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Adventures
| Altered Destiny | Michael Berlyn / Accolade | [top] | |
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Designed by Michael Berlyn (of Infocom's Infidel and Polarware's Oo-Topos fame), this is a bizarre text-parser/graphical adventure game with a cliche premise: after being sucked into your TV by a powerful alien, it is up to you to save the galaxy. The parser recognizes a wide range of words, and some puzzles are quite difficult, although all of them are logical once you figure out what to do. Recommended for its overall wackiness and good puzzles. It has some absolutely fantastic visual design, with graphics that push the 16-color limit to its breaking point. The game runs on the same engine as Les Manley in: Search for the King, which means it's practically identical to the SCI0 interpreter Sierra used for the likes of King's Quest IV and Space Quest III - artistically it's not only on par with these titles but perhaps bests them. | ||
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| Amazonia [Pt] | Renato Degiovani | [top] | |
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This game is considered a classic among adventure games in Portuguese. It was the first game of its kind to be published in a national magazine (originally a text adventure in 1983 on Sinclair ZX81). In 1990, a PC-compatible version came out, with support for monochrome CGA cards. In 1991, the first graphic version of the game was released, for PC / CGA. In 1993, PRO KIT Informática created the first color version of the game (16 colors), for 386 computers with VGA support. In 1995, mouse support was introduced in the game: it was possible to play traditionally, typing phrases and commands, but it was also possible to choose actions from an interactive menu. In 1996, it gained support for SuperVGA cards and entered the era of 256 colors. This version was released exclusively on CD-ROM and was the first Brazilian game distributed in this format. In 1996, the first version of the game for Windows would also arrive, with Hi-Color and True-Color support on PC computers. It is important to remember that it is not a lavish program in situations, but we can already have a lot of fun. The game is based on the solution of small problems, which lead to the solution of the main problem, which is to escape the dangers of the jungle after surviving an air accident, finding a paved road. To achieve this goal, the player must construct command phrases, using verb (action) plus objects. For example: TAKE THE SUITCASE. Jungle Adventures is a story that takes place in any jungle (it could be in the Amazon) and the goal is to find a place where you can ask for help. There is only one way out, and several ways to reach it: by deduction, intuition, logical reasoning, experience, error and success and even luck. It is important to make a map of the places to go, but this must be done carefully, because in the jungle you walk on trails that sometimes turn without realizing it. In 2012 the source code was made free and a web version was created. | ||
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| B.A.T. | Computer's Dream / Ubi Soft | [top] | |
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One of the best cult classic games ever made, B.A.T. is a fun cyberpunk romp through the underworld of crime and corruption. As agent for B.A.T., an ultrasecret organization serving the Confederation of the Galaxies in the 22nd century, you will be assigned various missions covering a wide range of spy activities and planets. The game sport many original concepts such as the ability to program the B.O.B. (organic computer implanted on your arm), and RPG-style character development based on various stats. Unfortunately, the tedious interface and obscure plot mar the games' strong points. Still, it's a refreshingly innovative game that's vastly underrated. | ||
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| Bargon Attack | Coktel Vision | [top] | |
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From quirky French developer Coktel comes this fun and long adventure where you have to free the Earth from captivity under the alienrace Bargon. The game is humorous in a scifi "B" movie kind of way as it has a lot of cheesy jokes and weird aliens in Latex. The puzzles are fair (and some even creative) compared to most other Coktel games though there are some "pixel-hunts", and the plot is fun to follow to the end. | ||
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| Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure | Intracorp / Capstone | [top] | |
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This is a fun game featuring the Bill & Ted characters of Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter in the 1989 movie by Nelson Entertainment. As Bill and Ted, you're going to the same whacked-out, time-warped trip through human history seen in the movie. The goal: nab a few famous persons from history so that they can help you pass the most heinous history exam. With the aid of a traveling phone booth, you need only to dial a year and off you go, back in time. The 12 historical celebrities (ranging from Joan of Arc, to Sigmund Freud and Gengkhis Khan) are in their own time periods, replete with good background graphics and enemies appropriate for that era. Fighting thugs and finding these "dudes" are half the task-- in many cases, you'll need some object to convince them to go with you. On difficulty levels 3 and 4, you'll need more than one object. | ||
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| Cadaver | Bitmap Brothers, The / Mirrorsoft Ltd. | [top] | |
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An interesting change of pace from the Bitmap style, Cadaver is a high-end arcade adventure. In the person of the thief Karadoc, players set out to raid the five stories of the castle Wulf. Legend has it that it's filled with treasure. What the legend didn't say is that the Castle is also filled with deadly traps, riddles and monsters. Surviving is not only a question of defending your life. Karadoc also has to prove his wit in collecting objects, putting them to the right use, mastering spells and solving tasks posed by the gods. Quick reflexes and jumping skill wouldn't hurt either. It utilises picturesque 3D isometric graphics, many a medieval mind bender and a nifty icon system by which to manipulate the world around your character to bring one of the favourite game types to the 16 bit computers - and with style. Hundreds of rooms to explore, a large range of spells and potions and a full compliment of adversaries to contend with. Cadaver is a challenging and tremendous game that continues to delight. | ||
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| Castle Master | Incentive Software Ltd. / Domark Software, Inc. | [top] | |
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Castle Master is one of the forefathers to the "modern" 3D games: in this mix between adventure elements and action, as a Prince (or Princess) you have to explore a completely 3D medieval castle to free your beloved. The game requires the player, through a first-person view, to explore Castle Eternity. There are riddles on many of the castle walls, which give gamplay hints. There are also keys and pentacles hidden in various locations for the player to collect. Many rooms contain spirits which attack the player and reduce his or her strength. The player's only weapon is an unlimited supply of rocks to throw, but a single hit is sufficient to exorcise most of them. The game was built on the Freescape engine, which allowed solid, fully three-dimensional environments to be produced. The adventuring portion is a marked improvement over Total Eclipse in that the rooms are now recognizably different from one another, and puzzles more diverse and precise (finding keys to doors and secret tunnels are still the mainstay, however). Overall, a solid action/adventure that offers many hours of fun, although the control scheme is awkward and graphics still difficult to make out. | ||
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| Castle Master 2: The Crypt | Incentive Software Ltd. / Domark Software, Inc. | [top] | |
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A number of copies of Castle Master came with an additional exclusive game called The Crypt. It uses the same Freescape game engine and continues the original plot. In this chapter, you'll have to free your beloved by entering and exploring a 3D crypt, activating lifts and exploring the various floors. It improves upon its predecessor by having more of everything: bigger world to explore (this time, a dank underground crypt under the castle you explored in the previous game), more secret passages to find, and more strange artifacts to find and find use for. | ||
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| Cawado [G] | Joop Systemlösungen / Berufsgenossen-Schaften | [top] | |
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This is a promotional adventure with German parser interface that mocks old Sierra classics. The title is combination of Can Want Do. You control a young man or a young woman through a day of their everyday lives, to school, to work, to go out in the evening ... always under observance of labor & traffic safety and accident prevention. | ||
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| Circuit's Edge | Westwood Associates / Infocom | [top] | |
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Play through the science fiction of George Alec Effinger's "When Gravity Fails" series; chip personalities and skills into your brain, take drugs and beat up thugs as you try to solve a murder mystery in the Middle East-meets-New Orleans "Budayeen." Many unusual characters populate this game and there is some adult content - hookers, drugs and sex changes, albeit in chunky EGA. The interface is similar to Crescent Hawk's Inception, and particularly Mines of Titan - all made by Westwood in the late '80s. It's an atmospheric, well-written game. The game's strength lies in the outstanding and rich depiction of the world that Effinger envisioned. You play Marid, a down-on-his-luck two-bit courier looking for a job. The game play - walking city streets, visiting bars and talking to sexchanges, using a cellphone, taking drugs, fighting punks, putting chips in your head - it was like few games in terms of grit and well-realized gameworld. The game also features an ingenious CHIP IN/OUT feature that is reminiscent of Interplay's Neuromancer: you can buy or obtain skill chips that can be activated to solve puzzles and increase your aptitude. Despite the seemlingly endless freedom in exploring the city and partaking its many vices, however, the gameplay is linear - one event after another, with lax time constraints, and endless wandering will be cut short by messages from your wristwatch reminding you of your current task. The interface and encounters are exciting enough, but the characters you encounter, while gritty, are limited in their variance (but then again, few designers care about the sexual history of characters in computer games back in 1990, or even now). Though the game's story and prose are very violent, the story is very interesting, and ranks among the best-developed in adventure games. There are also fighting sequences in the game, most of which doesn't further the plotline but add action and atmosphere. Overall, Circuit's Edge is a must-play for all cyberpunk fans. | ||
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| Clive Barker's Nightbreed: The Interactive Movie | Impact Software Development / Ocean | [top] | |
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This is a mixture of action and adventure in a game based off of Clive Barker's movie "Nightbreed" (which is based on Barker's novella Cabal). You play Aaron Boone, the main character from both the book and the movie. Boone is attempting to get to a planet of bliss called Midian. His attempts at gaining acceptance go wrong when he is bitten by a cannibal, and the Police of Earth find Midian and set out to destroy it. Boone must stop them. The game has several different sequences, most arcade based, trying to bring sequences from the movie to life on the computer screen. There are eight action types from driving to Midian, running from Peloquin the cannibal, or fighting 'The Mask', a serial killer whom Boone is mistaken for. This was the second game in OCEAN's planned trilogy of games based on the movie and is an action/adventure hybrid, and much worse than the first game in the series which was all action. The adventure game elements, only involve choosing where to go next, and collecting a myriad of pointless items. Disappointing sales of this game convinced OCEAN to abandon the idea of making a third game for the series, which was slated to be all-adventure game. | ||
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| Colorado | Silmarils | [top] | |
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The second survival game after Le Fetiche Maya, Colorado casts you as feerless adventurer who must deal with the Indians and wildlife in your search for the legendary Cheyenne goldmine. In addition to standard weapons, special objects such as a ship's horn lend an extra level of atmosphere and complexity to the already novel game. The plot involves a search for a Cheyenne goldmine. It's also a much better game than Silmaril's later survival game, the frustrating Robinson's Requiem. | ||
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| Corrupt [Sp] | GLL Software | [top] | |
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This is an interactive fiction game with high resolution EGA graphics, divided into 5 parts/chapters and framed within what in literary terms we would call a black novel. In this way, the player takes the role of an FBI detective who must try to dismantle a powerful gang of drug traffickers, finding the evidences to stop the biggest suspect before the arrival of the next big shipment of cocaine. In other order of things, it's necessary comment that, the game don't let the player save the game in course. To supply the lack of the save option, when the player will finish a chapter, the program will give a password that will let continue from that point. | ||
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| Countdown | Access Software Inc. | [top] | |
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Similar to Access' early Tex Murphy adventures, Countdown has an incredible amount of "pixel-hunt" puzzles and several pointless "arcade" sequences. The plot of this game is quite interesting, though: you are an amnesiac trying to escape the asylum and find your true identity. Overall, a fun game that's been overlooked by many people, despite frustrating puzzles, time limit, and some downright bad dialogues. | ||
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| Covert Action, Sid Meier's | MicroProse Software, Inc. | [top] | |
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As special agent Maximilian (or Maxine) "Max" Remington, you are the premier anti-terror agent in the world. CIA have received tips and clues about some suspicious activities of some known bad guys... Gather enough evidence through house search, wiretaps, etc. Decode any messages you discover to unravel additional clues. Each operation will be handled by multiple people. Figure out the crime BEFORE it happens and get enough evidence to find the true mastermind behind the whole thing... Then chase down and arrest the suspects via car chases or go into the house arrest the suspect yourself. Can you arrest all the masterminds? Covert Action is best described as a secret agent simulator, with a heavy dose of puzzle and some top-down shooter action. You'll follow the hints all over the world, surveil suspect safehouses, apply wiretaps (which is a puzzle sequence), even go inside and check each and every drawer without arousing suspicion (by keeping VERY quiet). If you're discovered, you'll need to AVOID car chases or you'll end up shooting it out with the bad guys. You can also "tail" a suspect (with multiple cars) and see if you can find another safehouse or more headquarters to search for clues. You have silenced pistol (or Uzi) and three different types of grenades, plus other high-tech toys. As you get closer to the mastermind, the plot gets more intricate, timeline gets shorter, code breaking is tougher, and enemy harder to take out. | ||
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| Crime Time | Starbyte Software | [top] | |
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Crime Time is a more or less classical 3rd person point-and-click adventure, with the major difference that you don't click on the graphics, but on controls below the graphics. Actions are done by clicking on words, as is movement. The story is a classical mystery setting: two friends go hitchhiking, and since it's raining so bad, they rest in a small hotel. One of the two starts to drink till he's totally out of control. He stumbles into the wrong room, gets knocked out and wakes up next to a corpse. Now, you have to prove you didn't do anything. | ||
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| Das Stundenglas [G] | Weltenschmiede / Software 2000 | [top] | |
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Das Stundenglas (“The Hourglass”) is the first of three interactive fiction games by German developer Weltenschmiede (the others being Die Kathedrale and Hexuma - Das Auge des Kal). It is entirely in German. Upon jumping into a mysterious chest, you arrive in a beautiful fairy-tale world. Yet the serenity is spoiled: the enchanted hourglass that controls the flow of time is lost, and the world has been split into two realities. Both planes are the very same land, but certain buildings and people exist only in one of the two zones. On your quest to reclaim the missing artefact, you will have to travel between the two worlds and claim a magical coin from each of the twelve inhabitants; of course, all of them ask a little favor in return for their gift… The game contains a (generous) time limit; you have to find the hourglass in 24 days. Consequently, there is a day-night-rhythm, and the characters will wander between certain locations in a daily routine. There are two graphics for most locations to reflect day and night. | ||
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| Deep Space Drifter | Michael J. Roberts and Steve McAdams | [top] | |
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Stranded in deep space after running out of fuel, you luck upon a nearby space station. When you get there, though, the place is abandoned, and strange things seem to have been happening lately. And if you can make your way off the station and reach the planet below, that's when things get really strange. Deep Space Drifter is a classic, old-school text adventure, complete with tricky puzzles, death traps, and some truly nefarious mazes. But the solutions are always logical, so puzzle fiends will enjoy this game's challenges. | ||
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| Deja Vu 2: Lost in Las Vegas | ICOM Simulations, Inc. / Mindscape | [top] | |
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Unarguably the best game ICOM ever produced, Deja Vu 2 continues the storyline of the first game, only this time you no longer have amnesia. As an ace private detective, use your sleuthing skills to uncover sinister gang plots and implement an ingenious plan to set one gang against the other. This is the one game that compares favorably with the best adventure games of the era (1989), and ICOM even generously reduced the number of useless items you can carry. In the sequel you wake up in Las Vegas with a great headache and realize that you are Ace Harding, who haa to find $112,000 of recently murdered Chicago's racketeer Joey Siegel for his boss and Las Vegas' mobster Tony Malone. You have a choice to find money in one week "or else". Just for formality you are watched by Malone's thug Stogie Martin. During the investigation in Noir style you can collect and use items, talk to characters and make some decisions. The game has a multiple windows interface, which size and position you can change. Together with its predecessor Deja Vu II is considered by some fans to be the most difficult of these games and requires a lot of lateral thinking. As in Deja Vu I, the gameplay has a final part where evidence collected during the game has to be planted in the right places. This part is among the trickiest in the game, since the significance of each tidbit can be hard to assess. In 2015, a MacVenture Series PC release contained both the original Macintosh 128k black and white, and Apple IIGS 4-bit color versions. | ||
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| Demoniak | Palace Software | [top] | |
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This is a highly original game that unfortunately gets bogged down with extreme non-linearity. You are a superhero who has the special ability to take control of most people you meet by typing "BECOME [someone]" and looking at the world from their perspective. Despite exciting possibilities, solving the game is almost impossible because you *must* become someone to solve many puzzles, but precisely who (out of 50 possibilities) to become is not always obvious. Recommended for veteran IF-er only, and be prepared to get frustrated in your quest to thwart the evil scientist. It has cartoonish graphics and was written by Alan Grant, known for his work on the Judge Dredd, Batman, and Robocop comic books; a Dredd paperback was included in the game box. It used the "Pure Fiction" game engine. | ||
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| Earthrise | Interstel | [top] | |
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Earthrise is a science fiction adventure game in which you are sent on a space shuttle to investigate the asteroid Solus, whose base has stopped responding. Once there, you must enter the doomed base while eliminating the alien menace. The game engine resembles Sierra On-Line's AGI system used in their early days, with text input, 16-color graphics and rectangular boxes for text. Matt Gruson has released other adventure games such as Rex Nebular and the Cosmic Gender Bender. Overall, it's quite a challenge to discover what happened to the scientists on the base, allied with fairly good backgrounds and some entertaining sequences. | ||
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| Elvira: Mistress Of The Dark | Horrorsoft / Accolade | [top] | |
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Elvira Mistress is an RPG/adventure. The game uses a first-person perspective where the hero wanders around solving puzzles and combat with undead creatures that have overrun Elvira’s Castle. This game features dozens of different death sequences; if the cook in the kitchen kills you for example you can see your head floating in her cauldron. The game has a real-time combat system, where you have to time your attacks and blocks in order to defeat the enemy. You never know what lies in the next corner and in what freakish way your corpse will be desecrated if you die. Just make sure you don’t play this game late at night. | ||
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| Explora III: Sous Le Signe Du Serpent [Fr] | Infomedia France / Microvalue | [top] | |
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This French point-and-click adventure game is the final sequel of the original Explora (released as Chrono Quest in English-speaking markets). The time traveling antics of the other games continue on this title, albeit in a more tangential way. You play as a writer with a severe lack of ideas that has a 3 month deadline to deliver a manuscript to his publisher. While watching TV you see your name linked to a report about a mysterious murder. It is your job to unravel this conspiracy. The interface of the game has a more minimalist approach this time, the icons were reduced to only three revolving on the bottom-right of the screen: a magnifying glass to examine the scenario, a hand to pick and drop things, and a hammer as the "use" verb. Above these icons there is a clock: the developers added a dimension of time to the proceedings, and certain actions can only be performed at an exact time point. This installment also ditches the synthesized speech of the second game. The games of this series share a common trait of being quite unforgiving: the player can easily get stuck on a unwinnable situation by forgetting to take some crucial object or not performing the exact action at the exact time. Death also comes swiftly and unexpected, sometimes only by opening a door at the wrong moment. | ||
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| Future Wars: Adventures In Time | Delphine Software International / Interplay | [top] | |
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Future Wars is a graphic adventure game, the first to use Delphine's proprietary Cinematique point-and-click interface. A right click brings up the verb menu. After choosing one of the six commands, you point the mouse over the desired target and execute with a left click. Small objects are depicted by enlarged drawings - once you found them. Pixel hunting is a very frequent aspect of Future Wars. Lazy players are punished with puzzle dead-ends. What an unlikely hero! You are a window cleaner. A common, little window cleaner. Yet you discover, more due to your notorious curiosity than by mistake, a time machine in your chiefs back office. Strange? Absolutely. Your adventure in the past and the future is about to begin. The quest? Four words: Evil aliens. Beautiful girl. | ||
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| Geisha | Tomahawk / Coktel Vision | [top] | |
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In one of the most unique and controversial plots ever seen, you play an undercover agent who disguises herself as a futuristic geisha to steal secrets from seedy characters. Puzzles are as weird as you can get, with many arcade sequences that are obvious metaphors of carnal acts. The game is extremely difficult due to the fact that it is not always obvious which item you can pick up, and the puzzles require very warped mind that most gamers don't have. Worse, you can get irrevocably stuck if you forget to pick up or use certain items in previous scenes, making it a tiresome save-and-restore affair. Nevertheless, the game's high originality and wacky plot might interest some gamers, especially those who like mature-themed games (although the erotic scenes are pretty mild). | ||
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| Golden Compass / Ougon no Rashinban [J] | Riverhill Soft Inc. | [top] | |
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Released for Sharp X68000, PC-98, FM Towns and PC, Ougon no Rashinban ("Golden Compass") is the second case starring the private detective Ryūnosuke Tōdō, following Kohakuiro no Yuigon. Like the first case, the adventure takes place in the 1920's. This time the investigator finds himself on a ship sailing from San Francisco to Yokohama. A mysterious murder occurs, and it is up to Tōdō to gather evidence and find the culprit. Like its predecessor, the game mainly follows an adventure format with some simulation elements. The game is heavy on realistic investigation routine, and mostly consists of questioning characters and finding clues that would help to solve the case. Unlike the previous entry, the game has isometric graphics with superimposed character portraits, and elements of point-and-click interface (e.g. when navigating the ship map and accessing various locations). This adventure was also released for PC. | ||
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| Hugo's House Of Horrors | Gray Design Associates / Gold Medallion Software / Personal Companion Software | [top] | |
