the parser that allowed a minimum of three different answers for whatever question. You play as an adventurer. Somewhere on a planet of the Third Kind, a policy reversal affects the lives of people. A hermit and a witch you call for help and the adventure begins. You must navigate a wacky world and retrieve tools as you browse levels. | ||
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| SRAM 2 [Fr] | ERE Informatique | [top] | |
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In this sequel to Sram, Cinomeh the evil priest was banished to the mountains, where he formed as a black magician. He returns and puts a curse on the player, "Knight weathercock", who is now his slave. Now that Egres IV is in power again, he repays your kindness by ruling through tyranny, oppressing his people and using sorcery. The only way to stop him is to kill him – but in a rather unusual way, by making what is known in France as 'la galette des rois', or 'the kings' cake' – a cake with a bean hidden inside it. You start in a crypt, where the only ways out are to open the tombs contained within it. | ||
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| Star Trek: The Rebel Universe | Simon & Schuster Interactive / Firebird Software | [top] | |
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Take control of the starship Enterprise in this conversion of a good Commodore 64 game, which tried too hard to be everything -- taken separately, none of the action, strategy, and adventure elements are truly on par with the best in respective genres. But the whole in this case is greater than the sum of its part, and the game has that strange, alluring quality to keep you playing. Starfleet Command has temporarily contained an explosive Federation mutiny by erecting a Klein Sphere. Your five year mission: Halt the Klingon instigated rebellion and render the solar systems within the Sphere safe for Federation vessels. | ||
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| Stationfall | Steven Meretzky / Infocom | [top] | |
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The game is a sequel to Planetfall, one of Infocom's most popular titles. What a trotting krip! Since your incredible heroics in Planetfall, where you risked life and limb to save the planet Resida, things have hardly changed at all. Sure, you were promoted to Lieutenant First Class, but this only meant that your dull life of cleaning grotch cages was replaced by an equally dull life of paperwork. Now you've got another assignment tailor- made for a grotchbrain: pilot a spacetruck to a nearby station to pick up a load of trivial forms. Trot and double trot! But all is not lost. By a happy twist of fate, your companion for the journey is your old pal Floyd. That's right, it's the same mischievous little robot, crayons and paddleball at the ready, who was your helpful buddy in Planetfall. Getting to the space station is easy. But once there, you find it strangely deserted. Even the seedy space village surrounding the station is missing its ragtag tenants. A spooky alien ship carrying only an empty pedestal rests in a docking bay. An ostrich and an Arcturian balloon creature are found, abandoned but in perfect health. The commander's log describes the mysterious breakdown of machinery, demonstrated by a roving hull-welder who seems bent on your destruction. And finally even Floyd begins acting oddly. | ||
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| Supernova | Apogee Software, Ltd. | [top] | |
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Scott Miller's Supernova is an atmospheric, well-written IF that was sadly ignored by the gaming public, perhaps due to the fact that their publisher Apogee is better known as an action game publishing house. Which is a shame, because besides being one of the very first games Apogee released (along with Beyond The Titanic), it is a well-written game with a good parser, in-game help function, and logical puzzles. This game was among the first IF to incorporate sound effects and effective use of colored text. Supernova casts you as a poor miner on a remote space mining colony about to embark on a strange adventure. To their credit, Apogee released the game as freeware in March 1998, although they couldn't find a way to make the games savable to hard drive - so you still need a floppy to save games. | ||
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| Sydney Affair, The | Infogrames Multimedia SA | [top] | |
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Promoted to a rank of Senior Sergeant of Investigations Brigade in Saint-Etienne (Loire), you've already proved yourself in L'affaire Vera Cruz (The Vera Cruz Affair). Your chiefs rest all their hopes upon your abilities and commit a new case to you, L'affaire Sydney (The Sydney Affair). Mr. James Sydney has just been shot in the head. The assassin, who fired from the opposite building, should know the habits of the victim, because (s)he spent all the day at the same place there... So you go with your team to the crime scene to collect the clues and follow the possible traces. The game as its predecessor flows in two parts: crime scene investigation to collect the evidence, and work with telex machine to gain information about possible suspects. The crime scene now includes two screens (street with Sydney's body and assassin's apartment). You should collect all possible evidence moving the marker on the screen and examining the objects scattered at the scenes as well as the body itself. With telex machine you should perform investigation according to the police procedures. Different actions are possible here such as sending messages within Diamond Network to receive the replies, printing the notes, contacting other Police services to gain the new information, comparing the evidences, carrying out examinations such as autopsy, interviewing/checking the alibis of suspects, and arresting finally. To specify the subject for each action you should type it. | ||
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| Talisman: Challenging the Sands of Time | Polarware / Penguin Software, Inc. | [top] | |
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One of the few games set in exotic Arabia, Talisman combines the well-known Arabian myths of genies and evil vizors into a captivating game. As a Persian hero, find the legendary Talisman to destroy the evil genie who is ravaging the land. Puzzles are logical but made more memorable by their Arabian references. The parser is simple by adequate, and the storyline is captivating to the end. When the game starts, you are in prison and about to be executed. With your head already on the chopping block, the execution is halted by order of King Darius. He grants you freedom when you destroy the evil genie. He sends you on your journey with a bag of gold and the vizier Abu who will keep an eye on you. Talisman is an interactive fiction with graphics that allows for full-sentence parsing. The packaging includes an "Arabian Express" credit card and an advertisement leaflet from Muhammad's Market, containing ads for flying carpets. | ||
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| Three Musketeers, The | American Action / Infogrames | [top] | |
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This is an interactive movie adventure based on the classic novel by Alexander Dumas. The arrow keys are used to move in the directions permitted. During a dialogue, the space bar is used to select the action and INPUT is clicked to confirm. Some objects are to be found at times, but the inventory is not visible. 'S' and 'C' can save and load a game. This is as limited as "Passengers On The Wind " with less colors. Indeed, only the CGA mode is recognized, and the mouse is not supported. At least recognize that the graphics are quite good for CGA. | ||
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| Top Secret [Fr] | Loriciels | [top] | |
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Since the news of coup d'etat in the province of Wago arrived, life became completely unbearable. The single resolution to save the peace of the country was to set up a secret organization which would be responsible for liberating the president, who was kidnapped and imprisoned during uprising. So you enlisted in this secret organization. Manu, one of the members of the organization, is your neighbour. Today, we are in the daytime of July 1st. But, suddenly, Manu has been stopped, and all network is dismantled. It is necessary to recover the equipment, to discover the passage and to drive the plan of Manu to the most complete success. But where to begin, towards whom to go, which persons is it necessary to contact? Typing in the sentences, you will visit city places including a bank, a bar, a garage, a newsstand, a small public garden, and a graveyard. For this, you have in the top of screen a directory of orders which you can choose with arrows of your keyboard and validate with the key COPY. Choosing an order you complete it with noun and progress in the game. | ||
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| Venom | Clive Wilson & Les Hogarth / Mastertronic | [top] | |
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The last Mastertronic adventure game disappointingly abandons the innovative icon-based interface used in Kobayashi Naru and Shard of Inovar in favor of a words menu that you must scroll down relentlessly to find words you need to construct the sentence. Other than this nuisance, it's a solid fantasy adventure that starts you out as a weary traveller stopping by an inn for rest, without knowing dangers that lie within. | ||
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| Vera Cruz | Infogrames Multimedia SA | [top] | |
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You are Detective Sergeant in the Crime Squad at Saint Etienne (Loire). As an Officer of the Police, you are capable of leading any criminal investigation. As you took your post, you were called to investigate what the press are fast terming "L'affaire Vera Cruz" (The Vera Cruz Affair). Prostitute Vera Cruz sprawled on the floor in her "Forest" apartment was found by caretaker. The pool of blood poured from a bullet wound in her chest. It was believed to be a case of suicide with a gun as the weapon involved. But you have to prove that it was a murder. The gameplay flows in two parts: crime scene investigation to collect the evidence, and work with telex machine to gain information about possible suspects. At the crime scene, you should collect all possible evidence moving the marker on the screen and examining the objects scattered at the scene as well as the body itself. With telex machine, you should perform investigation according to the police procedures. Different actions are possible here such as sending messages within Diamond Network to receive the replies, printing the notes, contacting other Police services to gain the new information, comparing the evidences, carrying out examinations such as autopsy, interviewing/checking the alibis of suspects, and arresting finally. To specify the subject for each action you should type it. The game was developed by a former police officer, Gilles Blancon, so you can vouch for its authenticity. | ||
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| Where Time Stood Still | Denton Designs / Ocean Software Ltd. | [top] | |
