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Adventures
| 1483 Anno Domini [G] | Softkey / Tewi Verlag GmbH, Jumping Bird Press | [top] | |
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This is a historical point-and-click adventure with action sequences. Silent water trickling down the walls of the stone vaults, each step through the corridors of dark masonry leads deeper into a bygone world of mystery, intrigue and danger. It takes place in 1483 in a lot of sinister places including the Tower of London rendered faithfully in 3D. You play as Sir Arcyus to prevent the murder of Crown Prince Edward V. Based on true events historically, you can change the course of history. Map and compass will help you to keep track of in this huge maze. There's countless items, weapons and enemies. | ||
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| 7 Days And 7 Nights (7 Dni a 7 noci) [Cz] | Pterodon Software / Vochozka Trading | [top] | |
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This is an erotic Czech adventure game very similar to Leisure Suit Larry. You walk around town talking to people, picking up objects and solving puzzles. This is basically a Czech version of classic Sierra or Lucas Arts adventure games. The background art work suggests that the creators were deliberately trying to mimic these classics. The story revolves around Venca Fold who one day receives orders from well known millionaire Jonathan Smith. His orders: To protect Smith's 7 daughters from potential suitors. However, after a night spent in a pub with one Fanda Spices who bets him one ruble that he can not claim all 7 for himself, Venca's duties take on a whole new meaning. He has one day with each woman in which to win her heart. However, each woman will pose a unique challenge for Fold to overcome. | ||
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| 7th Guest, The | Trilobyte / Virgin Games | [top] | |
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In the dawn of the CD-ROM era, a little known company named Trilobyte set
off to develop a software that aimed to harness the capacity of the CD-ROM to
deliver the multimedia capability of the home computer. The end result was the
market hit called The 7th Guest. With its incredible graphics and sound effects,
it has been considered by many to be the "killer app" that set off the CD-ROM
market. Countless CD-ROM drives have been sold bundled with this software to show
off the capability of the device. The story occurs seventy years ago, where an
enigmatic drifter named Henry Stauf created a toy making empire by seemingly
crafting incredible toys from his dreams. This reclusive, wealthy but twisted toy
maker invited six guests to a party at his hilltop estate, promising to fulfill
their desires for great wealth or power only to have them all disappear. Seventy
years later, while visiting the now deserted mansion, you are suddenly transported
back in time as an entity known as Ego only to witness their cold-blooded murders
which revolve around a mysterious "7th Guest." The identity of this guest is
finally revealed when the evil Stauf and his sinister puzzles are defeated. High
resolution SVGA graphics detail the mansion's 22 rooms, along with fully pre-rendered
transition Full Motion Video (FMV) clips between locales (first time ever used in a
game). Soundtrack is scored by the reputable George Alistair Sanger, also known as
The Fat Man around the MIDI circle. The musical scores are found in its entirety on
the second CD, which can be played like a conventional audio CD. Back then, no third
party utilities exist for the creation of the 3D rendering and video playback. All
these technologies had to be developed in-house specifically for this title. There
was a revamped release in 1995 that only added native Windows 95 support. Some
manufacturers reported a surge in demand of more than 300 percent shortly after The
7th Guest arrived on store shelves. More than 2 million copies of the game have
been sold worldwide. This is a 1st person, single button point and click game with
a 'smart' cursor: it changes to a skeletal hand for movement, a drama mask for
ghostly videos, chattering teeth for supernatural events, and a throbbing brain and
eyeball for puzzles. You gradually explore the 22 rooms of the mansion and as you
solve the puzzle located in each room, other rooms open up and more of the story is
revealed. A new type of adventure at the time, the game lacked an inventory, dialogue options, or even a visible player character; its gameplay was entirely comprised of standalone logic puzzles, brainteasers, chessboards, and mazes. Its ground-breaking use of live actors, at a time when few adventure games even had voice acting, also opened the floodgates for a torrent of FMV adventure games in the years that followed. And nearly two decades later, its puzzle-based format lives on in series like Professor Layton.
In Apr/2019, a remastered 25th Anniversary Edition was released with a totally new, much praised, game play controls that were built from the ground up; Hotspot based with the option to highlight all hotspots in each game screen; Skip quickly any scene; Completely new map, which can be access directly from the game screen; Completely new game menus and save/load system; Three Music options - The praised, orchestrated, music score re-mastered or the original score in high quality Midi recording or Adlib; Much improved voice acting audio and all-new, optional subtitles; High-end graphics upscaling (xBRZ filter) for high-resolution displays; Optional retro settings - play with original graphics, original music and even the original controls (mouse pointer). It has a lot of extras: ‘The Making of’ featurette; 19 Deleted Scenes and 34 Deleted Audio Parts; Comprehensive Soundtrack: 36 Tracks to add to your music collection; ‘The 7th Guest’ Novel (157 pages); The Original Script (104 pages), ‘The Stauf Files’ booklet (20 pages), Original Game Manual (41 pages); Legacy Editions as FREE downloadable content (DLCs) for Windows, macOS and Linux (English voice-acting only); Multiple languages (ALL included without additional payment);
English, German, French, Russian voice acting, with or without English, German, French, Russian, Italian, Portuguese, Swedish or Hebrew subtitles.
See also: Uncle Henry's Playhouse / Uncle Henry's MindBlower |
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| Abenteuer im Wald [G] | Computer Assisted Training / Kooperationsabkommen Forst-Platte-Papier | [top] | |
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Alternatively, as a boy or girl, it is your task to be included in the group of forest spirits. Condition: you have to help the inhabitants of the forest. Adventure in the woods is a nice, short little game that has definitely served its purpose. It's an advertising game from Austria by representatives of the Chambers of Agriculture and the wood processing industry. The DOS application packs the concerns of forest management in an interesting adventure game with witty dialogue. A small database linked tips with information on the subject. Due to the limited space, the interactivity is limited to the selection of paths and predefined dialogs. | ||
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| Adventures of Melvin Freebush, The | Sherwood Forest Software | [top] | |
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The game is made with GameBuilder. In the game you must help a hapless guy named Melvin Q. Freebush to have the perfect date with the girl of his dreams. Melvin doesn't know who she is, or where is for that matter. Typing in verbal expressions and moving around a town of Pussy Willow, you have to find her and convince her that you are the man for her. | ||
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| Adventures of Ninja Nanny & Sherrloch Sheltie: No 11 Downing Street | Silicon Alley | [top] | |
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It's a mystery story. It's educational... Click on hotwords in the story and it comes alive with animation - visit the wacky pigs. Archie's got quite a vocabulary, so check it out in the amazing DictioPedia NinjaNannica, a mini-classical education, a sort of National Enquirer for knowledge. No. 11 Downing St. is an interactive novel for pre-tens and teenages. It narrates the adventures of Ninja Nanny, a mischievous cow in search of her heritage, and her companion Sherrlock Sheltie. The story leads to animated sequences that introduce a host of unusual fiends and foes as Baron von Moribund trails Ninja Nanny through San Francisco, London, and the Cotswolds. No. 11 Downing St. uses sidebars to emphasize clues to the overall mystery of Ninja Nanny's heritage, give local color to a scene, or develop more richly the emerging relationship between the two main characters. The text contains hot-words and phrases that link to the DictioPedia which explains words, ideas, and settings. It's full of double entendres and puns, as you would expect from a company that calls itself Silicon Alley. Graphics often resemble turn-of-the-century clip art. Clicking on various objects causes items to move and entertain the user. For example, clicking on the bumper stop of a loading dock in chapter three reveals that it reads 'The truck stops here - H. Truman, Postmaster.' Looking up Truman in the DictioPedia indicates that he once went bankrupt and served heroically in World War I. One can see footage of the war and then see one of Tuman's most trying moments, firing General Douglas MacArthur during the Korean War. The user can also see MacArthur make his famous 'I shall return' speech. Those who appreciate the humor of Monty Python will love this product. | ||
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| ALeX-World [J] | NEC Home Electronics | [top] | |
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Made by film staff, this is a two-disc epic interactive movie for Win 3.x. It's an adventure where a female robot and time travel into the future, but was mistaken for a killer. You must have Alex and Serna to help with solving the mystery. In a world where humans and robots coexist, robot discrimination and dolphins also have a social dimension, including featured issues. The story will branch, you chose where to go and the conversation is made with keyboard input. | ||
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| Amazon Trail, The | MECC | [top] | |
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This is an educational computer game inspired by the popularity of The Oregon Trail, featuring the areas surrounding the Amazon River and some of its tributaries. The player is asked to set out on a quest for the Incas, and along the way, learn about the people who live and use the river for their survival. The player is told in a dream the Inca people are endangered by malaria and European explorers, and he or she will be taken back in time in order to search for cinchona. While on the quest, players find themselves meeting various people along the river (both friendly and unfriendly), taking photographs of the flora and fauna of the area, fishing, and capsizing their canoes. When they reach the hidden city in which the Inca are living, players are graded on various aspects of the game, including the amount of activity on the journey, the number of plants and animals correctly identified in the rain forest, health of the player, the amount of time taken, and, depending on the version of the game, the completion of mini-quests. Originally in DOS, in 1994 a Win3.x version was released on both floppy and cd versions. In 1996, a Windows CD version was released with more equipment items available, in addition to voice acting, and more enhanced mini-games and graphics. | ||
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| American Tail, An: The Computer Adventures of Fievel and His Friends | Intracorp Inc / Capstone | [top] | |
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An adventure game based on the Steven Spielberg/ Don Bluth animated movies of An American Tail and An American Tail: Fievel Goes West. You take the role of Fievel Mousekewitz, a young mouse immigrated from across the ocean and seperated from his family in New York. Through puzzles & games, you eventually get to the second half of the game which recreates the adventures of Fievel Goes West. This fun game is obviously aimed at kids. | ||
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| Armaeth: The Lost Kingdom | Real World Soft / Grand Slam | [top] | |
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A good budget adventure very similar to the classic King's Quest games. Despite an interface with too many icons which can be confusing (though you can enter word commands through a parser as well), it's a charming game with cute graphics and fairly easy puzzles. Definitely a good game for beginners in adventures. | ||
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| Backstage [G] | Art Department Werbeagentur GmbH / RM Buch und Medien Vertrieb GmbH | [top] | |
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The year is 1993. The rock star Axel Pose is on the peak of his success and in celebration of his new album, a radio station organizes a lottery. Answer five questions about this album and win a meeting with Axel Pose. This game is based on the real-life band Guns 'n' Roses and their front man Axl Rose. As a big fan, you are of course trying to buy the album immediately - but it is not as easy as it seems. As a promotional game, Backstage is neither long nor complicated. With a standard point-and-click interface you solve puzzles and speak to people. During the whole game, an advertising message is clearly delivered urging the player to join Lifeclub, a real buyer's club for purchasing products at discounted prices. | ||
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| Belzerion [MAC] [J] | Human Entertainment, Inc. | [top] | |
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An obscure exclusive game from Japan, curious mix of Snatcher (Sega CD/Saturn/PC Engine), Ghost in the Shell (film) and Iron Angel of Apocalypse (3DO/PC). 3D graphic adventure, arcade shooter and even partially fighting. Developed and launched in 1993 by Human Entertainment for Mac, best known for the Clock Tower series, was ported to 3DO a year later. The game is set in a post-apocalyptic distant future, where a violent religion enslaving people arises. You play as a part of the police force that investigates this situation and goes into the field using an armor called Mega-Costume-9999, which looks like a mix of Gundam with Robocop. Graphically Belzerion is pretty beautiful and features three styles of gameplay. First phase starts in a point-and-click style at your apartment (or base), where you receive a briefing from the head, then transportation to the crime scene or location of the mission follows. Now is the turn of exploration phase, which goes in first-person perspective with polygonal graphics generated in real time. When you face an enemy, either a robot or drone, you enter a phase of shooting from the distance or hand-to-hand combat. Despite the language, one can play it to the end without understanding a word, because gameplay is very intuitive and straight. It is worth at least to give it a try. | ||
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| Beverly Hillbillies, The | Synergistic Software Inc / Capstone | [top] | |
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This is a fun tongue-in-cheek adventure based on the campy TV sitcom of the same name and movie remake and the plot follows the familiar events of the series. You play Jed Clampett, the good-natured old hillbilly who is contentedly living on his ranch, oblivious that his life was about to change forever. Soon after the game begins, we learn that two oil executives discover oil on Jed's land, making him an instant billionaire. It is then your job to help Jed, Granny, and the rest of his family move safely to Beverly Hills and start a new life. This was Synergistic's last game before it was bought out by Sierra. | ||
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| Bi-Fi Roll: Snack Zone [G] | Art Department Werbeagentur / Bi-Fi Roll | [top] | |
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This is the first German promotional adventure for the snack sausage "Bifi". It's in 2D from the side with arrow keys to control movement. It has a somewhat confusing street guide to fight with, but also various annoyances of daily life. So you have to avoid, for example, speedy drivers and militant pedestrians, otherwise they will cost you valuable life energy. Can you restore back the Bifi snacks taken which can be bought at kiosks? The puzzles are not too short. Overall, it's a really good representative in terms of advertising games. Unfortunately, it's a bit annoying in the action part of the game and the overview of the city is not the largest. | ||
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| Black Sect | Lankhor | [top] | |
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A book of spells has been stolen. A sinister Community is terrorizing a small village in the Yorkshire Moors. It is time for you to help. Go and search for the book of spells that has disappeared. Your trail takes many days and nights over the lonely moors. You may discover the secret entrance of the black sect's hiding place. A lot of the puzzles are time dependent as certain events will only occur during certain times of day or night. This French developed game has been released as freeware now and the English version seems very rare. In 2012, a fan-made English remake was released with enhanced graphics and colour along with a few animations, sounds and puzzles. The game clock now advances solely when you undertake certain actions and a single click will reverse any fatal decision. The interface has also been improved, with the point-and-click cursor now lighting up over hotspots. | ||
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| BloodNet: A Cyberpunk Gothic | MicroProse Software, Inc. | [top] | |
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BloodNet is an adventure game with RPG elements. You play as Ransom Stark, a computer hacker, scrounger or mercenary (depending on how the player answers the opening questions when they start a new game) who finds himself caught up in a sinister affair involving an evil global megacorporation, TransTechnicals, Manhattan, a fight for Cyberspace and vampires. Ransom Stark became stricken with Hopkins-Brie Ontology Syndrome whilst working at TransTechnicals, due to his forced extended exposure to Cyberspace while he worked there. As soon as he was diagnosed he was dismissed from TransTech and found himself homeless and hopeless. Thankfully an ingenious woman, with a personal vendetta against TransTech, named Deirdre Tackett saved his life by inserting a prototype brain implant of her own design and this restoring his grip on reality. Over the following year Ransom became known as a reliable freelance until one day he got a job worth much more than he bargained for. His employers turned out to be vampires and as part of his 'payment', Ransom was turned into a follower of the evil head-vampire, Abraham Van Helsing - except his brain implant kicked in allowing him to keep temporary control of his humanity. Now Ransom must put a stop to Van Helsing's plans to take over Manhattan and control Cyberspace and hopefully save himself from being a vampire before its too late. | ||
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| Blue Force | Tsunami Games | [top] | |
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Unarguably the best game from the group of renegade ex-Sierra employees that made up Tsunami, Blue Force is an excellent police adventure by none other than Jim Walls, of Police Quest fame. Despite easy puzzles, hackneyed dialogues, and a cliche plot, the game features a great interface, charming characters and graphics, and lots of optional points. Help rookie Jake Ryan on investigations that will shed light on his parents' mysterious death. It's much easier than Walls' Police Quest games, but it's still a great adventure that will particularly appeal to beginners. Much better than the overhyped Police Quest 4 (which was not designed by Walls) at least. | ||
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| C.H.A.O.S. Continuum, The | Dash Digital / Creative Multimedia Corporation | [top] | |
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The year is 2577 and everyone on the Titan colony has suddenly disappeared. The station lies empty and hulking with the exception of a few automated robots which patrol the halls. The sentient computer C.H.A.O.S. is resisting any attempt at interface from the outside. You must take an advanced EVA pod, the Time Pod and shifting through dimensional rifts arrive at the Titan station to determine what went wrong. Use the probe's interfaces to gain access to computers, databanks and whatever else it will take to crack the access codes on the labs and C.H.A.O.S. itself. The game is presented in a standard first-person adventure, with pressable controls for movement and a center window into the world you explore. Most interface with the world is shown through MPC and Quicktime "live-action" video segments. Arrow Controls are provided for movement as well as a targeting/fire key, a 360 degree view button for any area. | ||
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| Cellofania | Synergy / Tonkinhouse | [top] | |
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Masamichi Ito's story depicts a boy and his dog riding a crescent moon boat on a fun-filled adventure journey to the land of Cellofania, where soft light shines as they encounter animals, robots, and other mysterious creatures. It is still remembered by fans as a revolutionary game in which small pictures that appear on the screen can be moved one by one by clicking with the mouse. The music played in the game is composed by Masaya Nishida, who is active in anime music. Famous artists such as Yoshiyuki Sahashi and Masatsugu Shinozaki participated in the performance. | ||
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| Companions Of Xanth | Legend Entertainment Company | [top] | |
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Piers Anthony's book Demons Don't Dream set up the mystical world of Xanth. Unlike Legend's previous parser-based adventures, this is fully operated by mouse. Commands such as 'take', 'give to' and 'listen' are on the left of the screen, directional icons and an inventory are at the bottom, with a rendition of the current scene taking up over half the screen. Two demons are controlling 2 humans to fight for the future of the land - if Dug wins, the magic is gone forever. You control Dug, who is also fighting his friend Kim to avoid losing his girlfriend. To get through the game's puzzles and mazes, you must choose a Companion character and talk to him. Cutscenes drive the story along. Like the novels, puzzles are heavily pun-related in ways reminiscent of Infocom's Nord and Bert, but a lot easier. Most puzzles are also not related to the plot, and the game is far too easy. It's a fun game, but not up to par with other Legend releases. Recommended only for fans of the novel and novice adventurers. | ||
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| Cosmic Spacehead / Linus Spacehead's Cosmic Crusade | Codemasters | [top] | |
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Cosmic Spacehead is a decent arcade adventure drawn in the illustration style of the 1950s (TV's The Jetsons comes to mind). Bright graphics, a simple point-and-click interface for the adventure elements, interspursed with enjoyable arcade romps will keep players' attention as they explore, with Cosmic, the alien landscapes. The plot is wacky enough: to obtain a hero's welcome and much-needed cash, alien Cosmic must return to Earth and photograph the previously unexplored planet to document his visit. It's an intriguing mix of adventure and arcade action gameplay. The majority of gameplay is an interactive arcade adventure which takes Cosmic across the many bizarre locations of his three main stops on the way to Earth: planet Linoleum, Detroitica a vehicle factory on a lone asteroid, and a space station. Each destination is divided into many smaller play areas where Cosmic can interact with other characters, manipulate and use objects to further his quest. True to Codemasters' expertise as makers of fun action games, it includes many action sequences: traveling between the adventure play areas involves the successful completion of a wide variety of 32 arcade-orientated action games, ranging from astro-car racing, robot attacks, to asteroid fields and many more. Unfortunately, the adventure portion isn't as good: the solutions to most puzzles are all too obvious, and often require items that you can only get by random luck - definitely not a good game design. | ||
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| Cosmology Of Kyoto | Soft Edge Inc. / Yano Electric Co., Ltd. | [top] | |
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One of the most unique and thought-provoking games ever made, Cosmology of Kyoto is a fascinating tale of religion, history, and superstition that ranks among the least-known but worthy games of all time. The game is set in the 10th and 11th centuries AD, during the Heian period in Japan when Kyoto was known as Heiankyo. The game includes episodes drawn from a large body of tales, legends and illustrated literature produced during or after the Heian period. These vignettes are edited into interactive, experiental forms, to allow the user to realistically sense the worldview and lifestyle of an ancient time. The game was inspired by The Tales of Genji and similar Japanese folktales. Your character in the game is a no-name male traveler, an ordinary human being who is faced with opportunities, driven by desires, and is bound to die. Your actions determine your path through this world, and many reincarnations to come. You may meet troublemakers, and demons, enter Paradise or Hell, be reborn, and re-enact the story of a scholar who played the devil in a high-stakes game of backgammon. In addition to very well-drawn authentic backgrounds, the game includes an excellent database of over 400 screens of text and pictures that gives background information for the time and place where you are in the game. Calling it a "game" is a bit misleading - you don't get to solve any elaborate puzzles in traditional point-and-click adventure sense. Any item you carry with you will be used automatically when the time comes, so you can't really get "stuck" in the game. Cosmology of Kyoto is better described as an interactive story that lets you interact with the game world at your leisure, similar to choose-your-own-adventure books. And what a world it is. The designers spare no pretense, no illusion that this is a "politically correct" or "family" game. Heiankyo comes alive before your very eyes, with all the gory details and harrowing images that its inhabitants truly faced or believed. A must-have, especially for anyone looking for a mature, meditative game that is a far cry from today's superficial releases. An English release came out in 1995. | ||
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| Critical Path | Mechadeus / Media Vision | [top] | |
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Critical Path was one of earliest games to be released on a CD, and featured real time video which made it appear to be graphically superior to most games of its time. In actuality, the entire game was an interactive movie, where most choices would simply cause the game to progress or end. Eileen Weisinger plays the main character "Kat," while the player plays an anonymous soldier confined to a control room of sorts. You and a female fellow soldier are stranded on an Island in a post-nuclear world. You are wounded and the building crawls with madmen led by General Min. The gameplay consists of the player using the available controls to aid Kat on her escape from the island on which both the characters are trapped. If successful, the player can guide, protect, and assist Kat to the player's location, in their bid to escape the island. The game was celebrated for its superior graphics and computer-generated imagery, but criticised for being little more than a 30 minute movie. | ||
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| Curses | Graham Nelson | [top] | |
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The game "Curses" was, at the time, by far the longest amateur (i.e. non-Infocom) adventure game written for the Z-Machine. The author, Graham Nelson, wrote the Inform compiler which he used to create the game. A seemingly simple quest to find a street map of Paris leads you into odd corners of an old mansion, your imagination, and ultimately into the ancient past. It's perhaps the most "literate" work of IF to come along in years. You'll find numerous puzzles ranging from simple (not many of those) to difficult (lots) and hair-tearingly frustrating, spread across the years from ancient Egypt to the present. And you will find literary allusions, references to historical events and legends, and a family history that literally meanders all over the map, but remains centered about the ancestral Meldrew Hall in England. The game's on-line hint system has been personified in the form of supernatural agencies - alas, the hints present are rather cryptic, and if you can't figure out a puzzle from the hint, there won't be any more hints. | ||
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| Dare To Dream | Game Syndicate Productions / Epic Megagames | [top] | |
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Second game by Cliff Bleszinski, talented designer who went on to fame and fortune years later with Unreal. In this original, campy adventure game, you are Tyler Norris, a ten year-old who has strange dreams. You must escape your dream by solving bizarre puzzles, traveling to strange lands, and meeting even stranger creatures. It's all in your mind - so nothing can hurt you...Right? Marketed as shareware, the first episode of which is free, the registered version contains three separate episodes, i.e. three dreams that Tyler faces. The dreams are quite surrealistic and sinister, and hint at the evil that lurks in Tyler (and presumably all of us). Gameplay is typical point-and-click adventure, with decent puzzles that are a bit too easy. The game's hallmark, though, is definitely the imaginative worlds Blesinski created: Tyler's dreams will take you from a deserted alleyway in an unfamiliar city, to his vision of hell and beyond. While not a classic by any means, the better-than-average writing, solid puzzles, and creative settings make it a pleasant adventure that's worth a look, especially by fans of surrealism. | ||
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| Dark Convergence, The | Jeff Kintz | [top] | |
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This is a very rare horror adventure game. The plot is simple: one night the player and some friends have a car crash on a near-deserted road. The player is sent out to search for some help and stumbles on an abandoned house. Inside it bloody bodies are found, and unknown menaces from other worlds and other dimensions try to kill the player. Will you survive the night and save the day? The game is programmed in QBasic (there is even the .bas file inside the game's folder) and the engine is similar to the one used in the Hugo's House of Horror series. The player controls the character with arrow keys and types the desired action using the parser. The game focuses on a morbid atmosphere and on violence with many nasty and gory situations in it. The plot and atmosphere for some ideas are reminiscent of Dark Seed. | ||
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| Das Telekommando Kehrt Zuruck [G] | Freelance Development / Art Department, The | [top] | |
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"The Telekommando Returns" is the second part of the free advertising game "Telekommando" of the German company Telekom. You play as a Telekom worker who must eliminate the disturbances in an important video conference in the environmental center. It soon turns out that there has been a sabotage, with everything from the air conditioning to the lifts and telephones being put out of action. You have only your mobile phone and your toolbox to help you out. First you must repair the lift, then you can roam more freely, talking to the workers of the house, finding clues and performing repairs. The game is very non-technical, and has a very relaxed relation to its sponsor, with the main character sometimes talking like a proud state employee, rather than a telephone salesman, directly to the player. Still, most puzzles and their solutions revolve around early-90s high tech such as modems, faxes, satellite equipment, mobile phones and videotex terminals. The good story and the motivating gameplay make this very recommendable. | ||
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| Day Of The Tentacle | LucasArts | [top] | |
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This beloved adventure is the sequel to LucasArts' Maniac Mansion, and is
widely considered one of the best adventures ever made. It's an insane, surreal
adventure with a long and complex story and beautiful and gunny comic graphics. The
Purple Tentacle, one of crazy Dr. Fred's creations, drinks contaminated water from
Dr. Fred's Sludge'o'matic, mutates into an insane genius and grows arms, and now
he's plotting to take over the world. In an effort to stop him, Dr. Fred sends the
three insane friends, Bernard, Hoggie and Lavern back in time to yesterday, in order
for them to turn off the Sludge'o'matic and stop the sludge from spilling into the
river. Naturally, the cheap doctor uses a fake diamond over a real one in his time
machine, which blows up sending Hoggie 200 years into the past and Lavern 200 years
into the future. With the help of a few items you can pass through time with the
use of the Chronojohn. Bernard, with the assistance of budding rock star Green
Tentacle, has to find a non-imitation diamond in order to make the time machine
functional once more, and Hoagie and Laverne both have to get back to their time
machines and connect them to a power source, in order to team up again and finally
defeat Purple Tentacle. The game uses the three time streams effectively, with
several puzzles depending on actions in one era affecting the other eras. The
player can switch between any one of the three playable characters at any time. The
three protagonists can also share inventory items amongst themselves (at least, those
items that can be stowed in a toilet), a feature that plays into many of the game's
puzzles. It includes the entire original Maniac Mansion as a game-within-a-game
which can be played simply by using Weird Ed's computer. The CD version of the game contains voice-overs for all the dialogues and no copy protection.