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This 16-color, parser based adventure created by one guy, David Gray, starts when your girlfriend Penelope is missing. She was last seen in a house where she went babysitting. That's where you start out as Hugo, in the House of Horrors. The inhabitants have captured your girlfriend in here, as you'll find out, and it's up to you to rescue her. It is here that you'll meet some characters that'll reappear in the other games in the trilogy. It's pretty fun in the style of early Sierra graphic adventures. Initially released as shareware, "the Hugo trilogy" enhanced versions were upgraded on 10/9/1995 by the original developer so that they will now run in Windows. Unlike the original DOS version text commands, the Windows version features an intuitive point & click mouse interface, toolbar, status bar, MIDI background music and digital sound effects (with a sound card) and complete online help and hints for every puzzle. A 2001 fan-made remake was done with AGS by Spyros but was later pulled. | ||
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| Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure | Lucasfilm Games | [top] | |
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It is 1938 and adventurer Indiana Jones is joined by his father on this quest, preventing Adolf Hitler from capturing the Holy Grail. He will have to deal with Nazi guards, the Luftwaffe and enemy spies as he tries to stop the tyrannical Nazi leader. This graphic adventure uses the same SCUMM gameplay system as the previous Maniac Mansion. Most of the screen is used for a visual rendition of the current scene. At the bottom of the screen are words, which can be clicked on using the mouse to activate their functions. For example, objects can be picked up, used, pushed or pulled, and turned on and off. Most locations are from the movie, but some further scenes are added. In keeping with Indiana's action-man persona, the game also features pure action scenes. Unlike most Lucasfilm adventures, you can die. Two PC versions of the game were released, one with 16 color EGA graphics, and one with 256 color VGA graphics. | ||
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| Inspector Gadget: Mission Global Terror | DIC Animation City / Azeroth | [top] | |
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Inspector Gadget is an excellent family-oriented point-and-click adventure starting the kind but bumbling cartoon hero. The game is aimed at a younger crowd, with a focus on environmental issues and abundant in-game hints. This is one of the more successful TV adaptations because the plot is interesting, voice acting is done well, and puzzles are logical. It may also be the first game in history that lets you play as a dog, although not to as great an effect as in Sierra's Pepper's Adventures in Time. | ||
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| Inspektor Griffu [G] | Tale Software / ariolasoft GmbH | [top] | |
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Inspektor Griffu is a German detective mystery and a mixture between a graphical and a text adventure. Features of the former are mouse control, button interface and graphical representation of the environment. The text output is a trademark of IF and can be found in this game. You play as Inspektor Griffu who was chosen because no one better was available and your task is to solve a murder case in one day. Every action you make eats up some minutes and if you don't reach the solution in time it's Game Over for you. Interrogate the village habitants, search for clues and finally, find the murderer. | ||
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| It Came From The Desert | Cinemaware | [top] | |
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It Came From the Desert is a fun action/adventure game that gets all its inspiration from the many cult horror (b) movies of the 50's and 60's. You play the part of Dr. Greg Bradley, a geologist and the new guy in town. Eager to satisfy your scientific mind you set out to examine the crash-site of a mysterious meteor, but what you find is not what you were looking for. Ants, twenty feet tall, go marching one by one, using your hometown as a picnic basket. Panic grips the city as this monster sized mutation strikes terror again and again. There's sound effects so eerie you can hear the distant marching of giant harvester ants on the prowl. Human drama abounds - blackmailing rivals, land scams, love triangles and desert cults. The game takes place all over Lizard Breath, and there are several different types of action / interaction. Though the adventure part of the game is very linear, it's still fun. And the action sequences, well, they're just what you'd expect from Cinemaware. The game was released as freeware in 2002. | ||
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| James Bond 007: The Stealth Affair / Operation Stealth | Delphine Software International / Interplay | [top] | |
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This game involves a top-secret stealth fighter which has been stolen from a US base, so it's up to you to track down its location and bring it back. Of course, the fate of the whole world rest on your weary shoulders. Puzzles are fun and are neither too hard nor too easy; and since most of them involve using cool spy gadgets such as a passport falsifier, fans of spy novels will have a great time with the game. It's controlled by the same pop-up command menu consisting of six verbs that was introduced in Delphines debut Future Wars. However, it's been slightly improved and does now allow interaction with your inventory, like examining and combining items. You get to toy around with a whole load of typical special agent's gadgets, beginning with a passport forgery kit and ending with explosive cigarettes. Apart from solving puzzles, you've got to make it through some arcade sequences: escape the labyrinth, dive with limited breath, dodge the evil guy's minions. There are three different versions of this game: It was originally released in Europe as an EGA version under the name of "Operation Stealth". A few months later, Delphine released a VGA-only follow-up. For the US market, Interplay got its hands on the official James Bond license and decided to spice up the game with the famous agent's name instead of "John Glames". | ||
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| Jara-Tava: The Isle of Fire | Satchel Software | [top] | |
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This is a traditionally-styled graphical text adventure game that was used as educational software in South Australian schools. Your recently deceased uncle has bequeathed you a map purporting to show the location of Captain Kidd's treasure, sending you on a quest to explore the remote South Pacific islands of Jara-Mau and Jara-Tava. Can you survive the shark-infested waters and an imminent volcanic eruption to make off with the fabled treasure? As in most parser-driven games, actions are achieved by typing simple commands: "Inventory," "South," "Get sword," "Tie rope," etc. A static first-person view illustrates the current scene, and the player can examine the map in their inventory to see the overall layout of the island. The Amiga port adds the ability to access some of the most common commands (such as movement, inventory, and the map view) by clicking with the mouse. Despite the game's short length, there are multiple distinct solutions to the challenges encountered: the manual states there are four ways to travel between the islands and three ways to find the treasure. | ||
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| King's Quest: Quest For The Crown SCI Remake | Sierra Entertainment | [top] | |
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This is a complete reworking of the original King's Quest, using Sierra's
16-color SCI (Sierra Creative Interpreter) engine. In celebration of their
10 years as a successful computer entertainment company, it was decided in
1989 that Sierra On-Line should make new, enhanced versions of the first
games in their five most popular game franchises: King's Quest, Space Quest,
Leisure Suit Larry, Police Quest and Quest for Glory. They would all use the
new SCI system and the enhanced looks and sounds of the new versions would
show how much tecnology had improved over the years. Graphics were remade,
and new music was added. Being the first of the remade Sierra classics, this
game was the only one to be made in 16 colors. All other remakes used SCI
Version 1 (introduced in KG5) which allowed hand-painted 256-color backgrounds.
However, it turned out that Sierra had greatly miscalculated how the market
would receive these games. Every single one of them flopped. It turned out
that the people who loved the original versions didn't like the new ones
because they didn't have the same feeling to them, and the people who had
never played the originals weren't impressed by the old-style gameplay and
the simplicity in the storyline. They were heavily critizised in most reviews
and many people compared the release of these games to the coloring of
classic black and white films: It was simply not an improvement at all, and
it was much more rewarding to watch the original, "accurate" version.
Also see: #King's Quest VGA Fan Remake |
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| La Diosa de Cozumel [Sp] | Aventuras AD | [top] | |
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The scene chosen for this adventure, the first one of the "Ci-U-Than" trilogy, is the Yucatan, a mysterious land in which legends say there are a lot of dangers, hidden treasures, unsolved mysteries, temples filled with traps... in short, the ingredients to which the good adventurer is used to deal with. The adventure is developed in the island of Cozumel, where you must guide an archaeologist who had an incident. He was sailing towards it perfectly equipped, when an unfortunate shipwreck left him without anything. Do not think he only lost the map or the machete, no, he lost everything, including the trousers and the underclothes, reason why it's quite possible that an entrance in San Marcos, coastal town near the place of the shipwreck, would carry serious problems with the justice. The main mission of the adventure is to discover all the hidden secrets of the island and then be able to escape from it. This game uses the habitual commands of the previous AD adventures, plus the inclusion of some PSI characters, it means, personages with own personality, decision capacity, different behavior according to the development of the adventure, that is, personages who must be treated as if they were real since their reactions can vary from a game to another. Some improvements like the objects treatment system have been incorporated (which include all their qualities); a better graphical detail; a score system that it indicates you which actions are positive and which negative, etc. | ||
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| Les Manley in: Search for the King | Manley And Associates / Accolade | [top] | |
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A milder version of Sierra's Leisure Suit Larry, the lovable nerd Les Manley finds himself in this wacky adventure where he must literally search heaven and earth for the King himself. The text parser is very flexible (you can use pronouns, etc.). You can get stuck in unwinnable situations since the game happily lets you proceed without having all the necessary items. The game is disappointingly short, with the second half simply not as well scripted or funny as the first. Still, it's a funny game that deserve a second look - just save often. | ||
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| Loom | Lucasfilm Games | [top] | |
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Loom is a strange and beautiful adventure game. The hero is Bobbin Threadbare, a weaver. In the world of Loom, everyone belongs to a guild. Apart from the weavers, there are sheperds, blacksmiths, glass makers. Although you do not know why, you are outcast from the guild and blamed for the lack of prosperity in recent times. After the Council of Elders is attacked and the Elders are turned into swans, you as Bobbin must set forth on a journey to find the swans and try to restore order to the Guild of Weavers. When Bobbin embarks on his quest, he has no inventory (very unusual in an adventure game), he will solve problems not with items, but with "drafts", spells consisting of four notes of music. These drafts can be written down in the beautiful Book of Patterns that is present even in later jewelcase editions. Loom also features three difficultly levels, and differentiates them by changing the way the interface works: Standard features the distaff at the bottom of the screen but notes aren't written, whereas Expert doesn't have the distaff and you have to replay the spells by hearing alone. Loom first came out 1989 on floppies with EGA graphics and a 30-minute audio prologue on tape. 1991 saw a new DOS CD version with VGA graphics and CD music. Thanks to the SCUMMVM engine, it can now be played on a wide variety of platforms. | ||
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| Magicland Dizzy | The Codemasters Software Company | [top] | |
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Dizzy, the egg protagonist, is back in his fourth installment: Magicland Dizzy. The land has been corrupted by an evil wizard, and it's Dizzy's job to set everything right. To do this, he must walk, jump and flip through a large number of screens, pick up and use various items, and talk to people. The series is memorable for eccentric level design, great music, and wonderful cartoon-style sense of humor. There were 15 Dizzy games made for the Spectrum, only 7 of which were ported to the PC. Magicland Dizzy is the second Dizzy game for the PC, fourth in the series overall. This time, the evil wizard Zaks is back and has done some strange things to the Yolkfolk - Denzil is trapped in a block of ice, Dylan is in a slumber, Dora has been turned into a frog, Daisy has turned into a giant, and Grand Dizzy is stuck behind a mirror. Dizzy managed to defeat Zaks before, so can he sort him out another time? Gameplay will be familiar to Dizzy fans: adventure-style puzzle-solving (complete with inventory items) with some frantic action. As well as rescuing the Yolkfolk, you must also collect 30 diamonds. Unlike the first three adventures, Dizzy now has an energy bar as well as three lives, so the game is much more forgiving than Fantasy World Dizzy. Sound and music this time have also been upgraded to Adlib/Soundblaster, so PC gamers can now hear what Spectrum gamers have enjoyed for years. Overall, nice graphics, nice tune, nice game. | ||
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| Maupiti Island | Lankhor | [top] | |
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Maupiti Island is a nonlinear police investigation with graphics in 2D. It's the sequel to Mortville Manor. Whilst famous detective Jerome Lange is at sea, a cyclone (Harry) approaches and obliges his ship to put in at Maupiti Island until the weather calms. Then, as if things were not bad enough already, a woman called Marie disappears from the island. Lange gives up on his holiday to investigate, and discovers many hidden secrets lurking beneath the surface of Maupiti Island. Conduct interviews, gather clues, and solve almost impossible puzzles that require insight as well as intuition. It's one of the hardest and most intriguing adventure games ever produced but also sadly one of the most overlooked despite attracting a loyal following in Europe. Overall, an excellent game that's marred only by a poor interface. | ||
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| Mission: Impossible | Konami Corporation | [top] | |
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Mission: Impossible is an adventure game that puts you in command of a 4-man spy team. You can control separate members, ordering them to do different things at once. Some of the things you can do include: track suspects, tap phones, infiltrate terrorist offices, and more. In fact, the spies *must* be given individual orders to solve many puzzles in the game. The game features a vast overhead map similar to Police Quest 1, real-time gameplay, and an involving plot that develops as you unearth more clues. Save often! | ||
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| Murder! | U.S. Gold Ltd. | [top] | |
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After personalizing your character, you enter the game where everyone is a suspect. The murder has occurred and whoever did it is nicely camouflaged within the party crowd in the house. However, the time is crucial as you have limited time (2 hours or so) to solve the mystery and make an arrest. With skills at your disposal, you will be able to take fingerprints from almost anything, write in your detective notebook about conversations you find intriguing, and slowly but surely, outlining your suspect. Alas, many love affairs, plots, intrigues and what all not among other characters may be uncovered in your investigations, but that mustn't cloud your judgment for why you are here, to solve the Murder! It's a fun murder mystery that resembles boardgame classic Clue! with real-time elements thrown in. Murder! puts you in the shoes of an investigator who must solve a murder case in a big mansion and arrest the killer before he or she strikes again. The game is played in real-time, which makes tracking down characters to interrogate within the time constraints may prove frustrating. Murder! can be quite compelling, as there is a wide scope for detailed questioning. You can also take fingerprints from possible murder weapons, and try to figure out what the weapon was. In fact, you need this to win the game, because to win, you need the murder weapon in your possession, plus you must accuse someone who you think might have committed the crime. If you're a fan of spy novels, the game may indeed be worth your while because harder levels can be very interesting. For instance, characters might lie about themselves, or be involved in supposedly "secret" love affairs with other characters. | ||
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| Murders In Space | Hitech Productions / Atari Europe S.A.S.U. | [top] | |
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This sequel to Murder in Venice takes you away from the picturesque city and into the cramped confines of a space station. The interface is simplified from the first game: left mouse button is used for most things, which is easy to use but also limits the puzzles to non-inventory related (e.g. interview people, collect evidence find combinations to safes, etc.). Despite this downside, the game is no less challenging than its predecessor, since you must still decide on what to photograph, and separate red herrings from real leads. Graphics are also upgraded to more attractive VGA, with a lot of neat scientific gadgets and instruments to find and use. Overall, a worthy sequel, despite sporting a more mundane plot and remnants of bad writing (or lack thereof) from the first game. | ||
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| Murders In Venice | Cobra Soft / Infogrames | [top] | |
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Terrorists plotting against the city of Venice have set a five-hour deadline - as a private detective, it is your job to stop them in that time frame. Motion in this mouse-controlled adventure is achieved by clicking on directional arrows, but pay attention to everything you see. You carry an organiser with which you take notes, make illustrations and store information. Your camera can be used to photograph suspicious clues and persons so you can show them to other suspects as evidence later. The game plays out in real time so timing and patience are everything, as there are points where you have to wait for certain characters to appear at a certain place at a certain time. This novel, "realistic" spy technique is later implemented to greater effect in Cryo's KGB. Overall, a fun underrated sleuth game with a lot of innovative features that's well worth a look. | ||
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| Nephi's Quest | TechnoCrafts Unlimited Inc. / Compuclassics Corporation, Eagle Marketing Corporation | [top] | |
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Nephi's Quest is a King's Quest style adventure game taking place in Jerusalem in 600 B.C. You follow the adventures of Nephi as they occured in the Book of Mormon (Latter Day Saints Church). | ||
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| Police Quest 3: The Kindred | Sierra On-Line | [top] | |
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A long 3 years have passed after the last game before Police Quest 3: The Kindred was released. With superior graphics than both previous games, this sequel is a definite step-up. Sonny’s wife has been viciously stabbed in a parking lot mall, and Sonny has to deal with a loose cannon police officer. All the while, a cartel is closing in on Lytton selling drugs and committing bizarre murders. The most obvious change in this game is the then revolutionary but now familiar icon system which since has become the standard interface for many adventure games. Again, new to this game is a brand new driving interface. No longer are you confined to only driving back and forth between locations, you can once more freely cruise the city of Lytton. Another new feature is motion captured actors on which character animations are based. This game is also the final game in the Police Quest series that designer Jim Walls has helped to create. | ||
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| Quest For Glory 2: Trial By Fire | Sierra On-Line | [top] | |
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The sequel to the first Quest for Glory game takes place in the town Shapeir
and the desert surrounding it, in a Middle East-like environment. It seems that the
powerful elemental spirits have been troubling the Shapeir folk recently. Something,
or someone, is behind those troubles. It is your task to find out what is going on,
to get acquainted with the many inhabitants of Shapeir and to prove once more you
are worthy of your heroic title! Just like its predecessor, "Trial by Fire" is an
adventure game with text-based interface, puzzles to solve, and characters to talk
to, mixed with a role-playing character development system and battles. You can play
as either a fighter, a thief, or a wizard, and also become a paladin in this game.
The combat is action-based. You gain better parameters by fighting enemies, training,
and performing other actions.
Also see: #Quest For Glory 2 VGA Remake |
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| Rise Of The Dragon | Dynamix Inc. / Sierra On-Line | [top] | |
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Dynamix's first adventure game, this is one of the most atmospheric graphical adventures ever made and Jeff Tunnell's masterpiece. As futuristic private eye and ex-cop Blade Hunter hired to investigate the death of the mayor's daughter in Los Angeles circa 2004 AD, you soon find yourself embroiled in a wide-scale drug ring and an ancient Chinese prophecy. The game's atmospheric graphics and comic-book style cutscenes that advance the storyline greatly enhance gameplay, which is a good blend of traditional use-inventory-item elements and excellent arcade sequences that would merit a game on their own. Adventure gamers who despise action sequences in adventure games will be pleased to know that Rise of The Dragon will automatically let you win the sequences if you die one too many times. One of the game's many original concepts is the use of non-linear plot, with many optional puzzles and subplots that allow multiple endings. This makes the game highly replayable for those who want to take a different route to see a different ending. The game also has realistic characters that DO remember your actions and respond appropriately. Puzzles are, for the most part, easy, except for some frustrating hunt-the-pixel and time constraints. Overall, it's a must-play for every adventure fan. Even the death scenes are so well done that you may want to try different ways to die just to see them all. | ||
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| Rody & Mastico V [Fr] | Elsa Ollivier, Lankhor | [top] | |
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The Easter bells remain silent, they have disappeared. This is a mystery that Rody will hasten to elucidate with the help of his inseparable robot Mastico. Let yourself, like them, be carried towards adventure, on a flying carpet. | ||
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| Rome: Pathway to Power / Rome: A.D. 92 | Firstlight / Millenium Interactive | [top] | |
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Millennium's second isometric adventure game is a humorous romp in the ancient Roman Empire. You start life as a poor slave in Herculaneum, which along with Pompeii was destroyed by the eruption of Mt. Versuvius. Eventually you travel to Rome and climb the social ladder, becoming a Captain in the army, a Senator and eventually Emperor of Rome. Four of the game's six levels are adventure style romps, while in the other two levels you control an army in an attempt to conquer an enemy of Rome. The game is made all the more interesting by the little details to be seen around the levels; from naked people running around the Baths, to buying slaves to fight in the Gladiatorial games. There are also RPG aspects to the game, especially in the way you have the freedom to choose how to deal with various problems. It's a vast improvement over the publisher's previous game, Adventures of Robin Hood, in every respect. The tiny characters are still there, but they are much easier to see thanks to VGA graphics and smoother animations. Most puzzles require astute observation of people's daily lives and good timing (a sequence in which you must wait to steal a citizen's toga is a case in point). The cities are teeming with priests, citizens, officials, warriors, and other kinds of people, all of whom have things to say when you stop them on the street. The game is divided into self-contained episodes, each of which must be solved in order. | ||
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| Secret of Monkey Island, The | LucasFilm Games | [top] | |
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Deep in the Carribean lies Melee Island, ruled by the beautiful governor Elaine
Marley. The cruel pirate LeChuck is deeply in love with her - so deeply that he
refuses to accept his own death! As a ghost, he dwells with his undead crew
somewhere near the mysterious Monkey Island. You are Guybrush Threepwood, a young
man whose only wish is to become a real pirate. At the Scumm Bar you meet three
pirates who tell you'll have to complete three difficult tasks in order to be
worthy of this title. This is a classic adventure game that utilizes the command
verb-based SCUMM interface first introduced in Maniac Mansion. This is a 2D (with
occasional animated cut-scenes), 3rd person, point & click game, with subtitles
(no voice). The original music by Michael Land is absolutely 'Caribbean Isle'
perfect, the kind you find yourself humming for days. And the puzzles are
challenging and wonderfully bizarre: involving everything from deadly piranha
poodles to the deadly chemicals in your breakfast cereal. It is the first
LucasArts' adventure game in which it is impossible to get irrevocably stuck or to
die. The branching dialogue system allows you to talk to characters in different
ways without fearing a wrong choice. There are plenty of inventory-based puzzles
to solve, and even "insult swordfighting" to participate in, where Guybrush has
to prove his wit is as sharp as his sword! It is the first adventure game to
use character scaling that showed Guybrush
shrink or enlarge according to his position on screen. The demo version is unique and has Guybrush Threepwood finding himself in the harbor town of Melee Island but trapped from leaving it: a troll blocks the exit and won't let Guybrush pass until he knows the magic phrase. To solve the game the player has to explore the (shortened) town and solve a few basic puzzles which are partly not present in the full version of the game. He also needs to chat with several persons known from the game which all have new dialogue, e.g. the voodoo lady talks about some features of the commercial version and Guybrush constantly cracks jokes about this being a demo. Originally released with EGA
graphics, several months later the PC version was re-released with VGA graphics. In
June 1992, a CD-ROM version of the game was released, featuring vastly improved
music as well as graphical verb and inventory icons (as seen in Monkey Island 2).