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From the eccentric makers of The Great Escape, this is a fun action adventure game that sports a much-improved engine used in the earlier game. In a plot that predates Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park by a few years, Where Time Stood Still casts you in a role of Jarret, the down-on-his-luck pilot who just crash-landed in a mysterious forest along with his three passengers. Now you are responsible for taking them out of this prehistoric hell-hole, and only one thing is certain - it's going to be no walk in the park. It's played from an isometric perspective. In addition to the innovative action/adventure gameplay of that game (e.g. you must try to keep the health meter full by avoiding or killing obstacles), it also lets you control all four characters. Jarret is a he-man all-rounder. Athletic Cambridge scholar Dirk was recently married to Gloria, a tough cookie in a fragile frame. And then there's Clive, an overweight businessman and Gloria's father, who's about to learn the hard way that his credit card is meaningless in a jungle. Each has the ability to carry up to four objects, one of which is a bag which can hold a further four. You'll need to exploit each character's strengths to bring everyone home safely. For example, Dirk is a great help providing Gloria survives, but if she dies, he becomes a hopeless fellow, lost in sadness. For such a vast and complex adventure, the game interface is remarkably simple and user-friendly. Although the graphics (in 4-color CGA) are nothing to write home about, they are adequate. The game's biggest problem is that you can't save a game, which means you'll spend a lot of time repeating the early stages when you make a fatal mistake. | ||
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| Zork Quest: Assault on Egreth Castle | Tom Snyder Productions, Inc. / Infocom | [top] | |
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This was one of the first interactive comic books (along with Lane Mastodon and Gamma Force). The unique element of this software was you could "follow" the narrative from a single character's point of view, or "jump" to another character's. Thus, you could re-read the story to learn new things about how the character's different paths affected each other and the outcome of the story. The display technology used a 3D vector format; Many scenes scaled (like zooming on a camera lens), although this sacrificed detailed graphical textures and colors. This Zork inspired comic acts more like a D&D novel, following a party of travelers as they enter and explore Egreth Castle. The lackluster consumer response was perhaps due to the then-primitive graphics technology and it was not conducive to engaging animations. But then again, the dismal sales of Marvel Comics CD-ROM comics much later may suggest that comics are best suited to a print medium after all. | ||
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Adventure related
| Alf: The First Adventure | Box Office, Inc. | [top] | |
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This was a budget release computer game based on the popular '80s television show of the same name. The player controls Alf, an alien who has crashed through the roof of the Tanner family garage. It has a Pac-Man resemblance where Alf has to run around the neighborhood collecting pizzas, catching cats (which is the alien's food) and find parts to fix your spaceship. He must avoid Willie, the Tanner's father who will take all items you have collected, and the dogcatcher which will mean game over for Alf. | ||
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| Blueberry / Lt. Blueberry | Coktel Vision / Infogrames | [top] | |
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Based on the French comic book character created by Jean-Michel Charlier and Jean Giraud, this is an interactive comic book. The game mixes graphical adventure (with digitized images from the graphic novels) and arcade sequences. The ageing Blueberry (also known as Mike) and his companion Jim McClure are searching Arizona for an abandoned gold mine, rumored to be near the Dead Horse Mesa. However, they know that the area surrounding the mine is cursed, and a spectre guards the mine. Many pitfalls await them, not least the native Indians and other ambushers... The game plays like a comic strip, while allowing you to make your own choices as to what you want to do next. There is also some arcade action where you must shoot enemies while avoiding being shot yourself – it's nice at first, but quickly becomes a real chore. The graphics are excellent, as one would expect from Coktel Vision, but the arcade sequences let the game down slightly. | ||
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| Defender Of The Crown | Master Designer Software, Inc. / Mirrorsoft, Mindscape | [top] | |
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Defender of the Crown puts you in the role of one of four Saxon knights in medieval England, in a time where the land is in turmoil as the King is dead and his crown was stolen. The Saxons and the Normans blame each other and fight for control of England. After a short introduction by Robin of Locksley himself, you start the game with a single castle and 10 soldiers at your command. From there, you have to build your army, take control of additional territories and fight the three Norman lords - and sometimes your Saxon friends as well. The game has several different styles: You may either engage in a jousting contest where you have to knock your opponent off his horse using a lance, you can go raid a castle for loot or you can attack another territory/castle. The game was originally created on the Amiga platform in 1986 by Cinemaware with wonderful graphics by James D. Sachs and great music by Jim Cuomo, then ported to the PC whilst keeping its original appeal and quality. It's unquestionably Cinemaware's best game, and one of the best Amiga games ever released (although the PC version offers no less gameplay, it pales in comparison to the vibrant graphics and amazing soundtrack of the Amiga version). What makes this game a classic is the masterful blend of action, adventure, and strategy game elements. The basic object is to take over all of medieval Britain by capturing the home castle of each leader. You do this with a campaign army made up of soldiers, knights, and catapults. Besides fighting other armies and taking over their castles, you can also conduct raids and participate in jousts, which can be played either for fame or for land. In a raid, you can raid a rivals castle for gold, or if the chance arrives, rescue a saxon maiden who will become your wife. Jousting experienced opponents can be a chore, as can the side-scrolling sword fights that take place during the raid or maiden rescue. But it still is one of the most atmospheric and truly cinematic games you'll likely find. As with all other Cinemaware games, beautifully drawn intermissions and cutscenes are included. A rarer EGA version of the game was released by Mirrorsoft which puts it on par with the Commodore 64 version, with vibrant graphics and the same gameplay that we all know and love. In 1989, a CD-Rom Version was released by Mirrorsoft in Europe with CD-quality music and voice dubbing. In 2002, a Digitally Remastered Collector's Edition was released which featured enhanced graphics and sounds effects that take advantage of modern technology. It also had never-before-seen screens and material that was cut from the original titles. | ||
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| Iznogoud | Infogrames | [top] | |
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This game is based on the adventures of the French comic book character Iznogoud. Many of the stories were written by the famous Rene Goscinny (Asterix, Lucky Luke). You are in the role of the Grand Vizier Iznogoud, whose only thought is to depose the Caliph of magical Baghdad and become "Caliph instead of the Caliph!" To accomplish this aim, you must wander around and interact with characters around you, acquiring objects along the way that may or may not be useful, and figure out how all this will help you achieve your goal. During the game, you have 4 different methods of interacting with other characters: you can give objects to them, you can threaten them, you can flatter them, and you can throw a tantrum. Depending on the character, these actions will elicit different responses - or none altogether. You will need objects for various things, and objects are all acquired from other characters. Some characters are helpful, others are not. But the right combination of your actions will help you to become Caliph instead of the Caliph, while the wrong ones will often land you in a cell beneath the palace. Just be careful not to lose your own head in the process. | ||
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| King Of Chicago | Cinemaware, Master Designer Software, Inc. / Mindscape, Inc. | [top] | |
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With Al Capone out of the picture, Chicago's prohibition-era profit is up for grabs. Are you merciless and cunning enough to gain it by whatever means are required? Every action you take has complex long-term consequences which are not always obvious at the time. You must keep your people on your side, watching what you say and do, knowing that an overthrow could be hatched at any moment. Look after your woman as well - who's going to respect a single mobster? The money has to be juggled in these ways, not forgetting to reach an 'understanding' with the Mayor to avoid any negative attentions. It's one of Cinemaware's best-loved games, and for good reason: it oozes a ton of atmosphere, and is simply a blast to play. Set in the roaring twenties, you play Pinky, a two-bit hood with million dollar dreams. When Al Capone is jailed, a power vacuum is created in Chicago, and you are just the man to fill it, or so you think. First you need a gang; why not the one you are in already? Well, because the "Old Man" is still in charge. If you wait for him to die, prohibition will end and its "curtains" for Pinky and all the other gangsters. Time to act. But do you try to persuade him or scare him off, or just bump him off? Should you act alone or gather some allies in the gang? These sorts of decisions are followed by scenes where you must carry out your plans. Even the best laid plans can go awry if you hesitate, say the wrong thing or fail to get off a clean shot. Once in charge you will want to expand your territory. Sometimes corrupt politicians can deliver but elections don't come cheap. You must lean on your speakeasies and bootleggers for the cash to pay your thugs (and keep your demanding and none to faithful "main squeeze" happy). And when talk and money fail, well there's always guns and bombs. This is definitely one of the best gangster games ever made, although the emphasis on arcade elements (some of which are very difficult) may turn some off. | ||
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| Lee Enfield: An Amazon Adventure / Bob Morane: Jungle | Infogrames Multimedia SA | [top] | |