See also: Day of the Tentacle Remastered |
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| Der Schatz im Silbersee [G] | CyberVision, Linel / Software 2000 | [top] | |
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Der Schatz im Silbersee is a graphic adventure game with an icon-based point-and-click interface. Based on the novel Der Schatz im Silbersee by German author Karl May, this game lets you join the wild west adventurers Old Firehand, chief Winnetou and Tante Droll on their way up the Arkansas River, through Utah to the Rocky Mountains. They're searching for the famous treasure in Silver Lake, but they're not the only ones: the unscrupulous Red Colonel and his band of tramps aren't exactly eager to share. You take control of Old Firehand, performing actions with a set of only three basic commands and a good deal of inventory management. The game features four episodes: the steamer Dogfish, the rafter's camp, Butler's farm, and the treasure hunt at the Silbersee. The Eagle's Tail and Utah chapters of the novel, roughly one half of the book, are omitted. The cast is greatly reduced, too, with neither Old Shatterhand nor any of the companions appearing at all. Knowledge of the book will not give you any advantages, as all of the puzzles are original and often deviate strongly from the events in the novel. | ||
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| Discoveries Of The Deep | Capstone Software / Softkey | [top] | |
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Discoveries of The Deep is an okay simulation of deep-sea exploration that suffers from the same syndrome as most Capstone games: great concept but poor execution. The concept in this case is novel enough: your goal is to explore the deepest place on earth: at a spot 320 kilometers south of Guam called "Challenger Deep" at the Marina Trench-- 11 kilometers (7 miles) deep from sea level. In perspective, that's two kilometers deeper than Mount Everest is tall. The game allows you to explore those depths at the helm of a simulated, high-tec minisub. You can undertake any of seven very different missions, from a nuclear waste site cleanup, to searching for new life at the bottom of Romanche Gap, hunting for sunken Spanish galleon, retrieving the "black box" from a drowned airliner, or even see the Titanic first-hand. Despite these exciting missions, Discoveries of The Deep unfortunately has many flaws that prevents the game from fulfilling its potential. For a start, the user interface is very clumsy, and piloting the ship is extremely simplistic. To add insult to the injury, most graphics in the game are of very poor quality. Although it is true that graphics are not as important as gameplay, in this case the heavily pixellated screens and amateurish graphics make suspension of disbelief very difficult. You can't easily tell objects apart (is that a coral or a fish?), which makes gameplay an exercise in squinting very hard at the screen more than anything else. Although mission objectives are diverse, in effect they amount to the same thing: search for the wreck/airliner/waste site, then click on a few buttons to accomplish your objectives. One redeeming quality of the game is that it allows you to explore the sea at your leisure, although with primitive graphics, you won't be doing it for long. | ||
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| Double Switch | Digital Pictures, Inc. | [top] | |
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Double Switch is one of Digital Pictures' many full-motion video games from the mid 90s. In this "cinematic mystery" you must watch your serveilance cameras in order to trap intruders in the Edward Arms mansion. Double Switch stars Corey Haim and Deborah Harry, and features a musical score by Thomas Dolby. The game takes place in a large and old apartment complex where a young man named Eddie has been locked in the basement, and needs your help to get him out. Each member of the building has their own plot line that overlaps into the main plot line. In the first level you have to quickly move from the various cameras Eddie has placed throughout the building in order to trap the various Mafia hit men and Ninja assassins wandering around the building. You also have to get the security codes to free Eddie that the grumpy old handyman will preview at certain points during the game. In the subsequent levels you learn that Mafia hit men and ninjas are trying to locate a valuable Egyptian artifact, and that they are willing to do anything it takes, even kill the various other tenants in the building to get what they want. Around this time a mummy will appear and attempt to steal the statue, and you must rely on the handyman to activate hidden alcove traps to finish off the mummy. If done correctly, the mummy is revealed to be Eddie himself and the game then moves to act 3 where you must protect the tenants from Eddie's rampage. If done correctly, the player will receive the best ending, in which the statue is revealed to be a key to opening a giant treasury within the complex itself. On Dec/2018, a 25th Anniversary Edition was released for modern o/s. | ||
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| Dracula Unleashed | ICOM Simulations, Inc. / Viacom New Media | [top] | |
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This is an interactive movie in the same vein as Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective. Basically, you can choose from several locations to go to, and at each location you are shown different events through live-action video clips. Clues in the videos will point you to where you should go next. You also have an "inventory" which you can use to affect the outcome of certain clips (for example, if you enter an asylum with the blackjack you'll be able to defend yourself against any escaped inmates, but if you don't bring the blackjack with you you'll be killed). Time is constantly moving and new events will pop up at different times of the day. It's the year 1899, ten years after the destruction of count Dracula chronicled in Bram Stoker's novel. You take the role of Alexander Morris, the younger brother of Texan Quincey Morris who died defeating Dracula. Alexander has come to London to investigate the circumstances of his brother's death, but became sidetracked when he fell in love with and proposed to a local girl named Annisette. Now, the dawn of a new millenium approaches and an evil force is stalking the streets of London, draining victims of their blood and transforming innocent women into bloodthirsty vampiresses. With the aide of your brother's old friends, the survivors of Dracula's evil, you must uncover the identity of this new vampire and prevent him from transforming Annisette into his queen of the night. Do not fail her, or she will personally rip your throat out. There are a few bonuses on the 2003 DVD re-release version that are not available with the original cd release including a wonderful "Making of Dracula Unleashed" video and audio and video outtakes including bloopers. | ||
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| Dragon's Lair CD-Rom | ReadySoft Incorporated | [top] | |
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A conversion of the 1983 Don Bluth coin op cartoon game. Players control Dirk the Daring as he struggles his way through a dungeon to fight Singe, the Dragon, and rescue the beautiful Princess Daphne. With limited movement allowed, the game's main emphasis is on its heart-stopping graphics. The fantasy adventure where you become a valiant knight on a quest to rescue the fair princess from the clutches of an evil dragon. You control the actions of a daring adventurer finding his way through the castle of a dark wizard who has enchanted it with treacherous monsters and obstacles. In the mysterious caverns below the castle, your odyssey continues against the awesome forces that oppose your efforts to reach the dragon's lair. It was the first game to use a laser disc instead of programmable chips to store the game information. The laser disc could store vast amounts of detailed art. In the case of Dragon's Lair, this art was the beautiful handiwork of Don Bluth, a former Disney animator who left the company to start his own animation studio. His film work includes The Secret of N.I.M.H., An American Tale, and the upcoming Titan A.E. The game worked a lot like those old "Choose Your Own Adventure" books - in each room, you would have a number of obstacles to avoid, usually by simply moving the joystick in one direction or hitting the sword button. Of course, more complicated rooms, like the one occupied by the aforementioned electric knight, would require a whole series of moves. One miss-timed or missed move and you were dead. The basic set of rooms never changed (since they were all pre-animated, there wasn't any way to change them). Once you had memorized the room's pattern, getting through it alive was pretty much a sure thing. Early on in the game, the game would give you hints: doors would flash, a sound would chime, and if you were paying attention, you'd know where to go. But those hints stopped pretty early on. The only real way of learning in the game was by dying over and over again, and learning from your mistakes. But that wasn't always guaranteed, either. Sometimes, the rooms would flip on you -- same animation, but in mirror-image. A DVD version came out in 1997 and in 2001, a remastered Arcade Authentic version came out with MPEG-1 video, original scoring scheme, arcade circuitry control through software dip switches, multiple levels of difficulty and total scene authentication. In 2006, there was an HD (High Definition) version. | ||
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| Dutchman's Return, The [G] | Springwald Software | [top] | |
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This graphic adventure emerged after 3 years of development and has numerous venues and a CD soundtrack. It has a similar style to Monkey Island. | ||
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| Dylan Dog 2:Through The Looking Glass | Simulmondo | [top] | |
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The second game by Simulmondo based on the horror stories of Dylan Dog is a complete change from its predecessor Dylan Dog - The Murderers. With a better plot, combined with their nice graphics and music, Simulmondo created an interesting and challenging adventure that will keep you playing for hours on end. The plot, at least at the beginning, is quite simple: an old anthropologist is found brutally murdered at his house in London. As Dylan Dog, "investigator of nightmares", you're asked by the anthropologist's niece to protect her and investigate on her uncle's death. The game itself is arguably Simulmondo's best production ever: this time the development didn't stop to the nice sound and graphics they were always capable of, but they created an interesting game with great characters, decent puzzles and a perfect atmosphere. The first remarkable touch is the interface: a truly innovative icon-based system that gives the player a feeling of complete interactivity with the enviroment and the characters, without needing any text input or verb lists, but only intuitive combinations of the two mouse buttons. The characters are another nice surprise: the atmosphere of the comic books is recreated perfectly (thanks to the help of Dylan Dog's inventor Tiziano Sclavi) and it really feels like you're living one of Dylan's adventures on paper. | ||
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| Dylan Dog Episodes 1-17 [It] | Simulmondo | [top] | |
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Between 1991 and 1993 Simulmondo created 17 interactive games based on the popular Italian supernatural comic book series Dylan Dog to be sold monthly on newstands. The episodes are as follows: La Regina Delle Tenebre, Ritorno Al Crepuscolo, Storia Di Nessuno, Ombre, La Mummia, Maelstrom, Gente Che Scompare, La Clessidra Di Pietra, Il Male, I Vampiri, Il Marchio Rosso, Il Lungo Addio, I Killers Venuti Dal Buio, Il Bosco Degli Assassini, Inferni Fantasmi Il Cimitero Dimenticato. | ||
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| Eric The Unready | Legend Entertainment Company | [top] | |
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This is a parody of the fantasy genre in general, though it parodies numerous other topics as well, ranging from Star Trek to Zork. The game engine uses an interactive fiction interface, although unlike most IF games, a graphical display of the player's location and viewpoint is provided. In contrast to the heady Time Quest, Bob Bates lets loose his lighter side in this side-splitting medieval adventure starring the incredibly accident-prone knight Eric the Unready. Just about every famous person, things, or fiction is at the mercy of his razor-sharp parody pen in this game, from Star Trek to the The Monty Pythons. One of the (many) great things that make playing it a blast is the tremendous variety the game offers, both in locations and types of puzzles. The game is loosely divided into "day," each of which is marked by hilarious cut-scenes and parody newspaper that recaps Eric's misadventures in the previous day and pokes fun at more people and objects than you can shake a stick at. The objects, locations, and puzzles in each day are self-contained, and as a mark of superior game design similar to LucasArts games. You'll be laughing from the start to the finish as you help Eric along one misadventure after another. A CD version adds cinematic animation, stunning hi-res Super VGA graphics, and an awesome soundtrack. | ||
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| Evocation: The Challenge / Evocation: La Sfida [MAC] | DedaloMedia Interactive | [top] | |
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This is a Myst-like point-and-click adventure for the MAC, with a first-person perspective. Players can interact with the world by dragging objects and other hot-spots onto a series of icons at the top of the screen. Movements are done simply by clicking in the direction or by using an optional map. Some objects can be picked up and stored in an inventory. Evocation's graphic (a series of static scenes without animations) was made by using Illustrator and Photoshop 2.0 on a Macintosh LC III. | ||
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| Fantastic Adventures Of Dizzy / Fantastic Dizzy | Codemasters Software Company Limited, The | [top] | |
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This was the most technically-advanced of Dizzy's adventure games in many ways. It was the only one to feature actual scrolling rather than a flick-screen system, the only one not to be released for the 8 bit computers the character originated on, the only one to originate on a console, and the only one to feature pure arcade sub-games, such as a simple Operation Wolf clone and a runaway mine-cart section. Gameplay involves walking Dizzy through the levels, picking up objects and using them to solve simple puzzles. There are plenty of tests of arcade skill along the way as well, as gaps must be jumped and baddies avoided - you have 3 lives to negotiate all this with. As well as aiming to rescue the beautiful Daisy, you are also aiming to collect as many stars as you can - there are at least 100 in each version. It was also notable for being the last adventure-style Dizzy game ported to the PC. | ||
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| Flies Attack On Earth [G] | Ego Software / Softgold Computerspiele GmbH | [top] | |
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Point and click adventure game playing in a dark future (year 2356) on Earth. The planet was struck by an asteroid infested by insects that spread a deadly disease over the planet. Soon after mankind was totally extinguished on Earth a few remaining scientists on Mars plan a time travel operation to save the planet. | ||
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| Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist | Sierra On-Line, Inc. | [top] | |
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Yee-haw! Experience life in the wild, wild west in this adventure co-designed by jokesters Al Lowe and Josh Mandel. As the title suggests, you are a gunman-turned-pharmacist who will soon find enough cause to pick up a gun again. Throughout the town, businesses are either being bought or proprietors are being scared out of town. Someone is obviously trying to take over the entire area, but who? And why? The slimy sheriff doesn't seem eager to help, so it's up to Freddy to find out the details. The cast includes the town's eccentric old man and story narrator Whittlin' Willy, Srini (Freddy's "Injun" sidekick - actually Indian-as-in-India), town schoolmarm (and Freddy's love interest) Penelope Primm, and Madame Ovaree, who runs the local brothel. Excellent puzzles (except for the annoying, devious copy-protection scheme disguised as "puzzle" in filling prescriptions), cool plot, and tons of zany characters. The humor is somewhat stale and predictable, however. Suffice it to say that if you have never understood the appeal of John Wayne movies and raunchy cowboy humor, you won't enjoy this game. But for anyone who appreciates jokes that have the word "flatulant" in them, this is the perfect game for you. It was released in both floppy disk and CD-ROM versions, the latter having full voiceover speech for all characters. The game's manual is entitled The Modern Day Book of Health and Hygiene, a parody of 19th century medical texts. It contains information necessary for solving prescription puzzles. | ||
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| Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers | Sierra On-Line, Inc. | [top] | |
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Arguably the best adventure game series ever made, Gabriel Knight not only
sets new standards of interactive storytelling, but also proves that computer games
can be no less literate, mature, well-informed, and thought-provoking than other
media. Jane Jensen has created in a disheveled, egotistical, and tormented New
Orleans writer one of the most memorable computer game protagonists of all time, and
thrust the term Shattenjager into the public spotlight. In this game, Jane stretched
the capabilities of Sierra's icon-based interface by adding new commands, and use it
in several new ways (such as allowing the player to write whole passages in Voodoo
language, or send drum codes). The game tells of how a struggling, no-good writer
comes to grip with his dark family history and accepts his fate to become the next
Shattenjager - shadowhunter. As Gabriel Knight, aspiring writer and owner of St.
George's bookstore, you are researching the voodoo murders as a basis for your new
book. The authorities, including your policeman friend Mosely, believe that the
voodoo aspect is faked by the murderer, and that the real voodoo cult does not exist
in New Orleans. With the help of Grace Nakimura, your assistant, you will slowly
unravel the web of intrigue that leads to the powerful voodoo cult... as well as
your own destiny. What makes it an instant classic as opposed to a merely "good"
adventure is the astounding level of detail and research that went into the game,
in addition to Jane's writing par excellence and a gripping plot. Never before in
Sierra's history that you can LOOK at so many items with customized descriptions
beyond the usual "you don't see anything special." Items in the Voodoo Museum
(patterned after the real museum in New Orleans) alone must have taken several
months of intensive research. This lends an air of authencity to the game's
supernatural/occult plot, which greatly enhances gameplay. Sierra later released a
CD-ROM version which features excellent voice acting by Tim Curry as Gabriel Knight.
The game also shipped with a very stylish comic book that sets the stage for the
story and dovetails very nicely with the ending.