In 1997, an updated version was include in the compilation cd Monkey Island Madness.
There was updated redbook audio music soundtrack for the first Monkey Island game, and
the interface was updated to look like Monkey Island 2. IN 2009, a special edition was released with all-new artwork presented in 1080i resolution, full voiceovers, re-recorded and remastered music, a new game interface and a dynamic hint system. See also: #Secret of Monkey Island Special Edition |
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| Sorcerian | Nihon Falcom Corp. / Sierra On-Line, Inc. | [top] | |
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Sorcerian is the fifth game in the Dragon Slayer series. It is set in the fantasy land known as Pentawa, whose inhabitants are in constant need of protection from ferocious creatures roaming the wilderness. The king of Pentawa hires a party of adventurers, and their first assignment is to retrieve a precious sceptre from a dungeon, where it is guarded by the evil demonic lord Ouks. The game is an RPG with an unusual side-scrolling perspective and action-based combat, somewhat of a cross between Wizardry and platform games. Despite being a Japanese game, Sorcerian resembles Western RPGs of its time, focusing more on character development than story. In the beginning, the player creates a party of four characters, choosing between fighter, wizard, elf, and dwarf (races and classes are not distinguished). Beside the usual inns and shops, there are many things that can be done in the towns of the game, including complex development of magical spells (up to 120 spells of different disciplines), training to raise personal skills (strength, intelligence, etc.), enchanting weapons with elemental magic, as well as looking for part-time jobs. The view switches to side-scrolling when the party ventures into a hostile area. Combat is performed in real time, with the player controlling the entire party at once. The lead character can be changed at any time, and battle actions will be carried out by whoever is in front. Melee attacks and magic spells are unleashed by pressing corresponding buttons. The characters can also jump and interact with objects by bumping into them. Dungeons are usually maze-like, and some contain simple puzzles such as finding and activating hidden switches to open doors. | ||
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| Space Quest IV: Roger Wilco and the Time Rippers | Sierra On-Line | [top] | |
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Following his humorous adventures in Space Quest III: The Pirates of Pestulon, Roger Wilco is relaxing at his favorite pub somewhere in time and space when heavily armed soldiers enter the room. Carrying a parting message from Roger's old nemesis, Sludge Vohaul, they plan to get rid of the janitorial hero, execution style. That is until a man with an over-sized hair dryer helps Roger escape through a time rip into the future. Now Roger Wilco has woken up on his home planet, sometime in Space Quest XII. The series has gone to ruin without it's hero, Vohaul rules all. Roger must quickly hotwire a time pod and undo Vohaul's plot. The most logical way to do this is to run amok through past, future and the end of the universe, having a few laughs along the way. If there's a few spare moments, he might swing by the galaxy's biggest mall, charm his ex-girlfriend whom he knows nothing about and provoke some brawly monochrome bikers living in the original graphics of Space Quest I. Space Quest IV is the first in the series to feature Sierra's SCI interface (better known as "VGA icons"). Sierra's standard icon set, used here, includes icons for Walking, Looking, Using/Pickup, Smelling, Tasting as well as inventory access. Roger Wilco is shown on the screen from the exterior in multiple viewpoints. It was released on floppy disks initially, and then on CD-ROM in December 1992 with full speech support and featuring Laugh-In announcer Gary Owens as the voice of the narrator. It featured 256-color hand painted graphics and a fully mouse-driven interface. It was one of the first games to use motion capture animation. The game cost over US$1,000,000 to produce, but sold m ore than its three predecessors combined. Like Space Quest III, this one featured a mini-game: Ms. Astro Chicken. | ||
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| Spellcasting 101: Sorcerers Get All The Girls | Steve Meretzky / Legend Entertainment Company | [top] | |
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This is another risque adventure from the mind of Steve Meretzky of Leather Goddesses of Phobos fame. After Infocom died, Legend was created to carry on the adventure tradition. Help bumbling nerd and wizard wannabe Ernie Eaglebeak escape the clutches of his evil stepfather and realize his dreams of becoming an apprentice wizard. Puzzles involving spells are very clever and logical. There are graphics in the game, but they are generally relegated to a corner of the screen, and can be removed, if desired, with a keystroke and be replaced by various status screens, a no-typing interface, or even an all-text display. It demonstrate the expert writing and designing of Meretzky with quite a bit good humor, and two different modes, naughty and nice. It's loaded with college type jokes (eg: Join the famous Tappa Kegga Bru or I Phelta Thi). It's enjoyable, funny, with intelligent humor, nutty and with a lot of sexual innuendo. | ||
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| Starblade | Silmarils / Palace Software | [top] | |
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StarBlade is an epic space-opera, set in the vastness of the Orion galazy, the year 3001. The human race has been decimated to a series of small hi-tech colonies by the ruthless, insectile Cephalhydras. To finally wipe out humanity, Cephalhydras geneticist have produced Genolyn, a hideously mutated Queen brood-mother, who will spawn a legion of super warriors. Your mission, to board "StarBlade", the most technically advanced starcruiser in the galaxy and to find and eliminate Genolyn before she starts to breed. Silmarils' first sci-fi game offers a good dose of action / adventure mix despite a hackneyed plot. The emphasis is more on action this time, as hordes of aliens are on your trail throughout the game. Repetitive combat and gameplay makes this one of Silmarils' most disappointing games despite the usual lush graphics and good music. | ||
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| Sunny Shine on the Funny Side of Life [G] | Rainbow Arts Software GmbH | [top] | |
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This is a promotional (still commercial) adventure which advertises L&M cigarettes. The player takes on the role of Sunny Shine whose car was destroyed by a steamroller. The goal of the game is to get the only existing duplicate car into Sunny's possession. The scenario takes place in Los Angeles. The game uses a non-parser control system: the player moves a cursor on the screen and after clicking on an interactive object, a list of possible commands pops up. Puzzles are mostly inventory and conversations-based. Special puzzles are a quiz about American pop culture as a first puzzle and a few action sequences. However, there are various dead end scenarios (missing an item which is required in a later scene) and a limited inventory. To pick up a new item after the limit is reached, an object has to be permanently removed from the game. The advertising consists of references to L&M in the background graphics and dialogues. | ||
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| Taran im abenteuerland [G] | Achim Kern / Oase Software | [top] | |
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The adventure begins in front of a castle in a kingdom. In this kingdom, however, no longer ruled the king, but sinister powers have seized power. Many followers and knights of the king have already lost their lives as they tried to regain the power symbols of the empire. Here comes our hero Taran into play. Fame, wealth and a beautiful princess are the reward, if Taran succeeds in liberating the kingdom from the clutches of sinister power. | ||
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| Theme Park Mystery | Joined Up Writing Software / Image Works / Konami | [top] | |
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Theme Park Mystery is a strange adventure game set in the mysterious world of gypsies, magic and supernatural powers where nothing is quite what it seems. Your routine life is disrupted forever when you use discarded tokens in the fortunetelling machine. Use the tokens to get a ticket from the Zoltan Wizard fortune telling machine at the Train Station to journey through the four worlds of Dragonland, Dreamland, Futureland and Yesterdayland. Find out what drove the fun seekers away and your uncle insane. Hunt for hidden keys, fiery torches and supernatural potions to help you avenge your uncle's death. | ||
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| Wonderland | Magnetic Scrolls / Virgin Mastertronic | [top] | |
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Magnetic Scroll's last adventure game (before they designed the inferior adventure/RPG hybrid The Legacy: Realm of Terror for Microprose) may be the best game they produced. It's filled with memorable characters, creative and challenging puzzles, and excellent windows-based interface (refined from Collection 1) that gives the player both the power of direct interaction with the parser and menu-based creation of sentences (similar to Legend's early games). You are none other than Alice, the hapless heroine of Lewis Carroll's immortalized "Through The Looking Glass", who inadvertently found herself in a fascinating fantasy world populated by talking animals and objects. In your quest to find your way home, you will interact with many well-written characters that truly capture the spirit of the novel, and solve many puzzles that are challenging yet all very logical. The game's many time- and location- based puzzles will truly force you to think in three-dimensions and be acutely aware of how long it takes to perform actions, and will give you a great sense of satisfaction when you figure them out. The shrinking/enlarging puzzle remains one of the most memorable puzzles of all time. | ||
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| Zombi | Ubi Soft Entertainment Software | [top] | |
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In Zombi (which was inspired by Dawn Of The Dead movie which was titled Zombi in Italy), you control a team of four intrepid travelers, who have landed their helicopter on the roof of a shopping centre in the hope of finding fuel. The problem is that, with Hell full, Zombies are walking the earth, devouring humans as they please. Zombi is a point and click adventure game in which you control the four characters (Alexandre, Sylvie, Yannick and Patrick) in turn, taking each of them individually through the abandoned complex. Lots of potentially-useful items have been left behind, some stored in cupboards - work out what they could be used for. Try to find a weapon with which to attack the zombies - bare-hands fighting only works for a few attempts before your character is worn out. Dead zombies should be placed in the freezer in the basement to stop them re-emerging. You have free rein over the shopping mall, and can use the bed shops to rest and the food shops for nourishment. Be wary of the dark and zombie-filled basement though. Originally released in 1986 on the Amstrad CPC, it was Ubi Soft's first game ever. This game also inspired ZombiU on the Wii U. | ||
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Adventure related
| Adventures of Beetlejuice: Skeletons in the Closet | Riedel Software Productions Inc. / Hi-Tech Expressions Inc. | [top] | |
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A truly bizarre game which was rather popular at the time. It's an action game of sorts, in which you play Beetlejuice himself and you have to kill (?) all kinds of skeletons with weapons -- you start with the ability to shoot a single loogie at the skeletons and, by collecting bonuses from destroyed skeletons, you may get additional loogies per shot or completely different weapons. Also, after you hit a skeleton, your friend Lidia has to collect the skeleton's remains with a vacuum cleaner; however, if a skeleton finds Lidia she becomes imprisoned in a cage and you have to release her by hitting another skeleton and taking a "lightning bonus" from his remains. Another nice touch is the worm, which comes out of the playground every now and then and, should it hit you, kills you. | ||
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| At the Carnival | Manley & Associates, Inc. / Miles Computing | [top] | |
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The first and only game using "The Puzzle Gallery" engine, for which there were supposed to be multiple Puzzle Disks. Extremely similar in style to game designer Cliff Johnson's other games Are We There Yet? and The Fool's Errand, "At the Carnival" includes word searches, jigsaws, block puzzles, word squares, crosswords, jumbles, cryptograms, mazes, and more. Each puzzle is set at and somewhat related to a different attraction at Hazard Park. There are total of 40 attractions, and 180 puzzles. | ||
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| Back to the Future Part II | Images Software Ltd. / Konami, Inc. | [top] | |
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This is a collection of five arcade and puzzle games. Based on the second installment of the popular Hollywood series Back to the Future, this movie conversion has Marty McFly and Doc Brown travel through time to stop their arch-rival Biff from changing the future. The game consists of five parts, each inspired by one of the movie's most memorable scenes: Hoverboard Chase: A Paperboy clone without newspapers, but with isometric levels and lots of enemies to dodge. Jennifer Rescue: Guide Marty's girlfriend Jennifer out of the house without her meeting one of the four family members. Open and close doors to make the persons go from one room to the next in this top-down puzzle sequence. Beat Biff: A side-scrolling beat-em-up sequence in the tradition of Double Dragon. Fight your way through a grim 1985 by jumping, hitting and kicking at Biff's lackeys. Band Puzzle: Rearrange the mixed-up parts of an animated picture of the school band in this sliding block puzzle. The clock is ticking. Hoverboard Chase 2: Another hoverboard sequence, similar to the first one, only this time set in 1955. | ||
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| Bad Blood | ORIGIN Systems, Inc. | [top] | |
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A nuclear war has turned the world into a wasteland. The pure-blooded humans have retreated in large cities while mutants live in small villages on the plains where they make a living by hunting the many monsters. Now one of the human leaders, Lord Dominix, wants to start a war to wipe out all the "bad-blooded" mutants. Your village chief has assigned you with the task of preventing this war. Bad Blood is a top-down action game with light role-playing elements. You can not create your own character but have to pick one of the three predefined ones: Varrigg (a strong green mutant who fights with his bare hands), Dekker (a human male armed with a knife) or Jakka (she looks human but can shoot laser beams from her eyes like Cyclops of X-Men fame). The choice you make has only a limited impact on gameplay and storyline. Gameplay consists of exploring the world map, visiting several cities and villages, talking with NPCs, picking up items and new weapons (like shotguns, grenades, Uzis etc.) and lots of real-time combat. Bad Blood lacks character stats and character development. The game has a day-night cycle which influences the amount of monsters on the plains and whether or not you can talk with some NPCs. | ||
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| BattleTech: The Crescent Hawks' Revenge | Westwood Associates / Infocom, Inc. | [top] | |
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This game is the first real-time strategy game Westwood ever developed. The format was tweaked and changed later in Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty and Command & Conquer. It's the sequel to BattleTech: The Crescent Hawk's Inception. It is the year 3029 during the Succession Wars; as the nineteen-year-old Mechwarrior Jason Youngblood of the Lyran Commonwealth (House Steiner), it is time to strike back at the treacherous forces of the Draconis Combine (House Kurita), who captured Jason's father in the original BattleTech, and whom he has sworn to rescue. Unlike its predecessor, the game inclines more towards RTS (real-time strategy) than role-playing gameplay style. The player will lead the forces of 31st Century BattleMechs (Warrior Robots) in a daring mission of rescue and revenge. The game consists of two parts - the storyline, which gives the player guidance and direction, and changes with the outcome of every decision made; and the scenarios, which are the arenas where the player watches his/her maneuvers unfold in real time. The game has digital speech and a technically advanced musical score. | ||
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| Bugs Bunny Cartoon Workshop, The | Novotrade / Hi-Tech Expression | [top] | |
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This lets kids create their own Warner Bros. cartoon by following a few simple steps. Kids first choose characters and the setting of their story, add their own text in word balloons, then animate the frame to watch the cartoon in action. The program isn't very versatile in a sense that each character you pick already has his/her own pre-set animation (the perky Road Runner, for example, will always run as soon as you animate the frame), but there is enough combinations and permutations to make the high replay value. Despite the name, the program includes many well-known Loony Tunes characters outside Bugs Bunny series, including Road Runner, Sylvester, Daffy Duck, and many others. Probably enough to satisfy the little fans of Bugs Bunny in your house for hours on end ;) | ||
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| Catacomb | PC Arcade / Softdisk Publishing | [top] | |
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If you look too hard for a plot you might strain yourself; in what was pretty par for the course at the time, you guide a projectile-firing hero (nuanced shot types: little, big, and Really Big) through 10 levels in the DOS version or 15 levels in the Apple II and Apple IIgs versions of twisty, monster-filled mazes in what might critically be reduced to a pretty diluted Gauntlet derivative: advance through stages, avoid getting killed, rack up points and offensive bonuses. The game is mostly of interest for historical value: its preoccupation with secret passages (here revealed by being shot) and an unprecedented "strafe" functionality hint at what lay ahead for its crew, for when you extrude the maze into three dimensions and shift from third-person to a first-person perspective, what you end up with is Catacomb 3-D... from which it was only a hop, skip and a jump for the creators (John Carmack, John Romero and Tom A. Hall) to Wolfenstein 3D and DOOM. It was never sold as a standalone product, but was used to promote Softdisk's Gamer's Edge brand. | ||
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| Clive Barker's Nightbreed: The Action Game | Impact Software Development, Ltd. / Ocean Software Ltd. | [top] | |
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This is the first of a planned trilogy of games based on Clive Barker's movie Nightbreed (the second game was Nightbreed: The Interactive Movie, and the third game was never released). This is a side-scrolling action game where Boone must fight his way through Midian, fighting the Sons of the Free and the Berserkers. | ||
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| Cougar Force | MDO / Tomahawk | [top] | |
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In the game you play a role of the special agent Cougar. Your mission is to penetrate the criminal's fortress to retrieve an information on new drug. The game is divided on three parts of different styles. First one is side-scrolling action in different locations such as prison, mines, or temple. For example, you begin in the prison, from where you must escape finding the keys to open doors, fighting the guards with martial arts, avoiding the grenades and lethal obstacles, acquiring the gun, and finally jumping into the plane. Second one is a flight simulator. For example, you have to control a plane, flying over the territory and shooting enemy planes with gun or missiles. Third one is a motorcycle riding. You have to reach the checkpoint for 3:00 before blowing up. | ||
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| Crime Wave | Access Software, Inc. | [top] | |
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A clone of the arcade game "Narc". Control a police officer, and shoot your way through slums, inner cities, and more- eventually destroying an entire criminal organization. The plot is just there to window-dress the action part: the president's daughter is kidnapped, and it's up to you, "super crime fighter" Luke McCrabe to rescue her and save the day. Gameplay is simple 2D side-scrolling action, in which all you do is blast endless waves of baddies. Digitization is a technique that may be useful and attractive for adventure games, but for this kind of action game it just didn't work out - everything looks very pixellated, cardboard-cutout, and people's movements are very jerky (imagine moving paper dolls around). | ||
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| Designasaurus II | Visual Concepts Ltd. / Britannica Software | [top] | |
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This is an educational simulation game with action elements, playing in the far future. It enables you to create your own dinosaurs and then teleport them to different time geological time periods, in quest of hidden dinosaur geneprints. The background story: In the year 2501, the renegade scientist Dr. Max von Fusion has stolen the Designasaurus Research Foundation's prized Gigantodon geneprints and hidden them in different geological time periods, leaving only a poem with some hints about their whereabouts. You play a researcher who goes on the quest for the hidden prints to recreate the fabulous Gigantodon, get millions of credits and get promoted Chief Scientist. The game consists of two parts. First, you select a dinosaur to go exploring with. You can either select a predefined or create your own dinosaur, combining head, body, arms and tails of existing dinosaurs as you want. The combination of parts affects the dinosaurs attributes, like fighting skills or speed. Once you have created a dinosaur and given him a fancy name, you get the opportunity of printing it out before you go exploring. You are now ready for exploration. Select a geological era and a climate and teleport your creature there. You now start the overhead action-adventure part where you have to try to find the Gigantodon's geneprints. Of course, there are other dinosaurs too - depending on the period and climate. Upon meeting, you can either eat them (if they are small enough), mate with them (if they are of your species and the opposite sex) or fight them. Just like in real life, successful mating is the most complicated, as afterwards you have to defend the eggs and then feed the young. You also have to keep an eye on your hunger, thirst and fatigue, so be sure to eat, drink and rest from time to time. At any time, you can save your game or teleport back to the foundation. This also happens automatically if your dinosaur is badly wounded, so you cannot lose in this game. Finally, you also get dinosaur facts displayed from time to time while exploring. You get points for successful playing, especially for finding parts of the geneprints. Once you have found all parts, you are promoted Chief Scientist and have won the game. | ||
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| Disney Animation Studio | Silent Software / Disney | [top] | |
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Powerful. Easy to Use. State of the Art! The Animation Studio is the only full-featured animation and paint program to utilize state of the art cel animation techniques that are characteristic of Disney Style animation. Powerful enough for the professional yet simple enough for the novice, The Animation Studio gives the ability to create or enhance full-length animated sequences. You'll have total control of classic animation features such as: Onion Skin Technology, Exposure Sheet, Sound Effects, Ink And Paint, Basic and Advanced Techniques. The set comes with A Studio Disk, Morque Disk, Demo Disk and Extras Disk. | ||
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| EarthQuest | EarthQuest Inc. | [top] | |
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Part of the aborted Quest series, Earth Quest is not really a game but a very well-done reference program that packs an incredibly huge amount of information on a few 3.5" disks. It's one of the early, well-written "encyclopedia" programs. The interface is intuitive (for those who knows Hypercard for the Macintosh, this is similar), and the quiz is quite difficult. This one is probably meant for adults or at least high-school students, because the font is small and the information is very detailed. | ||
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| Eurotap / Famitap | Ordinateur Express | [top] | |
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Famitap is a software to improve your skills with keyboard typing. This was part of IBM Famipack, the software bundled with IBM PS/1 computers. Eurotap was a clone, made by same developers, bundled with Olivetti PCS 1992 systems. | ||
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| Gold of the Aztecs, The | Kinetica Software / U.S. Gold Ltd. | [top] | |
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This is a fun action/adventure game set in South America. The mundane plot casts you as another unfortunate pilot-turned-adventurer who crash-landed in the jungle, destined to discover ancient Aztec treasure on your way to freedom The gameplay is similar to Psygnosis' Barbarian (by the same author), and you must go screen by screen to finish it. Over 140 main character movements are included. There are traps at each screen like stones or a dangerous bridge. The game is played from a typical side-scrolling view with some novel features. For instance, unexpected enemies (e.g. a huge elephant, or cannibals) will appear if you dally too long. The weapons are few, but reasonably realistic, and once you discover Aztec ruins, you will have access to some interesting mythical weapons and items. The adventure elements of the game, while exist, are not as developed as, say, Silmarils' underrated Le Fetiche Maya. Puzzles that require inventory items are far too easy to solve, and most of your time will be spent on figuring out how to deal with various nasties anyway. Although numerous, the enemies appear quite realistically (i.e. you won't get run over by hordes of elephants that appear all at once, and cannibals have believable attacks). Sometimes you must figure out how to kill an enemy by observing their movements - this is similar to Out of This World, and a lot of fun. Overall, if you like action games with some adventure elements, Gold of the Aztecs is one of the better ones you will find. | ||
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| Golden Axe | SEGA Enterprises Ltd. / SEGA of America, Inc. | [top] | |
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Sega's classic arcade beat-'em-up game, Golden Axe puts in the shoes of one of three heroes, each with his own reason for trying to overthrow the evil rule of Death-Adder, who - along with his forces of darkness - kidnapped and imprisoned the King and his daughter and stole the legendary Golden Axe. This is a horizontal fighting game, where you basically take one of the three characters (a warrior, a dwarf or an amazon) and bash everything which stands between you and Death Adder himself. | ||