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The second of four games of the superhero Bob Morane of the Belgian French-speaking comic comes as the rest of the series with a paperback. This game, unlike the first, has the action take place in a conventional time (perhaps in the middle of the 20th century). Chinese supervillain Yellow Shadow, the eternal enemy of Morane, who seeks to destroy the West. Of course, Bob has to stop him. Gameplay is a virtual shooting range in the first person with the automatic movement of the horizontal screen. You see the enemy, try for a limited time to kill him before he kills us, then move on. This action adventure is based on a series of battles with baroque opponents or Indian conquistadors, venomous animals or dangerous objects. A detector warns you of the proximity of potential enemies. The screen flashes red shifting dots. The only drawback is it runs on solar energy. But the action takes place partly in the dark bowels of a Mayan temple, and in the absence of regular refills of warm tropical sun, your detector fails. You also have a small stock of dynamite. | ||
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| Lee Enfield: Space Ace / Bob Morane: Science Fiction 1 | Infogrames Multimedia SA | [top] | |
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An evil army of enemy space soldiers has invaded a space station. The player, taking the role of the famous fictional character Bob Morane, must recover the control of the base, locating and destroying all the enemies. This is a multi-directional scrolling shooter game. The gameplay is similar to the game Prohibition. Like in "Prohibition", the player must locate (along the spatial base) and shoot each enemy soldier in a limited amount of time, before the enemy soldier shoots the player. The bests scores will be archived in the High-Scores table. | ||
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| Lee Enfield: The Tournament Of Death / Bob Morane: Chevalerie 1 | Infogrames Multimedia SA | [top] | |
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This is one of four games of superhero Bob Morane of the Belgian French-speaking comics. The Yellow Shadow is up to mischief again. This time the setting is the 13th century in the castle that belongs to the Count of Savoy. The Holy Shroud is a great religious relic that's being guarded by the minions of your arch enemy, the Yellow Shadow. The first thing that you'll notice about the game is the small playing area, it's only about a third of the screen. Down each side of it are strength indicators. The rest of the screen shows a picture of a knights head. In the playing area you see a simple 3D representation of the room that you're in and any people in there. The people are all nasty and include guards, foot soldiers and bears. When you fight them, you hold down the fire button and waggle like mad until they die. Some enemies are much stronger than others. The loser is the first one to run out of strength on their indicator. Sometimes you find a chest that'll contain something useful like a suit of armour. The interface and screen organisation is reused from the game Iznogoud. | ||
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| Lucky Luke | Coktel Vision / Cedic Vifi | [top] | |
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This multi-genre game is based on the famous comics series about Lucky Luke, a good cowboy who draws his gun and shoots quicker than his shadow. It was decided to construct a railway line to connect the East and West of the United States. Two companies argued about the establishment of this line. You were chosen to protect the quality of the line and to do not give it away to the competitor. In the beginning, Lucky Luke should move around the town and find out the bandits preventing him from travel on the train. During arcade shooting he should shoot all of them on the streets and inside the saloon. After train stops in front of the boulder on the rails, Lucky Luke has to find the way to this boulder to blow it up with a bomb collecting the useful items and using them in adventure mode. During these actions he'll encounter four Daltons and Apache's leader. The next trial is a puzzle, where Lucky Luke has to connect the branch lines for the train switching the points on the railway. And the last one is to solve the problem of water between Comanches and the Ranch owners in the place where quality will be checked finally. | ||
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| Pirates of the Barbary Coast | Starsoft Development Laboratories, Inc. / Keypunch Software, Inc. | [top] | |
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This is an ambitious but flawed strategy/action game set in the Barbary Coast region, during the high piracy era of the 17th century. One of the (few) best things about the game is the plot, which casts you as a captain whose daughter has been kidnapped by Bloodthroat (how fitting) the Pirate. He demands a ransom of 50,000 gold, and gives you 30 days before he sells her to the harems of the coast. Your job, of course, is to raise that much money and rescue your daughter. Gameplay is primitive, and not all that much fun. You raise money by trading goods in various ports - that's about all the strategy there is in the game. The action part comes in where you decide to fight a pirate ship (you can run from them as well). If you manage to sink the ship, you can board it and seize the captain's log and booty. The pirates' captain logs contain information about which types of goods can be bought cheaply, but they can be out of date. They can also give clues to Bloodthroat's hideout, but this is a rare event. The game's interface curiously resembles a text adventure in many places, such as the fact that you must click on items in order (e.g. powder, cannon, push rod) in order to load a cannon successfully. Following this historically accurate procedure is fun for the first time, but becomes a nuisance for the umpteenth time that you're frantically fighting the pirate ship. You must also keep your crew fed, although they replenish the food a bit too quickly for my taste. Overall, it will not knock anyone's socks off, or distract people away from Sid Meier's Pirates!, but it does offer some nice touches, as well as ease of play. Recommended for anyone looking for a real oldie on the subject matter that pioneers this niche premise. | ||
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| Sapiens | Myriad, Didier Guillion / Loriciels | [top] | |
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This is an adventure/arcade game that brings you back 100,000 years ago for discovering the everyday life of the Homo Sapiens Neandertalensis. You play as a young hunter from the Light-Foot tribe, and as such you'll have to explore your territory, keep up friendly contacts with the other tribes, trade objects, make assegai heads and fight for your life. One key to survival is to know your environment: learning the location of the springs, the hunting territories full of rabbits, the gloomy plains where wolves are on the prowl and the other tribe's camps is paramount. It gives you absolute freedom - you are free to explore the land and do whatever you want at any time. This degree of freedom, the virtual absence of plot, as well as the inclusion of basic RPG-style statistics such as Health, Agility, and Charisma, make Sapiens more of a survival simulation in the vein of Robinson's Requiem (although not 1/100th as aggravating) than a true adventure game. You must drink when you are thirsty, eat when you are hungry, and sleep when you are tired - but other than these basic simulation elements, the game is not very complicated. In 1996, a graphically enhanced Windows shareware version was released. The v3.0 was made freeware in 2017. | ||
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| Sid Meier's Pirates! | MicroProse Software, Inc. | [top] | |
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Take on the life of a buccaneer in the golden age of Caribbean Piracy! This game lets you choose from 6 different "ages" (for example, "The Silver Empire" from 1560-1600, "War For Profit" from 1640-1660, etc.), one of 4 nationalities (English, French, Dutch, Spanish), 4 difficulty levels, and one of 5 special abilities (skill at fencing, skill at navigation, etc.). Nine different types of ships were represented. The goal of the game is to retire with as much gold and land as possible, as many ranks/titles as possible (Colonel, Admiral, Marquis, Duke), and a wife. Finding long lost relatives helps too. You accomplish these goals by plundering cities, capturing and sinking enemy ships, getting in good with governors to receive titles, learn news of "evil Spaniards" holding your relatives, capturing evil pirates, etc. The game is educational, as you will learn about piracy through the thoroughly researched manual. You'll smell the sea salt as you participate in wild sword fights, desperate sea battles, and daring attacks by land. Pirates! was released in several different versions for the PC; the original 1987 game (which came on a self-booting disk), a 1989 DOS rerelease (otherwise functionally identical to the booter version), a 1991 release which came on high density floppies and only had the manual copy protection, and the 1994 edition which was a fully modernized CD-ROM game with VGA graphics. The 16-bit versions of Pirates! have an extra feature where governors assign you missions that was not in the 8-bit versions.
See also: Pirates! Gold, Sid Meier's Pirates! (2004) |
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| Storm | Mastertronic, Inc. | [top] | |
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This is a top-down arcade game similar to Gauntlet. You run around 100 rooms which are all the same size, killing monsters and collecting treasure. A simultaneous 2-player mode is on offer. Una Cum's Lair. Corrine, the beloved wife of Storm The Warrior has been abducted by the evil Una Cum and is being held prisoner against her will in his laboratory lair. Una Cum has left her closely guarded by his evil minions and has set off on a mission to locate the box which contains that legendary all powerful artifact The Fear. Storm realizes that should it fall into the wrong hands The Fear could cause untold damage, but first aided and abetted by his comrade the powerful Wizard Agravain he must find a way into Una Cum's castle to rescue his Lady Corrine. Una Cum has of course anticipated this and Storm and Wizard Agravain must pits their wits against the four traps he has laid to snare them and the evil minions who will do anything to prevent Storm from reaching the laboratory. Take the part of Storm (or Agravain the Undead) in this mutli-role, one or two player all action real-time adventure to rescue the Lady Corrine. Heed the lady's cries and prove your warrior's abilities. | ||
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| Thexder | Game Arts Co., Ltd. / Sierra On-Line, Inc. | [top] | |
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A platform shooter from Japan, Thexder offers many levels and diverse enemies that gradually increase in difficulty. You pilot a Battletech-style robot capable of switching from a 'mech into a jet at any time. Your weapon auto-aims, but uses up a fixed amount of rechargable energy; if you run out of this energy, you'll have to wait a few seconds before you can fire again. Your 'mech also contains a shield that can be activated to protect you from harm, but this lasts for a few seconds and uses up some of your life energy. It's a solid PC conversion of Game Arts' hit in Japan. All the innovation, however, becomes tiresome quickly as you discover that there is no way to save in mid-level, and levels are *huge*. You also can't switch special weapons during a level, which means you'll need to avoid picking up power-ups you don't need in the midst of all the chaos. All this makes for a very difficult game that's fun only to the most expert and masochistic of gamers.