See also: Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers 20th Anniversary Edition |
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| Game Builder | MVP Software | [top] | |
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These are DOS-based point-and-click (Sierra-style, with points) adventure game making tools. The packages include graphic and sound editors; everything needed to make games. Create graphics adventure games with no programming. Your games can include 256 color graphics, main character and background animation, masking, object inventory and detection, music and sound effects, and more, with a powerful point 'n click interface just like the pros use. Easy enough for children; sophisticated enough for savvy gamers. Supports CGA, EGA, VGA; mouse recommended. | ||
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| Gateway 2: HomeWorld | Legend Entertainment Company | [top] | |
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The second of a 2-game adventure series based on Frederick Pohl's award-winning science fiction books, Gateway 2 is a thoroughly enjoyable text/graphics game with clever puzzles. It's also considered by some to be the end of an era: the last text-based adventure game to share store shelves with its graphical brethren at the beginning of the multimedia explosion. Ten years have passed since you saved the human race from certain doom in the first game. You're now retired with fifty million dollars but a giant object appears out of nowhere and settles next to Pluto. It's promptly named the artifact as it's theorized that it's a Heechee spaceship. The UN decides to dispatch a spaceship carrying an ambassador to investigate but a sect of terrorists attack you before you advise the ambassador and you're forced to escape into the ship going to The Artifact. The game has Legend's text parser which fills up a third of the screen with a list of words to choose to perform actions, while another third is for the description of the current scene and the last third is a graphic picture. This sequel however uses full-screen graphics as well when you speak to other characters and has cutscenes as well. The story is captivating and much longer than the first game. It's a superb must-play adventure. | ||
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| Geheimprojekt DMSO [G] | Art Department Werbeagentur GmbH / Merckle GmbH | [top] | |
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Another adware game from Germany's mid-90's marketing beehive The Art Department, Geheimprojekt DMSO ("Secret Project DMSO") features the generic private eye, the generic adventure setting and a lot of painkiller ointments, all ingeniously united on the game's cover illustration. DMSO is short for Dimethyl-Sulphoxide, the prime ingredient of Merckle Pharma's Dolobene(TM) and Rheumabene(TM) ointments, and thus a likely target for scheming international criminals. As detective Jack Bene, you travel through Europe in search for the formula, solving simple puzzles and using a fair amount of ointments on your way. This DMSO is freeware, was published in German and Germany only, and features the exact ingredients of 100 g Dolobene(TM) and 100 g Rheumabene(TM) on no less than three manual pages. | ||
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| Goblins Quest 3 | Coktel Vision / Sierra On-Line | [top] | |
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The third in the series of the weird adventure-puzzle games. This time you only have one Goblin to control. This time we control Blount, a lonely goblin travelling through the country of Foliander. Almost at the beginning he will fall in love, but his girl gets kidnapped and so he has to go through the same kind of mind breaking puzzles to rescue her (and help lots of others 'weirdoes' in the meantime). The absence of co-ordination puzzles is made up by the sheer amount of puzzles and increased difficulty - so much so that the game is near impossible to solve without hints or a lot of patience. What makes the game very frustrating is a number of puzzles that you simply cannot solve without a lot of trial-and-error. The CDROM version featured full speech, different music and additional cutscenes. The original disk version also featured full speech of sorts. Whenever any of the characters spoke, their voices were rendered in "goblinish", a gibberish of sounds coming out in a voice appropriate to the character in question. | ||
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| Harp: A Fantasy Adventure Book [K] | Aduccini | [top] | |
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Harp is a young fairy of the Butterfly tribe. One day she and her friends meet an old man from another tribe, and Harp draws the ire of the villagers for helping him. Eventually the authorities decide to expel her. Shortly thereafter Harp finds out that the Hornet tribe attacked her home village and captured its inhabitants. In spite of their unfair behavior towards her, the kind fairy embarks on a journey to rescue her tribesmen. Harp is a Korean-made isometric monochrome adventure game with fairly simple gameplay mechanics. The playing area is confined to a small screen that looks like an illustration in a book; the rest of the "page" is occupied by text and small portraits or scenes depicting the events of the game. The player moves Harp through the game world and advances the plot by visiting different locations and talking to people. There is no inventory, puzzles, or any other kind of challenge in the game. In 1995, Harp Vol. I was remade with VGA graphics as opposed to the monochrome Hercules-only mode of the earlier release. The perspective is top-down rather than isometric, with a visual resemblance to Ultima VII. The story-book visual arrangement is gone as well, the playing area occupying the entire screen. Conversations with important characters are now displayed as large portraits superimposed on the screen. Major locations roughly correspond to that of the original game, to accommodate story progression; however, the actual layout is completely different. For example, the initial area has a sea shore and mountains, but no field paths as in the first version. Some scenes and conversations have been modified or enhanced. Gameplay-wise, the only notable change is the addition of random turn-based combat. Battle system is very simple and involves pressing a few keys to have Harp cast magic spells on the enemy. There are no experience points, money, equipment, or any other RPG elements in the game. | ||
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| Heaven's Dawn | Art 9 Entertainment / Manaccom | [top] | |
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One of the most obscure point & click adventure games ever made, this is an average game created by Taiwanese developer Art 9 Entertainment, translated into English and marketed in Australia by Manaccom. The game is yet another "clueless human gets sucked into a strange alternate reality" kind of game, except it is not as interesting as Accolade's Altered Destiny. You play a tourist who found himself listening to an old beggar who tells about God's curse on mankind. God, it seems, is now angry at humans for "creating sins," and has ordered 5 deities to curse mankind. The next thing you know is you get sucked into this strange fantasyland, beggar's necklace in hand. Naturally, you must find out where everyone has gone, save the world from God's wrath, and find your way home. All in a day's work. The gameplay will be familiar to every fan of LucasArts/Sierra adventures. Run your mouse cursor around the screen, clicking on interesting-looking objects to read their descriptions or pick them up. Right-click brings up the inventory screen, where you can click on objects to use in the gameworld. One nuisance about the game is that it offers no description of inventory items, although fortunately most items are not entirely alien, and most puzzles are easy. Speaking of puzzles, most are variants of the traditional find-key-to-unlock-door puzzle, and although there is a few neat magical artifacts you can use, you will not be stumped for long in this game, except for some cases of annoying pixel-hunting. Despite pleasant VGA graphics and a good feel of "traditional" point & click adventure, it has nothing to lift it up from mediocrity. The writing and plot are banal, and the puzzles are uninteresting. The game does not have the sense of humor of Monkey Island, the wacky but clever puzzles of Discworld, or intriguing plot twists of Dragonsphere to keep you interested. If you are a fan of adventure games, you will probably play this one anyway despite what I say ;) But don't expect to find another forgotten classic. It's not so bad it deserves to remain obscure, but it is also not good enough to promote. The game comes with music and sound effects; voice-overs are restricted to intro and ending. The Finnish and Chinese versions have speech but the English version doesn't. | ||
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| Hell Cab | Digital Fusion, Inc. / Midway Games West, Inc. / Time Warner Interactive | [top] | |
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Hell Cab was created by the legendary Pepe Moreno known for his beautifully drawn and written comics and graphic novels. It is a bit of a stretch to call this an adventure game but it does have some adventure elements. You got into New York only to find out that your flight was... More delayed. So, you decided to get a cab and look around. Unfortunately, you chose the wrong cab. Raoul, your cab driver, isn't just your normal sort of cabbie. One look at those blazing red eyes in the rear-view mirror should tell you that. Raoul is going to give you his special tour of New York. There's only one hitch. To survive the trip, you either have to pay Raoul with money... or part of your soul. You only have three lives, and once those are gone, the saying, "To hell with you." is going to have a whole new meaning for you. Not only will you have to survive the modern day menaces on the streets, but in the past as well. Can you make the right choices and survive with your soul intact? Or will you just be another victim of the soulless city? This was the second cd-rom game ever released. | ||
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| High Seas Homicide | Sherwood Forest Software | [top] | |
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You are Martin T. Berringer master detective from Scotland Yard. Afther solving the murder of mystery manor your superiors decided to give you some time off. You are aboard the ocean liner The HMS Elias. You are in your cabin when you hear three shots...the game is afoot. You must find the clues, find the killer and then bring the killer to justice. There are a total of 310 points to gain in this game. You can bring the killer to justice with less but why not go for all the gusto you can get. | ||
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| Homey D. Clown | Synergistic Software, Inc. / Capstone Software | [top] | |
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Take on the role of Homey D. Clown, the most popular Damon Wayans character from Fox's sketch-comedy series "In Living Color". Homey was a convicted felon forced to become a children's clown as part of a parole agreement. As a juxtaposition on his occupation Homey is surly, has a short temper and is not at all clown-like. If someone asked Homey to do something clown related, he would either demand money or fight violently against the clown stereotype by hitting people, usually the children, with a stuffed sock. This would be followed by his catchphrases, "I don't think so!" and "Homey don't play that!" Players guide Homey through his typical day on the streets of New York, using his sock to bop the annoying people he meets. Gameplay is point-and-click, with a combination of adventure and a little arcade. Probably the best (but not by much) among an average crop of movie and novel adaptations from Capstone that includes the horrendous Wayne's World, here you play a lowly clown trying to make a break for a TV station job. Travelling is a frustrating as you must evade the various bad guys around a huge map, and most puzzles are of the "get/buy item A to give person X" variety. Yet you may find it strangely and inexplicably compelling if you have a mean streak. | ||
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| Hound of the Baskervilles, The | On-Line / Prism Leisure | [top] | |
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One of the most sought-after adventure CD-ROM titles in existence, Hound of the Baskervilles is unfortunately a game for which there is good reason for its rarity: it is terrible. There are not enough 'game' elements to capture any gamer's attention for long: it is little more than a dressed-up "electronic book" version of the original Sherlock Holmes novel - and an inferior one at that. The 'gameplay' consists of clicking on various dates on the calendar to change the active date, then read the corresponding entries in Watson's diary and browse clues on his desk. That's pretty much it to the 'game.' Sure, the production value on some of the clues is admirable: you will find authentic-looking ticket stubs, crime scene photos, and more evidence than you can shake a stick at. And what is the 640MB CD-ROM space used for? Orchestral music that helps evoke the Victorian era, nothing else. After you spend a few minutes with this 'game,' you will realize that reading Sir Doyle's classic is a much better use of your time than playing this sorry excuse of a multimedia title. Since Sir Doyle's wonderful prose has been replaced with a tepid narrative that is no match to the 'real' Watson in the novel, there is nothing to save this thoroughly disappointing better-as-a-coaster 'game'. | ||
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| Innocent Until Caught | Divide By Zero / Psygnosis Limited | [top] | |
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Innocent until caught is a graphic adventure game with an icon-based point-and-click interface. Jack T. Ladd is a thief, his hunting-ground is the whole galaxy, and at the moment, he's in big trouble. He's got 20 days to pay his taxes - or else the interstellar tax agency will hunt him down. Termination is a viable punishment for tax offenders in these days, you know. Stranded blank on the barren, run-down planet Tayte, Jack decides that he has to make some cash. Quick. The game is pretty standard in terms of design and interface. Nice ideas include a mini-window at the bottom left of the screen which is alternately a mini-map of the area (showing all exits) and a looking glass for detecting small items. Also, the plot is illustrated by a few rendered sequences, some of the first used in adventure games. It's a fun, "light" sci-fi romp in the spirit of Rex Nebular and its many innovative puzzles have creative yet logical solutions. Using the game's excellent "sandbox" interface that allows you to place object anywhere in your inventory and manipulate them, you must combine a lot of items together to create useful gadgets. The game's mildly raunchy and cheesy dialogues are funny and never overkill, and most characters are memorable. | ||
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| Iron Helix | Drew Pictures / Spectrum Holobyte, Inc. | [top] | |
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A rogue navy ship named Obrian poses a grave threat to humanity. A virus has wiped out its crew, but the threat of it using its Iron Helix doomsday weapon is still there. Using a robotic droid, you must explore the ship to work out how to shut these down. The game uses interactive quarter-screen footage to display the ship's layout. From an action perspective, the main unusual challenge is that an automated security device is chasing you down, and must be avoided and ultimately destroyed. As you explore the ship, you will find data ports, which can be jacked into to gain information or to open doorways. To access most of these, you will need to find a DNA sample from a member of staff whose role gave him/her access. It was an early example of a CD-based game, including video elements integrated with conventional 2D maps and controls. The game takes place in a screen divided into several sections. In the lower-left, taking up about 1/4 of the screen, is a simple control panel with buttons that move the robot in one of the four cardinal directions or up and down if it is located in a vertical shaft. The buttons light up to indicate which directions the robot can move from its current location. To the right is a small 2D map of the ship, showing the current level, or deck. Above this control panel is a small television-like display showing a 3D view as seen from the robot's point of view, taking up perhaps 1/5th of the display. To its right is a video panel that is used to replay videos gathered from the dataports. Between the two displays is a small control panel with buttons that operate the robot, scanning for DNA samples or accessing dataports. | ||
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| Jewel Bem Hunter LIME VOL.1 [K] | Silence | [top] | |
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Once upon a month, a door behind the full moon opens. This door is between the human world and magical world. Now it just so happens that on one such night, Lime and Bass are in hot pursuit of a demon who had stolen six power gems from the magical world. The demon escapes to the human world through the open door, and the two follow. This game is a first person perspective adventure game. To advance in the game the player sometimes have to talk to the other members of his group, other people or make another action. | ||
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| Jonathan [G] | Phoenics / Software 2000 | [top] | |
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German small-town quietness erupts in a whirl of obscure horror, aggression and uninhibited sexuality as an ancient force stirs and warps minds. As Kronstadt drifts into chaos in the course of eleven days in November, a teenager bound to the wheelchair dabbles in Celtic mysticism and discovers his talent for magic. Bourgeois bliss, late-80’s youth culture, occultism and photorealistic nudity mix into a psychedelic nightmare that stands out as the most perplexing German adventure game. The successor to Holiday Maker and Stadt der Löwen, and Phoenics’ (formerly PM Entertainment) third (and last) adventure game, Jonathan was a child of the dusk of Germany’s vibrant Amiga scene, where a maximum of finesse met a new minimum of public interest. Jonathan is unconventional to the brink of schizophrenia, both in style and gameplay. The actual adventure actions in a colorless, messy interface are contrasted with the sumptuous high-res artworks of the frequent cutscenes. Many of these revolve around the members of the protagonist Jonathan’s clique, who are essential to the game – the disabled young man must rely on their help to do things he is unable to do. As the game switches perspective and explores the minds of Jonathan’s friends, it focuses on their sexuality with a unabashed bluntness that should have shocked the pampered German audience, had anyone bought it. | ||
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| Jonny Quest: Curse of the Mayan Warriors | Hollyware Entertainment | [top] | |
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Johnny Quest is an action-adventure game with beat-em-up sequences. This game is based on the Hanna-Barbera animation series The Adventures of Jonny Quest of 1964. Jonny is bright young fellow with a talent for judo-fighting, defeating evil creatures and generally doing heroic things normally not suited for 14-year-old boys. When mayan idols disappear in the South American rain forest, the Team Quest sets out to comb through the jungle and a couple of temples. Gameplay is divided into two parts: On the top-down map of the forest and the temples, Jonny and his friend Hadji search for useful items and solve puzzles. If they encounter an adversary, the game switches to a side-view. Jonny's then got to defeat his opponent in classical beat-em-up-style with a variety of punches and kicks. After a short time, Hadji and the dog Bandit appear on the scene and help Jonny by casting spells (Hadji) and dragging the enemy around (Bandit). If you lose, you'll get two additional chances; after that, it's hasta la vista. All main actions (talk, look around, access inventory) are performed via the F-keys; more sophisticated possibilities like using items involve strings of F-key/direction key usage. The puzzles are of the 'find item, use item' variety. | ||
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| Journey into Xanth, A | David R. Malmberg & Mark J. Welch / Softworks | [top] | |
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A Journey Into Xanth takes place in the magical world of Xanth known from the books of Piers Anthony. The game is a classic interactive-fiction game, with a text parser as the sole user interface. It was developed using a contemporary toolkit (Adventure Game Toolkit v1.3). You are playing a young man named Mim. Like all inhabitants of Xanth, Mim has a unique magical ability, the so-called talent. In his case he is able to conjure a magical mirror which can then be used to talk to any person he wants to, regardless of distance to that person. His talent makes him a quite important member of his local community, the Gap village. He serves as the villages' liaison to King Trent the ruler of the lands of Xanth, who resides in castle Roogna. Mim regularly corresponds with the King discussing various matters. This serves as the starting point for your adventure, as the latest communication with the King will result into a mission given to Mim. | ||
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| Journeyman Project, The | Presto Studios / Sanctuary Woods | [top] | |
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The year is 2318. The place: the sky-born city of Caldoria. After a century of bitter struggle, humanity has finally learned to live in peace. In 2117 the Unified World was established. And humanity knew no more war. But all that was achieved was threatened with the invention of time travel. Its potential to destroy humanity's hard won prosperity realized, the only time travel machine ever built, the Pegasus, was moved to a secret location. The Temporal Security Annex (TSA) was formed to protect history from sabotage. The project's code name: Journeyman. Exactly ten years ago, an alien delegation calling themselves the Cyrrollans approached earth as messengers from the Symbiotry of Peaceful Beings. They gave humanity ten years to decide if they want to join the Symbiotry or not. Now the moment has come, and humanity awaits the arrival of the alien delegation. You are Agent 5 of the Temporal Protectorate. When you report to the TSA, you find that someone is changing history, influencing events and happenings, changing how things happened - and not for the better. It is your job to find out who is messing with history, stop him, and restore history. For this you will have to travel time, using the Pegasus, as far as 2 million BC. You will travel to Mars in 2185 to stop attack on an alien vessel, visit the World Science Center in 2310 to stop an assassination, and go back to 2112 to destroy a nuclear missile. You will collect items, solve puzzles, and pit your wits against a giant robot. The game itself is an adventure game, played in 1st person perspective - explore the environment, collect and use items, solve puzzles and small games, and it even has a maze in it. It has a few twists though: according to TSA's rules, you are not allowed to interact with people from a different time, so you must gather information in a different way. You can also stay only a limited time in every time zone, since your protective suit has only limited energy. You can also die at this game, if you are not fast thinking and fast moving. The game was originally made for the Macintosh and the PC port 3 suffered some problems, leading to a later improved release in 1994, re-titled The Journeyman Project: Turbo! | ||
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| Jya Jya [MAC] [J] | Momodera's Brand Co. | [top] | |
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This is an eroge for hyper card of Mac. One night, a boy was heading home out into the night. It was filled with something glittering and magical ritual-like atmosphere. What then happens to the boy is like something in a freak show. As if waiting for him, strange events began. Features: characters talk; beautiful variety and adventure. | ||
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| L-Zone | Infocity Inc. / Synergy Interactive Corp. | [top] | |
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Step into the world of Shono's L-Zone, a title about as close to a performance piece as an adventure game can get. The package calls it "Interactive Theatre," a pretty good coined term for what this puppy is. L-Zone is a large domed city, created by a mad scientist. It is deserted but fully automated, with all of the machines still working, and it's your job to explore it. The purpose of the game is to get from one end of the humming machinery to the other, activating machines as you go, to get a door to planet Green open. There's actually very little storyline, just a macabre, and seemingly never-ending, series of complicated and slightly dangerous-looking machinery to move through. The game maker later went on to do Gadget, and Alice: An Interactive Museum. A "version 2" was released of this game which allows you to save and restore games. | ||
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| Labyrinth Of Time, The | Terra Nova Development / Electronic Arts, Inc., Wyrmkeep Entertainment Co. | [top] | |
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The gamer is cast as a world-weary commuter, who spends much of the introductory sequence bemoaning the monotony of a humdrum existence. On boarding the subway, there is a sudden pulse of light, and Daedalus, the famed mythical craftsman, arrives to deliver a dire message. He has been enslaved by the megalomaniac King Minos and forced to build a labyrinth which will stretch across space and time. When completed, this will allow Minos to conquer the world in all ages. In order to stop him, the gamer must navigate a diverse series of interlocking mazes, travelling through several time periods and locations. Labyrinth is a first-person adventure with slideshow navigation and, in keeping with the time of release, no 360-degree panning. The graphics consist of three-dimensional environments, rendered in 8-bit colour. Viewed over a decade later, the graphics appear blocky, and even when compared to the game's contemporaries such as Myst, they lack the same visually arresting quality, as well as the fine attention to detail. Labyrinth's greatest strength lies in the fundamental concept of the game—travelling through a number of different time periods. This allows the developers to embrace a range of visual styles and palettes, from the orange desert tones of a Wild West ghost town, to a stylised art deco theatre to a Mayan temple, to name a few. Daedalus' somewhat haphazard labyrinth construction allows for rapid transitions in style, might hold your interest and surprise you as you walk from a medieval maze into a '50s diner, or from a seedy hotel into an elaborate mirror maze. Unfortunately, in order to prevent you from getting your bearings, several of the mazes recycle similar or identical rooms over and over again. Although the mazes are initially interesting to explore, if only to see where you will end up next, you are forced to travel through each maze repeatedly in order to complete the game. Without the novelty of exploring new areas, the mazes soon become tedious. This game was re-released for Windows in 2004 by The Wyrmkeep Entertainment Co. that restored some audio quality and added a breadcrumbs feature for navigating mazes, as well as porting the original code to Simple DirectMedia Layer. | ||
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| Last Half Of Darkness III | SoftLab Laboratories | [top] | |
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This very rare sequel to Last Half of Darkness Part II starts when Part II left off. You find yourself stranded alone on an island inhabited by living dead (which seem to not have vicious or violent intentions) and, again, you have to find the girl you saved in the previous chapters of the saga. The third installment comes with some important changes: improved graphics and a totally different engine and interface. Some flaws that plagued the first two chapters of the saga are corrected here: dying doesn't happen too often (partially limited by the introduction of a life bar for the player) and the gameplay is more coherent and clear than in the previous two parts. The atmosphere, which was the strong point of the first two chapters, is still horror-oriented but it's less disturbing and oppressive than in the previous chapters. The game itself is less claustrophobic and more open. | ||
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| Lawnmower Man, The | The Sales Curve Ltd. | [top] | |
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Loosely based on a Stephen King short story (which he asked his name be taken off the movie because it was so vastly different) starring pre-Bond fame Pierce Brosnan as Dr. Lawrence Angelo, a scientist working for Virtual Space Industries in "Project 5", a secret research that attempts to increase the intelligence of primates using psychotropic drugs and VR training. With his reluctance to aim the research to a military purpose, after one of the chimps escapes and shoots a guard in the process he is given a forced vacation, and while taking notes on the need for experiment with a human subject, he notices Jobe Smith (Jeff Fahey), a simpleton who makes his living on odd jobs such as mowing the grass (hence, the title role). The first experiments quickly increase Jobe's intelligence, and while after an accident Angelo stopped the experiments, The Shop, a secret agency overseeing Project 5, reinserted the drugs responsible for violent behaviour into the program and sped up the treatment. As Jobe starts to develop telekinetic powers, he starts to take revenge on those who abused him before he started the treatments, and plots to take over all computers in the world. This is an interactive movie where you take the role of Dr. Angelo, and try to keep CyberJobe from escaping into the world. Battle real world minions like guards, giant wasps, killer primates, and remote controlled vehicles. When Dr. Angelo enters the cyber world, he will have to work his way through treacherous tunnels and passages where the enemies are only limited by the imagination. | ||
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| Legacy, The: Realm Of Terror | Magnetic Scrolls / MicroProse Software | [top] | |
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In this horror RPG adventure, your dream home has turned into a living nighmare. For the past 400 years, your evil ancestors have been planning this housewarming party just for you. And it's one party you may never leave. Exploring hundreds of reality-twisting rooms in your eerie estate, you'll encounter unearthy puzzles, sinister spells, and forbidden tomes. You'll battle hideous hosts like grotesque gargoyles and loathsome death leeches as you struggle to vanguish the evil forces contaminating your happy home. | ||
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| Legend of Kyrandia 2: The Hand of Fate | Westwood Studios / Avalon Interactive | [top] | |
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This is the second book in the Legend of Kyrandia series. It uses the same design as the first game of the series. This sequel, however, features a much stronger story and a few more difficult puzzles than its predecessor. The main character is a female this time, Zanthia the alchemist (a supporting character in the first game), rather than Brandon. Kyrandia, as usual, is in trouble. This time, the trouble is more than a megalomaniac jester: slowly, piece by piece, Kyrandia is disappearing. Marko (a wannabe mage) shows up with his new assistant, a hand. The hand, through diagrams, explains that they need an anchor stone from the center of the world to keep Kyrandia together. Zanthia is unanimously chosen to go get it. This game has the same beautiful graphics and easy to use point-and-click interface as the first game and was released both on floppy disks and CDrom which adds music and voices. | ||
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| Legend of the Condor Heroes, The / Shediao Yingxiong Сhuan [Ch] | Soft-World International | [top] | |