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| Hurlements [Fr] | Ubi Soft Entertainment Software | [top] | |
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The translated title of the "Howling" is the direct sequel to Zombi: it uses exactly the same interface and follows the same principle. These are more than four characters, but two are in charge here in search of gold bullion, and there are no longer zombies that threaten them, but werewolves. The controls have not changed one iota, only the central window is a little larger. All is played using a system of icons, no mouse, but no text on the screen describes the objects, which are not always easy to recognize. This lack of text does not help either to dive into the story. | ||
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| Joe Blade II | Players Software / Interceptor Software | [top] | |
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London in 1995 is an unfriendly unsafe city ran by thugs. Innocent civilians who leave the house will almost certainly face violence. An acclaimed hero since his successes in the original, Joe Blade is the man to put things right - if he can kill 100 thugs and rescue 20 civilians within ten minutes, the thugs will retreat and the city will be saved. As Joe, you must move through the streets and kill these thugs, by kicking them in the head (they have body armour). As in the first game, the streets are flick-screen and have many doorways linking them. Rescuing civilians involves touching them before completing a sub-game within a minute. There are four subgame variants of increasing difficulty, all based around a 1-2-3-4 sequence of numbers. The first involves simply stopping the cursor as each one appears in order - pressing the wrong one sends you back to having to find a 1. In the second, the numbers are on screen in random order, a cursor cycling through them - press fire to swap the two numbers currently highlighted. In the third, you are presented with two jumbled sets and must put one of them in order, by swapping numbers across the two sets. In the fourth, you must form the sequence by swapping an ever-changing number into the right place, by pressing fire at the right moment. | ||
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| Laffer Utilities, The | Sierra On-Line, Inc. | [top] | |
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Waste time at work efficiently! Larry has designed a program for everything you do at the office that has nothing to do with work. Create office pools, lotteries, read jokes, design memos, fax cover sheets and lots lots more! Outrageous clip art for memos and fax cover sheets will really impress your boss (try at own risk) and co-workers. "Anti-boss" safeguards help you keep your job by quickly changing your computer screen. With Laffer Utilities you may never want to do real work again! The Laffer Utilities, designed by Leisure Suit Larry creator, Al Lowe, was designed for Windows 3x. A spoof on Norton Utilities, it is labeled as "America's leading non-productivity tool". How about the oh-so-useful "What To Do?" program? There you can ask Larry Laffer any question just to find that he responds with "Take a cold shower" or "Oh, yeah?" or "Are you crazy? You'll never get away with it". Most of the little programs included in this box are just time killers. Some however, such as the memo program, could have had some practical use... back in the early nineties. The Laffer Utilities were also included in various Leisure Suit Larry collections. | ||
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| Last Ninja 2: Back with a Vengeance | System 3 Software Ltd. | [top] | |
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With the scrolls now in his possession, The Last Ninja begins training a new order of Ninja. During a training session he is mysteriously transported to XXth-century New York. The Evil Shogun has returned! Torn from his own time, The Last Ninja must defend himself once more with nothing more than the belief in his own abilities. This is an action/adventure game where the player, controlling a powerful ninja, must fight his way through opponents while collecting necessary items. The game is split into various levels, each of them depicting a different locale and divided into several screens. The view is isometric and the ninja can move in four different dimensions (he can also walk backwards) and jump. Enemies, armed with fists and various ninja weapons, wander around the levels. The ninja must fight them either bare-handed or with the weaponry he finds along the way; in either case, he has a number of blows and attacks at his disposal, as well as the ability to block. There's a special weapon, shuriken, which are thrown in a straight line rather than used for melee combat; if they strike an enemy, they'll instantly kill or at least heavily damage him. There are items scattered around the levels, such as keys, rope, a map or hamburgers (which restore health when eaten). Collecting these items and using them in a proper place is necessary for completing the game. It was an enormous commercial success with 5.5 million copies sold for the Commodore 64 version alone. | ||
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| Mammals: A Multimedia Encyclopedia | National Geographic Society | [top] | |
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This National Geographic multimedia encyclopedia is a treasure trove of of interactive information about more than 200 mammals from around the world. All information is cross-referenced: you can browse leisurely or investigate a specific animal or group of animals. Each mammal's entry includes basic characteristics, one or more photos with the mammal's vocalizations, videos (not all mammals), and numerous facts and vital statistics. Also included is an Orders Index for the Animal Kingdom. Ten interactive essays about various aspects of the world of mammals are provided along with six narrated tours that feature many mammals in habitats around the world. Six mysteries are provided in the Games section where users must identify a mammal and solve a mystery using clues and deductive reasoning. In 1996, Version 2.0 was released with significantly improved graphics and better video. | ||
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| Navy Moves | Dinamic Software | [top] | |
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My name is McArra and I belong to the special pacification forces. My mission: find and destroy a nuclear submarine U-5544 that has unbalanced the forces between the two most powerful Earth armies. The name of the operation is Cephalopod and I have heard that you want to help me in this "easy" mission. At first, we will be sent near the island where is anchored the submarine awaiting orders. We will swim to the coast, and once there... everything will depend on us. This is a one-dimensional side scrolling shooter, and the sequel of "Army Moves" and has the same gaming style. | ||
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| Navy Seal | Cosmi Corporation | [top] | |
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Take the role of a US Navy SEAL operative and embark in 3 missions involving terrorists, hostages, and the like. The plot is fairly superficial, since each mission is independent from the rest. Each mission has several "portions" with different types of game mechanics, making the game almost a series of mini-games. Swimming and submarining are among your tasks. The most predominant type of gameplay, however, consists of side-scrolling arcade action with a realistic basis, so you only have one life and there are no power ups available during missions. Underwater Sabotage - Parachute into the enemies harbor and destroy his Naval Supply Depot and Ammo Dump. Make sure you're in position for the "Zodiak" pickup. Hostage Rescue - A Central American dictator/drug dealer is holding our Ambassador hostage. Infiltrate by helicopter and perform the rescue. Surprise Raider - A Middle Eastern government has disguised a top secret ABM installation as a harmless oil platform. Your mission is to gather documents revealing the plan and destroy the platform. | ||
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| Plexu: The Time Travellers | New Line Software | [top] | |
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Plexu: The Time Travellers is a DOS conversion of the Amiga title of the same name. The gameplay remains unchanged with only one significant change. Instead of a side-scrolling perspective the player sees the action divided into numerous single board locations with a level boss at the end. Plexu may walk, jump, use a single, double and supershot gun plus - killing all enemies on board - Smartbomb and temporary invulnerability. Between each level the player may purchase various extras in the Intergalactic Shop, including extra life or time, needed to complete subsequent stage. Fighting with the final stage boss requires targeting an opponent's head and avoiding numerous incoming missiles. | ||
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| Punisher, The | Paragon Software Corporation / MicroProse Software, Inc. | [top] | |
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When his family was gunned down by gangsters, Frank Castle became The Punisher. As Judge, Jury, and Executioner, The Punisher is cleaning up New York City one dead criminal at a time. However, if he can raise $500,000, he can pay off an informant for the location of the biggest criminal in Manhattan, The Kingpin. Working with a time limit and financed by The Trust, he only has a short time to complete enough missions to raise that much money. Based on the comic book, this primarily plays from a top-down perspective, where the player moves Frank through the streets and alleys of New York, entering buildings and taking out enemies with a range of weaponry. He also drives to locations in his Battle Van, where the player controls the van from a first-person perspective, to the mission’s address. The game also has a scrolling mode when Frank scuba dives and knifes underwater assailants on the way to boats. Combat takes place in wonderfully diverse locations and the cool items and exciting missions throughout make this one of the best PC adaptations of a comics license. | ||
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| Ranx | Ubi Soft Entertainment Software | [top] | |
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This side-scrolling action / adventure game is adapted from a comic book of the same name. You're Ranx, a cyborg in a Cyberpunk-style world. A lethal virus is spreading, and the President has caught it, so you must go to New York with the antidote to save him. After this, you must rescue your girlfriend in Rome. You will fight with ninjas, gays, Chinese and others, using your kicks and punches. You can pick up items including pieces for later repairs and items which can be sold when you talk to other characters. Destroy street lamps to get money, but make sure the police don't see you. Enjoy the violence! | ||
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| Spirit Of Excalibur | Synergistic Software, Inc. / Virgin Games, Inc. | [top] | |
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A spiritual descendant of War in Middle Earth, Spirit of Excalibur uses the same engine to tell the tale of what befell Camelot after the death of King Arthur. You play the role of the regent who holds the throne while chaos spreads through Britain. The game is broken into a number of episodes, which carry the overall plot of trying to restore Arthur's kingdom to some semblance of what it once was. Early episodes involve gathering the Knights of the Round Table, who have broken their fellowship. Because of their general distrust and dislike of certain other members, many knights will only return if asked by certain people and/or are given the correct incentive. Ultimately, you will wage a war on the sons of Mordred, who vie for the same throne their father did and stop the machinations of Morgan LeFay. The game is played on two different levels. The first is a real time map where groups move about from place to place. At any time (or when a group encounters another or a place of importance) you can switch to a 'scene' level, which is a side-view of the group currently highlighted. Here you can pick up, drop, and manipulate quest items. A CD-Rom version included full speech. | ||
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| Terran Envoy | Stratagem / Mindscape | [top] | |
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Who thought an outer space gossip simulator could be so much fun?! The goal is, ultimately, to prove to the Ubbermenscha that you (and your human species) are indeed fit to become part of the Galactic Community. They've set you the task of finding out who the Usurper is; your mission is to eliminate him (it?) with the Ray of Justice once enough evidence is available to make a convincing case. The way you gather evidence is to flit around the galaxy, chatting with various amusing species of beings (19 in all). These species will each be glad to offer you one piece of information for free, but they need to be bartered with for more. To that end, you must also visit various planets and collect different kinds of crystals, some of which appeal to each of the species. The ship you travel in has only so much cargo room, cleverly limiting you from spending one half of the game just loading up on crystals, the other half on trading rumours and hearsay. Some planets are abundant in certain crystals, some have a little of a number of different kinds, and some are barren altogether. Planets also host the alien species, so some planning must take place in order to remember who's living where. Time can be wasted running back and forth aimlessly without an adequate map of crystal and species locations. With a proper supply of crystals, you then "gift" a particular species with the proper crystal, and they tell you nasty things (or nice things) about some other species. The reliability of their information depends, of course, on their own relationship with other species. Creatures who are friends are more likely to be telling the truth about each other than creatures expressing hostility towards each other. Your task is to sort out hearsay and innuendo from valuable information, to get to the point where you can ascertain a likely suspect with some reliability. To this end, your ship is fitted out with ARAC, a Xenology study computer and database. This unit gathers the information you collect as you go along, and offers likely profiles for each species (clearly, the success of the computer depends on the extent of your gathered info). Each species for which a profile is requested will be worked up in terms of likely friends, enemies, and favorite crystal type. Whether the species is friendly, honest or disloyal is also indicated by the system. All these inferences are generated out of the log of contacts, successes and failures you've made while attempting to get some straight talk. Once you think you've cornered the potential culprit, you must put together the right combination of crystals in order to fire up the Ray of Justice; firing the Ray essentially leads to the program's conclusion, where it indicates whether your identification of the Culprit has proven to be correct or not. Beware the Ubbermenscha: They are not pleasant when disappointed. It's a very much a static, window-oriented design. The right mouse button calls up a menu bar at the top for entering commands, and various windows can be controlled by clicking on the appropriate places. Animations are limited to planet pictures and images of aliens, the latter especially well done. The engrossing qualities of the game come from the process of trying to figure out "whodunit" (or who's going to do it) rather than from the graphics or sound design (there is no sound). One of the more interesting aspects of the game design is that the location of species, crystals, and the nature of the relationships between creatures are ever-changing; no two games seem to come out exactly the same. This makes for good replayability, and sustains the mystery from session to session. Comparable in some ways to MPS Labs' Lightspeed, but without the potentially annoying flight sequences, it can prove to be a fascinating little puzzler. | ||
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| Time Almanac | Compact Publishing INC / Softkey | [top] | |
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Take a multimedia journey through TIME! Welcome to the TIME Magazine Compact Almanac. A comprehensive multimedia news reference containing: 6 full years of TIME Magazine, 1989 - Jan. 1995. Selected TIME covers and graphic charts, current events videos and four multimedia special reports on National and World Politics, the Environment, and Diversity in America. An informative and entertaining collection of TIME articles about people and events of the 20th Century, historical news videos and photos, and two multimedia anniversary TImelines of 1945 and 1970. An almanac of interesting and useful facts and figures about the U.S. and the world with full color maps and graphic charts. NewsQuest, a challenging news quiz game with more than 2,500 questions and quotes from TIME Magazine. It has access to TIME Online, the weekly electronic, interactive edition of TIME magazine, via America Online. There seem to have been 1990 through 1997 and 1990's versions. | ||
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| Tom & Jerry: Yankee Doodle's Cat-astrophe | Hi-Tech Expressions | [top] | |
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This is the first PC game from Hi-Tech that star Tom and Jerry, the cat and mouse from the well-known TV cartoons. The game is based loosely on "Yankee Doodle Mouse", an Oscar-winning episode. Gameplay involves you controlling Jerry in a basement chase, avoiding Tom's traps and fighting back, much like the cartoons. You earn points by laying the smackdown on Tom. You can try to run him over in a little car, toss eggs at him, fence using knitting needles, drop lightbulbs at him from a carboard airplane, or toss dynamite at him. Be careful, though, because Tom can go after you, too. If you spend too long in the wall, Tom will throw a stick of dynamite in there. If you stand too long on the egg tossing platform, he'll shoot a plunger from a gun at you. Overall, a funny little fighting game that fans of the cartoons will probably enjoy. Sound and graphics are also above-average for a 1990 game. | ||
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| Tom and the Ghost | Blue Byte Software GmbH / Ubi Soft Entertainment Software | [top] | |
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7-year-old Tom and his mother are visiting the old castle in Scotland, while evil sorcerer kidnapped the mother. Tom was very upset, but the brave ghost Sir Reginald Arrow appears to help Tom. Evil sorcerer kidnapped his beloved 500 years ago to sacrifice her for Lucifer. Tom's mother may become the last victim in the sequence of dark ritual, and Sir Arrow has only 24 hours to stop the ritual and free Tom's mother. In the game you are controlling Sir Arrow. He may walk; jump; duck; use weapon; collect, combine and use items. Tom is near, but he should be kept in good mood. He may help you to beat monsters, but his energy is exhausting and he should be fed with Hamburgers and Milkshakes. When he is upset, you should give him a Teddy Bear. All such items as well as many others required to progress in the game such as different weapons, magic harp, or lighter, etc. are scattered within the castle. The huge doors either keep bonus items increasing your score, or monsters, or clues to solve the riddles. Tom may walk on his own, and you should blow in whistle to call him back and do not loose him. Many enemies are trying to get your life energy out, so kill or avoid them. Do not loose Tom, keep an eye on his stats, and do not allow to scare him to death. Just find his mother, and revenge for all the victims. | ||
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| Treasure Trap | Doodlebug Designs Ltd., Emerald Software Ltd. / Electronic Zoo | [top] | |
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In 1829 The Esmerelda, a cargo ship carrying gold, sinks to the bottom of the ocean. In 1927 a treasure hunter called Howard Kelp dons a diving suit and searches for the bullion in the wreck. It's an isometric action game similar to Head Over Heels, but less abstract in its theme. The player guides the diver in a series of rooms (100 total) where the main goal is to collect gold. The main hazard encountered is the sea life that occupied the vacant ship. The character has no weapons, but carries a limited amount of "smart fishes", trained piranhas that attack and destroy all the enemies in the room. Since the player starts with 2 fishes and only receives a new one at each 80 gold bars collected, most of the time the enemies have to be avoided by staying away or jumping over them. Stacking boxes and other objects stops the fauna from getting to the character (and also allows access to high places). There's an air gauge that is constantly depleting at the bottom-right of the screen. It can be filled with the compressed air tanks scattered in some rooms. Some doors require geometric-shaped keys. These can be collected and stored in three slots at the bottom-left of the screen. The game allows saving at each 50 gold collected. | ||
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| Trog! | Bally Midway Mfg Co. / Acclaim Entertainment Inc. | [top] | |
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Long ago, back in the days of cavemen and dinosaurs, there was a land called Og. In this land, hungry one-eyed cavemen, called Trogs, loved the taste of eggs. However, four Dino-Mites, Spike, Bloop, Rex and Gwen, were determined to rescue the eggs from certain doom. Up to four (or just Spike and Bloop in the home conversions) can play in a race to gather up the Trog eggs as quickly as possible. The first player to get all eggs of their colour wins the round. Of course, Trogs also love the taste of Dino meat, and will use cavemen inventions such as fire and the wheel to catch them and gobble them up. Luckily, the Dinos can fight back - eating a pineapple will turn them into a monstrous T-Rex that can chow down on Trogs, while a hot tamale lets them breathe fire. | ||
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| Wrath of the Demon | Abstrax / ReadySoft Inc. | [top] | |
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The mighty wizard Anthrax, in an attempt to usurp authority over the kingdom, has summoned a horrifying Demon. The Demon makes good on his chartered task by summoning a horde of monsters to lay waste to the kingdom at large. Fortuitously, a random stranger is strolling nearby the kingdom and realizes that only he can beat back the foul creatures. After some encouragement from the king, the adventurer begins the game on horseback, jumping over obstacles, beating flying creatures, and collecting potions on the ground. Afterward, the hero must proceed on foot through side-scrolling platforming levels, destroying creatures with his blade as well as collecting potions and additional weapons he will find on his deadly quest. | ||
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| Xenocide | Pangea Software, Inc. / Micro Revelations, Inc. | [top] | |
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Aliens have taken over the three moons orbiting your home planet, and your mission is to blow them up (not just the aliens, but the entire moons!).Each moon contains four levels incorporating several gameplay modes and perspectives. Level 1 is a first-person 3D space flight simulation, as the player pilots a ship over the moon's surface looking for the entrance to a cave. Level 2 is a side-view scrolling shooter in which the player explores the cave in search of bombs. Level 3 is similar to level 2, except it takes place underwater. Level 4 is the final one; it is a top-down grid-based maze shooter, as the player tries to plant the bombs and escape before they explode. | ||
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Kids
| Beetlejuice Print Kit | Hi Tech Expressions | [top] | |
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Players can create and print their own posters, banners, invitations, greeting cards and personalized stationery as well as masks and puppets with this simple, easy-to-use print kit. With a choice of typeface, type size, borders and graphics, players may get their first taste of desktop publishing with some of their favorite cartoon and movie characters. The fun-filled sign, stationery, card, poster and banner maker. Plus puppets, masks and more. Featuring Lydia, Delia, Charles and your favorite Beetlejuice. | ||
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| Fisher-Price Fun Flyer | GameTek | [top] | |
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This fun game teaches kids coordination, compass points, color recognitions and directions (left/right, up/down) as they soar over the countryside. | ||
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| Fisher-Price Perfect Fit | Beam Software Pty., Ltd. / GameTek, Inc. | [top] | |
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This is an activity that drops shapes onto the screen (usually in the form of Fisher-Price toys) which the player must then manipulate and match onto one of a series of silhouettes. In earlier levels, this is just a matter of moving the shape around the screen. In later levels, the player must also flip the shape vertically, horizontally, or both, before it forms the perfect fit for one of the silhouettes. The games can be played against the clock. There is also 2-player alternating play, where 2 human players can compete, or a human player can square off against the computer player (named "Electro"). | ||
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| Katie's Farm | Lawrence Productions | [top] | |
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This is the last title (except for a remake in 1994 called The New Katie's Farm) in Lawrence Productions' highly awarded McGee series of games for preschoolers. Like other McGee titles, Katie's Farm is designed to familiarize toddlers with life and activities in the farm. Together with McGee and Cousin Katie, kids can explore the chicken coop, garden, corral, and more. There are 32 fun farm activities to try, and kids will soon be able recognize animals and typical farm activities (e.g. milking a cow) while having fun. Katie's Farm's interface is as simple as it can get: everything can be done with a mouse click, and the locations kids can explore are clearly presented as pictures at the bottom of the screen. With great gameplay, fun activities, and user-friendly atmosphere, Katie's Farm is highly recommended for toddlers-- it will keep them glued to the screen, and the game's kid-friendly interface makes parental guidance unnecessary. | ||
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| McGee | Lawrence Productions, Inc. | [top] | |
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McGee is an educational game for young children (ages 2 to 6). The game is entirely wordless and tells its story through graphics and sound making it possible for the child to play the game without help from an adult. The idea is that the child in this way should become familiar and confident with the computer and grow a sense of discovery. In the game the player takes control of a child protagonist called McGee and gets to explore his home. The house consists of a couple of rooms and in each room there are a few objects that can be interacted with. All interaction is done by clicking on the four different icons that appear in each room. When doing so a short animation will start and McGee will do something, for example play with a ball, take a bath or hide under the carpet. There is no specific objective to the game and the player can move around freely between the rooms and interact with things over and over again. | ||