See also: #Thexder 95 |
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| Three Stooges, The | Cinemaware | [top] | |
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Join those zany masters of mirth as they quest to save an old lady and her three beautiful daughters from the clutches of an evil banker! With 30 days to collect $5,000 smackers, the Stooges will have to work together to save the orphans through pie throwing, prizefighting, and medical madness, all performed in classic Stooges style. For the Digitally Remastered series, players can expect the same classic gameplay of the originals, but featuring enhanced graphics and sounds effects that take advantage of today’s technology. Players can also expect never-before-seen screens and material that were cut from the original titles. Although enhanced, both graphics and sound will remain true to the style of the original products. In 2002, a digitally remastered collector's edition was released which featured enhanced graphics and sounds effects that take advantage of modern technology. It also had never-before-seen screens and material that was cut from the original titles. | ||
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| Wizball | Sensible Software / Ocean Software Ltd. | [top] | |
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The player takes the role of the friendly wizard Wiz who can turn himself into a green ball that is able to defend his world against the color-sucking enemies who have turned his once brightly colored Wizworld into a drab planet. With his trusty feline companion Catelite, the wizard will restore the colors to the world by retrieving them from defeated enemies. The player starts out as a bouncing green ball that can shoot and be put into more or less heavy rotation to move slowly or faster, physically correct through the side-scrolling levels. The first task is to upgrade the ball by shooting the first non-moving enemies, and collect the green bubbles that are left by them. In order to stand a chance against the following moving enemy waves, some upgrades are a must. First and foremost, complete control over the ball should be activated (i.e. flying through the levels), a shield sheltering the top and bottom of the player's should be acquired, and two-way fire (left/right) should be obtained. But the extra needed to advance is your friend Catelite who will, once summoned, take the form of a small green satellite that will imitate the ball's movement, or can be directly controlled by the player. Besides upping Wiz' fire power, Catelite is able to collect paint drops left by a certain kind of defeated enemies until the respective color pot is filled up. There's three colors available (red, green and blue), and several different combinations of them must be collected to complete a level and restore it to former colorfulness. Every color combination collected will send Wiz to a bonus stage, then to his laboratory where one of the power-ups can be made permanently. The game also features a bunch of multi-player modes, there's even a two-player cooperative mode amongst them. RetroSpec made an enhanced fan remake in 2007. | ||
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Kids
| Big Bird's Special Delivery | Hi Tech Expressions | [top] | |
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This is an object recognition game. Children help Big Bird and Little Bird sort the mail and deliver packages to the right stores on Sesame Street. They can experiment with different possibilities while playing. Does the car go with the bus or the egg? Do the shoes go with the tree or with the socks? By pressing one of three keys on the computer keyboard, children tell Little Bird the right answer. When a round of play is completed all of the stores on Sesame Street light up. If there is a mail mix-up, the shopkeepers gently point out mistakes and encourage the child to try again. | ||
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| Create with Garfield! Deluxe | Ahead Designs / DLM | [top] | |
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This is an educational video game originally released in 1986 for the Apple II, Commodore 64 and IBM PC. A deluxe edition was released in 1987. It's a simulation game. The player can choose a character or prop to display on the screen. The player can also choose pre-written dialogue or write their own, provided with either a thought bubble or a speech bubble. In the deluxe edition, the player has two disks and if the second disk is inserted, new character and prop sprites will appear. After the copyright screen, the player will encounter a "How to make a Cartoon" screen. It explains that the player must select a background, select a stick on, then save. The player can save their comic onto a data disk. | ||
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| Grover's Animal Adventures | Hi Tech Expressions | [top] | |
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Grover will take you on an exciting animal adventure. You will travel to the African Grasslands, the Atlantic Ocean and a North American Forest to learn what animals and objects in nature belong in which area. You'll even visit a Barnyard not far from Sesame Street, a place Grover calls home. After choosing one of the four places you can go, you begin selecting animals and objects from the selection box and placing them in the appropriate scene such as zebras in Africa and cows in the Barnyard. Be sure to place the animals in their proper environments so they'll feel at home. For example, you need to put fish in water, birds in the sky and horses on the ground. | ||
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| Math Blaster Plus! | Davidson & Associates Inc. | [top] | |
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An updated version of the older Math Blaster! educational game. Unlike the previous version, this one's not in BASIC. A new GUI greets users, called the "Davidson Student Desktop Interface"- this allows people to switch from one portion of the game to the next without all that nasty typing. The math is broken down into five subjects- addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and fractions/decimals/percents. The game itself is broken into 5 activities. Countdown - a flash-card style "game" with no scoring or timing. A problem, with answer, is shown on screen- upon command, the same problem appears sans answer, and must be answered correctly. Ignition - problems appear, and upon a correct answer, motivational messages and animations pop up. The player has two chances to answer correctly, and receives a scoreboard at the end showing number of problems, number solved, etc. (This scoreboard appears in the next two listed activities.) Lift-off - problems appear, with answer, but missing an internal component (like 2 * _ = 12). Three chances per problem are given to answer correctly. Once again, there are encouraging messages and animations - and a certificate of achievement may be printed out. Orbit - three problems appear on-screen with portions of each in boxes; these boxes may contain errors and need to be changed by the player. Each correct answer earns a star, and the player can attempt to answer twice. This one also can print a certificate of achievement. Blasternaut - the action-oriented math activity - you control a Blasternaut that must get into a rocket aimed at the correct answer to a shown problem. Bonus points are awarded if you can rescue floating Blasternauts - apparently slamming into them with the nosecone of a huge rocket constitutes help. The math problems contained within aren't randomly generated, but are pre-written lessons (which are handily printed in the instruction manuals.) It can be used to create new lessons, can be used in a classroom setting to track individual students' performance, and can print stored lessons as paper-based quizzes/tests for more traditional (and more boring) use. | ||
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| Mixed-Up Mother Goose | Sierra On-Line, Inc. | [top] | |
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All of the nursery rhymes in Mother Goose Land have become mixed up! Your goal is to set things straight by locating missing items for each of the fairy tale characters in the land. When wandering around the land you can talk to the different characters (each from a different nursery rhyme) to find out what item it is they need; for example, Little Bo Peep is looking for her sheep and Jack Be Nimble lost his candle stick. The items are scattered about the land, and when you locate one pick it up and return it to the appropriate character. When successful, the complete nursery rhyme will play with the lyrics appearing on screen. You can only carry one item at a time, so you may need to remember where you spotted or dropped items not being carried. Also, each time the game is played objects will be in a new location. Included with the game is a map of Mother Goose Land which may help you locate the different fairy tale characters. In 1990, an updated version utilized Sierra's SCI game interpreter and features enhanced graphics and sound. Two other versions, enhanced and deluxe, were also later released with revised graphics and music. | ||
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| Reader Rabbit | The Learning Co. | [top] | |
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This is an educational game, originally on Apple II in 1983, for children 3 through 7 designed to help reading and spelling skills. There are four different word games to play of increasing difficulty: a word sorter, a picture labeler, the word train, and a variation of the game memory. All four games are very accessible, with pleasant graphics and just the right difficulty level to encourage kids to play more. If you are looking for a fun language game to teach your kids basic reading and spelling skills (if they are already good at recognizing the alphabets), you would be hard pressed to find a much better program than Reader Rabbit - truly a wonderful edutainment program that is still as much fun today as it was when first released. An enhanced version, Reader Rabbit 1 was released for DOS in 1991 that incorporated the 256-color VGA mode, new interface, sound card option and mouse compatibility. | ||
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| Sesame Street: Astro-Grover | Children's Television Workshop / Hi-Tech Expressions, Inc. | [top] | |
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This is a kids educational game for one player based on the Sesame Street franchise. It provides a playful setting in which children practice counting, adding, and subtracting. The game helps children work with numbers in five different ways (How Many Zips?, Beam That Number, Adding Countdown, Take it Away Zips!, Sum Up Sum Down) - assisted by Grover and the Zips from the planet Zap. | ||
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| Sesame Street: Pals Around Town | Children's Television Workshop / Hi Tech Expressions | [top] | |