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This is the first game adaptation of the first part of the popular literary trilogy "Condor", written by Hong Kong writer Jin Yong (English name - Louis Cha ). The game uses the engine of the previous colorful RPG creation of Soft-World - Legend of Power Book. The plot of the first part of the trilogy tells us about the beginning of the invading army of the Jurchen Jin on the ground of the Song Dynasty in northern China. First, a strong male friendship between two soldiers - Jan Tesin and Guo Xiaotian. They fought shoulder to shoulder with the army Jin invaders. The friendship was so strong that they have agreed that if their future children will be of the same sex, they will be named brothers (or sisters), and if they are of different sexes - that they will be a married couple. Then Guo Xiaotian died and Yang Tesin went missing. The main part of the book is devoted to their children (both boys), whose names are Guo Jing and Yang Kang. The first was honest, kind, truthful, but a bit rustic, and the second is intelligent, cunning and vindictive. Over time, fate brings them together like this and like their fathers. But throughout the novel, the treacherous Yang Kang is revealed to be getting stronger and stronger. He planned to Jurchen invaders seize his native land Sung. But with the help of Guo Jing Jing army of Mongols break, and Yang Kang overtakes the punishing hand of fate. You will play a character Guo Jing, along the way meeting friends and other characters from the literary work. Many people mistakenly classify this game as just another RPG but in fact it is not. This is a typical genre of Adventure, since there are no RPG-parameters of the character. You just need to walk, to talk to people and take action. Main action is very short: talk (icon "conversation"), walking (the icon "man") and do (icon "hand"). There are more icons - a sword and a rag to wipe something. Discussions are displayed in the window with the image of the person speaking. If it is a thought to oneself, the text is enclosed in angle brackets. If it's just overheard conversations from the side it will not be a portrait of the speaker. For each correct action sequence made, gaming events will be transferred to the new state. In the story, you can move from one locality to another. In this case, you will be presented a general plan of the settlement and its individual species near buildings or on the streets. Learn the purpose of a house on the same map, you can use the menu item "eye". Gaming mouse will be painted in three different colors (red, yellow and green) when you hover over objects, people or animals. Green color means that the action is possible. Graphics resolution is the same as in the game Legend of Power Book and uses a similar method of vectorization: Chinese style and a limited set of contrasting colors. Actors in the frame can be a lot and they are pretty well animated. | ||
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| Leisure Suit Larry 6: Shape Up or Slip Out! | Sierra On-Line | [top] | |
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Larry 6 featured improved video and sound, and also returned to the earlier Sierra philosophy of "punishing" wrong moves with player death. However, the deaths were only for humor's sake, as a "Try Again" button allowed the player to reverse the mistake. In at least one case, however, the player could reach a dead end from which the game could not be completed. It was also the first game to be released the next year in a CD edition with voices, better graphics and higher resolution compared to the floppy version. At the outset of LSL6, Larry is alone again with no explanation of what happened to Patti. He wins a visit to a luxurious resort spa called La Costa Lotta. He gets the worst room and worst service of all. His aim is simply to meet and have sex with eight women. Though this always fails for a reason or another, each of these encounters leaves him with an object he can offer to Shamara Payne, a New Age enthusiast. (Shamara plays the "True Love" role in that winning her heart is the ultimate goal of the game.) | ||
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| Litil Divil | Gremlin Graphics Software Ltd. / Philips Interactive Media, Inc. | [top] | |
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A great game from the team that brought cult classics Heimdall 1 and 2, Litil Divil is a charming action/adventure that will appeal to young and old adventurers alike. As the game's name suggest, you play a little devil named Mutt, who likes nothing better than sleeping in his peaceful abode in the underworld. As luck would have it, Mutt is chosen as this year's hero (i.e. victim) to venture forth into the mysterious Labyrinth. His mission: to bring back the Pizza of Plenty from the mysterious Overworld. With cries of "anchovies" and "capers" behind his back, the game begins as Mutt gloomily enters the great unknown. Although billed as an "action adventure" game, Litil Divil is better described as an "action / puzzle" hybrid: much of the gameplay involves helping Mutt avoid the various traps and obstacles in the tunnels, as well as fearsome attacks from underground monsters. Reflexes are therefore essential, especially to avoid the dreaded "Entity" character that occasionally appears out of nowhere to nab Mutt to the dreaded Quit/Play Again screen - which means either restoring or playing the entire level all over again. When Mutt enters one of more than 40 total rooms in the game, the action shifts from first-person to isometric 2D perspective. Although you must figure out the objective of each room, they are for the most part quite simplistic. Some physical, object-oriented puzzles are quite entertaining and original, while others require pure reflexes to solve or items in your inventory. Speaking of items, fans of traditional adventure games will be very disappointed: Mutt will use the item automatically if the situation calls for it, although you still need to figure out whether Mutt needs an item he doesn't already have, and where such an item could be found. There are also many "Goodies Rooms" where Mutt can buy items - although most of them are weapons or shields that are helpful in keeping up his health level. The real star of the game are the charming British humor and those ingenious puzzles that require both reflexes and intuition. After the disk version, a deluxe CD version of the game was released which added some cut-scenes and extra rooms. | ||
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| Lost In Time | Coktel Vision / Sierra On-Line | [top] | |
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Lost in Time is arguably Coktel Vision's best game, and one of the most fiendishly difficult and intricate puzzle games you'll ever come across. You play Doralice, intrepid heroine who has been chosen by the Central Computer of the Space-Time Police because of obscure ties with the Villain of this adventure, Jarlath Equs. Jarlath has stolen a sample of Americium 1492, hiding it the past, because of it's radioactive half life, and needs to bring it back in time to be able to use it to conquer the world. You have to find him and the sample before he destroys the time continuum. Lost in Time may very well be the most inventory-intensive game ever made, as you'll face literally hundreds of puzzles that require MacGuyver-like logic of combining household items into useful tools. Although most puzzles are logical, some of them require giant leaps of logic and minute hunt-the-pixel syndrome that can cause some players to give up in aggravation. Compounding the problem is the fact that there are always more puzzles you are allowed to tackle than you have the items for, and part of the challenge is to figure out the *order* in which to solve them. Hints are available in the form of 3 "Jokers" which you can use at any time - and the game is even sneakily coded so that you can't "cheat" by using up a Joker and then restore - you will find, to your horror, that that Joker isn't coming back. With a vast scope that spans various eras in time from 1840 to the present, challenging puzzles, and interesting plot, Lost in Time will keep you occupied for days on end. The original release in Europe was divided into two parts, that is, two sets of 3.5" Floppy disks sold separately as opposed to North American version which was a single complete package. A CD-ROM version Lost in Time: Parts 1 & 2, was released at the same time as the Euro floppy version and contained enough storage space for both parts as well as additional and longer video sequences with a higher frame rate and audible dialogue instead of subtitles. | ||
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| Magic Death, The: Virtual Murder 2 | Creative Multimedia Corporation | [top] | |
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An anthropologist is found dead in her apartment as a sacrifice in a voodoo ritual. The Magic Death is the second entry in the Virtual Murder series of FMV murder mystery games. As in the previous title, the player has to solve the crime within a time limit of 5 hours. Time decreases when an action is performed (examining an object at the crime scene, watching a suspect's interview), the exception being a brief case summation that can be accessed and played without any penalty. After gathering enough evidence (stored automatically in the notebook area), the player can call a press conference and answer questions about the case. If this questionnaire is filled correctly, the game moves to its second level, where the player must present the case to the judge. | ||
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| Man Enough: The Ultimate Social Adventure | Tsunami Games / Time Warner Interactive | [top] | |
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This revolutionary televisual experience includes live-action video, digitized speech, and a driving soundtrack combine to create a whole new class of interactive CD-ROM entertainment. Here's the deal. Five women...and you. They want it all: conversation, adventure and style. Ah, so you're thinking to yourself, hey, only five? No problem. But here's the catch: It's not going to be easy. In fact, at times it'll be real tough. Are you up to the challenge? Oh by the way, the bonus: A shot at the ultimate adventure date. One that will take your breath away...so, what are we waiting for? It's the first CD-ROM multimedia dating simulation featuring a 1st-person interactive social adventure with almost an hour of live-action video: mountain bike riding, paint ball, and skydiving. Stimulating dialogue comes to life through digitized speech. There's also visually stunning, 320x400 enhanced VGA graphics. | ||
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| Maze Brew [MAC] [J] | MazeBox Inc. | [top] | |
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An interesting Japanese point and click adventure for the Macintosh Color Classic. You can actually flip through the different screens in Maze Brew using the arrow keys (which is kind of cheating). | ||
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| Mick [Ru] | Alexander Gogin / DOKA | [top] | |
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One of the finest examples of an action-adventure hybrid, Mick is an ambitious and clever game from a Russian developer. You play a young boy who has been transformed into a snail by an evil witch. Cast down into the dank dungeons, you must find your way out, rescue your girlfriend, and defeat the witch for good. The gameplay is deceptively simple, since as a snail there is not much you can do at first. You can move around the dungeon, and nudge small objects. It is not until you discover that you can transform into other animals that the cleverness of Mick begins to shine and the game gets more interesting. You often have to do the right series of transformation to overcome tight spots and physical puzzles, and the level design is ingenious throughout. The game is all in Russian, but there is very little text to read, so it doesn't matter much. In contrast to most games that claim to be an "action adventure" and end up being little more than platformers with plots, Mick is a true underdog in the niche genre. Similar to Bad Mojo and Imogen, Mick implements the metamorphosis idea much more fully and creatively than the other two games. The game is truly unique, challenging, and innovative - definitely deserving of a spot on the hard drive of everyone who is a fan of Out of This World. In 2004, it was released as freeware. | ||
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| Midnight Stranger | Jeff Green / Animatics Multimedia | [top] | |
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This is the first of two published interactive multimedia CD-ROM based collaborations between writer and director Jeff Green and the Animatics Multimedia Corporation. Noted for its cinéma vérité style, it is a Point Of View (POV) video-based experiment in simulated socializing that takes place in an anonymous city late one night. Players navigate between several locations, and can interact with one or more people in each location to varying effects based on the player's “reactions” to that person. The main technical innovation of Midnight Stranger is its use of an emotional continuum Mood Bar for interaction with the in-story characters rather than a text interface or an itemized set of options for each interaction. The Mood Bar simulates some of the frustration and uncertainty when dealing with other people in social situations, and provides a more realistic role playing experience. | ||
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| Mind Castle: The Spell of the Word Wizard | Lawrence Productions Inc. | [top] | |
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Word/vocabulary learning game for ages 8 and up. You enter the Word Wizard's castle and take on a series of quiz challenges by clicking on different parts of each room in the castle. The game runs against a clock, and each correct answer grants you bonus time to play and thus you get the chance to take on more challenges. Graphics are 2D vga depictions of each room with score and time indicators onscreen and challenges popping up on windows. | ||
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| MorphMan | Dynamic Dimensions Development | [top] | |
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This is an obscure 3D FMV Game. The gimmick of the game is that you're a guy in a special suit that can turn into any object, given it is sampled with this laser attached to his wrist. You take samples of animals to turn into to help you progress and pass various obstacles. The game is like many old-school FMV games in that it's "do the right action within X seconds to not die". While the premise would lead you to thinking of endless possibilities, it's entirely linear. | ||
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| Muzeum Mrtvol [Cz] | Vladimir Peníška, Oldrich Křivánek / Computer Experts Group Corporation | [top] | |
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Muzeum Mrtvol (Museum of corpses) is a classic text adventure (without pictures) in Czech language, using graphical interface for controls. The player finds himself in an unfamiliar, place in which it is winter, is hardly able to breathe and in the air spreads a cadaverous odor. The primary role is to go from there. In 1994 it was also distributed in a package of Czech games called Triptych. | ||
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| Myst | Cyan Worlds Inc. / Mindscape Inc. | [top] | |
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Myst was the bestselling video game for several years, until The Sims exceeded its sales. Myst and its success had a significant impact on the first-person adventure game genre and was a showcase for many buyers of their first cd-rom drives. The story has you stumbling upon a most intriguing book, a book titled Myst. You have no idea where it came from, who wrote it, or how old it is. Reading through its pages provides you with only a superbly crafted description of an island world. As you reach the end of the book, you lay your hand on a page. Suddenly your own world dissolves into blackness, replaced with the island world the pages described. Now you're here, wherever here is, with no option but to explore. Myst is a first-person point-and-click adventure where the player controls a character known as The Stranger. Magically transported into the world described in the book, he needs to explore Myst Island and solve its mysteries. The game is presented as a series of scenes where the player acts with the environment by clicking and manipulating objects. There are no enemies and it is not possible to die. Through Myst Island, the game is further divided into mini-worlds set in different ages accessed through different books. Due to the game's popularity, many "Myst clones" came out after it and some adventure fans blame it for the death of the once traditional point-and-click adventure genre.
See also: #Myst Masterpiece Edition, #Myst (2021) |
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| Mystery At The Museums | Artech Digital Entertainments, Inc. / Binary Zoo Software, Inc. | [top] | |
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This is the second in the Adventures with Edison series. The game is sponsored by Smithsonian Institution and allows the player to visit different museums. A detective agency is searching for missing treasures. They've been misplaced or hidden in museums. Accompanied by Edison, a happy little fellow, the players visits the museums and must solve various puzzles. Puzzle types include: match two or three hidden pictures of a kind, slide the tiles to compose the picture, falling block puzzle, match the constellation from a selection, etc. The answers are fulfilled with additional educational information. There are game sessions of different difficulties for childen in the age category 6-13+. Finding all the treasures in a session places the winner in the High Scores table. The looks of Edison may be adjusted. The game session progress is saved / loaded for each game profile. | ||
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| Olga's Arbejdsmiljø [Da] | H. Yoshizaki / INFA, Danmarks Lærerhøjskole | [top] | |
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You play as Olga, who will try to improve the working environment at her school. The game is designed for the Danish schools and must teach students to understand what a bad / good working environment is. It's a point and click adventure. | ||
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| One Step Beyond | Red Rat Software / Ocean Software Ltd. | [top] | |
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Star of this advertising tie-in game is Colin Curly, dog, who loves Quavers (snack). It was stormy night and Colin was playing his favorite game Pushover. Accidentally was Colin being digitized and curlified into his computer when he completed his final level. Colin was trapped inside of his own computer and an amazing array of challenges standed between him and escape from electronic nightmare. You have to move Colin Curly from the ENTRY packet to the EXIT packet by jumping from one platform to the next. Colin can only escape the level if ALL the platforms have shut before he reaches the exit. As Colin steps off a platform, it will slide shut behind him never to open again unless it has special properties. So it is important to work out the correct route to follow in order to close all the platforms before Colin reaches the EXIT but still be able to move around the screen. | ||
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| Oseong-gwa Haneum [K] | A+ / Goldstar Software | [top] | |
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This Korean clone of Coktel's Goblins adventure takes the plot from an ancient Korean story from the 1500's. It's a comical tale with the theme of traditional Korean settings. Oseong and Haneum were two brothers, scholars of ancient times that were quite famous for a anecdotes about their childhood mischiefs. The game starts out with their daily routines (stealing fruit from trees, doing their homework, catching snakes, etc.), but soon the two find themselves in a land of dreams, which gives the artists an excuse to put in several backgrounds that would be terribly out of place and time otherwise, like a dinosaur, a high-tech world, and so on. Like the heroes in the French role model, Oseong and Haneum have to work together to solve the puzzles (Haneum joins in the third screen). However, here they use the same set of commands (walk, pick up, interact), and often it is not comprehensible why Oseong had to do this, but only Haneum could to that. Also, some items have to be placed at the exact location on screen to be usable, but more often than not there's no indicator whatsoever to reason this. Because the twenty stages all work without a single word of text (only an introduction telling the background story of the two protagonists comes in text form), Oseong-gwa Haneum can be enjoyed by everyone without any language barrier. Only a few of the real-world puzzles may be harder without the cultural context (that most Koreans would probably lack nowadays, either). The question is, would one really want to take it upon oneself? While technically much more solid than their first game, it is still delivers an example of frustrating adventure design. Only the detailed artwork and lovely animations can at least partly compensate for the hardships. | ||
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| Plumbers Don't Wear Ties | Kirin Entertainment / United Pixtures | [top] | |
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John is a plumber who is looking for love. He's looking in the house of the blonde Jane who has daddy issues. He's always been pretty successful before. And this situation looks to be one where John will be able to lay some pipe and unclog some stuffed passages. This is an "interactive story" dating simulation. After a video introduction, Players are treated to photographs of various people and places while characters voice act the situation. At times, John will be able to make a choice of his next action, from a list of choices at key locations in the plot. If John is successful, he'll move into an amorous relationship with Jane. If not, the two will be pulled apart. Despite being advertised as a full motion video game the game is only still pictures. A secret code allowed the player to see some nudity (John's butt and Jane's side boob) during the shower sequences. Without the code, these parts of the body are covered with on-screen censorship icons. It's considered one of the worst games of all time. In 2024, a Definitive Edition was released with 4K remastered photos and a wealth of documentary and interview content. Select between original and new 4K restorations on the fly. Full gallery mode, view images, behind the scenes and original release assets from the 3DO classic. New unlockable documentary feature, discover the history of video in video games and the making of PDWT through the cast of journalists, game industry veterans and original game crew. Save your progress and repeat your favorite scenes. | ||
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| Police Quest 4: Open Season, Darryl F. Gates' | Sierra On-Line | [top] | |
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With designer Jim Walls gone, Sierra On-Line needed a new person to take the helm of the Police Quest series. Their search led to retired LAPD police chief Daryl Gate. The graphics are totally different than any of the previous games of the series. Digitized actors were used for this game, giving the characters realistic appearances. The story in this sequel bares no similarity to the previous titles. The protagonist is no longer Sonny Bonds and the setting is no longer Lytton. Set in Los Angeles, the player is now in control of John Carey, a young LAPD homicide detective whose best friend has been murdered while on assignment. This sequel contains many more locations than all previous games and has many more characters with whom the player can interact. Numerous mature themes are depicted in the game, including hate crimes, Neo Nazis, and African American celebrities and youth involved in crime. As you progress in the game you learn that your police partner had a double-life as a cross-dresser and in a first for a computer game, Carey's investigation leads him into a transgender nightclub in West Hollywood. The Police Quest series were transformed into the SWAT series after this and no longer were adventures. A CD version was also released with new music, full speech (done by different actors than those who played the characters), numerous removed bugs, and many changes to the graphics. The cursors were re-designed and their size decreased, all objects in the inventory were re-drawn or re-photographed in a higher resolution, and many backgrounds and objects in background were re-shot in higher resolution (and thus higher quality) again. A short promo film on the game's making is included on the CD. There also two arcade games which can be accessed at 'The Short Stop' bar by clicking on the arcade games (an Asteroids clone and dune buggy game are available). | ||
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| Psycho Killer | Delta 4 Interactive / On-Line PLC, Prism Leisure Corporation Plc | [top] | |
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One of the plethora of multimedia video-streaming games that came out upon the advent of the CD-drive, this one masquerades as an interactive modern-day adventure thriller. A cold day, late in October, and you're driving along an unfamiliar country road. After a while the constant noise and repetitive throb of the engine drift away. Your mind wanders as the dashboard display blurs out of focus. You're thinking of the weekend, about stopping off later to get something to eat. You don't really notice the bank of mist that envelops the car as you speed up a hill. Suddenly, you jolt back into consciousness as a car looms up ahead of you out of the mist. It's sideways on, completely blocking the road as you stab desperately for the brakes. | ||
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| Quantum Gate: The Saga Begins | Hyperbole Studios | [top] | |
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Earth 2057. The inability of the world's industrial nations to reach a unified solution to environmental management over the last five decades has finally borne bitter fruit. The world governments, using a highly advanced simulation program called Earth-5, have predicted that the environment has only five years before an irreversible decline begins. The Eden Initiative has begun to attempt to reverse the death of the planet. The key to this operation is a rare mineral, iridium oxide, found in abundance on planet AJ3905. A hostile world accessible only through the Quantum Gate. You are Drew Griffin. A newly enlisted corporate soldier. Enjoy your journey. It's an adventure game set on a distant planet where you are sent out to fight in a war with an alien race...or are you? Most of the game is played in a first person perspective, as you travel around your base and talk to other people. There are also fighting segments, done in FPS mode, in which you and your computer allies must battle alien soldiers. | ||
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| Quest for Glory 4: Shadows of Darkness | Sierra On-Line, Inc. | [top] | |
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This is an adventure game/role-playing game hybrid and the fourth installment in the series. Drawn without warning from victory in Tarna, the Hero arrives without equipment or explanation in the middle of the hazardous Dark Caves in the distant land of Mordavia. Upon escaping from the closing cave mouth, he meets a mysterious young woman named Katrina who assists him again several times in his journey. He encounters several old foes, including the not-quite-dead Ad Avis and the ogress Baba Yaga, and makes several bizarre new allies. The Hero is ultimately coerced into assisting Ad Avis' Dark Master in collecting the Dark Rituals that will awaken Avoozl the Dark One (an obvious Cthulhu pastiche, and most likely a reference to the Slavic deity Crnobog) from his slumber underneath the Dark Caves. Naturally, the Hero is freed from this control and thwarts their plan, destroying Ad Avis in the process. During the celebration of the Hero's somewhat pyrrhic victory, the wizard Erasmus appears, summoning the Hero to the land of Silmaria. It's easily the darkest of the game series with its dark cult and numerous undead and Lovecraftian monsters. The floppy disk version is notorious for having many in-game bugs, but a patch was eventually released. Sierra also released a CD-ROM version of the game that had the same patch already applied. The soundtrack was largely original although it included a reprise of the hero's theme, and a version of Anitra's Dance by Edvard Grieg provided the background music at the Mordavian Inn. This was also the first game in the series to feature voice actors, and John Rhys-Davies provided the voice for the narrator. | ||
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| Really Intended To Kill Red [Ch] | G.R.X. / Kinoko Group | [top] | |
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This is an early decryption puzzle game that works under DOS game system environment. The fun of the game's vivid performance body tells the story of the protagonist Shibaura who is an operating officer in a detective agency. One day, she is inadvertently engaged in a serial murder. In order to investigate, you must collect evidence many times, communicate with different people, and finally arrive at the truth. | ||
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| Refixion III: The Reindeer Story [MAC] | Synergy Interactive | [top] | |
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This contains two "Macromind Director" movies. One is "The Reindeer Story." If you double-click this icon, you can see the main story with sound. Another one is "Music Track" in which you can listen to the 16-bit CD-DA sound as great as you imagine. Macintosh IIfx is recommended. If you use on a slower Macintosh it may result in music being out of sync with the pictures. The software is designed to work in 256 color mode. It may quit automatically if a different color mode is used. In case of running under System 7.0 or later, Virtual Memory must be off and 32-bit addressing must be turned on. This is a multimode CD with 6 audio tracks. | ||
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| Return Of The Phantom | MicroProse | [top] | |
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This is a third-person game that begins in the present day in the Opera in Paris. It seems that the Opera management has decided to finally mount a full production of the Opera Ghost's sole work, "Don Juan Triumphant." As if this wasn't strange enough, everywhere you look there are echoes of the disastrous run-in with the Phantom in the 1880s - the star of the opera seems to be related to Christine Daae, the young ingenue with which the Masked One was infatuated, and worst of all, during the performance the infamous chandelier comes crashing down, killing several audience members. Your character is the police detective who comes in to try to solve the mystery. Your character is also a descendent of the man Christine Daae was in love with during all that nasty Phantom business. You're about to find out what secrets lies beneath the surface as you'll look for clues here in present time, and back in 1881. In the past, you won't be known as a detective but more as Christine's fiancee or something that close. This point and click adventure game is available on both four 3.5" floppy discs and a CD version which includes speech. Most of the game is happening inside the opera house, with an exception of numerous tunnels and secret sewer passages beneath the opera house that are supposedly the phantom's residential places. | ||
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| Return To Zork | Infocom / Activision Publishing, Inc. | [top] | |