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| Mickey's Memory Challenge | Designer Software / Walt Disney Computer Software, Inc. | [top] | |
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This is a puzzle / educational game. It stars Mickey Mouse and several other Disney characters make guest appearances. The game itself is a simple but colorful matchmaker game. Eight upturned cards are presented to the player, who can only turn two at a time. The goal is to find the missing couple of every card. | ||
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| New Math Blaster Plus! | Davidson & Associates Inc. | [top] | |
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This is the second revision of the original Math Blaster! educational game. This version features upgraded graphics and sound, along with some new gameplay modes and functionality. Children, as well as their parents and teachers, can keep track of their progress with the record keeping system. Records can be saved and printed out for future reference. To further extend the life of the product and customize it for specific needs, the easy-to-use Editor allows you to enter your own math problems for use with all the activities except the Number Recycler. The Test Maker allows you to create and print a math test. Gameplay modes include "Rocket Launcher" where you build a rocket and then lift-off by answering math problems correctly. In "Trash Zapper", players help Blasternaut clean up space by finding the missing values in equations and blasting them with lasers. In "Number Recycler", the player forms equations that are then recycled in a machine for coin value. "Math Blaster" is an arcade-like game where players increase speed and accuracy in solving basic math facts as they help the Blasternaut fly to the space stations. | ||
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| Number Munchers | MECC | [top] | |
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Learn basic math skills with this first game in MECC's Munchers series. Keep your Muncher away from the Troggles by munching on multiples, factors, prime numbers, equalities, and inequalities. If you can stay away from the Troggles and earn enough points, you'll be part of the Muncher Hall of Fame. | ||
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| Oregon Trail, The | MECC | [top] | |
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This is a computer game originally developed by Don Rawitsch, Bill Heinemann, and Paul Dillenberger in 1971 and produced by the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC) in 1974. The original game was designed to teach school children about the realities of 19th century pioneer life on the Oregon Trail. The player assumes the role of a wagon leader guiding his party of settlers from Independence, Missouri, to Oregon's Willamette Valley over the Oregon Trail via a Conestoga wagon in 1848. The game has been released in many editions since the original release by various developers and publishers who have acquired rights to it. You first must stock up on provisions, and then, while traveling, make decisions such as when to rest, how much food to eat, etc. The Oregon Trail incorporates simulation elements and planning ahead, along with discovery and adventure, as well as mini-game-like activities (hunting and floating down the Dalles River). Oregon Trail Deluxe VGA came out in 1992 and Oregon Trail for Windows in 1995. | ||
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| Reading Adventures in Oz | Davidson & Associate Inc. | [top] | |
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Build preschool through third grade reading skills with one program. This takes children to the land of Oz to meet the characters, including Dorothy, the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, and the Lion. Using the characters, lands, and excitement of L.Frank Baum's sixteen Oz books, this helps children develop basic reading skills and acquire an interest in great literature. It has over 400 words, Includes over 40 different screens, digitized speech and sound effects, captivating animation and music. It contains 3 different levels: Pre-reader, early reader and experienced reader. Contains over 40 different exciting screens. All activities provide clues in searching for words to bring to the Wizard. In the end, when all tasks are accomplished, the user will finally get to meet the Wizard. | ||
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| Spell-A-Saurus | First Byte | [top] | |
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This is an educational game for elementary school children. The game has a prehistoric theme using dinosaur characters. It consists of four mini-games: AstroDrive, Zug Escape, Ptera-Ptutor, and Spell-A-Saur, centered around unscrambling, spelling, or otherwise writing words. The player can choose a list of words to use for each game, or create one from scratch. Spell-A-Saurus also has an early text-to-speech feature with compatible sound drivers. | ||
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| Super Solvers: Challenge of the Ancient Empires! | The Learning Company | [top] | |
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As a Super Solver, your job is to recover the hidden treasures of the ancient world in 4 caverns (Greece & Rome, Egypt, India & China and Near East) to reach the fifth and final cavern where the ultimate challenge awaits you. Challenge of the Ancient Empires is a platform game, divided into 5 levels (called "caverns"), each of which includes 4 sub-levels ("chambers"). In each chamber you have to collect 6 pieces of an ancient artifact and assemble them like a jigsaw puzzle. The chambers are full of dangerous animals which you have to avoid. There's some food you can collect to regain lost health though. The chambers are also full of puzzles, usually involving manipulation of switches. You have 3 tools with you - a helmet with a headlight, jumping shoes and shields. The helmet emits a beam of light when activated; it is used to solve puzzles that rely on rotating prisms to direct a light beam to a switch. The jumping shoes allow you to, well, jump higher. The shield protects you from enemies for a short time when activated, but you have a limited number of shields and they need to be used wisely. | ||
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| Super Solvers: OutNumbered! | The Learning Company | [top] | |
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One of the education games aimed for older elementary students, from The Learning Company's classic Super Solver's series. The Master of Mischief is up to his old tricks and now is trying to take over the Shady Glen TV Station, with the help from his robot Tele. Now the Super Solver must move around the TV Station catching Tele and avoiding the discs Tele tosses at you and hot wire, with a remote control and use your Math skills to get clues of where The Master of Mischief is hiding. In 1995, a slightly enhanced and more Windows-friendly version was released on CD-ROM. | ||
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| Super Solvers: Treasure Mountain! | The Learning Co. | [top] | |
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This is an educational game designed for children ages 5-9. The Master of Mischief has stolen the magic crown as well as other treasures and hidden them on Treasure Mountain! Your goal is to locate the magic crown and as many of the treasures as possible while climbing your way to the top. To make your way up the mountain, you will need to find keys which unlock a path. The keys are hidden somewhere behind an object on each level of the mountain. To find out what is behind an object you need to use one of your magic coins. However, the number of coins you have is limited and there are many places to search so you first need to find clues as to where keys (and treasures!) are located. Wandering about the mountain are numerous elves; if you catch a scroll carrying elf in your net, he'll ask a question. A correct answer will provide a clue. After reaching the top of the multi-leveled mountain, all the treasures you collected along the way will be put back in the treasure chest, and you begin again at the bottom with a tougher difficulty level. After all treasures have been brought to the top, you can find the crown and win the game! An enhanced 1998 windows edition of the original DOS version was later released that includes full voiceovers, better graphics, and of course, it can be played entirely in windows. | ||
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| Word Munchers | MECC | [top] | |
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This is an installment in the Munchers series focused on vowel sounds. The player moves his muncher creature on a board, the task is to eat the right words with the same vowel sound as a word shown at the top of the screen. Sometimes, unfriendly creatures called Troggles enter the playfield. They come in different types with different patterns and abilities, and running into them depletes Muncher lives, as does eating incorrect words. Occasionally, safety squares appear which offer some temporary protection. It's possible to make some adjustments to the game, such as the difficulty by using the management options. | ||
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| Yogi Bear visits... the National Parks | Vision Software Inc. | [top] | |
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While Yogi was taking his nap under a tree, Boo Boo wandered off to another national park. Playing as the part of Yogi, you must find the whereabouts of Boo Boo. Mr. Ranger, with his ranger radio and computer, is the only one who can help you besides the park maps in your hand. You will need to ask Mr. Ranger to use his radio and computer to get a brief description of the missing bear's last sighted location and find the national park on your park maps that matches the information. Then you have to fly the helicopter of Mr. Ranger to the park and see if Boo Boo is still there. The game also lets you review the information of all the the National Parks and print out some quizzes without launching the main game. | ||
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| Yogi Bear's Math Adventures | Genus Microprogramming / Omega Software | [top] | |
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This allows children to learn math using addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division. Grade levels can be selected from 1st through 6th grade. The games are timed as you work through math problems by selecting the correct answer using Yogi Bear. You select the answer by moving Yogi to the correct answer to the problem. Each problem gives you a choice of three answers. | ||
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Adult
| De-Ja [J] | Elf | [top] | |
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The name of this game's hero is Ryuusuke; he has a fascination for ancient civilizations and archeology, researching them thoroughly in hope of finding legendary treasure. One day he has a strange dream after having dozed off in his office: he has found an enormous mythical treasure, which is guarded by a terrifying monster... when he wakes up, strange things begin to happen one after the other. Ryuusuke finds a mysterious ancient staff and decides to investigate its secret; beautiful golden-haired girl tells him he is on a a grand mission... Which is dream and which is reality? That is what the hero will have to find out. This is a Japanese-style adventure. At every screen, a menu with verb commands appears at the bottom. The commands include Examine, Talk, Ask, Take, Use (an inventory item), Move, as well as other context-specific commands that appear on some screens. Choosing a verb usually leads to an object sub-menu. Typically, the game's story advances once the player has gone through most of the commands and acquired the needed information. The game has some scenes with nudity and mildly depicted sexual situations. In 2004, a Windows release of De-Ja Multipack 1&2 was released with full voices. | ||
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| Dr. Stop! [J] | Alice Soft | [top] | |
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You control Takumi, who works in a hospital and whose mind is mostly occupied with female patients, most of whom are young and pretty. One day, during a visit to a patient, an explosion occurs. Who caused it - one of the patients or an outsider, or maybe a staff member? It's up to you to investigate, and win the affection of your lovely patients. This is a traditional first-person anime-style Japanese adventure. You interact with the game by selecting commands from a menu. In some of the rooms you'll see backgrounds, while others have text-only descriptions. You move around the hospital by selecting destinations from a menu while looking at the hospital map. | ||
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| Sex Olympics | Free Spirit | [top] | |
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One of several games featuring intergalactic hero "Brad Stallion" and his ship, the "Big Thruster". They're all pretty much rip-offs of Infocom's Leather Goddesses of Phobos, but distinctly aimed at male players. Fortunately, Free Spirit finally realized how stupid their parser was for their previous games, and replaced it with icon-based interface for the third and final game, Sex Olympics, in which you participate in Sex Olympics tournament. The point-and-click interface makes the game a bit more tolerable (since you no longer need to guess the verb). Some of the command icons are "screw," "jerk off", and "kiss." 'Nuff said. One good idea is that you can recruit women to follow you around, although they serve no real purpose other than being the object for the "screw" command. | ||
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| Toushin Toshi | Alice Soft | [top] | |
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Custom, a swordsman from a small village, is on a journey when he comes across a carriage being attacked. He defeats the attackers, rescuing the lovely maiden Kumiko. Kumiko was on her way to Toushin Toshi (Combat God City) to search for her father. She suspects her father is in the Combat God Mansion, residence of the annual combat tournament's champion. In order to get in, she needs to partner up with someone who can win the tournament that year, and Custom agrees that she can be his partner. They head to Combat God City to enter the tournament. Although victory in each round of the tournament earns one gold, special medicine, and other wonderful prizes, perhaps the most interesting prize is the opponent's partner. Each participant is required to have a beautiful female partner, and if the participant loses in combat, the victor gets his or her partner to do with as he/she pleases for one night. Female warriors in the tournament can choose to act as their own partner, as do the ninja Yayoi and swordswoman Morris. This monster-filled underground maze is located on the outskirts of Combat God City. One of the requirements to participate in the tournament is the retrieval of a Hero Crest from here. While the Hero Crests are on the first level of the labyrinth, there are several more floors and surprises waiting deeper inside. In 2008, the game was made freeware. In 2013, an English fan-made translation was released. | ||
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| Virtual Valerie [MAC] | MacPlaymate / Reactor | [top] | |
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She's your cybernetic fantasy. You've got a hot date with Valerie. Explore Val's "virtual world" and learn the true meaning of the term cybererotica. An intuitive point-and-click interface makes Virtual Valerie virtually yours to play with. She's your cybernetic fantasy and you control the action. Hilarious rip-roaring entertainment in a sexploration adventure. Features: 8 bit color graphics; Loads of animation; Erotic interaction; Real sounds; Original music; A panic screen and more. | ||
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Role-Playing Games
| Bard's Tale III, The: Thief of Fate | Interplay Productions, Inc. / Electronic Arts, Inc. | [top] | |
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The warriors who have destroyed the evil wizard Mangar receive a letter while celebrating their victory. The letter informs them of a terrible disaster: Mangar's master, the Mad God Tarjan, has unleashed his wrath upon the town of Skara Brae, completely destroying in. The heroes visit a refugee camp nearby and embark on a quest to defeat Tarjan. Thief of Fate is the third installment in the Bard's Tale series, and a sequel to The Destiny Knight. It is similar to its predecessors, being a first-person fantasy role-playing game in which the player explores maze-like pseudo-3D towns, dungeons, and wilderness areas. Two new character classes have been added: Geomancer and Chronomancer. There are more dungeons than in the previous games, and this installment also adds an auto-mapping feature. The game's world is divided into separate realms accessed by using time warps, each with its own theme and setting - including, among others, famous locations from Earth's history such as ancient Rome or Berlin during World War II. | ||
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| Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday | Strategic Simulations, Inc. | [top] | |
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Buck Rogers had once fought in the cold war, a pilot sent into outer space to destroy a Russian weapons platform. He was successful, but his success destroyed the planet, as nuclear war was launched, and you went into a centuries long cryogenic sleep, abandoned by the people who could not retrieve you. In the centuries that he slept, Earth colonized the solar system. There are large groups of people on Mars, Venus and Saturn. The colonies once existed to bring resources back to an Earth that had problems sustaining itself. But the intervening centuries brought a power shift. Now Earth is at the Mercy of the interstellar alliance RAM—formerly the Russian-American Mercantile, but now the superpower, based on asteroids surrounding the planet Mercury. Mercury exploits the Earth for resources, at the expense of Earth's population. Earth has fallen into barbarism, except for one small light—the New Earth Organization (NEO). These "rebels" consider themselves freedom fighters, and they are fighting for Earth's freedom from the interstellar powers. Awakened from centuries long sleep in the 25th Century, Buck Rogers becomes an ancient military hero and symbol of earlier times. As he is brought up to date, he decides to join the the NEO, to fight for his home planet. It's a role-playing game similar in gameplay, interface, and visual styles to the Dungeons & Dragons games by SSI, despite the completely different setting and sci-fi scenario. The player's first task is to create a party of six characters from a choice of five classes (Rocketjock, Warrior, Medic, Rogue, and Engineer) and six races (Human, Desert Runner, Tinker, Venusian, Martian, and Mercurian). Then, these six new NEO recruits are trained, and are thrust into the battle for Earth. There are several navigation modes in the game. The player can navigate the space ship on a top-down map of the Solar System, choosing planets to land on. Hostile ships may attack the player-controlled ship in this mode. Landing on a planet usually positions the heroes on a local overworld map. Finally, navigation in individual locations (towns and hostile areas) is done in first-person perspective, with pseudo-3D environments. Combat is turn-based and is viewed from an isometric perspective; characters are represented as icons and can be freely moved on the battle field. | ||
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| Champions of Krynn | Strategic Simulations, Inc. | [top] | |
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The War of the Lance is over, the dragon armies have been defeated. But evil has not left Krynn. In northeastern Ansalon, outposts of the Knights of Solamnia remain to guard the fragile peace. Your party of adventurers is hired to carry out missions for the Knights. On your first mission, you stumble upon Draconians, long believed to have left the area. What are their plans? On your travels you have to face dangers in many dungeons and towns and might even meet some of the legendary Heroes of the Lance. This is the first of SSI's "gold box" games set in the AD&D world of Dragonlance, with all the usual features: first-person view and movement in dungeons, towns and outposts, overland travel on a map of the area and tactical turn-based combat from a top-down perspective. As the first game set in Krynn, it has several features unique to that setting: In character races, one can choose from Kender, Silvanesti or Qualinesti Elves and Mountain or Hill Dwarves in addition to humans and half-elves. Special character classes include Solamnic Knights, clerics of the major deities of Krynn and mages of either the Red or the White Robe. The deities grant special spells and powers to their respective clerics. Red and White mages have access to different spells and the phases of the moons of Krynn affect their spellcasting abilities. | ||
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| Crystals Of Arborea | Silmarils | [top] | |
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Mogroth, the deity of chaos, was enraged by the gods' decision to banish him from the pantheon. Plotting revenge, he began poisoning the minds of the nations of the world. Black elves and orcs became his minions. The gods flooded the land in response, secluding the island kingdom of Arborea as the last stronghold against Mogroth's forces. Jarel, the last Prince of the elf-like race of Sham-nirs, must find allies who would help him on his quest to obtain four elemental crystals, restore the power of the temples, and defeat Mogroth. Crystals of Arborea is an RPG which is a precursor to the Ishar games. The party of six characters roam the world (on a 2D map or by exploring 3D individual locations), defeating Mogroth's minions, gathering experience points and becoming stronger. Unlike the subsequent Ishar games, combat in this game is turn-based, and takes place on separate screens. The players must manually navigate party members on the battle fiel. Archers and spellcasters can use ranged attacks, while melee fighters must stand close to the enemy in order to strike. | ||
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| Dark Heart of Uukrul, The | Digital Studios Limited / Brøderbund Software, Inc. | [top] | |
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Four adventurers are sent by the Western Council to defeat out Uukrul, a great evil that once defeated the Ancients, thought to be destroyed, to possible invasion to the Western Lands. The last party sent by the council was lead by Mara, and it has been 18 months since they have sent word. The council assumes the worst. Now these adventurers must infiltrate the underground city of Eriosthe, continue to the eastern end of Eriosthe, the heart of Uukrul's stronghold, and destroy the evil once and for all. The Dark Heart of Uukrul is a first person perspective, turned-based role-playing game (RPG), where the player takes control of a party of four specifically classed adventurers: a fighter, a paladin, a priest, and a magician. The player may use a pre-generated party or create an entirely new party. The adventure takes place in the immense underground city of Eriosthe, which consists of twisting caverns and dangerous monsters. Adventurers may however, take refuge in sanctuaries - safe havens created by the Ancients to provide safe resting, storing items, and access to teleportation portals. Characters sufficiently experienced will automatically be leveled-up here. Sanctuaries also act as a progress indicator as areas accessed after each sanctuary introduce stronger monsters and tougher puzzles. These safe havens may only be accessed after answering the puzzle by consulting the soul amulets (copy protection). Aside from sanctuaries, the only other gathering place for adventurers is the marketplace. The marketplace is the only area in the whole of Eriosthe which provides services such as a shop to purchase and sell weapons, items and food, a forge to repair weapons, a hospice to heal wounds and cure diseases, a mausoleum where dead characters can resurrected or laid to rest (removing dead members), a guild to meet and replace (if needed) dead companions with new recruits and a teleportation portal, which links to other portals (such as those in sanctuaries) and other areas. The marketplace also links to temples and the Magic Circle, which allows priest and magician characters to advance (by obtaining rings of power). There are also rumors that a sage provides services in identifying objects somewhere deeper in the eastern tunnels. Adventuring in Eriosthe consists of exploring its caverns and defeating randomly encountered (or pre-set) monsters. An auto-map feature is also available, as well as a directional compass to help guide the way. Certain encounters, such as puzzles may prompt the player to choose various options in handling the situation, each choice with a possible different outcome. Turn-based combat occurs automatically when the party meets opponents while adventuring (indicated by a sudden picture of the opponent). Fighters and paladins take the offensive role, while priests and magicians (usually) take the support role of casting spells, summoning elementals, and invoking the gods. Surviving combat may uncover money and items. The Dark Heart of Uukrul has no sound or music. | ||
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| DarkSpyre | Event Horizon Software, Inc. / Electronic Zoo | [top] | |
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The Gods of War, Intelligence, and Magic have created DarkSpyre, and intimidating tower full of riddles and monsters. The player takes control of an aspiring champion, whose goal is to explore the maze-like levels of the tower, retrieve five powerful runes hidden there, and ultimately save the world from destruction. DarkSpyre a top-down "dungeon-crawling" role-playing game. The player creates the protagonist, choosing gender and magic specialization (healing or offensive), as well as customizing his/her combat parameters. The game consists of navigating the tower's complex levels (39 of them must be traversed to complete the game, though there are 50 altogether), fighting monsters in action-based combat. The protagonist can equip a variety of weapons and armor; weapons can break after excessive usage, and armor will deteriorate in quality if worn for a long time. Spells are learned from scrolls found in the tower. The hero gains weapon and magic proficiency by repeatedly using the same weapon and/or spell. | ||
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| Dragon Lord / Dragon's Breath | Outlaw / Spotlight Software | [top] | |