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This game for IBM PCjr cartridge has the player picking a character (Sesame Street characters available included Bert and Ernie, among others) and interacting with various objects in a variety of settings. An animated know-the-neighborhood activity. Children learn about the community as they explore five different settings and create scenes with Sesame Street friends and familiar objects. Who's that downtown buying cookies in the bakery? Why, it's Cookie Monster! He and his Sesame Street pals are here to help children identify people, objects, and activities in various parts of a neighborhood. Children explore five different community locations by moving and placing animated, setting-appropriate community workers and objects. At the same time, they create colorful, musical, custom-made scenes with Big Bird, Grover, Oscar, and their other Sesame Street pals. In Sesame Street Pals Around Town, children have fun with familiar friends as they begin to recognize various community members and objects that are found in a Classroom, in a Schoolyard, on a bust Downtown Street, in Bert and Ernie's apartment, and, of course, on Sesame Street. Children select animated characters and objects to move and place in each scene, helping them learn who and what is usually found in each setting. The program also encourages them to think about the functions of these objects and the roles of community helpers as they create their own neighborhood scenes and make up stories. The accompanying manual includes step-by-step instructions. With lively colorful graphics and music, this delightful computer activity entertains as it enhances familiarity with the physical and social characteristics that make up a neighborhood. | ||
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| Spy's Adventures in South America, The | Polarware Inc. | [top] | |
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The third addition to the Spy's Adventures series is another geographical edutainment title, featuring the same combination of international travel and mystery-solving as the previous two installments, and similar to the contemporaneous Carmen Sandiego games. All-around bad guy Dr. Xavier Tortion (Dr. X for short) is up to his jewel-thieving antics once again, this time in South America, and must be tracked down along with his contraband. The game can be played in single-player mode, or up to 6 players may play cooperatively ("spy network") or competitively ("spy vs. spy"). The chase starts in a country of the player's choice, with a map of the continent, some money, and dossiers with basic information on the various countries. The player can travel from one country to its neighbors on the map. Each country offers at least one site to visit, and investigating the various locations will uncover clues to the whereabouts of jewels - informants will also be found, who can be paid off with money or jewels to provide crucial clues to Dr. X's hiding place. The goal is to guess his location in no more than 3 attempts, or he escapes and the quest comes to an end. If he is caught, a score is awarded based on the time taken, jewels recovered, guesses left, and letters still not exposed (in the clue to Dr. X's location). The creators now have it available as freeware. | ||
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| Think Quick! | The Learning Company, Inc. | [top] | |
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A dragon has taken over the Castle of Mystikar. To defeat the dragon, you must find the parts to build an enchanted knight which are spread throughout the castle. Numerous locked doors, many of which need to be opened in the proper order, block passageways. Roaming the halls are numerous slime worms, who will swallow you whole or fall asleep if you can feed them some flowers first. From any of the castle rooms you can access your hideout, which allows you to store useful items and clues you may find, and also pause the game. Each section of the castle has a time limit, and gets progressively harder. A castle builder is also included allowing players to create their own maze and puzzles. It can even be considered an introductory-level adventure game, because the key to solving many obstacles lies in picking up and using the correct item. | ||
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Role-Playing Games
| Alien Fires: 2199 AD | Jagware Inc. / Paragon Software Corporation | [top] | |
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Assume the role of a Time Lord, an immortal race of beings responsible for protecting the temporal balance of the universe from chaos and destruction, and travel to the Galaxy's End, to prevent Dr. Samuel Kurtz from travelling to the dawn of time and witnessing the Creation of all that is. Create your Time Lord choosing from a variety of skills, including Fighting, Marksmanship, Diplomacy, Dexterity, Understanding, Tracking and Quickness. Features colorful, three dimensional graphics and digitized rock music and sound effects. | ||
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| Bard's Tale, The: Tales Of The Unknown | Interplay Productions, Inc. / Electronic Arts | [top] | |
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The small country town Skara Brae was enjoying a peaceful life, until an evil wizard known as Mangar the Dark appeared. Monsters have invaded the town, terrorizing its inhabitants. Mangar cast the spell of Eternal Winter on the surroundings, isolating Skara Brae from any possible help. Guards that were entrusted with the task of protecting the town have disappeared within one night. Only a party of brave adventurers can save Skara Brae and defeat Mangar. This is a fantasy role-playing game similar to Wizardry games, with first-person exploration of pseudo-3D maze-like environments, and turn-based combat against randomly appearing enemies. Unlike early Wizardry installments, the town can be explored physically, and parts of the overworld are accessible as well. Several dungeons must be explored before the player can tackle the final quest. Six character classes are available when the player is prompted to create a party of six adventurers in the beginning of the game: Bard, Hunter, Monk, Paladin, Rogue, Warrior, Magician, and Conjurer. The last two can be promoted when specific conditions are met during gameplay. The bard class plays a special role, possessing magical songs that improves the party's performance in combat and are required to solve some of the game's puzzles. | ||
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| Braminar | PC-SIG | [top] | |
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The Overlord has enforced unjust laws throughout the kingdom of Braminar -- raising taxes, enslaving villages, and, worst of all, outlawing hamburgers. You are the stalwart adventurer bold enough to emerge from the ranks, accumulating through exploration the skills, experience, artifacts and followers necessary to undo his burger-hating rule and usher the realm of Braminar into a new golden age. | ||
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| Le Maître des Âmes [Fr] | Ubi Soft Entertainment Software | [top] | |
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This is an early French fantasy role-playing game from UbiSoft. The game will lead you through dungeons, secret chambers, tunnels... It tends to respect as much as possible the basic rules of famous RPG games. At the beginning you have to create a party of 4 characters among 6 different ones: Warrior, Wizard, Cleric, Robber, Dwarf & Elf. Each one has special skills and attributes. The whole story takes place in a castle. Kharram Akkad, Royal wizard, was on the verge of making a big discovery but then vanished mysteriously. Since then, a huge storm has surrounded the place making all life disappear. A party of adventurers standing in front of the fortress decide to enter. | ||
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| Might and Magic: Book One - Secret of the Inner Sanctum | New World Computing, Inc. | [top] | |
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A party of adventurers in what appears to be a medieval fantasy world called Varn is looking for an entrance to the highly coveted Inner Sanctum. Before long the heroes realize that one of the four kings that rule the countries of Varn is in fact an impostor, a creature from outer space. Their task is to find the real king and ultimately stop the mysterious space traveler, revealing the truth about the world's origin in the process. This role-playing game is the first installment in the Might and Magic series. Core gameplay concept is similar to that of Wizardry games, though the game does not focus solely on dungeon crawling and features overworld areas and towns that can be physically navigated. In this way the game resembles The Bard's Tale, though it has a significantly larger playing environment with several towns. The entire game is viewed from first-person perspective, and the game environment consists of maze-like passages made with pseudo-3D graphics. In the beginning of the game the player creates a party of six adventurers. There are six classes to choose from: Knight, Robber, Sorcerer, Cleric, Paladin, and Archer. Each character has six main attributes: Might, Endurance, Accuracy, Personality, Intelligence and Luck, with each class requires proficiency in a specific attribute for effective functioning. There are also five races to choose from: humans, elves, dwarves, gnomes, and half-orcs. As in most RPGs, the gameplay revolves around exploring the game world and leveling up to be able to proceed to the story-advancing challenges. The party starts in a particularly weak state, equipped with only clubs and having no money. The player is free to explore most of the game's locations in any order, and there are few hints as to what needs to be done to advance the plot. Turn-based battles against randomly appearing enemies typically take place against a group of monsters more or less equal in size to the player-controlled party, but enemy reinforcements can appear once their comrades have been slain. It is also possible to try and bribe enemies, or surrender to them before entering combat. The game has no auto-mapping feature of any kind, and it is only possible to save the player's progress at inns located in towns. | ||
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| Mission: Mainframe | Jerry Plemons & Brian Shankman | [top] | |