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Infocom's first return to the famous Zork universe after a long hiatus is a funny adventure that retains much of the campy atmosphere that makes the original Zork trilogy a classic, but unfortunately falls victim to its own innovative adventure interface, unforgiving and illogical puzzles, and some very cheesy acting. The plot is a typical treasure-hunting quest in the spirit of the original Zork trilogy, with a dash of some magic and evil woozle thrown in for good measure. The innovative point-and-click interface allows a much wider of actions than other graphical adventures. Clicking on an object brings up a menu of possible actions you can perform with that object, and clicking the object on another usually brings up even more actions. The conversation interface is also innovative: every time you talk to a character, you can select the mood you want in order to set the tone and direction of your speech. You can also ask people about any object in your inventory, or any photo you have taken. Sometimes doing so is the only way to obtain the much-needed clues for puzzles. Acting is downright horrible, canned, and cheesy, but at least you won't find too much of that in the floppy version, and all the characters and the overall atmosphere are in keeping with Zork's wacky, easy-going fantasy mythos. The game's worst weakness is the ruthlessly unforgiving puzzles. They are not just bad - they are so illogical and obscure that sometimes you'll be solving a puzzle correctly without knowing why that particular solution works... even with a walkthrough in hand. Clues are scattered in the most unlikely places, including minute references in the Encyclopedia Frobozzica, a thick fan-made book about Zorkian mythos included free with the game. Suffice it to say that anyone who's been spoiled by LucasArts' excellent cannot-get-stuck-or-die game design will likely get very frustrated playing RtZ. A Special MPEG Version was released for ReelMagic (one of the first MPEG decoder cards available for PC). The digitized actors are fully animated and actually move and show some body language. A number of the conversations are changed as well (some are shorter, some longer). A lot of backgrounds are more animated as well- for example, the flowing water of the river behind the lighthouse or in the boat has a much higher framerate and looks much better in the MPEG version. The intro and ending movies are also noticeably better quality. In the DOS CDROM version a lot of music from the game was in redbook audio format and played off the CD. In the MPEG version the music is part of the MPEG files - there are no redbook audio tracks on the CD. This means that some of the music sounds a little different. | ||
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| Sam & Max Hit The Road | LucasArts | [top] | |
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This classic adventure is one of the best loved games from LucasArts. You play Sam (a Canine Shamus) and Max (a hyperkinetic rabbity thing), the freelance police. Travel all over the US on the trail of a sasquatch named Bruno kidnapped from his place at the Hall of Oddities, and on the way visit locations like The World's Largest Ball of Twine, The World of Fish, and The Mount Rushmore Dinosaur Tarpit. The puzzles involve some of the most twisted humor in a LucasArts adventure game, and the dialogue including a non-sequitur option goes way over the top. Beside puzzles, there are also some action sequences, like Wak-A-Rat. Sam and Max Hit the Road has our heroes setting out on a bizarre manhunt, spanning the entire caricatured US of A. They encounter strange locations, entirely unhelpful clues, a cast of suspicious (possibly dim) characters, and a number of plot twists (one is a number, right?) that complicate their mission. Like previous LucasArts adventures, Hit the Road was based on the SCUMM story system. However, this game had a few notable new features. It was the first LucasArts adventure to feature an cycling verb point-and-click interface, that is, where the player right-clicks to select a different action icon, like "use" or "look at", rather than picking from a list of verbs at the bottom of the screen. Additionally, there were several 3D models integrated into the 2D environment at various spots throughout the game to create some sort of effect, a first for LucasArts. It was released simultaneously on floppy disk and CD-ROM; the CD version had a full voiceover soundtrack. | ||
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| Secret Island Of Dr. Quandary | MECC | [top] | |
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Seeing the carnival in the distance, you were interested and decided to stop near Troggle Shoot. The owner of it, Dr. Quandary, proposed you to shoot at selected targets and to win a one of three dolls. In any case, either you won or did not, Dr. Quandary awarded you with one of the dolls based on your choice. But a victory only looks like a victory; your mind will be put in the doll's body and will be sent to the mysterious island, where the main gameplay begins. As a doll, you'll wake up at the beach, where the bottle from the sea arrives. Reading the message from the bottle and the letter from near post stand, you're informed that you should collect certain items and brew them in a magical cauldron to prepare Fixer Elixir. Drinking it, you will return to your real form in the real world. Items will be given to you, when you complete certain puzzle or challenges. The puzzles are remakes of classic ones and vary from musical sequence repeating to Tangram and Tower of Hanoi. Different inhabitants of the secret island interact with you as well as the image of Dr. Quandary himself keeps an eye on you. Three dolls represent the difficulty levels, which are kept in their names: B. Ginner (beginner), O.D. Nary (ordinary), D. Feecult (difficult). Difficulty is increased by the number of items in the puzzles, challenges, etc. | ||
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| Seven Colors, The: Legend of PSY・S City [MAC] | Masaya Matsuura / Sony Music Entertainment | [top] | |
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The extremely rare (Multimedia Grand Prix-winning) first game by Masaya Matsuura (best known for PaRappa the Rapper) is a Macintosh-only first-person point-and-click adventure. It came out on April 23, 1993 - five days before the release of The 7th Guest and five months before Myst's release. (It was even shown at an exhibition in 1992, a year before Journeyman Project.) The game's interface is all in English, but all dialogue is written in Japanese. This CD-ROM is an adventure game software designed based on the world of the pop music group PSY•S, and can be enjoyed by the people of all generations. Enjoy the adventurous heart-searching journey in PSY•S City full of poetry, graphic and music. This story starts in the heaven city up above PSY•S City. Residents of the heaven city are the angels who are sent to guard the earth. One day, a hasty angel, so inadvertently dropped the important Seven Hearts the govern the night. One of the seven, the Purple Heart has accidentally fallen into your hands. At the appeal of the Purple Heart, you have so kindly decided to go on an adventurous journey to seek for the rest of the lost hearts in order to retrieve the night in PSY•S city. However, getting all the hearts back is not good enough to bring back the night to the city. You have to put all the collected hearts in the mailbox that connects PSY•S City and the heaven city and return them to the angels. But where is the mailbox? In the course of the journey, you will find it. A touching last scene is waiting for you who have safely accomplished the task. | ||
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| Seymour Goes To Hollywood | Codemasters | [top] | |
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If you haven't met Seymour before, imagine a relative of Dizzy the egg, who lives in the real world. He's a sort of slug-type thing, who wanders around with his little eyes blinking and his little hands waving. He scrolls his way through life jumping over things, collecting them, working out puzzles and trying not to get killed. And in this, the first of the Seymour escapades, the little sluggy fellow has zipped off to Hollywood. Why? It's difficult to say, really. There must be a place in a film for a talking slug with hands and big shoes. He's actually got to get into the film studios by somehow proving to the big and dangerous security guards that he is the famous Seymour. It's difficult because, like us, nobody in Tinseltown has ever heard of him either. But if you can find him a pair of dark glasses, he'll look exactly like Jack Nicholson (or Madonna or someone), so he should have no trouble getting in. His hassles are only just beginning though. Once actually in the studios, he's got to get through the maze of equipment and he's even got to be able to talk to the stars (who are notoriously dim, as we all know). All the usual CodeMasters tricks, traps and head-scratchers have been included in the game, as well as a couple of nasty pranks. But once you get into the swing of things, Seymour, like the Dizzy games it resembles, is completely brilliant. It's packed with great graphics, it's got a kickin' soundtrack and it's very, very playable. As it's set in the real world, it's a bit more logical than some of the Dizzy games. There are lots of objects (which you won't know what to do with) and there are lots of problems to solve before you can proceed. Use the correct objects with these probs and you can get past. There are 96 stonking screens, each one packed with detail, colour and things to jump up and down on. | ||
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| Shadow of the Comet / Call Of Cthulhu: Shadow of the Comet | Infogrames / Interplay | [top] | |
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In 1834, in the small New England fishing village of Illsmouth, the distinguished British scientist Lord Boleskine lost his mind. After studying ancient manuscripts of evil repute, he had travelled to this place to observe the passing of Halley's comet. What he observed that night, however, turned him into a raving lunatic. Now, 76 years later, Halley's comet is coming back, and young reporter John T. Parker has travelled to Illsmouth to try to uncover the truth in Boleskine's wild claims, and see the comet for himself. Shadow of the Comet is a horror adventure game, inspired by the terrifying writings of H. P. Lovecraft. Contrary to many adventure games from the early 90s, the game has a keyboard driven interface with a system of actions activated either by pressing the corresponding key (L for look, G for get, T for talk, U for use) or selecting them from the menu activated by the TAB key. The CD release was enhanced with a mouse-driven interface. Typical for Infogrames titles (e.g. Eternam), the game contains vector-based cut scenes with enlarged graphics of the faces of the speakers during dialogues and additionally includes a Museum mini-game where character can walk through a museum and look at various mystical objects and paintings inspired by H. P. Lovecraft. | ||
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| Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective Volume 3 | Viacom / ICOM Simulations | [top] | |
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In this third installment of Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective your task is to solve three separate crimes by visiting various locations, listening to the dialogues and reading the in the package included mock London newspapers. Once you have gathered enough evidence, you have to present your case in court and answer all of the judge's questions correctly. The three cases are: The Solicitous Solicitor - This case involves the sudden death of Melvin Tuttle, a solicitor who apparently has died of a heart attack. You are visited by Inspector Lestrade, who believes that Tuttle was murdered, poisoned to be exact. The Banker's Final Debt - This case involves the murder of Oswald Mason at his home. Scotland Yard believes that the murder was a result of Mason disturbing a burglar, but the Treasury wants you to investigate the case as Mason was dealing with sensitive Treasury work at the time. The Thames Murders - This case requests your assistance in solving five murder cases in which the bodies are all found on the bank of the Thames, this at first being the only thing linking the murders. | ||
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| Shining Flower: HikaruHana [MAC] | Maze Inc. / The Voyager Company | [top] | |
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Visual Poetry for the Personal Computer... Filled with beautiful graphics and animations, Shining Flower describes the journey of a wanderer and a search for fulfillment. Part meditation, part fantasy, it's an intriguing story of a wanderer's quest for enlightenment within a mysterious world. It's an almost completely non-interactive digital experience with concept and illustrations by Kikuko Iwano. A single character holding a glowing flower makes his/her way through a series of surreal vignettes, on a kind of spiritual journey. Interactivity is limited to basically choosing which several-minute-long sequence you want to watch next. | ||
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| Simon The Sorcerer | Adventuresoft Ltd. / Infocom | [top] | |
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Simon is just an ordinary boy in an extra-ordinary world. A world in which he must rescue Calypso the Wizard by embarking on a long challenging quest. The game is a point-and-click adventure, using a typical interface with words such as 'Use', 'Open', 'Walk To' and 'Pick Up' (for these last two unlike Lucasarts' SCUMM games a simple click on that area of the screen won't do). The game's plot has a number of references and spoofs to fantasy and fairy tales, with the Three Billy Goats Gruff involved in a particularly significant scene. The humor is very British in places, with lots of dry sarcasm, and lots of Simpsons-esque self-references to the fact that this is a computer game. The levels are non-linear in layout, with puzzles spread across the lands. It is a surprisingly long game and the game world is quite large even by today's standards. It's beautifully drawn giving the story a magical, fairy tale quality. It was first released on 3.5 inch disks in 1993, then re-released in 1995 on CD, with voice. In April/2018, a 25th Anniversary Edition was released with: totally new, much praised, game play controls that were built from the ground up; Hotspot based - no more pixel hunting; All-new slick icons and animations; Quick actions using right-click; Completely new game menus and save/load system; Four Music options - New stereo recording and the Original music in MT-32, General MIDI or AdLib; A stunning new HD graphic mode that upscales the game beautifully to high-resolutions; Optional retro settings - play with original graphics, original music and even the original controls | ||
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| Simulman Episodes 1-11 [It] | Simulmondo | [top] | |
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This series is an original one created by Simulmondo similar to their other series based on comic books. There were 11 interactive games in the series sold monthly on newstands. The episodes are as follows: Simulman!, Nella Morsa di SS, Nel regno di Doors, Il mondo simulato, I rapitori di sogni, Luna Park, Il grande freddo, Il giardino virtuale, Il giocattolaio, Pentagram, Jailhouse Rock. | ||
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| Soft Kill | Xiphias / Compton's New Media | [top] | |
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Imagine a high-tech attack on the United States... Imagine a unique story told in an unprecedented way. Developed by Xiphias, the company that introduced the first computer graphics system to be used in television news (KNXT in Los Angeles), Soft Kill is a unique techno-thriller based on the latest in hi-tech that explores the possibility of a world power using non-lethal warfare to bring the U.S. to its knees. Two politically opposed characters are thrown together in defense of the United States as a rogue element of the Japanese military attacks the Alaska Pipeline, the Panama Canal and the Malaccan Straits. The action explodes from a secret U.S. Navy base on Kauai to an ancient military shrine in Tokyo, from the North Shore of Alaska to the Palaces of Riayadh and the deep bowels of the United State's computer systems. Founded in a deep understanding of the vulnerability of the American infrastructure to attack and disruption, and the age-old attempts of governments to contest each other's territories of influence, this story combines high drama with photo-realistic imagery and video of secret places. The disk contains more than 70 digitized images and more than an hour of narration, which tell the story of what "nonlethal warfare" will be like in the not-so-distant future. Soft Kill owners can have the story told from different perspectives, including those of a narrator and the story's main characters. The innovative gameplay system consists of seven rows of ten cells each (called the Matrix), with four storytelling modes possible: Author (basic storytelling), Point-of-View (first-person views of varying subjects or subplots), Random (play sequences within each cell), and User (create your own path through the cells). | ||
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| Space Quest V: The Next Mutation | Dynamix, Inc. / Sierra On-Line | [top] | |
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In the simplest sense, Space Quest 5 is a gigantic spoof of the 1960s television series, Star Trek. Even the opening scene (and the subtitle) of the game resemble it. Not that that is bad. The plot of Space Quest 5 is much more intriguing and immersive than most new games in all genres. Basically, Roger Wilco, the hero/janitor/all-around great guy of the Space Quest series, has enrolled in StarCon shortly after the events chronicled in Space Quest 4. Unfortunately, the StarCon Academy is very difficult for him, the main reasons being that it requires actual work to complete and the fact that he has gotten on the bad side of the toupee-wearing captain on the station, Captain Quirk. By some extreme luck, he manages to graduate (thanks to his roaming eyes on the final exam and a computer breakdown) and becomes captain of the garbage scow Eureka. With his trigger-happy gunner and green-skinned helm officer, Roger Wilco must survive a homicidal female android set to kill him and solve the mystery of unauthorized trash dumping, which obviously leads him to saving the galaxy. | ||
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| Speed | Knowledge Adventure, Inc. | [top] | |
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Zoom through the history and science of speed starting off with the spear-carrying Neanderthal man, followed by the wheel. You move ahead to the bicycle, and race toward rocket cars, and sound-barrier breaking jets. Experience the simulations of the speed of light. You discover that Albert Einstein claimed the fastest speed in the universe might will be "The speed of your imagination". The interactive IMAX movie consists of watching the MacGillivray-Freeman movie, SPEED. Speed reading consists of the speed and comprehension-building game and attention-riveting sounds (like Orff's Carmina Burana, Rossini's Barber of Seville, Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, and Rossini's William Tell Overture (The lone ranger) toward improved reading. Speed match consists of watching the preschool scientist, and choose which picture matches the speed given. For example - animal, the race car, rollercoaster, and the antelope. Instantly Access the Speed of Your Choice! consists of watching the machines like Ford's Model T, da Vinci's helicopter, and Cousteau's snorkel. The fastest way to learn consists of watching the acceleration and watch the fastest baseball, fastest animals, fastest jet, and zoom in the globe to discover the "hot spots". Zoomscape A-Mazing Speed consists of zipping through the maze making split-decisions about who is faster for example: Is it a dolphin of a shark?, It is a sky diver or a helicopter? Who would win? A rooster or carnivorous arachnid? If you can finish the game, you will be greeted with the finish line. This game came with Packard Bell computers in the early to mid 90's. It came on a CD-ROM, along with other Knowledge Adventure titles, like Undersea Adventure, Speed, and a Knowledge Adventure demo of other products. | ||
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| Spider-Man (Uomo Ragno) Episodes 1-3 [It] | Simulmondo | [top] | |
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This is a series of platform games based on the famous comic book hero. They were sold in magazine stands just like comic books. The individual titles are: 1) Ritorno di Hobgoblin, 2)..E ora Carnage!, 3)Destino incrociato. | ||
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| Světák Bob [Cz] | Petr Vochozka / Bohewia Software | [top] | |
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Legendary game playboy Bob Dandy is rightly considered the first Czech computer game ever and was created at a time when they ruled the console gaming market. It's a very simple adventure game that draws inspiration for its design from the then very popular word games. You will find yourself on a desert island, it is up to you how to continue the adventure. | ||
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| Tajemnica Statuetki [PL] | Metropolis Software House | [top] | |
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One of the best Interpol agents - John Pollack - must solve the mystery of a series of thefts. Ancient artifacts disappear all around the world and rumor has it that Joachim Wardner, a former CIA employee, may be involved. Tajemnica Statuetki (Mystery of the Statuette) is a point-and-click adventure game composed entirely from photographic backgrounds, lacking any animation - thus requiring a lot of "pixel-hunting" from the player. Items and characters have fairly verbose descriptions and the puzzles are quite demanding. Conversations have dialogue options. | ||
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| Time Machine [K] | Ungjin Media | [top] | |
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This is similar to the Carmen Sandiego games, but the player is traveling through the Korean history. In 2010, players go on this media exploration adventure game to find who is taking the time machine to steal historical artifacts. You must investigate through the end of each time period and whether or not the way to follow is there and reasoning to proceed. Through giving hints, you must create a killer montage to fulfill the mission and find the culprit. It's an educational and fun game. | ||
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| Town With No Name | On-Line Entertainment / Prism Leisure Corporation Plc | [top] | |
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This is an interactive cartoon arcade/adventure game, using a 3D modelling technique (original for the time). A western adventure where guns make the law. You must be ready to enter perilous places and confront dangerous people. You will need then, also, a strong stomach, of course. Your path will take you to The-Hole-In-The-Wall gang! May be you shouldn't mess with them... Now, the undertakers won't be too many. | ||
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| Trick Or Treat | ACA Soft, S.L. / Junkyard | [top] | |
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Trick or Treat is one of those obscure adventure games, which are hard to find nowadays. It's a true graphical point & click extravaganza from a Spanish developer that puts you in the shoes of an out of job young guy who has recently got another job as a Care Assistant at an Elder Home Care Center in Devilsville. You start your job on 31st of October and no sooner you reach the Care Center your car got stolen by the former Care Assistant. You enter the home and introduce yourself to all the old people and they all order you to get them various items for a Halloween party they are organizing tonight. Finding these items is the first part of your quest. The conversations you can have with various care home residents are quite funny, although there are some awkward sentences and only a few people to talk to. The game is a bit too short, thus making it ideal for adventure game beginners. | ||
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| Veil Of Darkness | Event Horizon Software / Strategic Simulations | [top] | |
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This is an adventure game with RPG elements featuring a fixed isometric perspective and a fair share of action-RPG style combat. You take the part of a cargo pilot whose plane is shot down by a mysterious force while flying over a remote valley in Romania. A helpful village girl named Deirdre rescues you from the crash and takes you to her father Kiril, who informs you that your arrival via plane crash marks you as the chosen one who is prophesized to destroy Kairn. Kairn is the local vampire lord who long ago murdered his father and brothers so he could inherit control of the valley. Ever since he's used his powers to cut off contact with the outside world Kairn has been living it up, torturing the villagers with madness and death, feeding off of them like livestock, turning the village women into his personal vampiress servants, and generally being a spoiled pain-in-the-butt. Meanwhile the villagers are miserable, as every day they face the possibility of either being devoured by werewolves, gnawed on by zombies, driven into stark raving lunatics, or turned into vampires by Kairn and his posse. Since Kairn has cut off all ways out of the valley the only way you're going to leave is, as the old saying goes, over his dead body. That's not going to be very easy, however. Wild animals and unnatural creatures roam the countryside. While some villagers wise to help you rid them of Kairn, others have been driven mad with despair and by the valley's oppressive aura, causing them to commit unspeakable acts or otherwise act in an unhelpful manner. Even your most trusted allies may turn out to have a few skeletons in the closet. | ||
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| Victor Loomes [G] | Promotion Software / LBS | [top] | |
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This is a free German promotional adventure for the bank LBS. The game begins in Chicago in 1927. The main character is a "typical" detective of the time such as Humphrey Bogart played. His goal is to bring down the diamond thief "Wild Bill." Also, the beautiful singer "Rachel" wants that he invests their money as profitably as possible. Victor travels in a time machine into the future and includes a savings agreement from - of course at LBS. Seven years later, in 2000, he can pay off any debts. The vision for 2000 is bleak - cities are completely run down and the air is polluted. | ||
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| Wayne's World | Capstone | [top] | |
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Wayne's World is an adventure game based on the movie with the same name. The game itself is a classic point and click adventure, and should not be confused with the platform game based on the movie. You play both Wayne and Garth, and you can switch between them at any time. The plot is simple; In an attempt to save their tv-show, Wayne and Garth decide to hold a pizza-thon (a charity show with a pizza-theme) in order to raise money. In order to be able to hold the pizza-thon Wayne and Garth must embark on several quests to collect items and hire people they need for the show. The adventure includes participating in babe-jeopardy, joining a biker's gang and baking pizza. The graphics are in 2D and the sound contains several samples from the movie. | ||
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| Ween The Prophecy | Coktel Vision / Sierra On-Line, Inc. | [top] | |
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The charming zaniness of Coktel's Goblins continues in this game filled with wacky characters and sporting an improved interface. Unfortunately, the puzzles are often too obscure to all but die-hard puzzlers. The plot of the game is up to Coktel's usual wackiness: you are Ween, a hero who must complete three quests and to be rewarded with three grains of sand, which you then must place into a magical hourglass to vanquish the evil wizard Kraal and thereby fulfulling an ancient prophecy. But you only have three days to do it, and a lot of hairy puzzles to solve. Those who have played Coktel's Goblins games will be right at home with this one - except that many puzzles are very convoluted and, having taken place in a fantasy world, not at all clear. Worse, many objects have multiple uses which you must discover by trial-and-error since the game's descriptions are usually vague. To the game's credit, there are often more things to do and more objects to manipulate in one Ween screen than in dozens of screens in other games. The game also branches in two occasions, thus allowing you to solve completely different sets of puzzles. There are also two methods of on-line help: your trusty bat sidekick, and your grandfather's friend Petroy, both of whom provide progressively explicit clues that range from gentle hints to specific directions. | ||
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| Who Killed Brett Penance?, Murder Mystery Case 3 - The Environmental Surfer | Creative Multimedia Corporation | [top] | |
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An activist surfer is found dead on the beach. The third installment of the Virtual Murder series (now renamed Murder Mystery) follows the same overall design of the other games. The player has 6 hours to solve the murder, and time diminishes with each action executed (interviewing suspects, examining items on the crime scene), with the exception of a brief case summation that can be played without any time decrease. After gathering enough evidence (stored automatically in the notebook area), the player can call a press conference and answer questions about the case. If this questionnaire is filled correctly, the game moves to its second level, where the player must present the case to the judge. On the previous iterations, the murderer was selected randomly by the computer out of three possible choices. This time, the player can select directly one of the three game paths at the beginning of the game. Each has small alterations and different clues, although the setting remains the same. | ||
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| Who Killed Sam Rupert?, Virtual Murder 1 | Creative Multimedia Corporation | [top] | |
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Sam Rupert has been found dead in the resturant he owns. The police detectives arrive at the scene and must gather clues and solve the mystery to find out which one of 8 suspects might have killed Sam Rupert. Furthermore, since "most" crimes are solved within 6 hours, the city is demanding this case be wrapped up within that limit. Who Killed Sam Rupert is a multimedia full-motion-video detective game. Players assume the role of the investigating detective and must search the area, and zoom in, via a 1st person adventure game interface for clues and interview witnesses. Each action eats up a designated amount of time, and after 6 hours, the case is over and the player must explain what they've found at a press conference in order to get a chance at arresting the guilty party from a narrowed down list of 3 suspects. There are three possible "motives" for the case and thus three possible endings in solving the murder of Sam Rupert. | ||
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| Who Killed Taylor French?, Murder Mystery Case 4 - The Case of the Undressed Reporter | Creative Multimedia Corporation | [top] | |
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A investigative journalist is murdered while jogging. The final installment of Creative's Murder Mystery series shares the same overall design with the previous games. The player has 6 hours to solve the murder, and time diminishes with each action executed (interviewing suspects, examining items on the crime scene), with the exception of a brief case summation that can be played without any time decrease. After gathering enough evidence (stored automatically in the notebook area), the player can call a press conference and answer questions about the case. If this questionnaire is filled correctly, the game moves to its second level, where the player must present the case to the judge. There are three possible solutions to the crime. The player can select directly one of the three game paths at the beginning of the game. Each has small alterations and different clues, although the setting remains the same. | ||
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| Wild West: The Incredible Adventures of Donald Reddish [G] | Proline Software | [top] | |
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In the game you are a young man of Sherrif in a western town. To get into this city he has however a limit over which he cannot talk about, it is because he does not have enough money for customs. You must raise the money needed. You'll meet different characters a young angelic woman at a lake, a jewelry pawnbroker where you could make money from the gold tooth of a criminal. There's also a runaway pig which one could catch if you make it drunk with alcohol. | ||
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| Wind In The Willows | Leisuresoft | [top] | |