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Play one of the three evil wizards all competing to find the magical talisman. To do so, the player must hatch, raise, breed dragons, and use them to spread terror and power across the land! Use these dragons and spells to conquer or help numerous villages and cities across the land while devastating the other wizards also seeking control of the land. It introduces different levels of gameplay. The game introduces a complex process of alchemy. Different ingredients have positive and negative results in combination of different types of Magick equipment used for it. Use alchemy to strengthen (or even weaken) own dragons or use them to cast spells at surrounding villages and cities (as well as some alchemical spells for the player's own benefit). Creating a too powerful spell in the Magick Laboratory may introduce an unpleasant explosion in the lab. Ingredients may be obtained through villager tribute or purchase from traveling merchants. Dragon Breeding - The game is almost impossible to play without the Alchemical Table of Ingredients. The player may breed several individual dragons in the castle. Each require nurturing and patience before they can hatch and even more so after they hatch! Use alchemy spells to help strengthen the dragon eggs (or they may not hatch at all!). Dragon Missions and Political Map - This feature gives a top-down perspective of the political map around the land. Send dragons to wreck havoc and terror to the surrounding villages and cities, or use them to explore the region and even protect villages and cities from enemy dragons! Attacking villages and cities may prompt them to surrender themselves under the player's control, providing the damage done is sufficient enough. This is also where the player may control the taxation of villages and cities (under player control) as well as any other information regarding them. Dragon Combat - Though optional, the player may enter manual combat (as to automatic combat) and enter a top-down, side-scrolling (vertical) arcade combat when attacking villages or cities. Here the player basically uses a dragon to burn anything that remotely looks like a structure. Note: If there is an enemy dragon near the area, the enemy dragon will come to the defense of that village or city! | ||
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| Dragon Wars | Interplay Entertainment Corp. | [top] | |
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This RPG takes place in the magical land of Dilmun, an island of salvation perverted into a world of horror by Namtar (as you might expect - the bad guy). The player starts with a party of four in the city of Purgatory, equipped with nothing more than.. well - nothing. Worst of all your magic users won't help you out, either, because magic has been banned (to correct this unpleasing situation is one of your main objectives). Other main targets are surviving, getting out of Purgatory and toppling Namtar (maybe getting some decent clothing, one or two shiny swords and the like on your way out). Gameplay instantly reminds of the Bard's Tale series. Step-by-step first person 3D, opponents materialize out of the air. The combat system is turn based. Unlike its (spiritual?) predecessors the game features a full-blown skill system, auto-mapping and many places to actually use all these abilities. Reasonable distribution of your skill points is rather critical. | ||
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| Dungeon Explorer | John K. Murphy | [top] | |
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Dungeon Explorer is a graphical role playing game. You create a character, buy equipment and explore a dungeon or ruin. You must defeat whatever monsters you encounter to gain experience and wealth, causing your character to become more powerful and stronger. But unlike most RPGs, Dungeon Explorer allows you to play a variety of different adventures using the same game. Each adventure is stored separately and as time passes, more adventures can be added and played without having to upgrade the basic program. Dungeon Explorer comes with a mini-adventure called Dungeon of the Beast which contains 64 rooms to explore (full adventures have 128 rooms). You may copy it freely and are encouraged to give copies away. In this way you can try out Dungeon Explorer for free and if you enjoy the game, you can order some of the other full size adventures." | ||
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| Escape From Hell | Electronic Arts | [top] | |
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A "light" RPG with a healthy dose of humor, Escape from Hell is based on an interesting premise: you are a typical guy who's one day mysteriously "zapped" into Hell. And now you must find a way out alive. Talk to lots of Hellish creatures, see inventive tortures and why, aside from the apologetic note in Hell's phone booth, your guardian angel never shows up. Gameplay is standard top-down RPG fare, with simplified statistics and a good amount of adventure-style puzzle solving. The designer missed no opportunity in poking fun of Biblical references and pop culture: everything from weapon choices, non-player characters, and location descriptions in the game are tongue-in-cheek and some are flat-out funny. Highly recommended for anyone wanting to try a good RPG parody, but don't be fooled by the simplified statistics though: the game will take you quite a while to finish. | ||
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| Fire King | Strategic Studies Group / Electronic Arts | [top] | |
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Fire King is an action role-playing video game. It was developed by Strategic Studies Group and distributed by Electronic Arts in 1988 for the Commodore 64/128 and DOS. It was sequel to another game of the same style titled Demon Stalkers: The Raid on Doomfane. The game has been compared to Gauntlet, with its top-down view and endless enemies spawning from monster generators, but differs in that it contains more plot and puzzles than the typical hack and slash game. The player becomes one of six characters, first appearing in a room above the town square of the town in Stormhaven Bay. The harmony of the land is controlled by the great elemental forces of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water, each controlled by a mage. The Fire Mage was king until he was slain by a magical beast of superhuman strength and size. Although this monster was slain, another magical beast appeared and began to dine on villagers. New enemies roam the countryside, leaving it to the player characters to confront the beast in the catacombs and end the terror. | ||
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| Fountain of Dreams | Electronic Arts, Inc. | [top] | |
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Fountain of Dreams is a 1990 role-playing video game developed and published by Electronic Arts for MS-DOS as a successor to 1988's Wasteland. The game is set in post-nuclear war Florida, literally separated from the continental United States by intensive bombing during World War III that sparked an enormous earthquake. Central Florida itself was hit heavily with neutron and chemical weapons, in order to destroy the life there and preserve the technology.[3] 50 years later after "The Change", life on the island of Florida is constantly threatened by mutations due to residual ionizing radiation. Adding to the threat are the deranged Killer Klowns, as well as three organized crime factions: the DeSoto Family, the Obeah Orders, and the Bahia Mafia. The player controls a small band of adventurers who set out to find the purifying waters of the legendary "Fountain of Dreams" to stop the spread of mutation. The gameplay is very similar to that of Wasteland since Fountain of Dreams was originally intended to be a sequel to this game. It is noted as being "very unforgiving" near the beginning, making it hard to start the game without dying. | ||
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| Hard Nova | Spaceport Malibu / Electronic Arts, Inc. | [top] | |
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Take control of your own team of high-tech mercenaries in this sci-fi role-playing game. Pick your team and take on dozens of missions in four star systems, each increasing in difficulty and profitability. Gameplay features three different real-time combat systems: deep space, air combat within a planet's atmosphere, and ground battles on the surface. | ||
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| J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Vol. I | Interplay Productions | [top] | |
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This is a fantasy role playing game based on the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien. This game covers the first novel in the trilogy. Although the game follows the book, it also adds plenty of its own elements. Your quest is to carry the one ring to Mordor, and destroy it, thus saving Middle Earth from destruction. An enhanced CD-ROM version including many videos taken from the 1978 animation movie by Ralph Bakshi was also released. A second and third instalment were planned, but the third was never released because Interplay couldn't decide whether to do it as an RPG like the first two, or as a strategy game. | ||
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| Keys to Maramon, The | Mindcraft Software, Inc. | [top] | |
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The Keys to Maramon is set in the same world as Magic Candle, and uses a modified engine from said game. This is a single player RPG more aimed at novice players. Your job is to clear out all the monsters infesting the cellars, dungeons and dark corners of Maramon. | ||
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| Legend of Faerghail | Electronic Design Hannover / reLINE Software | [top] | |
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Something bad has happened to the race of elves. Without provocation, they attack innocent people and are preparing to conquer the peaceful city of Thyn. The Count of Thyn needs somebody to go to the city of Cyldane and ask the local Count to send reinforcements. This task is given to the protagonist of the game, who has to recruit other adventurers to help him in dangerous battles. Soon the heroes will discover a greater evil behind the sudden insanity that plagues the elves, and will have to find a way to defeat it. Legend of Faerghail is a role-playing game with an interface similar to that of The Bard's Tale series. The player explores towns, wilderness, and complex dungeons of the game from first-person perspective, fighting enemies in turn-based combat. The combat system requires the player to pay attention to the position of the characters in battle. For example, a mage will lose concentration and fail at spellcasting if he stands too close to the enemy. | ||
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| Lords of Doom | attic Entertainment Software GmbH / Starbyte Software | [top] | |
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In the desert town Vertic, werewolves, vampires, mummies and zombies appear suddenly, feasting on the population until only a ghost town of undead is left. Two ordinary citizens team up with two professional monster hunters to cleanse the town of evil. Sharon, Charlie, Susan Leicester and Abraham Van Halen must fight their way through monsters and eventually defeat the overlord of each species, ending the invasion. Lords of Doom is a hybrid game that incorporates elements of adventure and role-playing. The player controls the party of characters from a first-person view, navigating a pseudo-3D town. The adventure gameplay manifests itself in exploration of individual locations, interaction with objects, and the use of items to solve puzzles. Role-playing elements are present in party management and character statistics. Each character has, beside hitpoints, thirst and hunger meters, so that the player has to "feed" the characters regularly in order for them to stay alive. Combat is done in real time. | ||
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| MegaTraveller 1: The Zhodani Conspiracy | Paragon Software Corporation | [top] | |
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Based on the MegaTraveller table-top science-fiction game, your task in The Zhodani Conspiracy is to prevent war breaking out between the Zhodani Consulate and the Imperium - Zhodani officials have bribed some of their Imperium counterparts to try and bring about a war between the two sides. In this role-playing game character creation is the first task. Characters can be created and then put through a choice of five military careers to gain skills and experience semi-randomly (there are more than 70 talents and abilities), or you can simply compose your squad of five from the pre-defined roster. In total there are 28 planets grouped within 8 solar systems, and there's not much space free of adventure and mystery. 30 different types of cargo exist for interplanetary trading and bartering. Combat takes place in real-time, you can control any one of your characters while giving orders to the others. | ||
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| Rance 2: The Rebellious Maidens | Alice Soft | [top] | |
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Four magical rings were stolen from Custom Town. A bunch of sexy, but dangerous sorceresses terrorizes the land. The town mayor has no choice but to invite Rance, a freelance private investigator whose mind is mostly occupied with pretty girls and promises to pay him quite a large sum of money if he stops the evil. Naturally, Rance agrees. It's time for him and his trusty cute purple-haired sidekick Shiiru to fight evil once again. This is the second game in the animé-style erotic role-playing game adventure series. The game is played from first person perspective, save for navigation in dungeons, where the player moves a cursor on a map to access various rooms. Rance and Shiiru can buy and equip weapons and armor. In dungeons, the player will encounter enemies to fight in turn-based combat. The player will have to search for the enemies to make them appear. In 2008, the game was made freeware. In 2011, an English patch was released.
See also: Rance 02: Hangyaku no Shoujo-tachi |
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| Secret Of The Silver Blades | Strategic Simulations, Inc. | [top] | |
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The heroes from Pool of Radiance and Curse of the Azure Bonds return once again. This time, they arrive naked via a magical well inside a frozen town wishing for heroes to help them. The party once again attempts to save a town under siege (once re-equipped) and struggles to learn the secret of the Silver Blades... The gameplay is quite similar to that of the previous Gold Box games. Following the AD&D rules of role-playing, the player creates a party of characters (up to the maximum of six). Exploration takes place in pseudo-3D environments, from first-person view. Battles (random as well as pre-set) take the player-controlled and enemy party to a top-down battle screen. Commands are issued in turn-based fashion, and the player-controlled characters can freely navigate the battle field. Unlike the previous games, there is no "world map" traveling in Secret of the Silver Blades. All the exploration takes place in the 3D world. | ||
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| Space 1889 | Paragon Software Corporation | [top] | |
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A role-playing adventure set in the "future" as seen by Victorian era science fiction writers. Players explore the far corners of the Earth (Atlantis, King Tut's tomb etc...) and travel between planets on ships made of martian "liftwood" (invented by none other than Thomas Edison). Based on GDW's pencil and paper roleplaying game. Similar in design to Paragon's MegaTraveller series. | ||
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| Tunnels & Trolls: Crusaders of Khazan | New World Computing, Inc. | [top] | |
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This game is a computerized adaptation of Ken St. Andre's pen-and-paper fantasy role-playing game, Tunnels & Trolls. After a four hundred year long war, humans and monsters finally signed a peace treaty, and harmony returned to the Dragon Land - but not for long. The leader of the monsters, the mysterious Lerotra'hh, declared the peace contract was invalid. Monsters began to attack human settlements once again. The only one who can save the humans is the mighty wizard Khazan. Unfortunately, Khazan was imprisoned in his exile. This is where a group of brave adventurers enters the picture, determined to rescue Khazan and defeat the evil. The party explores the world of Crusaders of Khazan from a top-down perspective, roaming wilderness areas, visiting towns, talking to people, receiving quests, and descending into dungeons. Battles take place on a top-down battle screen, on which characters can move freely and attack enemies in turn-based style. The game features point-and-click interface with multiple windows. From the first dozens of introductory screens that outline the backstory onward, the writing captures the true medieval-fantasy spirit. The well-developed storyline and side quests make up for the cumbersome interface and *extremely* frustrating combat where you can't kill certain monsters. Casual gamers need not apply, but die-hard RPGers will likely have a lot of fun with this classic. | ||
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| Ultima VI: The False Prophet | ORIGIN Systems, Inc. | [top] | |
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Several years after having restored Lord British to his rightful position as the monarch of Britannia, the Avatar is captured by demon-like creatures and placed on a sacrificial altar. His friends Iolo, Shamino and Dupre appear just in time to save him. In the Britannia castle, the Avatar learns that his abductors were gargoyles, a race of enigmatic creatures who have recently invaded Britannia and occupied the shrines of Virtue. As the Avatar embarks on a quest to liberate Britannia, he begins to gain insight into the gargoyles' true motives, and realizes that it is his duty to achieve peace and understanding between the two races. Ultima VI is notable for introducing a continuous world to the role-playing genre. There is no "world map" in the game; all the locations are seamlessly connected to each other, turning the game world into a "sandbox" environment. Compared to the previous installments in the series, the game focuses more on quests and exploration rather than on combat. The latter no longer involves separate screens; battles occur during exploration, without any transitions. The turn-based system from the previous games has been preserved. The interface has been re-designed, the original key-bound commands co-existing with selectable command icons and mouse-based interaction. The game world is more detailed than in the previous games, with a large number of various objects that can be manipulated or added to the inventory. Conversations are more extended, with a wider selection of topics, including many personal ones unique to specific characters. The player is also able to conduct extensive conversations with the Avatar's companions, as well as split the party and control the characters separately. Some important topics may be highlighted during text display, to facilitate further dialogue, which requires the player to type the desired conversation topics. Like in the predecessors, the player is free to explore the game world from the beginning of the game, and visit locations in any order. Following the main quest and obtaining specific items and information is necessary to complete the story; however, the player can also opt to bypass a large part of it by using previous knowledge of the game or outside help. See also: #Ultima Collection | ||
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| Wizardry 6: Bane of the Cosmic Forge | Sir-tech Software, Inc. / Sir-tech Software, Inc. | [top] | |
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It is said the the Cosmic Forge is a magical pen possessing an enormous power: whatever is written with it instantly becomes true. A group of explorers ventures into the castle that where the king, the queen, and the wizard who created the pen used to dwell. Nobody knows what has been happening there for the last hundred years, since nobody dares to enter the haunted castle. As the heroes step in, the doors behind them close forever. They are left alone to discover the truth about the Cosmic Forge and the drama that occurred between the castle's inhabitants. Bane of the Cosmic Forge is the sixth entry in the Wizardry series. While retaining the basic premise of creating a party of up to six adventurers to roam first-person dungeons and fight enemies in turn-based combat, this installments contains numerous enhancements and new features. It was the first game in the series to feature full color graphics and a mouse-driven interface. The game also features a branching storyline: depending on the player's choice to believe or mistrust a key character, the plot will split into different directions, resulting in several different endings. | ||
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| Worlds of Ultima: The Savage Empire | ORIGIN Systems, Inc. | [top] | |
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This is a spin-off of Ultima games, taking the series' protagonist, the Avatar, into strange and mysterious places outside the scope of a conventional dungeon-based RPG. In this game, the hero visits Eodon, an Amazonian world dominated by dinosaurs. Many characters populate this world, including stone-age tribes, mad scientists, and lizardmen. But not all the inhabitants of Eodon are peaceful - get ready to fight for survival as gorillas, pterodanodons and tigers encroach. The game is made with the Ultima VI engine, and is very similar to that game visually and gameplay-wise. Like Ultima VI, the game is set in a seamless graphical world, and offers many objects to interact with and combine, party management, and turn-based combat. Compared to Ultima VI, some gameplay features have been simplified. There are less spells, less emphasis on character development, and conversations with NPCs are more limited. | ||
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| Xenomorph | Pandora | [top] | |
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You have landed your crippled ship at the Atargis mining station. The platform was deserted and no one answered your radio calls. Now you are forced to enter the station and find a way to get off the asteroid. Hopefully whatever happened to the 200 personnel in the labyrinth of mines under the station won't happen to you too. Xenomorph is a first person RPG. Like in the Dungeon Master series, everything happens in real time. You move around in 10 foot steps and can turn 90 degrees. You have two hands to fight and use items with, a belt and holster for quick access to weapons as well as an inventory for carrying things. The objective of the game is to find parts to repair your ship. You must also find food and water for sustenance and guns, grenades and mines for self defense. Other items can help you during your mission such as environmental suits, security passes and a motion detector. Data disks found throughout the station will fill in the story. | ||
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Platformers
| Amazing Spider-Man, The | Paragon Software Corporation | [top] | |
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Spider Man has to rescue his girlfriend Mary Jane who was kidnapped by the super villain Mysterio. The whole game takes place on a film set studio. This game is primarily a platforming game in which Spider-Man fights against various enemies. Those can be stunned with Spider-Man's iconic web substance, but touching them or other hazards in the game world will decrease his health. Another important part of the gameplay are puzzles, mostly with the goal to deactivate some of Mysterio's gimmicks, e.g. changed gravity, to clear the path. Spider-Man can climb walls and shoot grappling hooks. | ||
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| Batman: The Movie | Ocean Software Ltd., Data East Corporation | [top] | |
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Based on the 1989-Batman movie. The game consists of five different parts, each resembling well known game types. Part one, the chemical plant: Hunt down Jack Napier who has raided the plant (typical platform action, climb ladders or use "Bat"-rope and shoot at some enemies...). Part two, "Batmobile" (...the car): Joker is chasing you and have to escape to "Bat"-cave. Avoid obstacles like police blocking the road and others. Part three, "Bat"-cave: A puzzle game where you have to find a certain item (belonging to Joker) amongst other items. Part four, "Batjet": Cut the ropes of the balloons which are filled with poisonous gas. Part five, the cathedral: Hunt down Joker. This part plays like the first one. Finally you will confront Joker in a fight that decides the fate of Gotham city. | ||
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| Captain Comic II: Fractured Reality | Color Dreams, Inc. / ComputerEasy | [top] | |
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In this sequel to the original Captain Comic, you play a comic book-hero-like space ship captain who "beams down" to a strange planet to save its inhabitant. Your only weapon is your blaster, which can fire a varying number of shots depending on how many blastola colas you've collected. Other items you can find include the pickaxe, jet pack, magic wand and other little trinkets. The best things about the game is the huge non-linear playfield which is divided into several different terrains. As Captain Comic, galactic hero, you jump from platform to platform and collect all kinds of bonus treats. The graphics are EGA only and not as detailed as Apogee's platformers, but they are more than sufficient. There is also an element of puzzle-solving (e.g. finding this or that treasure, exit to the next level, etc.) thrown into the mix to make the game more challenging. | ||
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| Chip 'N Dale Rescue Rangers: The Adventures in Nimnul's Castle | Riedel Software Productions, Inc. / Hi-Tech Expressions, Inc. | [top] | |
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This platform game is based on the famous animation series by Disney. In the game, the player controls Chip helped by Dale (automatically controlled by computer), who break through the obstacles made by one of their arch-villains, Professor Norton Nimnul. The Rescue Rangers go through 9 levels to save the Monterey Jack caught by mouse-trap in Nimnul's castle. On the first 3 levels, Rangers must get to Nimnul's castle jumping in and out of pits, avoiding the running dogs and falling acid drops thrown by Nimnul himself. On the second 3 levels, Chip must avoid fire throws from candles, collect screws, and give them to Dale as he runs away from dogs. On the third 3 levels, Chip must avoid the machine with hands, collect screws, and give them to Dale running away from dogs. Between levels the animation is shown on how the player progresses in the game, such as, for example, Zipper transfer the screws collected by Rangers for the flying machine to repair it by Gadget. | ||
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| Continuum / Alpha Waves | Infogrames Europe SA | [top] | |
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Continuum is a 3D game viewed from the Third person and was one of the first 3D platformers. The player will pilot a "Mobile", a craft which bounces off of the platforms that fill the rooms. The game comprises of 256 rooms, which you explore while in search of 16 crystals and 16 cubes. The Mobile bounces from platform to platform, making its way around the room to the doors that lead into other rooms. On the way, players will encounter many other creatures and vehicles, as well as exciting surprises, such as rooms with reversed gravity. There are two modes two modes of play: emotion and action. In action, players start in the center most room, and work their way around, while being timed. Players gain time when going into a room they haven't been in before and when crystal or cube power-ups are picked up. When time runs out, the Mobile explodes and the game ends. In emotion, players can choose to start in any of the 12 regions that reside within the 256 rooms (the 256 rooms are grouped into 12 regions). The regions are arranged in the context of different areas of the human brain. While there is no timer, players also can't explore beyond the region that is chosen. This game is viewed 3rd person to the Mobile vehicle via a camera. The mobile rotates left and right, thrusts forward, and can move the camera up and down for optimal viewing. | ||