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Some time in the recent past, the main computer of a big corporation went mad due to some electrical disturbance. It gained control over its operator and began to influence other employees. Your mission is to find the main frame, defeat the operator and return to the lobby alive. Mission: Mainframe is a shareware variation of Wizard's Castle, a mix of a board game and role-playing, set in a bizarre contemporary / sci-fi environment. Before beginning the game, you first create your character. You may choose one of four character types which differ in their D&D-like vital stats. As in other RPGs, the stats may be increased by gathering experience. You then start in the lobby of the corporation, where you can buy some basic equipment by spending chips and bytes (instead of gold) on such useful items as Junk Food (which is very important, otherwise you'll starve quickly), Strategies (corresponding to magic spells in fantasy RPGs) and Office Supplies (replace weapons and armor, thus assisting you in dealing with reluctant corporate employees). Other things you can do in the lobby is go the Health Club, where you can build up your stats, as well as restore your Power & Plans (the power level represents hit points, and plans are needed to use strategies -- e.g., spell points). Finally, you can start the real game by taking the elevator to other floors. The company is located in a thirty floor building. Each floor is divided into an 8x8 grid of squares. Each square may contain something, like employees you have to deal with, or file cabinets which may contain helpful items. As the contents of the squared is determined randomly at the beginning, each game is different. Depending on the difficulty level you chose at the beginning of the game, you can see the contents of the squares, or you have to move onto it to know what it contains. When you meet an employee, you can deal with him in several ways, for example trying to bribe him, fight him, use a strategy, evade him, trick him, or try to distract him by making a phone call. The success of all these actions depends on different statistics, both of you and the employee. There are 24 different types of employees, and it's your task to find out how best to deal with each of them. When you successfully deal with an employee, you gain experience and can raise your grade (level), which increases your survival chances in the higher floors, where the employees get more and more powerful. The file cabinets may contain chips and bytes as well as items like office supplies or beverages. Some of those are helpful, some are harmful (poison) -- and some can make you drunk. Luckily, you can first take a sip from a drink, getting a hint about what it may be. As some cabinets are trapped, you also should be careful with them. The task is complicated by the lights which sometimes go out. To restore light, you have to light a match (which can be taken from some employees) and find a fuse box. Also, you have to get special key cards to get beyond floor 10 and floor 20 by defeating bosses who guard them. At any time, you can get back to the elevator and lobby, where you can sell your treasures, rest and buy new supplies. You can also quit the game here, getting the opportunity to save your character first. | ||
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| Moebius: The Orb of Celestial Harmony | Greg Paul Malone II / ORIGIN Systems, Inc. | [top] | |
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Khantun is traditionally a peaceful land, with no army or wars. Former leader Kaimen has turned to using his powers for evil, and the land has not withstood his aggression. The Holy Ones have been kidnapped, the land instead ruled by an evil group of monks. It is down to the player to vanquish Kaimen and restore the path of righteousness. The game combines top-viewed role playing elements with combat action. The player explores the lands, but when encountering unfriendly people the player must fight, using swords or martial arts moves, as well as long-range missiles and magical powers. | ||
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| Rings of Zilfin | Strategic Simulations, Inc. / Strategic Simulations, Inc. | [top] | |
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Rings of Zilfin is an unusual, but relatively unknown early fantasy solo RPG by Ali N. Atabek, who went on to create the Magic Candle series. It was meant for beginners to computer RPGs, featuring no character creation, simple game play and movie-like cut scenes, concentrating more on atmosphere than on character stats. The background: Long ago, the Zilfins (mighty wizards) established an enchanted realm of peace and property in Batiniq. They created two rings of power which, worn together, made the wearer invincible. Unfortunately, the evil necromancer Lord Dragos has found one of these rings and has come to great power. The only hope to prevent him finding the second one is Reis, a young boy possessing some innate magical ability. In the introduction, Reis barely escapes Dragos' minions, and leaves his home village. The game features a huge world with over 100 villages and towns in four kingdoms. Each town has up to three buildings you can enter shops with items to buy and sell, inns to eat and drink and rest, amongst others, and also people you can talk to (careful, some are shape shifters!), sometimes offering valuable information. There are also a few dungeons and some caves to explore, but most of the game is played in towns or travelling between them. | ||
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| Seven Spirits of Ra, The | Macrocom, Inc. / Sir-tech Software, Inc. | [top] | |
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Osiris was once a pharaoh of the Old Egypt, ruling the land in happiness, as it enjoyed great prosperity. But his evil brother Set was envious of him. He killed Osiris and cut his body in pieces. Now the ka (soul) of Osiris is standing in front of the entrance to the World of the Dead, unable to find solace. Defeating Set is the only way to end the torment. But in order to do that, Osiris will have to return his body, scattered around the land, devoured by wild animals. He will have to restore his body, absorb the spirits of animals, and challenge his treacherous brother in a final battle. The Seven Spirits of Ra is a follow-up to ICON: Quest for the RING, sharing much of its predecessor's gameplay and interface features. The player navigates Osiris through various environments in ancient Egypt, in a mixture of top-down and side-scrolling views, eliminating enemies in simple action-based combat. The role-playing element is less noticeable in the game compared to its predecessor; however, the world is larger and offers more exploration possibilities. | ||
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| Shard of Spring | Strategic Simulations, Inc. | [top] | |
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The blessed island of Ymros is always at ease thanks to the Shard Of Spring -- a crystal that bestows eternal springtime. Now, the evil sorceress Siriadne has stolen the sacred shard and you have to get it back. The world you once knew has fallen to hunger, famine and despair. Everyone now asks you to come forward and take the challenge! Shard of Spring is a role-playing game, in which the player creates and builds up a party of adventurers composed of the traditional races of humans, elves, dwarves, trolls, and gnomes. The two main classes are warrior and wizard; each class specializes in different skills (such as elemental proficiencies). Towns are represented by simple text menus; most of the action takes place in the dungeons, fighting enemy parties in turn-based combat. | ||
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| Wizardry 4: The Return of Werdna | Sir-tech Software, Inc. | [top] | |
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This takes a decidedly different approach from the original trilogy. Instead of playing as a party of six player-generated characters, the player controls Werdna himself, the evil Archmage from the first game. It seems that after Werdna was defeated by the party of adventurers who stole his amulet, he was imprisoned at the bottom of his ten-level labyrinth in an eternal slumber to be tortured by nightmares for eternity. Although Werdna was supposed to sleep forever, somehow he has awakened, and now he is out for revenge. At the beginning of the game Werdna finds himself in a situation that is singularly unique for most arch-villains: he is stripped of his powers, trapped within his own former stronghold, and filled with the realization that the same traps and monsters he created to keep adventurers out now act as obstacles to his freedom. Werdna will slowly regain his magical powers as well as have the ability to summon helpful monsters to accompany him on his journey and aid him in combat. Unlike other role-playing games, no experience is awarded for defeating enemies. Instead, Werdna can only become stronger by searching for pentagrams found in the labyrinth. Accessing a new pentagram allows Werdna to summon stronger monsters and restore his health and spellcasting powers. Werdna will have to fight a variety of monsters and guardians, but many of the randomly appearing enemies in the game are parties of adventurers not unlike those who were controlled by the player in the previous three games. In addition, Werdna is being chased by the rather ticked-off ghost of his old enemy Trebor. The game features a somewhat tweaked version of the same engine and graphics that was used in the earlier installments of the series. The difficulty level has been increased due to the lack of an experience points system, which often leaves the player-controlled party underpowered. The labyrinth contains abundant traps and complex mazes. For obvious reasons it is no longer possible to import characters from the previous games. The game features three different endings: a good ending, an evil ending, and a special Grandmaster ending which is often considered to be the single most difficult task to achieve in the entire series. | ||
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Platformers
| Aldo's Adventure | Yahoo Software | [top] | |
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You are Aldo (who for some reason looks incredibly like Mario of Donkey Kong). Your mission is to successfully reach the upper levels and obtain the treasure chest that lies within. However, beware of the falling barrels (yes, barrels) that inhibit your progress and threaten to 'flatten' you into the existing background. Control Aldo by fast moving, jumping and climbing ladders to reach the pot of gold on the top level. | ||
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| Dark Castle | Silicon Beach Software, Inc., Eastridge Technology / Three-Sixty Pacific, Inc. | [top] | |
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The Black Knight has brought misery to the land, and the end way to end this is to enter his haunted house to slay him. You are the brave adventurer taking on this quest through 14 increasingly-tough zones. The bulk of the game is side-viewed, involving single screens to pass through, which incorporate ropes, cages and trapdoor. There are enemies walking, flying and hovering through this, and many of them respawn. Unusually your weapon to take them on (rocks) can be thrown through 360 degrees, which aims to make the gameplay more realistic and methodical. The screens were linked by hub screens, which the player passes through simply by clicking on a door. This game was a classic on the MAC but is lesser known on PC. | ||
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| Ghosts 'N Goblins | Capcom Co., Ltd. / Capcom U.S.A., Inc. | [top] | |
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This is a sideways scrolling action platformer spread over six levels, each of which must be completed within three minutes (or a life is lost), taking in forest, village, mountain and cavern settings with increasing difficulty. Arthur the brave knight must rescue his beloved Princess from the Demon King Astaroth and his forces - amongst them are the various undead (ghosts, zombies), bats, ogres and goblins. Other challenges include moving platforms, ladders and water/fire hazards. As in most games in this genre, the player can pick up power-ups such as daggers and bombs during the course of the game, giving the player greater firepower. The game is often considered very difficult by arcade standards and is commonly regarded as one of the most difficult games ever released. A fan remake done with BlitzBasic was done in 2004 with graphics comparable to the original arcade version. | ||