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This is the second game in Leisuresoft's "Leisureland" series of adventure games aimed at kids ages 5 to 8 who are learning to read. Unfortunately, it suffers from obscure puzzles and annoying random elements that will make it an exercise in frustration for all but the most patient kids. The plot will be familiar to anyone who has read a few fairy tales: you are well-mannered mole called, uhm... Mole, who awakes one day to find that his friend Toad has been kidnapped. Gameplay consists of going to various locations and choosing what to do from a number of multiple choices. What makes the game extremely aggravating is the fact that some objects you need, as well as some crucial encounters, are random. This makes it almost impossible to finish the game without many trial-and-error sessions where you go everywhere over and over again to trigger the missed event. Worse still, the objects you collect are used automatically almost every time they are needed - there is no way to select each item from the inventory individually to be used. This limitation destroys any potential for fostering logic and deduction skills in kids, and makes the game very passive. Overall, Wind in The Willows is a disappointing title whose "educational" value is limited only to perhaps increasing reading skills in young kids. | ||
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| World's Hardest Adventure, The | A. Fielding and David Malmberg | [top] | |
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David Malmberg is the genius who brought us AGT in its "classic" and its "enchanced" formats. This text adventure starts out in that most cliched of adventure game settings: you are before a house(mansion, I mean). Get in and get the treasures and get the hell out. EBut in this game, the settings are familiar by design... in this game, familiar rooms and settings and storylines are a confusion tactic. Simply put, this game is your enemy. It hates you. You do not have to do anything wrong to get killed in this game. Walk around for a few moves and find out. You'll die. A wizard will pop up and say you've spent too long on the adventure: eat dirt! Zork II anyone? Or you'll get eaten by a cyclops, swallowed by the ground, eviscerated by a gluttonous blob. Luckily, dying in this game doesn't mean a whole lot. Yes, you do get pushed back to the starting room but you still have all your items and everything you've done to alter the gaming environment remains the same. Of course, if you die twenty or so times the game will really end, but there's a couple of cool commands called "save" and "restore" that might help you get around that. Use them! As soon as you realize trying the "direct" approach to gain entry into the house is doomed to failure, you begin to explore your surroundings. It shouldn't take you long to encounter several scenes of pure unadulterated plagiarism. | ||
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Adventure related
| 3-D Dinosaur Adventure | Knowledge Adventure, Inc. | [top] | |
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3-D Dinosaur Adventure is an educational game about the many types of dinosaurs from Earth's past. As the title suggests, the game has several areas that make use of the included blue-red 3-D glasses that make the dinosaurs appear to leap off the computer screen. Kids can learn using the reference encyclopedia section to explore when or where the dinosaurs lived, how they evolved, and what survival methods they used. The title has several learning activities that take advantage of the wealth of fossil photo records and illustrations for visual recognition of dinosaurs. It also has a movie theater that shows the dinosaurs' anatomy so that the kids understand the biology of the creatures. The 3-D museum allows you to walk around in a virtual museum, using your 3-D glasses to really bring impact to the creatures as they pop off the screen. The game layout is stylized like a theme park, and has four main areas to explore with hidden items to find and experience. In 1997, an Anniversary Edition was released including a separate disc with a small program called "Art-a-Saurus" which lets the player make pictures using paint, moving dinosaurs or non moving ones, music and lots of backgrounds to choose from. Also included with the package is an authentic fossil. | ||
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| Alien Legacy | Ybarra Productions / Sierra On-Line | [top] | |
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A spiritual descendant of the StarFlight series, you are in command of the UNS Calypso, a seed-ship sent by a war ravaged Earth. On the edge of annihilation from an alien race, you are to colonize a new star system and rekindle the light of mankind. One of these seedships, the UNS Calypso, is sent to Beta Caeli, which is the farthest star attempted yet. 15 years later a second seedship, the Tauntalus, is dispatched to the same destination in order to better the chances of human survival. The Tauntalus is equipped with a more advanced engine and thus will reach the star some 21 years ahead of the Calypso. You are the captain of the Calypso. You've just been awakened from stasis and your ship is orbiting the most habitable planet in the system. There is no sign of the Tauntalus. All you have are some 5000 colonists, past radio transmissions and a few key advisers to help you colonize this new unfamiliar solar system. You will need to explore the new system, discover the secrets of the artifacts you find, and establish and maintain a base. Interracting with your crew, piloting your scout vessel, and micromanaging your base are all activities you will learn to excel in if you how to succeed. As you progress, an overall story will unfold and you will find yourself in the midst of intergalatic intrigue. | ||
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| Arctic Baron / Transarctica | Silmarils | [top] | |
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The Viking Union has a very dominant role in your society, as they control the vast railway networks. Could they be to blame for the disappearance of the sun and the resultant ice age? As a train captain, you must find out and overthrow them. Transarctica is a strategic trading and combat game, rather like Elite in many ways. You must keep your train running, and make sure there is enough fuel. When you reach towns you can trade with local people, with each city having a primary function. These towns often contain useful information to put you on the right track in your mission. You are in possession of slaves, who are traded just like other commodities. Contact with other trains results in combat. Buy upgrades to boost your performance in combat, to increase your chance of fending off the Viking Union. Overall, one of the best Silmarils games ever made, despite cumbersome interface and extreme scarcity of resources. | ||
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| Artificial Life: School World [J] | Inter Scape Ltd. / Pioneer LDC Inc. | [top] | |
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An ambitious work by Daizaburo Harada, who was a companion to Haruhiko Shono, formerly of Radical TV [Japanese video-art group] plus Greg Bear and an interview with Ryuichi Sakamoto. It is a biological breeding program based on Artificial Life theory. When you explore the planet, collect the creatures there, adjust the amount of light in the breeding machine and breed it, a mysterious insect that you have never seen grows while undergoing several stages of evolution. The collection is done on a CD-ROM, and the breeding uses a program installed on the hard disk. Books are also included in the package. It's quite difficult to breed and often die, but once you get the hang of it, you'll quickly reach the final evolution. It's a unique work, and the material is interesting, but the drawback is that it's easy to get bored. | ||
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| Better Homes and Gardens Healthy Cooking | Multicom Publishing | [top] | |
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This provides a compilation of the best healthy recipes from Better Homes and Gardens, publisher of America's best-selling cookbook with over 30 million books sold. The "How to" section provides tips, techniques, and procedures for the novice and experienced cook. The CD-Cookbook can also suggest recipes based on the ingredients you have available or your nutritional guidelines. Automatically calculate ingredient proportions based on a selected number of servings. Planning your family meals in advance has never been this easy! Select your favorite recipes, build a meal plan, and then print a shopping list of ingredients. The program includes 80 full-motion videos of cooking techniques, stunning photographs of every recipe, full recipe directions, ethnic music, comprehensive indexing, complete descriptions and photos of over 60 cooking utensils, and detailed nutritional information. It features: Full-screen photos for over 400 recipes; 80 narrated video cooking techniques; What's For Dinner section searches recipes by ingredients; comprehensive indexing and full recipe directions; printable shopping list for your weekly menu plan; calorie counter and complete nutritional guide. | ||
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| Buzz Aldrin's Race Into Space | Strategic Visions, Inc. / Interplay Productions, Inc. | [top] | |
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This re-creates the thrilling endeavor of trying to lead your country's space program to the moon before a competing superpower does the same. It's based on a board game called LIFTOFF! As head of your country's space program you will need to develop all the hardware you need for your spacecraft and make it safe, choose the right persons to send into space and make sure they come back alive. Loaded with lots of historic video clips, and other historically correct items make this game reflect the "Cold War" situation as it should. It recreates all the excitement of every space mission using digitized footage from lift-offs, space walks, lunar landings and splashdowns. The 1994 CD-ROM version incorporated the earlier updates to the floppy disk version, a few new updates, improved video of the mission launches, and new multiplayer modes. | ||
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| Clue!, The | neo Software Produktions GmbH / Kompart UK, Ltd. / NEO Software | [top] | |
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The Clue! is an original mix of adventure and strategy. You are Matt Stuvysant, a young criminal wannabe trying to strike it rich in London... through robbery. Adventure elements include talking to other people for clues on potential targets and recruiting accomplices and getaway car drivers, while strategy involves planning every detail of the burglary, including escape route and more. Great game overall, but difficult due to the wealth of information and names you must keep track of. Still, if you like adventure games that successfully combine elements from other genres, or just unique games in general, The Clue! is a must-play that will keep you entertained for dozens of hours. | ||
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| Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia | Compton's Home Media / Softkey | [top] | |
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Compton's-1995 contains the complete information of a 26-volume encyclopedia on a single CD-ROM, and includes over 33,000 articles, more than 7,000 pictures, over 100 videos and animations, and over 14 hours of sounds. Primary operation of Compton's-1995 is through an information search bar on the left side of the screen, dialog boxes, and a menu bar across the top of the screen. The menu bar contains On-line Help, Events Highlights (gives you a short slide show about recent historic events), Editing Room (used to create your own multimedia presentations by combining and arranging any of the information in Compton's-1995), Bookmark (for returning to information at a later time), Picture Tour (browses through pictures in the encyclopedia, either the complete tour or one of 15 available categories), Notebook (for keeping notes -- you can paste text and pictures here), Dictionary (Webster's New World Dictionary), and Setup/Preferences (for changing program settings). There are several ways in which you can search for information: Contents (alphabetical listing), Idea Search (typing a word, phrase, or question will result in a list of related articles, pictures, movies, sounds, and tables), Infopilot (finds groups of articles related to a topic), Topic Tree (displays articles arranged by topic and subtopic for narrowing your area of interest), Atlas, Timeline (charts people and events in U.S. and world history), and Explore (takes you into four different settings to explore information in the encyclopedia in a different way). The "Guided Tour" gives you an overview of the encyclopedia presented by Patrick Stewart. InfoPilot, is a cool trick which lets you pick a central topic — say, baseball — and view related topics, like Babe Ruth or card collecting, arrayed around the main entry. It's handy and makes browsing through Compton's 33,000 entries a breeze; unfortunately, the text-heavy approach doesn't let you enjoy your explorations the way Encarta does. It was published in 1993, 1995 through 2001. | ||
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| Creepers | Destiny Software Productions Inc. / Psygnosis Limited | [top] | |
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At first glance it would be easy to mistake Creepers for a Lemmings clone. Chunky, colourful graphics, toe-tapping music, levels dotted with pistons, flaming torches and obstacles for a six-pixel protagonist. Fortunately, this is a game which is original, interesting and versatile - probably owing more to Sierra's Incredible Machine than to the Lemmings saga. Your job is to assist a group of caterpillars as they make their ponderous way towards a hatching pot. To do this, you use a quantity of tool points to build ramps, walls, fans, trampolines and other handy items. If you are successful, your wards will emerge as butterflies. The interface is a simple mouse-driven affair, but suffers from a lack of refinement, something which a little more playtesting would have rectified. The caterpillars are suitably 'cute' (cue the 'awww' factor from passing relatives), but dont be fooled by their appearance. In later levels on the higher settings their looks won't save them, and unless you're a) a genius or b) omnipotent, neither will you. But if you fancy a challenge and you're not scared of bugs, Creepers will provide you with hours of entertainment. | ||
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| Criterion Goes to the Movies | Voyager Company | [top] | |
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Among film connoisseurs, the name "Criterion Collection" is synonymous with "quality film releases." Founded by the same founders as Voyager Company, Criterion is dedicated to gathering the greatest films from around the world and publishing them in editions that offer the highest technical quality and award-winning, original supplements. Criterion began with a mission to pull the treasures of world cinema out of the film vaults and put them in the hands of collectors. All of the films published under the Criterion banner represent cinema at its finest. This CD offers plenty of information and clips from more than 140 movies in the Criterion Collection of Laserdisc (now DVD & BluRay) film releases. With only 140 films or so compared to 15,000 or 20,000 on similar CD-ROMs like Microsoft's popular Cinemania, what does Voyager's CD-ROM offer that others don't? Plenty. To start with, every single movie on this CD-ROM is worth seeing: Criterion doesn't mince words when it claims to focus only on "the world's greatest films." And the breadth of Criterion's focus is immense: classics like Some Like it Hot and King Kong keep company with cult classics like Blade Runner and The Adventures of Baron von Munchausen, as well as popular favorites like Ghostbusters and even a good number of non-Western classics such as Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai. Each entry on the CD-ROM presents detailed information about the film, including full credits, essays, still photographs of leading actors/actresses, as well as excellent filter/index functions (for example, you can view only Criterion releases that won the Oscars, released only in a certain language, and so on). Also included are extras like trailers and production photos - the stuff Criterion is famous for. With an excellent sampling of classic and contemporary films from the Criterion Collection and insightful essays and plenty of extras, this is undoubtedly one of the finest reference CD-ROMs ever made about any subject. It is no small irony that Voyager Company is no more, but the Criterion Collection -- which was started by the same founders -- is alive and well. | ||
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| Ecco The Dolphin | Novotrade International / SEGA Corporation | [top] | |
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Travel through the time along with Ecco the dolphin, in the only game that could call itself a "dolphin simulator". Indeed, you can do pretty much everything a typical dolphin does, including eating fishes, surface in order to breath, using your biological sonar and of course jump out of the water to amaze your friends. The storyline is actually deeper that one may think by looking at the box illustration. As Ecco, you are the only dolphin which managed to escape from the giant whirlpool who sucked down its entire pod. The five shining stars on your front show you are the chosen one to save them. But that task will be not be an easy one, as you will have to travel time and space with the Atlantean time machine, and meet the mystical Asterite in order to defeat the vortex queen. The gameplay is essentially side-scrolling, with horizontal, diagonal and vertical movement. Attacking enemies is accomplished by making Ecco ram into them at high speeds. Swimming can be made progressively faster by tapping a certain button, and the speed can be maintained by holding it down. Players can perform a purely aesthetic spin in the air when jumping out of the water. Two features of the game play on actual dolphin habits; one button causes Ecco to sing, allowing him to speak with other cetaceans and interact with certain objects. The same button is used for echolocation; holding it down causes the song to return, generating a map of the area. Additionally, Ecco, being a mammal, has to surface periodically for air, or else find an air vent. Ecco drowns if his "air meter" runs out. His health is measured by a separate meter; it is depleted by enemies or when his air meter runs out, and it is recharged by eating fish, "singing" to clams, or, later in the game, singing to special statues or crystals called Glyphs. This PC version features better graphics than its console counterparts (256 as opposed to 64 colors), full CD soundtrack and video sequences from the SEGA CD version of Ecco: The Tides of Time, and even a mulit-language support. This means that the PC version is probably the best version of the first game in the series - a fitting and competent job on one of SEGA's best games. In 2010, a port of the Genesis version came out on Steam. | ||
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| Everywhere USA Travel Guide | Deep River Publishing | [top] | |
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This multimedia reference cd has travel information on over 3,000 attractions in the United States, with over 6,000 color photos and 80 minutes of motion video. It uses an interface similar to the same publisher's Adventures cd but it has a database that is more than twice as large. It has two cd-roms - one for the East and one for the West. There's a playlist for the videos and a state-by-state slide show to pique your interest. It lists events, attractions, festivals, theaters, museums, historic sites, national parks, professional sports teams, and more. You'll find up-to-date descriptions, addresses, phone numbers, and hours, as well as a locator map. Through its easy-access Windows interface, this travel guide brings thousands of interesting bits of information to the screen in seconds. Family vacation planners can search for activities suitable for their children, and business travelers can get information about the city or state they're going to. You can use the menu of listings based on geographical area and type of activity, or you can create a custom search based on a variety of criteria. The listed items include aquariums, zoos, theme parks, museums, science centers, agricultural fairs, festivals, historic sites, national parks, dance, music, theater, sports tours, cultural centers, and more. | ||
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| Flicks! Film Review Library | Villa Crespo Software Inc. | [top] | |
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Looking for that perfect video rental? Having trouble keeping track of your own video library? Or do you just want to test your knowledge of movie trivia? Then Flicks! Film Review Library is the program for you! With over 30,000 movies listed, Flicks! is the most comprehensive and sophisticated movie database ever. Includes complete cast and director credits, reviews and MPAA ratings, ability to edit data and reviews for all movies, add new movies, keep track of your own video tape information, and a challenging movie trivia game. | ||
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| Fun School Learning Adventures With Sammy Spy | Europress Software / Davidson & Associates, Inc. | [top] | |
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Get ready for fun and mystery! Sammy Spy loves a good mystery. And Fun School's six different multilevel learning adventures are just what he's been looking for. Your job is help our super sleuth as he takes on a variety of new missions. Colorful graphics, clever sound effects, and delightful animations insure each learning adventure is filled with excitement, intrigue and fun! Join Sammy Spy in these six multilevel learning adventures! Spy Travels. Learn to identify major countries, rivers, oceans and continents as you travel around the world helping Sammy Spy locate stolen treasures. Timetable. Oh no! Sammy's stuck at the airport and needs your help adding and subtracting departure times in order to find the correct flight. Exchange rates. Sammy is ready to travel overseas. But before his trip begins, he needs help learning about the currencies and exchange rates for foreign countries. Spy Quiz. In order to receive his next secret message, Sammy Spy must climb the walls of Quizzendene. This fun-filled adventure tests your general knowledge of math, science and spelling. Proportions. Sammy has been assigned a secret mission. But before he receives his first set of clues, you must help him pass the proportions test on fractions, decimals, and percents. Desert Dates. Discover the secrets behind the pyramids as you help Sammy determine the correct dates of major historical dates. Fun School with Sammy Spy will teach your child dozens of new skills! Math. Fractions. Decimals. Percents. Sequencing. And more! Historical events. Geographical locations. Spelling. Exchange rates. Timetables. | ||
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| Fun School Learning Adventures With Teddy Bear | Europress Software / Davidson & Associates, Inc. | [top] | |
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Give your child a head start! Kids love variety. That's what makes Fun School products so unique. Each program contains six different multilevel learning adventures, designed to capture the imagination of every child and make learning fun. Colorful graphics, delightful animations and clever sound effects add to the excitement and keep kids coming back for more! Join Teddy Bear in these six multilevel learning adventures! Teddy Paint. This fun-filled environment allows children to create their very own pictures using dozens of delightful shapes and objects. Teddy's House. Painting Teddy's house is a blast! Children will learn all about colors as they identify and paint three different parts of Teddy's house. Addition. Children learn basic number facts as they help Teddy and his classmates count objects and learn simple addition. Teddy's blocks. Now it's time to help Teddy and his friends guess which book Daddy Ted is reading. By finding the correct book, children will develop simple counting and sequencing skills. Fun Train. Join Teddy for a ride on the Fun Train. This delightful activity introduces children to simple vocabulary by teaching them to match pictures to words and words to pictures. Karaoke. Check out Teddy D's awesome music machine! Children will have hours of fun as they sing along to well-known nursery rhymes and build early reading skills. Fun School with Teddy Bear will teach your child dozens of new skills! English. Pre-reading. Picture/word associations. Vocabulary development. Sequencing. Math. Counting. Simple addition. Estimation. And more! Creative thinking. Shape/color recognition. Visual discrimination. Computer skills. Problem solving. | ||
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| G.O.R.G. | Microforum | [top] | |
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This "Out of this World" CD-ROM will keep you playing for hours. Experience the adventure of a lifetime and venture into the dark, threatening planets of the G.O.R.G. galaxy. Enjoy the latest in computer animation, graphics and sound with this intergalactic platform adventure game. Includes over 50 megabytes of sounds, incredible graphics and over 35 planets to explore. | ||
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| God of Thunder | Adept Software / Software Creations | [top] | |
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The year is 927 A.D. (as mortals reckon time) and the Almighty ODIN has summoned you, his faithful and heroic son, to The Great Hall of Asgard. Armed with only your enchanted hammer and considerable wits, you must journey to Midgard and destroy Jormangund! God of Thunder was written by Ron Davis. It was never given much of a chance in the shareware market due to lack of funding, so this great game remains very rare. Its unique combination of strategy and arcade action on the PC make it a classic favorite. It has strong elements of puzzle-solving. Thor explores Midgard, fighting enemies in action-based combat, using his hammer or lightning attacks. Many hazards are there to make the hero's life difficult, and the player must solve puzzles to protect Thor and advance the story. The puzzles range from simple exercises in re-arranging objects to more complex examples that occupy the entire screen. Most of the game is viewed from a top-down perspective, though there are platform sequences as well. The creator released the game as freeware in 2000. | ||
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| Guinness Multimedia Disc of Records, The | Grolier Electronic Publishing / Guinness Publishing | [top] | |
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Grolier gives "The 1995 Guinness Multimedia Disc of Records" a lively new interface to help users find answers about extremes in just about every walk or run of life. More than 200 big new pictures accompany 15,000 record entries and fill the screen with bright and colorful immortalizations of major unsurpassed moments. Videos include new audio tracks to enhance selected movies adding more narration and music. The roster of videos is expanded to include a mobile hotel, a record-breaking assortment of jack-o-lanterns, and the longest fingernails in recorded history. Another added feature, "About Guinness," is a delightful multimedia essay that integrates animation, pictures, audio and video. Here, users can take an in-depth look some Guinness Records based on interviews with some unusual, offbeat and eccentric record breakers. For the deep-trivia diver, "The 1995 Guinness Multimedia Disc of Records" provokes in-depth record-browsing with its "Guess What?" game. This feature poses a question, provides a short and provocative answer, and invites the user to explore the disc further to locate more information on the topic. It is serendipitous searching at its best. | ||
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| Hard Day's Night, A | The Voyager Company | [top] | |
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One of the earliest attempts to convert a fully playable movie to home computer, the Voyager Company's CD-ROM release of the 1964 movie A Hard Day's Night featuring the Beatles. All 90 minutes of the original movie can be watched complete and uncut with the option to skip to certain scenes and the film's many musical moments. The original script accompanies the movie and scrolls through pages as the movie plays. Extrras included deleted scenes, a commentary track, an essay, trailers, clips from director Richard Lester's early work and profiles of the band, cast and crew. The product predates DVDs by years and though the film's quality was brought down greatly to fit onto CD-ROMs, the title is a milestone in software innovation made possible by the late, great Voyager Company. It's also sure to also delight Beatles fans too. | ||
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| Isaac Asimov's The Ultimate Robot | Byron Preiss Multimedia / Microsoft | [top] | |
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This award-winning CD-ROM is based on the robot stories of Isaac Asimov, and is an expert compilation of text, graphics, audio and video created and constructed by Judson Rosebush Company entirely in-house. The player is instantly immersed in Asimov’s fascinating world of robotics, where one can watch feature film clips, explore hundreds of color photographs, study animations of robot mechanics, read both fact and fiction, and ultimately build a customized robot of one’s own using the robot toolkit by Star Wars production designer Ralph McQuarrie. More than 600 million variations are possible, with the option to animate, save, and print your custom robot designs. | ||
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| Kid's Zoo: A Baby Animal Adventure | Knowledge Adventure, Inc. | [top] | |
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A baby animal adventure for animal lovers ages 3 to 12. Learn about nature from the cutest creatures on the planet. Click on someone your own size. What better way to introduce young children to early science than through young animals just their size? Children meet and play with, talk to and learn about all kinds of baby animals. From the delicate butterfly to the humongous hippopotamus. What children learn: baby animal names, animal sounds, initial letter sounds, lifespans and speeds, footprints and sizes, how animals are born. Animals from A to Z. Click to look up your favorite animal or play the Photo Safari game and see if you can make your way from alligator to zebra. How big? How fast? How old? How big will the zebra grow? How long will she live? These are just some of the questions children can answer by clicking sliders or reading notes on-screen. Plus, they can click on icons or footprints to learn even more. Read a book. In a delightful 20-page electronic book, children can ponder the age-old biology question: "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" Whose footprint? Click on a footprint to find out whose it is. Guessing games. Young children love guessing games- especially ones about animals. By examining extreme close-ups of textures and animal parts, children guess to whom they belong in a game called "Who am I?" Other guessing games include an animal sound game, a location game and a name game. Watch a movie. In the baby animal movie theater, children get a glimpse of animal babies in their natural environments. They'll see a butterfly coming out of it's cocoon, a lioness grooming her young, and bear cubs being, well, bear cubs. | ||
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| Last Chance to See | Voyager Company, The | [top] | |
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Based on the 1989 BBC radio documentary series and its accompanying book by Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine, Last Chance to See by the Voyager Company is an entertaining interactive examination about endangered animals. Adams and Carwardine traveled to various locations in the hope of encountering species on the brink of extinction. The book, radio documentary and this software title are the result of their travels which is illuminating to say the least. This software title featurins 800 still photographs, Douglas Adams providing a reading of the nearly complete book, Carwardine reading fact files on the species they searched like side bars, extracts from the BBC Radio 4 series and menus for creating custom collections of data and images | ||
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| Lemmings: The Official Companion | Psygnosis / Prima | [top] | |
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The Prima Lemmings Official Companion by by Mark Tsai & A.J. Aranyosi included a bonus disk with a demo version of Lemmings with 16 exclusive levels. It's a guide book detailing the solutions to all 120 levels in the game Lemmings, along with solutions to the demo levels that come on a disk included with the book. The disk contains 16 exclusive levels, split over four difficulties. | ||
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| Mad Dog McCree | American Laser Games, Inc. / IBM | [top] | |