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| Dangerous Dave in Copyright Infringement | Softdisk Publishing | [top] | |
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Late one night in September 1990, John Carmack was up working late (at Softdisk) on his new side-scrolling EGA engine and was joined by Tom Hall. They wanted to do something to show John Romero and blow him away, so Tom looked over at the Nintendo that was running Super Mario Bros. 3 and said, "You know, we could make the first level of SM3!" Carmack said, "Okay, let's do it" and so they commenced to spend the next 6 hours or so banging out the graphics, game map and programming for a little demo Tom titled Dangerous Dave in "Copyright Infringement" (meaning that they ripped off SM3, so it was copyright infringement!) So Tom didn't have to draw all the walking and jumping frames of a Mario character, he just took my Dangerous Dave graphics (from the PC EGA version) to speed along the process. Romero was excited when he saw it as this would lead to the first smooth side-scrolling game for the PC and the Commander Keen games. It would also lead to them later creating their own company id Software which became a huge hit with the Doom & Quake franchises. This demo game was never released commercially. | ||
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| Dangerous Dave in the Deserted Pirate's Hideout | Softdisk Publishing | [top] | |
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This is an early platformer game by John Romero who later went on to fame with making Doom. It was developed for the Apple II in 1988 and later ported to DOS as an example game to accompany his article about his GraBASIC, an Applesoft BASIC add-on, for the UpTime disk magazine. The object of the game was to collect gold cups to move on to the next level. Guide Dave through ten terrifying levels as he tries to reclaim his trophies from a deserted pirate's hideout. This is a standard platform run and jump game although with only 10 levels but it's meant to be more difficult than the usual. | ||
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| Dick Tracy | Titus France SA | [top] | |
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This is a tie in to the 1990 movie adaptation of the classic comic strip, staring Warren Beatty and Madonna. While an action/adventure hybrid using this license was released by Disney for the PC and Amiga, Titus also held a license to the movie. This is a side scrolling action game, where you control Dick Tracy as he moves through five stages, shooting gangsters with an assortment of weapons. Each stage leads to one of the mob bosses, until you ultimately capture the big man himself. | ||
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| Disney's Duck Tales: The Quest for Gold | Incredible Technologies, Inc. / Walt Disney Computer Software, Inc. | [top] | |
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This game based on the Disney tv cartoon puts you in the roles of various members of the Junior Woodchuck Board of Advisors, including Huey, Dewey and Louie, on a search for the world's rarest treasures, which are located in a number of exotic places the world over. To add to Scrooge McDuck's ever-expanding wealth, you must help the Disney ducks complete six different adventures. A map screen will help you move from one location to the other as you seek riches in the mummy-infested caves of Ali Baba in Arabia, photograph the wild Sausage Lynx and Dolly Llama on the Photo Safari in Duckburg Island, and dodge coconut-wielding monkeys as you swing from vines in the jungles of the Okeefadokie Swamp. Not only can these ducks run, jump, swing on vines, and take photos, but they can also climb mountains (watch out for boulders) and take flight in an airplane and do a little barnstorming. | ||
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| Fire Hawk: Thexder II | Game Arts Co., Ltd. | [top] | |
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The official sequel to Thexder, Fire Hawk has more of everything: More weapons, more enemies, more music, more levels... more everything. Some of the main improvements include the ability to save your game at certain points, multiple special weapons, the ability to switch between special weapons during gameplay, and a greatly expanded high-quality soundtrack. | ||
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| Flintstones, The: Dino Lost in Bedrock | Softie, Inc. / Hi-Tech Expressions, Inc. | [top] | |
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This is a platform game based on the famous animated television show. Fred Flintstone's pet dinosaur, Dino is, well, lost in the city of Bedrock. Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble try to find him. The game is divided into several levels. You walk as either Fred or Barney through Bedrock, and you must avoid enemies such as crocodiles or turtles; should they catch you, you lose a life. You can pick up rocks to throw at them. At the end of every level, you encounter a boss - always a big prehistoric creature. There is a time limit on every level, but you can get coconuts out of the trees for extra time. Sometimes, however, there are spiders instead of coconuts in the trees. | ||
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| Gremlins 2: The New Batch | Motivetime Ltd. / Elite Systems Ltd. | [top] | |
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As Billy, you set off to rescue Gizmo the Gremlin from Clamp Tower skyscraper, where Dr. Catheter plans to viciously experiment with him. Unfortunately, Catheter gets word of your plans, and mixes up a whole new batch of vicious gremlins. As a result, your mission is now one of destruction and avoidance. Elite's implementation of this adaptation of the movie sequel is a five-level side-view action game, in which you run around avoiding or shooting the gremlins. Each level has a secret object which must be collected. Bonus items such as extra lives and time can be collected, as can improved weapons, and credits to spend on a new weapon after each level. | ||
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| Jetsons in "By George, in Trouble Again" | Softie, Inc. / Hi-Tech Expressions, Inc. | [top] | |
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This is a decent platformer starring Mr. Spacely, George, Elroy, Astro and Rosie, main characters from Hanna Barbara's charming TV cartoon about an accident-prone space-age family. The plot: renegade robots have taken one of Mr. Spacely's sprocket plants. And George, his most stupid subordinate, may just be stupid enough to risk his life to get it back. You can choose to play as either George or Elroy in one-player mode, or play both characters with a friend in two-player hotseat mode. The gameplay is simple: use the arrow keys to avoid hostile robots; run, crawl, and jump your way to the next screen. You have three lives (called "days" in the game); losing all of them means restarting that level. There is also a strict time limit on each level in the form of energy counter: you will die when the countdown reaches zero. Fortunately, the game is neither difficult nor long enough to be frustrating, although the characters' movements are somewhat too "sticky," i.e. unresponsive to keystrokes. The death scenes in this one at least are funny to watch, though. | ||
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| Joe Blade | Interceptor Software | [top] | |
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Tough guy Joe Blade must rescue six respected leaders from the madcap Crax Bloodfinger, who has kidnapped them in different areas of his base. Along the way he will find six bombs which must be activated, leaving him with only 20 minutes to rescue everyone. Joe Blade is viewed side-on and uses flick-screen progression. The bombs are deactivated by arranging letters into alphabetical order, but the bulk of the gameplay involves shooting and maze navigation. The screens are linked in various ways, and contain a number of keys which must be used correctly. | ||
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| Lorna [Sp] | Topo Soft | [top] | |
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Lorna is the typical sexy heroine who fights against the foreign aliens in a distant place. This game follows the standard style of "go ahead and kill all anything that interpose on your way", those "friends" that will want to complicate your existence will be a varied mutant monsters, and, to defend yourself, you will be able to use hand-to-hand attack techniques, and if you prefer, you can use your always effective assault-rifle. This game is based on the popular Alfonso Aspiriz's comic book. | ||
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| Mario Bros. VGA | Dave Sharpless / The Software Toolworks | [top] | |
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This is an unofficial remake of the classic Mario Bros. game of the arcade in VGA 16 colors. You control Mario who has to flip turtles coming out from two pipes at the top of the screen. The goal of the game is to defeat these turtles and score points by flipping them from underneath, not jumping on them. All gameplay is on one single screen, there are no scrolling levels like regular Mario games. The registered version also allows a second player as Luigi. | ||
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| Mega Man | Hi-Tech Expressions, Inc. / Capcom | [top] | |
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In the PC version of Mega Man, it's up to the blue robot Megaman to stop the plot of Dr. Wily, the maverick lab assistant, by jumping and shooting his way past an army of robots. At the end of these levels are three of Dr. Wily's robot masters, Dyna Man, Sonic Man and Volt man who each drop a key when defeated. These keys are then used to gain access to the room where the megacomputer Crorq is being stored for a final showdown. As always, Megaman can absorb the weapon power of the robot masters and use it as his own. Mega Man is a side-scrolling platform game. It differs greatly from the original megaman game with only three bosses and not very many extras to find. Lesser robots can defeated and drop a variety of power-ups including an energy capsule for filling energy, a weapon capsule which restores the power of captured robot weapons, an extra life, a continue and an energy tank which will restore all of Megaman's energy once. Instead of creating faithful reproductions, Hi-Tech reduced the excellent anime characters that NES fans have come to know and love to laughable animated blobs - with Mega Man himself looking like a broken-doll version of Commander Keen ... a cabbage patch doll gone awry, so to speak. The graphics are dull, and even the innovative gameplay that lets Mega Man transform himself into different robot types can't save it from mediocrity. | ||
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| Night Shift | Attention to Detail Limited / Lucasfilm Games LLC | [top] | |
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Night Shift is a strange platform/puzzle combo of a game. Thriving Toy Company seeks energetic employee to operate unconventional machine. Generous rewards in store for you... if you can meet the challenge! Gameplay is divided into 6 different kinds of shifts, each with its own assignments (provide power, use wrench to tighten bolts, etc.) You will use tools throughout the game, and will be awarded with bonus items (hourglass for extra time, cash bonus for extra points). Master the BEAST to crank out action figures from Star Wars(r), Indiana Jones(r) and your favourite LucasArts games. You must meet your quota each night. IF YOU FAIL, YOU'RE FIRED! Make your quota! Get a raise! Get a bonus! Get a bigger quota! Fend off nasty lawyers and furry pests. Make it all the way from the assembly line to the mansion on the hill! | ||
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| Ninja Gaiden | Tecmo, Ltd. / Hi-Tech Expressions, Inc. | [top] | |
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This begins with a cinematic animation in which 2 ninjas duel to the death; one goes down. It is revealed that the doomed ninja is the father of Ryu Hayabusa. When Ryu learns of this, he embarks on a quest to find out who killed his father and why. This quest takes him to America to find an archaeologist with whom Ryu's father was working. From there, Ryu becomes embroiled in an evil, supernatural conspiracy involving a villain named Jaquio who has plans to use an ancient castle and some relics to unleash a terrifying evil upon the world. In comparison to the better known console version this game is based on the original arcade version. It is a traditional fighting game similar to Double Dragon in which the player walks from left to right while battling numerous enemies. Only if all foes are dispatched of, the player can advance in the level. It's also possible to perform special attacks and use weapons. The latter are either collectable power-ups or environmental objects like phone booths. | ||
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| Onslaught | Realms / Hewson Consultants Ltd. | [top] | |
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As a highly respected warrior, you are attempting to conquer as many regions as possible. This is a three-stage task, as first you must fight through hordes of fighters simply to reach the castle, and then you have to climb the various sections of the castle, before battling with its existing inhabitant. The bulk of the game is side-scrolling platform hack 'n' slash action, with mines to avoid on the route. You can collect a number of spells, and select them using the function keys. Your physical and mental energy are measured separately throughout the game, and must both be kept high. | ||
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| Pharaoh's Tomb | Micro F/X Software / Apogee Software, Ltd. | [top] | |
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As a lowly research assistant Nevada Smith believes he's finally going to get his big break into the pages of archeology by discovering a long lost tomb. His glory is soon stolen away from him by the professor he's assisting at the University. The same professor he's been assisting for years in the hopes of tagging along for a treasure hunt. Tired of taking things lying down Nevada sneaks into the professor's office and steals back the ancient map he found and afterwards he runs home to pack his bags and outrun the professor to the tomb inside one of the great pyramids of Egypt. Once inside the pyramid, Nevada will face hazards such as traps, falling spikes, bottomless pits, and dangerous denizens of the pyramids including, bats, monsters, and of course mummies to say the least. Nevada must find a number of keys on each level to advance to the next level and must also be on the lookout for treasures. one other hazard in his way are mysterious winds that blow on certain levels which add to the challenge of exploring the level. Nevada isn't exactly defenseless however. His adventures begin with five lives and he's got a couple of spears which he can throw at the creatures in his way. Pharaoh's Tomb is a platform game where the player controls the actions of Nevada Smith. Nevada can run around and jump and he can also throw spears at enemies. More spears can be picked up on certain levels and bonus lives to give you a better chance at getting through the adventure can also be found or earned. Levels are passed once the required number of keys or treasures are found. Players can save their progress at the beginning of any level. Enemies in Pharaoh's Tomb are restricted to move in strict patterns and players must pay close attention to these patterns to avoid them. Throwing spears at enemies also requires some space between the player and the enemy and therefore enemies can't be speared when Nevada is right next to them. Pharaoh's Tomb is comprised of four volumes: Vol.1 - Raiders of The Lost Tomb, Vol.2 - Pharaoh's Curse, Vol.3 - Temple of Terror and Vol.4 - Nevada's Revenge! The shareware version of the game is the entire first volume. Each volume of the game includes twenty levels taking place deeper and deeper into the pyramid. Pharaoh's Tomb uses a proprietary animation system called FAST (Fluid Animation Software Technology) which allows the game to run on older machines at a good performance level however the restrictions of this system are the enemies are located in bounding boxes and therefore players need to imagine a rectangle around enemies and other hazards in order to fully avoid them. In 2009, the game was made freeware. | ||
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| Rastan | Taito Corporation / Taito America Corporation | [top] | |
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Originally a 1987 arcade game, Rastan features five levels of hacking and slashing gameplay with a boss at the end of each level. Numerous enemies assault you on your journey such as flying demons, chimeras, valkyries, piranhas, undead and more. Fight through to the end and save the land of Lograth from certain doom. The game features different weapons such as axes, maces and fire swords, each with its own attributes like extended range or attack power. Armour can also be picked up in the forms of shields, cloaks and armour, reducing the damage from enemy attacks. Other items include rings (increase the speed of your weapon) and jewelry for bonus points. | ||
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| Rick Dangerous II | Core Design Ltd. / Microplay Software | [top] | |
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Nice follow-up to Rick Dangerous, this time more akin to old aliens-invade-the-Earth movies than to Indiana Jones, but gameplay retains the same addictive action/puzzle blend of the original. After the archaeological antics of Rick's first outing, he returns home to London.... only to find that entire city is being attacked by aliens. Determined to save the day once again, Rick soon climbs the stairs that lead into the bowels of the alien mothership. Although the levels are no more archeological digs, gameplay remains the same. Rick starts the game equipped with a ray-gun (limited shots) and several electronic detonators (also limited), both of which can be used to triggering and neutralising traps as well as blasting aliens. While aliens are easily spotted and terminated, traps are what makes the game very devious and sets it apart from other platformers. Lasers built into the walls are hard to find and avoid. You must also pay attention to various switches and levers that are scattered throughout each level. These activate lifts, guns, and various other alien equipment that will help your quest. The game takes you across five levels, from the interior of a spaceship to the alien planet and beyond. Unlike the first game, you can now play the levels in any order - but you have to complete all of them to get to the fifth and last level. The cartoony graphics are outstanding throughout, although they are (of course) duller than the Amiga original. Luck is more important than judgment for many puzzles, where trial-and-error is the only way to figure out how to escape the scene. You will likely die many times (especially after level 2) from pushing the wrong thing at the wrong time. Despite frustrating deaths, though, you still want to keep playing, because it's chock-full of that "just one more try" quality that all classic games share. If you like the original and want more of the same, Rick Dangerous 2 won't disappoint, although be warned: it's not a little tougher than it's predecessor. | ||
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| Satan | Dinamic Software | [top] | |
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Three magic scrolls must be found in the first part of the scrolling hack 'n' slash game, before you can make the journey to defeat your foes and rescue the other wizards in the second part. As with so many Dinamic games, the two parts are loaded separately, but the second can't be accessed until a password (provided at the end of part one) is input. Contact with the enemies en route (which are mostly mutant demons) drains your limited energy, and you are also working against a time limit on each section. As well as your magical powers (which are stronger in part two), you can collect swords to attack, as well as lightning bolts which can be collected to destroy all enemies on screen. In part two vanquished foes release coins, which can be spent at shop sections on rechargers, shields and teleporters amongst other things. | ||
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| Shadow Knights | id Software, Inc. / Softdisk Publishing | [top] | |
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As a ninja with a mission to "redeem Naipusan, the once peaceful land that was destroyed by the northern armies", you have to defeat the evil Shogun of Death. This is a platform game where you try to complete several levels, such as a village, a cemetery or a castle, before confronting the final boss. On each level, you'll encounter a lot of enemies - initially dogs and ninjas with clubs and bows, but more types of enemies appear later. To defeat them, you can slash at them with your sword. However, your ninja also has magic powers. He can spend this magical energy to toss magical projectiles at the enemies, or to restore his health. Depleted magical energy can be refilled by collecting golden spheres scattered throughout the levels. | ||
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| Skate Dragon | Iris Soft | [top] | |
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An arcade game with some puzzle elements that is said to take place in 2025, where 'Skate Dragon' is a popular and very dangerous TV show. A person on skates is to cross levels of platforms, each of them occupying one single screen, and to reach the exit door, while struggling with and avoiding different menaces and obstacles that include ice coating, dragons breathing fire or shooting small balls etc. | ||
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| Stryx | Psygnosis Limited / Psyclapse | [top] | |
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You star as half-robot operative Stryx. Dome City is under attack by KILLER CYBORG ASSASSINS! You navigate Stryx through numerous levels on foot, hovercrafts and some weird round eyeball-type flying craft. Stryx is an ambitious multi-type action game with some puzzle elements (similar to Epyx' classic Impossible Mission 2) that unfortunately is bogged down by poor platform action levels. The plot, which is almost superfluous in this type of games, is about another cliche Cyborg-vs-human conflict. You are Stryx, the most advanced Cyborg created to be mankind’s last chance against the Cyborgs. Your job: find four keys that would activate the termination system called "Lifeforce". Once activated, the Lifeforce would destroy all robotic and computer systems ... naturally taking your life in the process. Gameplay alternates between typical 2D sidescrolling platform action and shoot em-up sections. Although the shoot em-up sections are a lot of fun, the platform action which makes up the first and biggest part of it is so unbelievably appalling that very few people will ever bother to progress to get to the shoot em-up parts. As Stryx, which is just a small little sprite in the game, you will trudge aimlessly around a lot of repetitive scenery, taking the odd potshot at big but lifeless enemies with your ineffectual little gun. | ||
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Casual Games
| Ante-Up at the Friday Night Poker Club | ComputerEasy | [top] | |
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This is a your chance to play against four computer players in four different Poker games. You can choose whether you play a variety of games or stick to just the game(s) you want to play. The game modes available are: 5 Card Stud, 5 Card Draw, 7 Card Stud, and Texas Hold 'em. This game also offers a tutorial/lesson mode where the Captain will teach you the basics and different aspects of the game while you play. Again, you can get tutored in a variety of game mode or learn just the game you want. The game presents a top down view and has full card graphics as well as opponent graphics. The usual rules of poker apply to all the poker games, and you use a mouse to pick-up and throw more chips in or to ante-up. | ||
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| Battle Chess II: Chinese Chess | Interplay Productions, Inc. / Electronic Arts Ltd. | [top] | |
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A sequel to the original Battle Chess, this game takes on a more Chinese approach, both in the rules of the game and in the presentation. Using a Chinese variation of the game of Chess, pieces like the Queen and Bishop are replaced by Counsellors, Ministers, and Cannon. Pieces behave differently than their European counterparts and even the board is set up differently. Two things remain the same: the ultimate goal of checkmating the opposing player's king and the Battlechess style animated battles that occur when two pieces contend for the same spot on the board. However, it actually does NOT implement one of the Chinese chess rules, which says the two kings may not face each other in the same file with no intervening pieces. This makes checkmating the king somewhat harder than it should be, especially in games with very few pieces left on the board. | ||
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| Big Bobble | I.J.E. Inc. / GameTek Inc. | [top] | |
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Parker Brothers' challenging 3-minute word game is now fast-paced fun for all ages on your computer. It plays just like the original- let the computer shake up the 25 letter cubes and go. There are over a trillion letter combinations waiting to appear on the screen. You get to choose your game options for your own personal challenge: you can preset your own minimum word size, select your own time limit, determine your own point goal. As the timer counts down, you and up to three opponents, or you and the computer, or just you alone try to find as many words of four letters or more hidden in the grid. Form words by joining letters up and down, left to right, and diagonally. The longer the words, the higher your score. It's the word game you'll learn in minutes and play for hours. | ||
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| Chess Simulator | Oxford Softworks / Infogrames Europe SA | [top] | |
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This is a chess game which offers the standard features: playing chess against the AI which can be set in a number of different levels suited for beginners and advanced players (the maximum ELO rating is 2150); optionally with an advice option which tries to teach chess to the player. Graphical features include a number of different pieces and the option to change the angle and zoom of the 3D playfield. Of course it is also possible to use a top-down perspective. The game also provides a way to calculate the user's ELO score: the program presents 24 situations and the player must provide likely moves within two minutes. | ||
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| Chip's Challenge | Epyx, Inc. / U.S. Gold Ltd., Microsoft Corporation | [top] | |
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Nerdy Chip desperately wants to join the "Bit Busters" computer club, led by Melinda the Mental Marvel. However, before she'll let him in, he must prove his intelligence by passing the initiation test. 149 increasingly difficult levels, including a few hidden ones, await Chip in this tile-based puzzle game. Use tools such as keys, and special shoes to bypass obstacles. Manipulate switches to and use dirt blocks to build bridges across waterways. Avoid enemy creatures, grab all the computer chips in the level, and hurry to the exit: On top of everything else, there's a time limit! You can also ownload and play Tile World, a fanmade "emulator" that allows you to play the original levels plus hundreds of homemade levels created by fans of the game. In September/2020, the game was made freeware.