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| Goody | Opera Soft | [top] | |
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Goody is a fun 2D action/adventure platformer from Spanish developer Opera Soft. You play a small thief bent on robbing a Spanish bank. Before embarking on this venture, you'll need to find appropriate tools for the job, including torch, pincers, etc. Once you gather all the necessary tools, you will be ready to launch the crime. But things are not as easy as they seem, of course. Along the way to the bank, you will have to avoid or deal with policemen, gorillas, kung-fu experts, weeping women, paper airplanes, and other obstacles in your way. Anyone who likes Codemasters' classic Dizzy series will probably enjoy Goody. It is a fun game in the "video adventure" 2D action/adventure genre that was very popular in Spain in the 80s – 90s. While the game is a traditional adventure in that you need to use inventory items in the correct places, it also requires the same combination of good reflexes and timing as typical platformers do. Sharp cartoon graphics with a lot of detail (even with the limited 4-color CGA palette), smooth animations, fun puzzles, and a charming atmosphere makes Goody well worth a look for action and adventure fans alike. A modern Windows-based remake was made in 2004 by Coptron Games that sports excellent SVGA graphics, sound effects, and addictive gameplay that is completely faithful to Opera Soft's original. | ||
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| Karnov | Quicksilver Software / Data East Corporation | [top] | |
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This platform arcade game is the debut of Data East's mascot of the same name. Karnov, the fire-breathing ex-circus strongman Russian, is seeking the Lost Treasure of Babylon. He runs, swims, jumps, climbs, and flies through nine levels of gameplay. However, between him and the treasures are several horrendous monsters, including sword wielding monks, djinn, foot hopping giant fish and ostrich-riding skeleton warriors. He can find special items that will help him on his way such as jump boots, bombs, ladders, boomerangs, and super fireballs. He also can collect red orbs with which he can upgrade up to three fireballs at a time. Each level contains a variety of strange enemies, such as gargoyles, rock creatures, and strong men, which Karnov must destroy or avoid. When he reaches the end of a level he usually has to face one or more powerful enemies which he must defeat to beat the level and receive a new piece of a treasure map. At the end of the game he must face a powerful boss often called "The Wizard" and collect the treasure. | ||
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| Platoon | Ocean Software Ltd. / Data East Corporation | [top] | |
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The Oscar-winning film Platoon directed by Oliver Stone featured a squad of five soldiers on their mission for the US Army in Vietnam. In this action game based around the film, you take control of these five guys in turn, with the chance to switch between them as they each take one of the 3 hits that would kill them. The game recreates each of the sections of the film, starting with a side-scrolling journey through the jungle, with paths to cross both horizontally and vertically, and the ability to jump or duck hazards. You will need to blow up a bridge and then locate a village, which contains a torch, a map and a trap-door. The enemy has booby-trapped the area and are launching airstrikes, so the danger is not all from enemy ground soldiers. The next section is in first-person 3D, as you move through a network of tunnels in search of flares and a compass. There are 3 distinct control methods, changing from the standard motion when an enemy appears (this puts you in control of a cross-hair for more accurate targeting), and when you enter a room to search. After escaping this you settle in a bunker overnight, and have a limited amount of flares with which to locate incoming enemy, and must then shoot them before they can shoot you. The jungle airstrike from the film is the next moment - you have two minutes to rush into a safe position to the north, using your compass for guidance. Finally you face the treacherous Sergeant Barnes, and must hit him with grenades 5 times whilst trapped in a foxhole to prevent him wiping you out. | ||
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| Rad Warrior / The Sacred Armour of Antiriad | Palace Software, Ltd. / Epyx, Inc. | [top] | |
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As Tal, your job is to single-handedly clear out the aliens who have invaded a desolate and destroyed post-nuclear earth. To have any chance of this, he must locate a sacred suit of armor. Not only will this protect him from radiation, and allow him to withstand some enemy contact, it also heals him, and enables him to float. This means that the game has two distinct styles, with your character limited to jumping, and with only rocks (located around the screens) to throw. Once he finds the suit he can fly around the ledges, shoot the inbuilt Pulsar beam, and survive within the volcanic hideout the aliens have based themselves. You will need to recharge the suit at times, and also take it off to pass through tight caverns. In 2003, Ovine By Design made a free remake with modern graphics. | ||
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| Zeliard | Game Arts Co., Ltd. | [top] | |
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One of the defining "action/adventure" games for the PC; buy weapons, magic, and health to help you bash your way through the caverns of Jashiin, and earn experience points to gain more life and magic. Save the princess and the Holy land of Zeliard. Amidst the flurry of imported games that resulted from Sierra's deal with Japanese publisher Gamearts are Sorcerian and Zeliard, two quirky action/RPG titles with strong "console" feel. Definitely "light" games in that there is few statistics (although characters do gain levels), and the arcade-style platform action may not be every RPGer's cup of tea. Still, interesting plots, spells, and lots of "secrets" make these games above average despite chunky graphics. Although both games are RPG with heavy arcade elements, Sorcerian has a stronger RPG flavor because you get to control a four-character party, comprising the traditional retinue of priest, fighter, and wizard, each of whom have access to unique weapons and/or spells. Zeliard, on the other hand, is a solo-player RPG with much less emphasis on character development than nonstop platform action. | ||
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Casual Games
| Boulder Dash Construction Kit | First Star Software, Inc. / Epyx, Inc. | [top] | |
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Rockford the Ant returns in another Boulder Dash adventure which contains 15 new levels, in addition to the easy-to-use game editor. Players can build, save, and play their own levels. The software includes a feature to sequence your levels on a separate game disk. All of the elements and hazards from the previous Boulder Dash outings are back: The fireflies, butterflies, growing amoebas, enchanted walls, and of course, the boulders. New features include titanium (indestructible) walls, growing walls, and slime that allows boulders and diamonds to drop through it at a varying rate. | ||
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| Classiques No. 1 | Titus | [top] | |
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The first volume of Titus Classiques includes three games: Invaders, Glutton, and Infernal Breakout. The first of them is nothing more than an ordinary clone of the famous Space Invaders. Even the surroundings have not changed: all the same, aliens resembling robots are attacking earthly cities, and your cannon must hold back hordes of invaders. Moreover, the enemies, just like you, can shoot - and they do it very aggressively. Even hiding behind cities, one cannot be completely calm; in addition, the speed of the game is so high that you have to reduce the number of DOSBox cycles to a minimum, and the controllability of the gun leaves much to be desired. Glutton- another nod to the ageless classics: The glutton we must control by collecting points in mazes is, of course, none other than Pac-man. There are four ghosts and four balls, giving you a short-term opportunity to eat ghosts, as well as many interesting levels with gradually increasing difficulty. It is through the design of the levels that the game is quite capable of captivating. Finally, Infernal Breakout is perhaps the most noteworthy in this collection. Of course, this is another Breakout clone but masterfully done. An abundance of bonuses, starting with the banal "ball splitters" and "bombs" (you shouldn't fall under them!) - and up to the second upper bat, which moves synchronously with yours and helps to hit the balls, and the bat, which is located even higher and already in every possible way interferes you play. Thanks to such seemingly simple design solutions and smooth controls, the game turned out to be very decent. At each new level, the number of lives is replenished, due to which the complexity is not at all prohibitive, as it often happened in those days. The graphics in all games are made in the ascetic CGA-mode, while not causing rejection. In each game, the maximum number of points that you are invited to beat is saved; these high scores are also displayed in the main menu, where the games of choice are presented as icons instead of titles. Thus, there is really an absolute minimum of textual information. | ||
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| Classiques No. 2 | Titus | [top] | |
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The second volume of the collection of classic arcade games from the famous company Titus is already more original developments hidden under the names Penggo, Arnold and Grand Prix. In Penggo before you is an ice labyrinth with three diamonds and four monsters. Your hero - a pink penguin - must touch all three diamonds in a row (and just like a straight chain!), Pushing them in front of him and removing obstacles in the form of pieces of ice (this is done simply - just come close to the ice floe and press the spacebar). Everything would be simple if it were not for the monsters: unlike the ghosts in Pakman from the first collection, here they chase your hero. But it is easier to kill them: just push an ice cube or diamond in their direction. Many levels with increasing difficulty make Penggo a real treat for lovers of maze-like arcade games. Arnold is an analogue of a "snake", but in a labyrinth, - not so much an arcade as a puzzle: you need to collect all the points scattered around the level, but at the same time choose a path so as not to cross your tail. And if at first it is easy, then on the second "circle" of the passage the tail is already growing at such a pace that it will be very difficult to do it. However, arcade roots can be traced here too: they won't give you a long time to think, because the inexorable timer constantly counts down the seconds until the loss. A little spoils the impression here only not the most responsive controls. Grand Prix is a top-down arcade race. Here, in the role of a Formula 1 racer on a car, you must hold out as long as possible on the track, and obstacles, passing cars - racing cars and an ambulance - and all the same ruthless time counter will interfere with this. It is necessary to replenish the stock of this resource by picking up bonuses. You can also accelerate and brake, which gives you more room to maneuver. Despite its simplicity, the Grand Prix is quite capable of passing a few minutes. The second volume turned out to be a little more interesting than the first, providing more recent, but the same crystal clear and addictive arcade hits. At the same time, at least the first two make you think too. | ||