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Mag Dog McCree and his gang have kidnapped the Mayor and his daughter, and its up to you to rescue them. You must blast through bars and bank robberies to take the gang out and save everything you regard as good and true. Where the game differed from other Operation Wolf-influenced shoot 'em ups was in the use of live video, with real people appearing on the screen before you shoot them down. You have unlimited continues with which to reach the end, so the actors will have their screen deaths seen by as many people as they would had they starred in a film. This is the first live-action laserdisc video game released by American Laser Games. It originally appeared as an arcade shooting game in 1990 and gained a lot of attention for its real-video style, bearing similarities to recent Hollywood westerns. It is also arguably the shortest release by the company, as well as the simplest, with mostly static action and little music. The game was re-released by Digital Leisure in 2001 to run on Windows. | ||
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| Mathology | VeeneTronics, Lawrence Productions Inc. / Davidson & Associates | [top] | |
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This is an exciting arcade-action math adventure where you flip, jump, duck, move, and shoot your way to victory. But beware of the dangers that abound. Only the warrior will defeat Apathy and return triumphant to Mt. Olympus and Zeus' Chamber. Become part of a Greek legend, learn the "Numbers of Light," and save Greecia forever. | ||
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| Mega Movie Guide | Infobusiness | [top] | |
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If you go to movies, rent or buy videos you need this CD-ROM. Insuring that one always picks a good movie to watch is not always a simple task, until now. This multimedia CD-ROM provides you with the golden key for unlocking the treasure chest of cinematic wealth. With this CD-ROM you can guarantee that your valuable viewing time is matched perfectly with your viewing interests.Numerous trailers/film clips provide you with added direction in your movie selection. Powerful, new interface makes retrieving the desired movie review fun and easy. Benefits and features of Mega Movie Guide Versions 3.0. Sleek, new, easy-to-use interface. The multimedia capabilities have been greatly enhanced by adding trailers/film clips from 13 recent movies- including award-winning movies such as Schindler's List, In The Name of the Father, The Flintstones, The Little Rascals, and more. These new additions make the generous helping of film clips (nearly 2 hours) even more impressive. The quality of the film clips has been improved by increasing their size on your computer screen and by enhancing their clarity. Contains over 42,000 distinct movie reviews, including reviews on the most recent movies as well as reviews on films dating back to the 1920's. Nearly 1,000 extensive in-depth movie reviews written by Rex Reed, one of the nation's most widely read film critics. Major Academy Award Winners and nominees since the Academy Award's inception 1927-28. A compilation of the greatest hits of the decade for every ten-year period since the 1920's based on a combination of popular ticket sales and critics' picks. Numerous new biographies and stills. Provides the user with a variety of ways to search for a particular movie: i.e. actor, director, genre, Academy Awards, quality rating, MPAA expanded rating, black and white or color designation, availability on video, etc. Add personal notes to any section of the CD-ROM. Utilize ListBuilder to print out a list of your favorite movie selections for guidance at the video store. Your comprehensive guide to the movies. Treat yourself to the best movies have to offer: Academy Award winners, greatest hits of the decade, over 1,000 four-star films, Mega Movie Guide will show you how. | ||
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| Mega Rock Rap n Roll: Jam Like A Pro | Medior Inc / Paramount Interactive | [top] | |
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Quite possibly the snazziest music software on the market, this lets you mix and record your own party tunes using hundreds of prerecorded instrumental and vocal samples. An extension of the popular Rock Rap ‘N Roll released earlier, the game lets players recombine studio-produced music clips to create songs in multiple genres, including rap, jazz, blues, and reggae. Hip-hop, especially in the 1990s, mixes jazz and blues elements, and the game’s rap interface allows users to create a track with these musical sounds while scratching the track or adding a hip snare. | ||
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| Microsoft Art Gallery | Microsoft | [top] | |
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Microsoft Art Gallery takes you on an interactive tour of London's National Gallery. More than 2,000 works of art, each displayed in 640x480 resolution, are featured by such artists as Leonardo da Vinci, Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet, and Rembrandt van Rijn. Paintings are indexed by pictorial type, subject, locale, and era, and the program offers a full glossary of terms and names. The presentation is divided into five parts: Artist's Lives, Historical Atlas, Picture Types, General Reference, and Guided Tours. Narrated tours focus on composition and perspective, making paintings, paintings as objects, and a look beneath the varnish. | ||
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| Microsoft Dinosaurs | Microsoft Press | [top] | |
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Learn more about dinosaurs with this multimedia CD-ROM from Microsoft. More than 1,000 color illustrations are included, along with summaries of each species and factoids. Dinosaur expert Don Lessem narrates multiple guided tours, and video clips are available from the PBS television series, The Dinosaurs. Information can be found by searching through an index, or by clicking on the following buttons: Atlas, Timeline, and Dinosaur Families. Print out your own dinosaur fact cards to review, or cut and paste the disc's images into your documents. | ||
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| Microsoft Encarta | Microsoft Corporation / Microsoft Home | [top] | |
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This is a digital multimedia encyclopedia published by Microsoft Corporation released in multiple editions from 1993 to 2009. As of 2008, the complete English version, Encarta Premium, consisted of more than 62,000 articles, numerous photos and illustrations, music clips, videos, interactive contents, timelines, maps and atlas, and homework tools, and was available on the World Wide Web by yearly subscription or by purchase on DVD or multiple CDs. Many articles could also be viewed online free of charge, a service supported by advertisements. Microsoft published similar encyclopedias under the Encarta trademark in various languages, including German, French, Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese and Japanese. Mic Its articles are integrated with multimedia content and may have a collection of links to websites selected by its editors. Encarta's articles in general are less lengthy and more summarized than the printed version of Encyclopaedia Britannica or the online Wikipedia. The popularity and scope of the latter, ironically, was one of the reasons Microsoft discontinued making Encarta. Like most multimedia encyclopedias, Encarta's articles tend to provide an overview of the subject rather than an exhaustive coverage and can only be viewed one at a time. Due to increasing size of the editions, which later came to include extras such as an extensive world atlas, Encartas came to be divided up into separate products. There was the main encyclopedia portion, the world atlas and, for a time, an Africana Edition focusing solely on African culture. In addtion to being a terrific reference guide, there are additional interactive activities. For adventure gamers specifically there is Mind Maze: a mix of a quiz and a maze game. It is sure to be a delight and is in all editions up until the 2008 Encarta which saw it removed. Despite no longer being made by Microsoft, who discontinued the line in the face of stiff competition from Wikipedia, the Encarta software series is still a terrific source of information and education. | ||
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| Microsoft Julia Child: Home Cooking with Master Chefs | Microsoft Home | [top] | |
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Follow Julia Child into the lively kitchens of 16 influential chefs for a "virtual apprenticeship" in the art of cooking. Here's the interactive way to gain culinary expertise and savor memorable meals at the same time. "The art of cooking is indeed a noble hobby," Julia remarks. And you'll agree, whether you're new to cooking or a practiced home chef. Here are 25 detailed video lessons, 100+ recipes, plus more than 250 inventive and timesaving tips to help you easily acquire the confidence and creativity of the true gourmet. Master unique salads, perfectly sauced pastas, exotic curries, irresistible desserts, and much more. Fill your home with the rich aromas of mouth-watering dishes. Discover more than 100 original recipes, each with a tantalizing photo. You can scale recipe ingredients from an intimate candlelit supper to a holiday feast for 12. More than 400 photographic references pop open to provide useful information on ingredients, cookware, and utensils. Automatic shopping lists are an added convenience. Just watching a practiced cook handle a knife is a learning experience. Enjoy "live" demonstrations with video clips from the Emmy Award-nominated TV series. The more one learns, the easier, faster, and more enjoyable cooking is. Watching the featured chefs in action, you'll learn secrets that take the mystery out of gourmet meals. Enjoy whole lessons from start to finish, or watch selected steps at your leisure. With every viewing, you'll discover new techniques to try in your own kitchen. | ||
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| Microsoft Multimedia Schubert: The Trout Quintet | The Voyager Company / Microsoft Home | [top] | |
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As part of the Microsoft multimedia series on great composers, Multimedia Schubert: The Trout Quintet offers a comprehensive excursion into the world of Franz Schubert's music and inspirations. Narrated by National Public Radio commentator and music critic Alan Rich, the program brings fresh insight into the original song that inspired The Trout Quintet, historical and social background information, and reproductions of artwork that capture the spirit of the era. As with other titles in the series, a matching quiz tests your knowledge of various themes found throughout the music, with animated sequences as the reward for correct answers. The "Pocket Audio Guide" lets you listen to composition Die Forelle at any point, while "Inside Schubert" provides background on the composer's life and times. Compositions are divided into selectable sections by movement, including exposition themes, development, and recapitulation. It features artwork, charts, mini-games and more | ||
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| Midnight Movie Madness | Medio Multimedia | [top] | |
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The Bonkers, the Brilliant, the Berserk. See it all in this collection of the 100 best drive-in movie classics on Earth... or any other planet. Hang out with Gilbert Gottfried and former National Lampoon editors, as you surf through memorable clips from the movies that sold more popcorn than Orville Redenbacher. Over 100 motion video clips put you in the driver's seat at a motor-in movie palace. It's where you run to the show, flipping through movie memorabilia from The Bob to 1 Million Years B.C. to King Kong Vs. Godzilla. What's your scene? Comedy? Horror? Sci-Fi? Whatever you like -this will deliver multiple megabytes of Robots, Rockets, Monsters, Madmen, Bazooms, Blood, Beasts, Pratfalls, Pathos, and people flying around in capes and tight pants. Big stars who've forgotten they were ever in these movies. Along with dozens of actors and actresses you'll recognize on sight. (And if you just can't remember their names, you can bet Gottfried will.) It's a double feature times fifty. Imagine going to a movie where Frankenstein lived in The House That Dripped Blood where he was Under Attack By The Crab Monsters on The Day of the Triffids. The Bride of the Monster would probably become one of the She Demons and put old Frank on a Missile to the Moon. Seriously now, where else are you going to find the Queen of Outer Space, Horrors of the Black Museum, and Attack of the Giant Leaches and 90 more all-time greats in one place? Nowhere but Midnight Movie Madness. Features: More than 100 full motion video clips; Nation TV's outrageous movie host Gilbert Gottfried; Knockout comedy by ex-National Lampoon editors; Brain-bashing quizzes and trivia with every clip; Sound bites and video that will blow you away; Hot color plus authentic black and white; Look up directors, stars, aliens or mad doctors - any which way. We don't care. It's easy and fun. So you think you know your movies? Get a clue. You're keeping company with the whacked out and massively manic Gilbert Gottfried. So Midnight Movie Madness will blitz you with comedy quizzes, and freaky facts. You'll be in danger of becoming a Moviemeister yourself. | ||
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| Millenium Auction | Eidolon / Electronic Arts | [top] | |
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Millenium Aucation places players into the role of a high stakes bidder at a futuristic Auction House, controlled by the World Body government. The game was developed by Eidolon and is set in the then future year of 2011. The game begins by choosing from one of seven predefined characters, each with their own personalities and motivations. Each game takes place over a single day and consists of twelve items for auction, which are pulled randomly from a pool of 135 in total. The player begins with 8.5 million UN dollars and the bidder with the highest net worth at the end of the day is declared the winner. The four bidders per game can be controlled by either computer AI or other players. Auctions play out in real time, with bidding tokens gained by browsing the gallery and answering questions correctly. There are three rounds of auctions consisting of four items apiece in each game, and they are triggered at the players command. Bidding wars have a strategic feel and the historical prizes include famous works of art, general items of value and satirical memorabilia such as Bill Clinton's Saxophone. Item descriptions can be both informative and subversive. No Caption Provided Between auctions the player uses a point and click interface to navigate the offbeat auction house. NPC's, including opponents, populate the world and help shape storylines through their dialogue and gossip. Television, radio and newspapers are frequently updated with creative stories that can affect the value of items up for bid. Investigation becomes necessary to outwit opponents and determine if works are undervalued, overvalued or possibly counterfeit. | ||
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| Mortal Kombat | Midway Manufacturing Company / Acclaim Entertainment Inc. | [top] | |
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Five hundred years ago, an ancient and well respected Shaolin fighting tournament, held every 50 years, was corrupted by an evil and elderly sorcerer by the name of Shang Tsung. Shang was accompanied by Prince Goro, a warrior of the Shokan race (a four-armed half-human / half-dragon). Knowing that if ten tournaments in a row were won by the Outworld champion, the Earth Realm would be conquered by evil and fall into darkness, Shang entered Goro in the tournament and had him defeat the great Kung Lao. Goro has been reigning supreme as the undefeated fighting champion for five hundred years now. As the last tournament required draws near, Raiden, Thunder God and protector of the Earth Realm, enacts a plan to tip the scales in the humans' favor, Seven fighters step into the arena on Shang Tsung's mysterious island: Shaolin warrior Liu Kang, Special Forces operative Sonya Blade, the mercenary thug Kano, fame-seeking actor Johnny Cage, the ice-wielding Lin Kuei warrior Sub-Zero and his undead adversary Scorpion, and Raiden himself. Mortal Kombat is a side-scrolling fighting game. Fighting is set as one-on-one combat, allowing each player to perform a variety of punches, kicks, and special moves in order to defeat their opponent. When the opponent faces their second round loss, the winner can perform a finishing move called a "Fatality" on the loser. The Fatality is a move unique to each fighter that graphically kills the loser in a blood-soaked finale. Mortal Kombat began its life as a 2-player arcade title in 1992. It is notable for its use of digitized actors to represent the game's fighters, as well as its use of copious amounts of blood during gameplay. | ||
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| Movie Select for Windows | Paramount Interactive | [top] | |
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The Intelligent Guide to Over 44,000 Videos - each entry only mentions the director and a few principal performers plus a perfunctory plot summary. One of the first discs by the multimedia arm of that Paramount movie studio, it focuses much more on helping you find a movie to rent for an evening's entertainment than it does on providing info for cinema buffs. To use the "recommendation feature" you start by telling the program the names of three movies that you like. The software is based upon exit interviews made of several thousand people leaving video stores around the U.S., and it will tell you the names of other movies favored by people who liked the same three titles you cited. Surveys were in depth and focused not only on specific titles but also on actors, directors and categories of films. The program then uses artificial intelligence techniques including fuzzy logic to tell you what other films you might like based on other people's experiences. It will produce up a list of suggestions for future viewing in one of 19 different subject areas (including 'adult' X rated entertainment). It also allows you to search by keywords to find various movies, but it has no photographs. And it includes filmclips of commercials for upcoming Paramount movies. | ||
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| Oceans Below | The Software Toolworks | [top] | |
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Your first dive will leave you breathless. Welcome to Oceans Below, the multimedia diving experience that plunges you into a virtual scuba environment, exploring some of the world’s most exotic undersea destinations. The Caribbean, California Coast, Red Sea, Hawaii, South Pacific, Australia, Sea of Cortez, and the Galapagos. There are seventeen dive sites in all, each containing original video footage and narration, plus color photographs. It’s the closest you’ll ever come to diving without getting wet. | ||
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| Pirates! Gold | MicroProse Software, Inc. / MicroProse Ltd. | [top] | |
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As with the original, this is a blend of strategy, action and adventure. It's a remake with minor improvements, a MIDI score, mouse support and better graphics for Windows 3.1, DOS. Pirates! Gold lets you play the role of a beginning buccaneer in the 17th century Spanish Main, in search of fame and fortune. Each town in this untamed raw region has different surprises and dangers. How you acquire stature is up to you; you can make your living through honest trade and the search for hidden treasure, or you can be a little more daring and attack and plunder ships. As you can choose a specific skill to stand out in, the game can vary each time. Sword fighting is played out in side-view action sequences. | ||
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| Rock and Bach Studio | Artech Digital Entertainments, Inc. / Binary Zoo Software, Inc. | [top] | |
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This is the third game in the educational Adventures with Edison series. The game focuses on famous composers of classical music. The plot revolves around a certain studio that produces musical video clips. Accompanied by Edison, the player takes part in whole life-cycle of such a production. First of all, the rock band consisting of 4 members (solo, bass, drums, and chord) is created. Song is selected from a list or composed based on riffs and chords after that. Based on the song, the video is produced in means of three aspects such as camera view, background, and special effects. Song and video contains 16 cycles, and it is the player's task to customize them. When the video clip is completed, it may be viewed in the studio's theater or sent to another game profile. There are four pre-defined video clips created by Edison himself. Before the video production takes place, numerous adjustments may be made as well as musical information may be gained. For example, it is possible to adjust the looks and sounds of each item in drum base, customize the looks of the scene for a band, adjust the sound f/x, etc. Guitar riffs with keys and chords may be examined and played. Musical instruments, their history and place in symphonic orchestra is provided. Musical pieces of eight famous composers may be performed with four different instruments. Each game profile has its own game session. The looks of Edison may be adjusted as well as game session progress is saved / loaded for each game profile. | ||
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| Rock Rap N' Roll | Medior Inc / Paramount Interactive, Tec Toy | [top] | |
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This is a music education game authored by Barry Schuler, Nick Tenbrock and Gary Levenberg. It allows the user to construct songs in various styles, using studio produced music clips. The program is divided into ten musical styles, or studios: Africa, Big Band, Blues, Latin, Rap, Reggae, Rock, Soul, Street Jazz, and Techno Pop. Each studio contains its own library of unique instruments, vocals, and sound effects. Africa, for example, features a host of native percussion instruments such as steel drums, the shofar horn, and the unmistakable Winky Wanger. In the Big Band studio, choose from a wide selection of scat vocals, baritone and alto saxophones, and various muted horns. Some sampled sounds are of questionable merit, like the barrage of nonsensical blurbs in Techno Pop and the use of automatic gunfire and police radios as rap instruments. Overall, however, the designers address the diverse musical needs of each style very well. Sound snippets are stored in Windows WAV format and recorded as monaural 8-bit, but they're sampled at a higher rate of 22050 Hz for maximum clarity. The basic structure and graphical interface are identical for all the studios. Each contains a bank of ten unique song loops--prerecorded background tracks of various length and instrumental depth. Use these to form the basis for your musical excursions. Simply drag and drop the tokens representing each song loop into the sequencer, called the Song-A-Lizer. As many as ten loops can be used at one time, in any order, and repeated as often as you like. Click on the Start button, and custom background tracks play as a single loop, with seamless transitions between sections.When you're ready to get into the groove, choose from one of five methods of musical interaction. At the center of the screen are two of the program's most dynamic components, called Mouse Kickers: the Vibe-A-Tron and Bop-O-Rama. Sounds are manipulated by holding the mouse button and scratching the surface at various speeds, as with the finger pads on some MIDI keyboards. Pull-down menus let you assign virtually any sound to each pad. Next to the Mouse Kickers is the Voc-A-Lizer, a push-button bank of eight sampled vocals guaranteed to enliven any song. | ||
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| Shadow President | Shadow Tor Studios / Iceberg Interactive | [top] | |
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This allows you to become the president of the USA, starting June 1, 1990, in the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Eastern European countries are getting independent, and Saddam Hussein is not the number 1 enemy of the US. The game is very well documented, every country is presented with very good data and you can get a pretty accurate state of geopolitics of 1990. Shadow President is a captivating game if you manage to get into it. Your tasks take place in many issues like resolving crisis, avoiding wars in conflict zones, sending aids (military, technology and social for example) and having a good approval rating by the US population. You have to put lots of efforts to make your strategies work. This can get quite frustrating, and that's the main weakness of the game: it's such a precise simulation it can get pretty annoying to play. A great game for geopolitics nerds. | ||
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| Software Toolworks U.S. Atlas, The | Software Toolworks | [top] | |
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"The Software Toolworks U.S. Atlas" is an electronic atlas of the United States. The products includes up-to-date, detailed reference and relief maps crafted by master cartographers, as well as selected regional city maps and county boundaries. Comprehensive national, state, county and city data can be viewed, compared and printed. Features include state anthems and flags, graphing capabilities, and data import and export options. | ||
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| Spiritual Warfare | Wisdom Tree, Inc. | [top] | |
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Spiritual Warfare is a Zelda-like overhead action game where you play as a soldier of God, fighting the forces of darkness in various parts of a modern city to find the armor of God, each one guarded by increasingly difficult demon bosses. When you are dire need, an angel may come down and help you, if you answer Bible questions correctly. The game will take through increasingly difficult levels of play, where in the end you will face off with Satan himself. It was included in Spiritual Warfare & Wisdom Tree Collection 2017 compilation running on DOSBox. | ||
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| Suburban Commando | Alternative Software Ltd. / New Line Productions | [top] | |
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This is a mix of space shooter, jump-and-run and beat-em-up. If you're American, the mention of the name Hulk Hogan will most likely make some tears sparkle in your eyes, while your reminisce about the good old days when the Hulkster single-handedly beat up all those jerks in the WWF. If you know Hogan only from his movies, you'll have a different reason for crying. One of the films featuring Hulk was called Suburban Commando (1991). It was turned into a game two years later, and they decided to create a wild mix of space shooter, platform jumping and - of course - beat-em-up action. Loosely following the storyline of the film, Hogan alias intergalactic hero Shep Ramsey travels through space, crash-lands on earth and beats up the bad guys. The first level is a R-Type-like horizontal space shooter; destroy formations of drones and collect weapon upgrades. After that, you'll enter three platform levels, in which you have to find nine items each. Avoid being shot and dispatch the enemies with kicks and jumps. After each mission, you’ll encounter the level boss, who you’re supposed to beat up in a Street Fighter clone. Apart from a comic-style likeness of Hulk Hogan as the main hero (with a huge head and tiny body - strange), the game has little reference to the movie. No other main characters appear. Fans of the film will especially mourn the complete absence of any mimics. If you’re curious for more information about the movie, check the trivia and links sections. | ||
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| Supersonic: The Multimedia Guide To Modern Military Aircraft | Interactive Publishing Corporation | [top] | |
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The multimedia guide to modern military aircraft. Take the controls and throttle up. Your flight is about to begin. Choose an F-16 Fighting Falcon and get ready to be airborne. View a comprehensive collection of both modern and historic aircraft. This is the most up-to-date atlas of modern military aircraft on one CD-ROM. With stunning graphics and a wealth of aircraft information you'll want to add this to your collection. Fasten your seatbelt and take Supersonic for a ride. A tremendous resource of modern military aircraft. It contains pictures, silhouettes, videos and narrations on over 100 aircraft. Also includes missiles and famous historic aircraft, cockpit simulations and games! Climb aboard the F-16 Fighting Falcon. You are surrounded by a complex array of dials and gauges. Follow your teacher's instructions carefully and take her up. But be careful. Even the slightest mistake could cause you to crash. You'll find a wealth of aircraft information here. Search by aircraft name, type of plane or other descriptive category. View variations of each plane and their silhouettes. Then zoom in for a closer look and watch a video of each plane in flight. 4 exciting aviation type games: Sliding puzzle picture game; Concentration style matching game; Action-packed bombing raid game; Aircraft identification game. | ||
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| Swiss Family Robinson, The: An Island Adventure | Multi Dimensional Communications, Inc. / New Media Schoolhouse | [top] | |
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Beautifully illustrated adapatation of Johann Wyss' classic tale. Complete with animations, full narration, and an on screen glossary of over 250 words. It's a CD-ROM program that tells the classic tale of the adventures of a 19th century family shipwrecked on an unknown island in the South Seas. Organized into twenty pages (screens) of illustrations and accompanying text, it includes music, sound effects, and animation. Users access the program by using the control panel located at the bottom of each page or by exploring the page with the cursor. The program's many built-in features supply contextual clues, thus assisting non-native speakers in their understanding of the passage. In addition, the sound-symbol correlation is reinforced since the text is both printed and spoken. The program's visual and audio creativity alone make it one that will perk the interest of almost any reading student. | ||
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| Syndicate | Bullfrog Productions, Ltd. / Electronic Arts, Inc. | [top] | |
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In the year 2096 the world is divided into many regions, each controlled by a mega-corporation known as a Syndicate. The gameplay is visually reminiscent of X-Com, with an angled top-down perspective, but it is real time rather than turn based. You have missions ranging from infiltrate and capture, to seek and destroy. In each of these you direct a team of four agents as they move through the world shooting at anything that gets in their way. You are a marketing director for one of these syndicates and you must set up a long-term business plan to dominate the world. To do this, not only will you need revenue and research, but you will also need cybernetically enhanced and highly armed "marketing agents." Starting from a small corner of Europe, you must take over the regions of the world one by one. Each region periodically contributes money to the controlling syndicate's coffers, so the more regions you control the more money your syndicate makes. Money can be used to upgrade your stock of agents with existent cybernetic upgrades and weapons or to research new upgrades and weapons. To capture a region you deploy up to four armed agents to complete mission objectives on an overhead view, 2D map. The objectives include assassinations and kidnappings among other things. If you successfully control your agents and complete the mission, you gain control of that territory. You arm agents with a variety of weapons to help them in their task. Pistols are the weakest weapons but are available immediately while more powerful weapons need to be researched before they can be purchased. Agents can be armed with force shields to protect them from weapon fire as well as with the Persuadetron, a mind control device that makes other characters in the game follow along faithfully. Civilians can be controlled immediately and a number of them must be under your power before cops and enemy agents can be controlled. Controlled enemy agents are added to your agent pool if you end a mission successfully.