See also: #Microsoft Entertainment Pack 4 |
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| Colossus X Backgammon | CDS Microsystems | [top] | |
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This is a single-player, mouse-controlled DOS implementation of Backgammon. The game plays in CGA and EGA modes and has the following features:* Games can be saved, loaded and replayed. Players can undo and redo moves - referred to in-game as 'Backward-step' and 'Forward-step'. There is a Blindfold option where The player's pieces, the AI opponent's pieces, or both are hidden. The player can play against the computer or they can play both sides. The pieces are moved by either clicking on first the piece and then the destination, alternatively the player cal click on a piece and drag-and-drop it. Where there is only one legal move the game will automatically move the piece when it is clicked on. Dice are rolled by clicking anywhere in the game area. The game communicates with the player via a message area at the bottom of the screen and has an in-game option to change the language of these messages, the languages changed by entering English, Francais, Deutsch, Espanol or Italiano at the appropriate prompt. | ||
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| Colossus X Bridge | CDS Software Ltd | [top] | |
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This is a bridge game for a single player (computer playing the other 3 hands; demo mode available). The game uses the Acol bidding system and Blackwood, Stayman, and Baron conventions; also supported are take-out doubles and the strong 2 club. Other features include hand input, save/load, rebid/replay, backstep, card autoplay/recommendation and cheat option. | ||
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| Colossus X Draughts | CDS Software Ltd | [top] | |
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This is a single-player, mouse/keyboard controlled DOS implementation of the popular board game. The game plays in CGA and EGA modes and has the following features:* Games can be saved, loaded and replayed. Players can undo and redo moves - referred to in-game as 'Backward-step' and 'Forward-step'. There is a Blindfold option where the player's pieces, the AI opponent's pieces, or both are hidden any of which makes for a really odd game. The player can play against the computer or they can play both sides. There are six types of game; tournament; equal time etc, game clocks, and three types of draughts piece. One of the strengths of the early Colossus Draughts game was its game book, a database of opening moves. This game also has a game book with a database of moves and the game contains a 'Book Keeper' function which allows the player to alter the database - though the manual does stress very strongly that this is for expert users only. The pieces are moved by either clicking on first the piece and then the destination, alternatively the player can click on a piece and drag-and-drop it or they can specify a move by typing, for example, g3h4 which specifies the start and end cell. The game communicates with the player via a message area at the bottom of the screen and has an in-game option to change the language of these messages, the languages changed by entering English, Francais, Deutsch, Espanol or Italiano at the appropriate prompt. | ||
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| Curse of Ra, The | Rainbow Arts Software GmbH, Cyberstyle | [top] | |
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This is a puzzle game where the player (Scarab) has to escape a pyramid by solving the riddles. The player needs to remove all stones on a board by finding a counterpart. Only two stones with the same symbol can be removed at a time and they have to be on a straight line, horizontally or vertically. The game starts with Scarab on an ankh and that item has to be returned upon completion. Moving a stone is done by sitting on one and moving it towards the counterpart. Not all stones can be moved however and there are teleporters, obstructions and diversions to make it more difficult. There are also traps and for instance ice that forces Scarab to move in a single direction. When the stones are aligned, pressing fire matches them and they disappear. The game can be played in a Logic or in an Arcade mode. Logic mode offers 100 levels with no time limit. Special stones can make the player’s life easier or harder. In Arcade mode the player has to complete a level within a certain amount of time. Special coins can be used to buy extras after each level, such as ability to fly for 30 seconds, more time, extra lives and others. Levels are generated at random. The Arcade mode has a high score table. Demo mode shows the usage of all the different stones found in the game. This is a sort of non-playable tutorial. The game also provides a level editor. | ||
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| Dames Simulator | Infogrames Europe SA | [top] | |
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This is a computerized version of the famous board game called Checkers. The objective, as in all checkers games, is eat all the enemy pieces, before than the opponent. The player has the opportunity to select the color of his pieces (Black or white), the enemy level (between nine levels), the strategy (Defensive or offensive). The player can also save the game in any moment. During the game, the player has the possibility to use the hint option, for advice on the best move to make. | ||
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| Edward O. Thorp's Real Blackjack | Villa Crespo Software Inc. | [top] | |
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A simple but entertaining casino game of 'Blackjack'. The game bears the name of Dr. Edward O. Thorp, who is famous for his work on 'winning strategy' and statistics tables for the game of Twenty One, and those are the tables used and displayed in the game itself. Up to six players can compete against the dealer - the options section provide flexible 'house rules', and extensive in-game help alongside the optional Tutor could make Blackjack experience enjoyable even for the beginners. | ||
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| Faces...Tris III | Sphere, Inc. / Spectrum Holobyte, Inc. | [top] | |
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Rotating falling blocks in a set way is the aim in this follow-up to Tetris and Welltris, but the concept here is very different. The falling shapes represent parts of people's faces, which must be arranged and rotated to form complete human-looking faces, ideally matching that of a famous person or other face. You can use a paint package to draw a face to import, which each of the 60 faces has appropriate background music. There are 10 difficulty levels and an optional head-to-head mode. | ||
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| Freakin' Funky Fuzzballs | Sir-tech Software Inc. | [top] | |
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This is a little puzzle game where you step into square worlds defending your Fuzzball from the enemy while trying to get all the keys or cards to enter the next level. In each level (of a total of 15 in five different worlds) you can get different items and goodies which will help you to accomplish your goal... | ||
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| Hoyle Official Book of Games - Volume 2: Solitaire | Sierra On-Line, Inc. | [top] | |
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The next volume of Hoyle Book of Games features 28 Solitaire games: Calculation, 8 Off, Strategy, Shamrocks, Eagle Wing, Yukon, Beleaguered Castle, Eliminator, Klondike, Slide, Canfield, Bowling, Golf, Nestor, Flower Garden, Aces Up, Scorpion, Gaps, Spiderette, Penguin, La Belle Lucie, Pyramid, Fortress, Triplets, Baker's Dozen, Poker Square, Cribbage Square, Bristol. | ||
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| Ishido: The Way of Stones | Publishing International / Accolade Inc. | [top] | |
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Ishido is a solitaire board game played with tiles, similar to Shanghai. The objective is to place all of the tiles onto the board and obtain the highest possible score by following specific rules of play. There are ways to play that can dramatically increase the score, which makes the game very strategic in nature. Additionally, when desired, the player can get an oracle reading by asking a question, which is answered when the player makes a very elegant play (four-way match). There is also a "construction set" where players can create their own tiles and backgrounds. The game comes with numerous tile sets and backgrounds. | ||
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| Klax | Atari Games Corporation / Domark Ltd. | [top] | |
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Back in the late Eighties, Atari Games lost the Tetris license to Nintendo. Rather than admit defeat, the company instead set out to out-Tetris Tetris with a brand-new tile puzzle game for the arcade titled Klax -- a design that obviously borrows an element or two from the popular Russian puzzler while adding its own unique flair into the genre, especially the nice isometric/3D perspective. You're presented with a stationary table spanning out in the distance. Up close, you take control of a paddle that can move to one of five positions. Colored tiles flip from the far end of the table and creep towards you. The idea is to maneuver your paddle, collecting these tiles, then flipping them into the bin below in one of the five positions. Connect three of the same colored tiles up, down, or diagonally (called a "Klax"), and they'll disappear, settling the rest of the tiles deeper into the bin. Each level has a specific criteria to meet so you can advance to the next level -- some require you to form a set amount of Klaxes, others require you to capture a defined amount of tiles on your paddle. And in others, you'll have to score a certain amount of points. It's a lot of fun, and extremely addictive-- a must-have for all action/puzzle lovers. | ||
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| Labyrinth [Da] | Interactivision | [top] | |
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A rare Danish puzzle quiz (outwardly disguised as an arcade), based on the local television show of the same name, popular in the 1980s, with Kim Schumacher as the presenter. Before starting, you can select the following parameters: mode for one or two players; the number of rounds (by default, the action is divided into two parts that are very different from each other; "Begge runder" will allow you to play both sequentially, "1. runde" - only in the first, which is just a quiz, "Finale runde" - only in the puzzle ); time limit allocated to the "party" (three, five, ten or fifteen minutes); the same for answering a specific question (five, ten or fifteen seconds). However, both last parameters are allowed to be disabled by setting the value "Underfineret" for each of them. Perspective of the game is top view; the action takes place in a "labyrinth" filled with dots, consisting of several rectangles "inscribed" into each other. The protagonist is a funny amorphous creature (in solitary mode - red), at the time of launch it is in the external "perimeter"; visually everything looks very much like Pac-Man, but there are no enemies, and collecting points, although it adds points (they are being taken into account), it seems to lead to nothing useful. Moving is done using the arrow keys and is largely - but not completely - automated. In each "perimeter" there are barriers, and directly on the "edges" of all the rectangles that make up the labyrinth, except for the outside, are white-painted areas. When touching the "face" a protagonist with these objects (in order for this to happen with their second type - white areas on the edges, the creature will have to be deployed accordingly), a question may be asked - naturally, in Danish - from any field of knowledge (from astronomy and chemistry before history and popular culture; "specific" topics related in one way or another to Danish realities, including, for example, the local stage or the metric system, are enough here - but they are still smaller than the conventional "well-known" ones) with four options about a tweet. If we chose the right one, then we observe either the destruction of the barrier, which provides the opportunity to move on, or the destruction of the section of the edge of the rectangle, which allows you to move to the next "perimeter". Within each specific contact with any barrier, except for one, leads to a question; contact with the white sections of the "walls" does not always end with this - you need to look for the appropriate places. The ultimate goal is to get to the center of the labyrinth, which, as is clear from the above, does not necessarily mean the maximum possible “cleansing” of each of the “perimeters” (and even if we play with a time limit, then doing so is completely undesirable). | ||
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| Loopz | Audiogenic Software Ltd. / Mindscape Inc. | [top] | |
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A puzzle game where the main goal is to make loops! Random pieces are presented over a board, including simple lines and corners as well as S bends and other warped shapes, of varying sizes. It is up to the player to link them up in a loop form, then moving on to the next level. Pieces can be placed on any empty space on the grid, and rotated into one of the four main compass directions. Any pieces which are not part of the finished loop when a level is completed are left on the screen, so there is value in playing towards 2 distinct loops, to ensure that you have options depending on which pieces are drawn - unlike Pipe Dream there are no clues as to which pieces are coming next. Three play modes are available, two of which can be played with two players. Game A is freestyle - simply make loops, gaining extra points for size and style. Game B is about unlocking bonus boards of the game by reaching a certain score and uses a bonus multiplier method depending on loop difficulty. The third mode of play begins with an already made loop and then removes random pieces of it, so the player has to put them back in when they appear again. It is essentially a memory test and logic puzzle of fitting the pieces back as one remembers - although placing a piece where it seems to fit is also often effective. | ||
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| Microsoft Entertainment Pack for Windows | Microsoft Corporation | [top] | |
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This compilation contains: Cruel Solitaire, Golf, IdleWild (A screensaver utility), Minesweeper, Pegged, Taipei, Tetris, TicTactics. The pack also includes several screen savers. Microsoft Entertainment Pack was designed by the company's "Entry Business" team, whose job was to make Windows more appealing to homes and small businesses. Ex-Microsoft product manager Bruce Ryan said the company did this because it "was concerned that the operating system’s high hardware requirements meant that people would only see it as a tool for large enterprises". The project had "almost no budget", and no major video game publishers got involved because they doubted Windows' legitimacy as a gaming platform; therefore Ryan compiled a series of games that Windows employees had been working on in their spare time. Microsoft advertised Entertainment Packs for casual gaming on office computers. The boxes had slogans like "No more boring coffee breaks" and "Only a few minutes between meetings? Get in a quick game of Klotski". The marketing succeeded; Computer Gaming World in 1992 described the series as "the Gorillas of the Gaming Lite Jungle", with more than 500,000 copies sold. | ||
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| Microsoft Solitaire | Microsoft Corporation | [top] | |
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Often described as the most popular computer game ever. It was developed by an intern at Microsoft in 1988. It has 3 modes of play and a small selection of card images. It comes with every version of windows since 3.0. The goal of the game is to sort the deck in to 4 sequential stacks of suits. (clubs, diamonds, spades and hearts.) You flip 1 to 3 cards from a deck and place them in alternating color sequential order. The table has a selection of 10 stacks of cards that you can flip from as well. The 10 stacks serve as your holders for alternating color sequential rows. The 4 suits are started with an ace and are added to as the game progresses. This form of solitaire is commonly called Klondike, though it is also known as Canfield, Chinaman, Demon, Fascination, or Small Triangle. Klondike is one of the harder solitaire games to win at but the option to draw the cards singly rather than three at a time improves your odds greatly. | ||
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| Puzzle Gallery | Cliff Johnson / Miles Computing, Inc. | [top] | |
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The "sequel" of sorts to The Fool's Errand (first released in 1989 on MAC as At The Carnival), Cliff Johnson wasn't at his best in this puzzle collection designed around the "carnival" theme (the game takes a sardonic look at the amusement park biz through Johnson's eyes as a former employee), but that's not to say the game isn't good - it *is* a good collection of puzzles of many types, although none as original as those in its prequel. Still, there are a few pleasant surprises and good twists lurking among the anagrams, jigsaws, and other well-known parlor puzzles. | ||
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| Puzznic | Taito Corporation / Taito America Corporation | [top] | |
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The challenge in each level of Puzznic is to manoeuver a selection of blocks into place so as to clear them all, by making them make contact with blocks of the same design. You control a cross-hair, which can move a block left or right, which can cause it to fall if there is no block under the space it would occupy. There are many complications in terms of solving the levels. Moving platforms meaning that you need to move a block at a particular time, or in particular order, to prevent them being blockaded. In some situations there are an odd number of a certain type of block - solving these requires positioning two of the blocks one space apart, such that a move will result in a piece making contact with two others, and immediately removing all three. You will also encounter blocks positioned on platforms suspended in space and gaps in level arrangements meaning that a certain number of blocks must be in place to make a certain move possible (by forming a stack, for example). The game structure is slightly unusual, as after you complete each batch of four levels you get a choice of two sets of levels - you are progressing through an expanding matrix of levels, which means there are two sets on level 2, three on level 3, four on level 4, and so on. This means that there are a total of 220 screens in the game. Each screen is played against a time limit, and losing a level (either by running out of time, or by making a poor move and leaving an impossible position) loses one of your three lives. | ||
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| Rock'n'Roll | Rainbow Arts Software GmbH | [top] | |
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This is a real-time puzzle game. You know, there's this ball, and it's stuck in a labyrinth for no apparent reason. Never mind - let's just help him out, okay? You control the friendly, spotted ball with the cursor keys. It'll gain speed as it goes, bounce off when it hits obstacles, loose energy when it's caught in traps, die when it falls off the platform. The 32 levels through which you've got to guide the ball are full of traps: laser barriers, ramps, tubes, breakable tiles etc. Colored keys will open doors, switches create (or destroy!) helpful items. These include picks to repair floor tiles, parachutes to prevent you from falling off and bombs to destroy walls. Items have to be bought with coins that are found all over the level. The inertia of the ball has a very realistic feel to it, making the control intuitive and relatively easy. Not so easy, however, is the design of the (huge) levels; to finish Rock 'n Roll, you need skill as well as patience. You got the balls? | ||
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| Shanghai II: Dragon's Eye | Activision, Inc. | [top] | |
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This is an installment in the tile-matching game series initiated by Activision. Players try to remove mahjong tiles in pairs from a set pattern. Different versions of the game have up to eight different tile sets, twelve patterns based on the animals of the Chinese zodiac, and a layout editor for creating patterns. In addition to the standard mode, the game also features "Dragon's Eye", a two-player Shanghai variant. Players take turns adding and removing tiles from a small field with one player attempting to remove all the tiles and the other trying to position tiles to make this impossible. | ||
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| Sharkey's 3D Pool | Aardvark Software / MicroProse Software Inc. | [top] | |
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This is one of the earliest 3D cue-sports games, featuring a fully-rotating table and variable viewpoint allowing for much more realistic shot-playing than the traditional top-down game style (although the game can be played this way instead). The pace, spin and angle of each shot can be set up precisely before playing it. Both 8-ball (pot your seven colors plus the black to win) and 9-ball (pot the 9-ball with a shot that also hits the lowest remaining ball, whatever that may be) are included. There are seven skill levels to work through. A trick-shot mode is also included, with 20 pre-set shots. Prior to each match it is possible to bet on the outcome. | ||
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| Spot | Virgin Mastertronic Ltd. | [top] | |
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A puzzle game loosely featuring licensing from the 7Up soft drink. The gameplay involves up to 4 players, which can be either human or computer, each taking on spots of a particular colour. Starting from opposite corners, they take it in turns to move, either by 'reproducing' one of their spots to form another one in an adjacent square, or by making a jump, losing the square you did have but taking one two spaces away. When a piece lands next to one of another colour, that piece changes colour into that of their opponent. The winner of each round is either the last player with any pieces left, or the player who has the most pieces left when the level is full. | ||
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| Stratego | MindSpan / Accolade, Inc. | [top] | |
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The board game Stratego is a more elaborate version of Capture the Flag. Each player starts with 40 pieces; made up by the flag, 5 bombs, and an assortment of 9 types of military units. After these have been placed, each player takes it in turn to move their pieces. Other than scouts (which are the least powerful) the units can only move one space at a time.The flag and bombs can't be moved during the game, so watch out for any squares the computer does not move when it otherwise logically should, and these could be your goal. When you choose a square occupied by an opposition piece, combat arises, and the higher-numbered piece is lost from the game. You have no way of knowing what strength the opposition pieces are until you have hit them. This computerized interpretation has 3 different board layouts, a selection of automatic setups with different strategic benefits, and a demo mode. | ||
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| Taipei | Microsoft Corporation | [top] | |
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A popular Mahjongg adaptation, Taipei has the player attempting to find matches between the Oriental-motif patterns printed atop "free" (generally: exposed, on corners) tiles in various layered formations. Matched pairs disappear, yielding different free tiles and further matching possibilities. Ostensibly, the game is completed when all tiles are matched, though sometimes random tile placement results in unwinnable games. This game ended up, like many of its brethren, in pretty much every office in the nation courtesy of its inclusion in the Microsoft Entertainment Pack for Windows, and later the Best of Microsoft Entertainment Pack. | ||
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