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| Club Casino | Prism Leisure Corporation | [top] | |
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Experience the big time of Vegas where stakes are high and nerves need to be made of steel. Choose from four of the most popular casino games - roulette, craps, blackjack, poker and maybe one day you'll make a name for yourself as the highest roller in town. | ||
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| Family Feud | Softie Inc. / ShareData Inc. | [top] | |
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This is the first Family Feud computer game based on the successful television game show. A few years later, Softie developed The All New Family Feud with more advanced graphics and music. Two families compete against each other or against a computer family, 5 people per family. Just like in the tv show, there are 3 Rounds ending in a timed Bonus "Fast-Money" Round. Randomly generated questions are asked, and the object is to figure out the most popular answers from the 100 people poled. Each member of the family contributes during the Rounds, and two people play in the Bonus Round. | ||
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| Jeopardy! | ShareData Inc., GameTek | [top] | |
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Based on the tv game show. Three players compete against each other by coming up with the question for a given answer. There are two rounds of play each with six categories of answers, and one final round consisting of a single answer. Each correct question given can be worth from $100 to $1000 for the player to respond first, or if a daily double is uncovered the player to find it may bet up to the current amount of money they have. The player with the most money at the end wins. Jeopardy! features a high scores table so players can save their characters wins and losses, different male and female character animations to choose from, and of course a wide variety of answers and questions. Up to three human players can compete, or a combination of human and computer players. | ||
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| Macadam Bumper | ERE Informatique / Accolade, Inc. | [top] | |
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A single classical-style pinball table is provided in this simulation. A table editor is also provided — this allows you to choose a shape for the table and arrange the component parts as you wish. Up to four players can take it in turns, each with five balls in turn. Unusually, the default table has multiple flippers at the bottom of the table, as well as some located higher up. Use them to return a ball higher on table and to prevent it being lost at the bottom of the table. Hitting some valuable areas of the table gives you a bonus. Gain as many points as possible to rack up a high score. | ||
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| Marble Madness | Atari Games Corporation / Electronic Arts, Inc. | [top] | |
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The idea of this popular 1984 arcade game is deceptively simple: Guide a marble down a path without hitting any obstacles or straying off the course. The arcade version used a trackball which require furious swiping to make the ball gain speed. The game is viewed from an isometric perspective, which makes it harder to stay focused on the direction the ball is to follow. There are tight corridors to follow and enemies to avoid. There is a 2-player mode in which players must race to the finish; otherwise you're racing against the clock. It was one of the first arcade games to use true stereo sound. The PC version supports 16-color graphics and 3-voice sound - but only on a Tandy or PCjr computer. All other users automatically get 4-color CGA graphics and single-voice sound. There is a secret level accessible from the first level (involving being in the right place at the right time) which contained various difficult challenges (rivers, moving platforms and the like). This secret level does not exist in the original arcade game. | ||
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| Mini-Putt | Artech Digital Entertainments, Inc. / Electronic Arts Ltd. | [top] | |
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This is a miniature golf game that offers 4 courses, Deluxe, Classic, Traditional and Challenge. Up to 4 players can either play a game or practice any hole on any course. Each course offers its own difficulty level. Deluxe and Challenge have difficult hills and course layouts. The Challenge being the more difficult course. The Classic offers animated bridges and other obstacles. The traditional is your standard miniature golf course which requires well placed bank shots. To make a shot, using the joystick, move the crosshair in the approximate direction and distance where you wish the ball to go. When you are ready to shoot, hit the fire button. You will notice the level rise in the power bar. When the bar reaches the desired distance, press the fire button again. When you release the fire button, the bar starts to move back down. The mark where you stopped the bar moving indicates the power with which you hit the ball. When the bar reaches the bottom of the power bar, it moves horizontally on the accuracy bar. In the middle of the accuracy bar is the center line. Too much to the left of center, it pulls to the left. Too much to the right of center, it pulls to the right. Press the fire button at the right moment to hit the ball. If the course proves to be too tough, visit the Practice course option. Not all of us can be a pro. | ||
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| Pool | Icon Design Ltd. / Mastertronic Ltd. | [top] | |
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Pool is a game about pool billiards. There is one opponent to compete against (either controlled by the AI or another player) without further possibilities for customization. The control method is divided into two distinct parts: first the basic position of the cue is set in a top down view. After that the game switches to a first-person perspective where the player can fine-tune the cue to select the spin (the game gives the parameters of the current position). Finally the shot is performed with a mouse click. For both parts the player is on a time limit of about ten seconds each. | ||
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| Pub Pool | Ibid/ Mastertronic Ltd. | [top] | |
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This pool simulator is set in the Pub. You may direct the white ball by moving the cross cursor on the pool table, adjust the spin by selecting the place, where cue strike the ball (nine places on the ball is available such as center, bottom, right, top left, etc.), and select the power of stroke. All balls should be pocketed in the correct order (ball "8" should be pocketed last) on the table formed the regular hexagon. When rack is completed, the game advances to the next level, setting the balls in more difficult positions on the table. 5 misses are allowed for each level before the finish of the game. Audience of the pub watches the gameflow, says different comments on the player's actions, and takes the beer from the barmaid. The game is available for 1 or 2 hot-seat players. Each player in 2-players mode use own table with own balls and own game set. | ||
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| Soko-Ban | ASCII Corporation, Thinking Rabbit / Spectrum Holobyte Inc. | [top] | |
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This is a classic puzzle game first in Japan computers in 1982, the basis of numerous clones in the later years. It is set in a warehouse. On each level, the player must push crates (from square to square) to get them onto designated spots; once each crate is on a marked spot, the level is complete. Crates can only be pushed one at a time (so two crates next to each other cannot be pushed together), and cannot be pulled - so it's possible to get a crate stuck in a corner, where it cannot be retrieved. By the last levels, you must plan 40 steps in advance. | ||
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| Tetris | Spectrum Holobyte, Inc. | [top] | |
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The original commercially-licensed version of Alexey Pajitnov's classic Tetris puzzle game. Geometric shapes fall from the top of a playfield to rest on the bottom; fit the pieces together, and the line they form disappears. If the pieces don't form lines and eventually stack up to the top of the playfield, the game is over. Difficulty increases by dropping the pieces faster and faster over time. | ||
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| Trivial Pursuit | Oxford Digital Enterprises Ltd. / Domark Limited | [top] | |
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This is the earliest home computer incarnation of Horn Abbot International Ltd's classic board game, Trivial Pursuit. The game involves answering questions on one of six subject categories to gain moves, and answering questions on special squares to gain one of the six 'Wedges' you need to gain the right to take on the final winning question. Questions are aimed at British players - many entertainment questions are based on British TV, and sport questions relate to popular British sports. Two game modes are available: Single Player (which involves answering questions against the clock) and Multiplayer (where you can take on up to five human-controlled players). The computer reveals the answer, and you select 'yes' or 'no' to tell it whether you got it right. The question categories are exactly the same as the board game: Art & Literature, Science & Nature, Geography, History, Sports & Leisure, and Entertainment. However two different question styles are added to take advantage of computer technology - some questions relate to a picture or diagram and some relate to a piece of music. One additional feature not available in the board game is a statistical analysis of the number and type of questions answered correctly. This can be split into the performances of all the players, or the performance of an individual player within the six categories. It is especially useful at the end of the game, when choosing which category a player must answer to win the game. | ||
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| Wheel of Fortune | ShareData Inc. | [top] | |
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A very basic translation of the popular game show Wheel Of Fortune, where you guess letters until you can guess the phrase. This CGA version has three old-school rounds of Wheel of Fortune (where the puzzles are simply "Phrase", "Title", "Person", etc.) and then a bonus round. You can compete against 2 computer players or up to three people can play against each other. | ||
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