See also: #Syndicate: American Revolt |
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| Syndicate: American Revolt | Bullfrog Productions, Ltd. / Electronic Arts, Inc. | [top] | |
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The American regions of your Syndicate have risen up in revolt. You must direct your squad of agents through a series of missions in order to re-conquer the American territories one by one. This is an add-on pack for the original Syndicate. Like its predecessor, it's a top down view, 2D-action strategy game where you control up to four cybernetically enhanced and armed agents. You lead them through a series of missions on the American continent in order to bring the territories back under syndicate control. Regions under syndicate control contribute money to the syndicate - money used to upgrade your agents with cybernetics and weapons. Your agents can be equipped with a number of weapons to make their job easier, including pistols, shotguns, mini-guns, lasers and sniper rifles. Agents can also equip force shields to protect against enemy agent firepower. Certain missions require you to equip one or more agents with the Persuadetron to brainwash and kidnap civilians. Your operatives must complete all mission objectives to end a mission successfully. A mission fails if all your agents are killed, a target your agents are protecting dies or an assassination target escapes, or, if you no longer have enough agents to complete the mission. | ||
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| TIME: Man of the Year | Compact Publishing | [top] | |
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This contains a database providing Time magazine cover stories from every Man of the year issue beginning from 1927's Charles Lindbergh to 1992's President Bill Clinton. It also features a portraits section that provides articles, videos, and photo essays on the eleven people most often profiled by Time during the 20th century. | ||
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| Troddlers | Atod Design KB / The Sales Curve Ltd. | [top] | |
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This is a puzzle game in the vein of Lemmings. The player takes control of an animal-like wizard who can create and remove blocks; these blocks are useful for both jumping onto and redirecting the path of the little Troddlers that you have to direct towards the exit. The tricky bit is that the Troddlers can climb walls and ceilings, following the edge of the world and the exit is often in the middle of the screen or with an obstacle in the way. | ||
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| Ultimate Frank Lloyd Wright: America's Architect, The | Byron Preiss Multimedia / Microsoft | [top] | |
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Experience Frank Lloyd Wright with a walk through three-dimensional simulations of three of his most famous buildings: the Robie House, the Ennis-Brown House and the Larkin Building, which was destroyed in 1950. Explore a richly-illustrated collection of more than 360 of Wright's most important works in architectural and decorative arts. Text from seven books allows you to research all aspects of Wright's life and work. Create your own architecture by designing with Wright styled blocks. A custom computer aided design system allows you to work with doors, windows and roofs from Wright's early "Prairies" and "Usonian" periods. Rotate, tilt and zoom in on your unique three-dimensional structure. Discover the events and influences that shaped Wright's life and work through and extraordinary chronology of more than 100 images linked to audio and video clips, vintage photographs and text. | ||
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| Ultraverse Freex | Malibu Comics Entertainment | [top] | |
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One year after launching their initially successful “Ultraverse” line of superhero comics, Malibu Comics decided to extend their newfound empire into new mediums. One of these was computers and onto this they launched a short lived attempt at adapting their comics into interactive form called CD-Romix. Three CD-ROMs in total were released adapting three series: Prime, Hardcase and Freex. The Freex CD adapted the very first issue of the Freex comic series that focused on a group of young teenage superheroes as they struggled with their powers and finding acceptance in a world frightened of people like them. It was given animation, music, sound effects and full voice over work to turn it from a normal comic into an interactive and more lively one. The CD also included a behind the scenes look at the making of the original comic it was based on. | ||
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| Ultraverse Hardcase | Malibu Comics Entertainment | [top] | |
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One year after launching their initially successful “Ultraverse” line of superhero comics, Malibu Comics decided to extend their newfound empire into new mediums. One of these was computers. For this platform they launched a short lived attempt at adapting their comics into interactive form in a line of CD-ROM titles called CD-Romix. Three CD-ROMs in total were released adapting three series: Prime, Hardcase and Freex. The Hardcase CD adapted the very first issue of the Hardcase comic series that followed actor turned superhero as he fights against a violent villain by the name of Head Knocker. It was given animation, music, sound effects and full voice over work to turn it from a normal comic into an interactive and more lively one. The CD also included a behind the scenes look at the making of the original comic it was based on. | ||
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| Ultraverse Prime | Malibu Comics Entertainment | [top] | |
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One year after launching their initially successful “Ultraverse” line of superhero comics, Malibu Comics decided to extend their newfound empire into new mediums. One of these was computers. For this platform they launched a short lived attempt at adapting their comics into interactive form in a line of CD-ROM titles called CD-Romix. Three CD-ROMs in total were released adapting three series: Prime, Hardcase and Freex. The Prime CD adapted the very first issue of the Prime comic series which involves the most popular of the Ultraverse superheroes, Prime, introduce himself in big ways. It was given animation, music, sound effects and full voice over work to turn it from a normal comic into an interactive and more lively one. The CD also included a behind the scenes look at the making of the original comic it was based on. | ||
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| Wild Science Arcade, The | Artech Digital Entertainments, Inc. / Binary Zoo Software, Inc. | [top] | |
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Kids learn about physics by maneuvering a ball using four variable settings: gravity, friction, ball material and initial force. Although it resembles visually the classic Marble Madness, the gameplay is easier, aimed at the younger gamer. The game is divided in 5 levels, each with several rooms. You progress by guiding the ball to the exit hole in each of this rooms. After you complete each level, you receive a warp code for the next one, thus requiring some degree of literacy from the child. | ||
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| Wrecked: A Psychedelic Adventure | K.K.O.S. / HealthWise | [top] | |
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Wrecked was released as shareware by a group called HealthWise, promising… and I’m quoting the Readme file directly here… “5 levels, 12 drugs and hours of Stoned action!!!!!!!” That’s 10ccs of something just for the exclamation marks. It encourages everyone to pass it on, so feel free to grab it. I’ve never seen a full version, or even finished the one-level demo, but believe me, that’s enough of a toke on the crap pipe for anyone. It’s one of the worst platformers you’ll ever encounter, made unforgettable by its central gimmick – if you want to win the game, you have to get high. Yes. Really. The gameworld is sprinkled with drugs from caffeine to crack, and they’re your power-ups. Some simply mess up the screen. Others let you shrink down to get through small gaps. Others just make you look cool in front of your peers, whatever The Man says, yo. You may be wondering what lesson you’re meant to take from this, other than “Taking drugs gives you handy superpowers that help solve problems in your life”. If you play it, you’ll likely be just as confused about where the hell a game that lists Timothy Leary and Jimmy Hendrix in its High Score table gets off even trying to teach lessons. Well, don’t worry. When it remembers, Wrecked has an Important Message For The Young. | ||
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| Arthur's Teacher Trouble | Living Books / Broderbund, The Learning Company | [top] | |
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Arthur begins a new school year in his third grade class with his new teacher Mr. Ratburn. As all of the kids in Arthur's class will tell you, Mr. Ratburn is not exactly every child's dream of having him for a teacher. He is known to the students as the "RAT" because all of the students are afraid of him. Mr. Ratburn will be giving the children a spelling test the first week they are in school! Not only is it a new school year, they are preparing for the spellathon and will be selecting a classmate to represent the class in the spellathon with many different schools. This means lots of work for the student that is selected. Arthur is amazed when he is chosen to be in the school spellathon. His classmates cheer him on of perhaps winning the spellathon. Arthur shares his homework woes with his family. They help him study by asking him to spell words for them. Arthur studies very hard for the spelling test. One of the words they are asked to spell will be an eleven letter word. Even though Prunella believed she would win, Arthur was determined to do his best. Arthur spells P-R-E-P-A-R-A-T-I-O-N and wins the Spellathon. Animated story books let elementary and beginning level children create an interactive world where they learn, listen and explore. By clicking on any part of the screen, phrases and sounds are triggered for each page of the story. The interactive stories allow for self-paced work and employ a dynamic whole- language approach to reading and word recognition. Based on the book by best-selling author Marc Brown, children practice spelling and reading while learning new vocabulary words. Kids practice along with Arthur as he studies for his school's spelling bee. Enhance your child's education while they have fun playing with Arthur. Let Me Play Mode: You'll be able to start exploring each page after its introduction. Selecting Read To Me to has the story read to you (passive mode). | ||
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| Awesome Adventures of Victor Vector and Yondo: The Hypnotic Harp | Sanctuary Woods, Inc. | [top] | |
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The third one of a series of fully interactive comic book adventures for kids where you play as the heroic Victor Vector and his digital Saint-Bernard dog Yondo. They are field agents of The Museum of Fantastic Phenomena, and travel through time collecting unique items. In the games, the arch-villain Ram Axis, a virus spawned in the great crash of 2093, will often pop up in disguise in order to prevent their efforts. Players explore a virtual environment by clicking on the onscreen knobs and directional controls to move through the game. They click on images to talk to people, collect treasure and other items that may boost or diminish their energy level or are needed to solve puzzles. Information can also be retrieved from Yondo's data bank collar. In this episode, Victor Vector and his digital dog Yondo's mission is to ancient Rome in the year 64 A.D. You will battle the gladiator Spiculus and savage lions, as well as compete in a chariot race. The educational content in this game includes the society of ancient Rome and the history of Latin and Roman numerals. | ||
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| Awesome Adventures of Victor Vector and Yondo: The Last Dinosaur Egg | Sanctuary Woods, Inc. | [top] | |
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One of a series of fully interactive comic book adventures for kids where you play as the heroic Victor Vector and his digital Saint-Bernard dog Yondo. They are field agents of The Museum of Fantastic Phenomena, and travel through time collecting unique items. In the games, the arch-villain Ram Axis, a virus spawned in the great crash of 2093, will often pop up in disguise in order to prevent their efforts. Players explore a virtual environment by clicking on the onscreen knobs and directional controls to move through the game. They click on images to talk to people, collect treasure and other items that may boost or diminish their energy level or are needed to solve puzzles. Information can also be retrieved from Yondo's data bank collar. In this episode, your mission is to retrieve the last dinosaur egg in order to save the dinosaurs from extinction. You will go to the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous eras, where you'll see gigantic prehistoric creatures fighting each other while volcanoes erupt around them. In the journey you will also learn interesting information on prehistoric times and animal life. Another time traveler you will meet, named Delta Mode, can also be helpful in your search for the egg. | ||
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| Backyard, The | Brøderbund Software, Inc. | [top] | |
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This is an educational game for toddlers that is set in a child's backyard. Everything within the backyard can be clicked on, resulting in an activity, or at least an amusing animation. The Backyard is the third in a trilogy of games for toddlers that include The Playroom, and The Treehouse. Children are presented with activities that encourage development in associating facial expressions with the words that describe them, map reading and making, animal identification, and of course, numbers and letters. | ||
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| Bailey's Book House | Theatrix Interactive, Inc. / Edmark Corporation | [top] | |
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Kids, ages 3-7, develop a love for reading when they play with Bailey in the Book House. Through 7 fun filled activities that feel like play children develop literacy skills. Bailey and his friends inspire early readers to learn letters, words and word families, rhyming, prepositions, adjectives and storytelling. Learning the alphabet is great fun with the letter machine. Kids click on a letter or press a letter on the keyboard to see dinosaurs dance, rhinos roller skate and more. Each screen shows the letter both uppercase and lowercase with words and a crazy picture that emphasizes that letter. The letter is spoken along with the words. Kids will go wild over Goats Gobbling Gumdrops and Monkeys Making Music. Kids create their own stories and watch Bailey and his friends as they act out the stories. Children can also print the stories and fold them into books. Rhyming is silly and really fun when kids make Mother Goose rhymes with a twist. Children choose pictures to complete crazy rhymes that will have them laughing and learning. The Three-Letter Carnival is a unique phonics activity that helps kids learn to sound out three letter words. Children begin by choosing pictures and listening to the spelling of the word. The word is also sounded out. When players are ready they can choose the Rhyming Coaster or play with beginning letter sounds. This crazy coaster carries pictures of things that rhyme or begin with the same letter. Words are repeated again and again as the coaster takes off for a ride. Edmo the Clown and Houdini the dog are playing at the dog house and teaching kids all about prepositions. Edmo and Houdini will go in, out over, under, on and behind the doghouse. Children can also make a funny friend while they explore adjectives and make fun greeting cards to print. Activities have two modes, Explore and Discover and Question and Answer. Kids learn while exploring freely in the first mode and can then play fun games in the second mode to test their knowledge. Kids will love reading and playing with Bailey and his friends in Bailey's Book House. | ||
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| Barbie Super Model | Bonsai Entertainment Inc., Tahoe Software Productions / Hi-Tech Expressions Inc. | [top] | |
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Help Barbie become a great fashion model. This is an arcade game with many different activities to participate in. In each level, Barbie starts by going left to right with forced scrolling. She has a default speed and can speed up as well. She must avoid moving obstacles by moving up and down and controlling her speed. If she hits one, she loses a chance and it's game over if she runs out of chances. She must pick up items which grant point bonuses and extra chances. There is also a camera item to pick up which brings you to a magazine cover shoot. You are shown a cover with barbie wearing an outfit which is themed to the level. You must then go to her dressing room and dress her in a matching outfit. You are also given separate control of the colors of three different components and must match these. You are awarded points for each correct match. When you reach the right side of the level, you are given a runway practice. This consists of four positions on the runway floor labeled to tell you which button you must press at each one. Barbie then goes back through the level right-to-left. On the return trip, there is a handbag to pick up. This brings you to another magazine cover. You then go to a makeup mirror where you must match Barbie's hairstyle, earrings, eyeshadow and lip and nail color to the cover. Again, you are awarded points for each item which you get correct. When you reach the left side of the level, you must then do Barbie's runway walk that you were given earlier. You are awarded points for each station at which you perform the correct move. Barbie then continues to the next level. There are a total of four: Barbie driving down the street, skating on the beach, walking through a ski resort and walking through the park. | ||
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| Barney Bear Goes to Space | Free Spirit Software Inc. | [top] | |
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This is an educational game for children aged three to eight. It consists of two parts: the first one is a story book where Barney Bear visits Kennedy Space Center and accidentally ends up at a shuttle as it launches to space. The story is told through pictures with digitized narration and the player's interaction is limited to clicking to move to the next picture. The second part takes place at the control panel of the shuttle and consists of the following five activities: The Solar System shows an image where the player can click on various planets. A more detailed picture will then be shown along with a spoken description of the planet; Did You Know? - When clicking on this activity a bit of information regarding space is displayed and spoken; Short History of Space Travel is a short history lesson where the player listens to the voice while looking at the pictures shown; Follow-The-Pattern Game is a variant of the electronic game Simon where four squares light up in a random order and the player has to repeat the sequence; My Color Book is a painting program where the player fills in the color on a number of different pictures. It's also possible to draw freely with a brush or a pen. | ||
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| Barney Bear Goes to the Farm | Free Spirit Software Inc. | [top] | |
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The Barney Bear series are excellent edutainment titles aimed at teaching the basics of various subjects to toddlers aged 1 to 4 years old. Aside from being some of the finest titles ever made for this (some would say hard to please) target group, the games are notable for using SBTalker, Creative Labs' proprietary text-to-speech program that shipped with early versions of Sound Blaster card. The narrator in all Barney Bear games therefore sounds exactly like that mechanical, HAL-style voice of Dr. Sbaitso, a program shipped with SBTalker to showcase its capabilities. Barney Bear must wake up early to help with farm chores such as milking the cow and feeding the chicks. This short interactive story of a day on the farm leads to an evening in the farm house, complete with a warm fire and plenty of time to hear some stories and play some games. This includes ten short "I Can Read" stories, educational stories called "The Seed" and "Healthy Bears," a "What Belongs?" game, a mix-up-the parts scarecrow and a complete painting program with a dozen fill-in-the-color pictures. Each Barney Bear title focuses on one subject, and features Barney, a cute Teddy bear, as the player's companion and star in the stories. Every Barney Bear game offers two modes of play: story, and game. In story mode, a story involving Barney and the topic will be shown in attractive scenes, all fully narrated. Kids can interact with various "hotspots" on the scene before flipping to the next page. In game mode, all the activities are laid out and presented in one place, where kids can easily jump from one to the next. What makes Barney Bear games special is not only the excellent presentation that will capture kids' attention, but the near-perfect balance between game and information in each title. In Barney Goes to Farm, for example, kids will watch an animated story of how a seed grows into a tree, asked by the game to count the number of apples in a scene, and learn how to milk a cow. The game sets a fine balance between honing kids' basic skills, letting them learn interesting knowledge, and offering them fun activities to do. In short, these are some of the best games for toddlers ever designed, although they were much less known than titles from big companies. And kids will probably find the inhuman SBTalker voice even somewhat amusing. | ||
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| Berenstain Bears, The: Learning at Home, Volume One | Compton's New Media | [top] | |
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Educational title, for ages 2 to 7, based on the children's franchise The Berenstain Bears. The game plays pretty much like an adventure game, with hotspots in the scenario to click on, and get interesting facts and often funny rewards. As the title states, the child can learn about many facts by walking around the house and exploring different rooms, where you can also start learning activities and animated sequences. The various sequences that the game features teach children to tell the time, emotions, bathroom safety, tooth brushing techniques, basic hygiene, among other things. The game has cartoon-like graphics and animations, digitized voices and also a soundtrack from the famous Fat Man. | ||
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| Berenstain Bears, The: Learning at Home, Volume Two | Compton's New Media | [top] | |
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These favorite bears are back in a fully interactive journey through their tree house. Here, kids aged 2 through 7 can learn life lessons in home safety, manners, and skills such as reading and number recognition. They may need help navigating through the colorful animations and games, through; from becoming frustrated. Sister Bear and Professor Actual Factual guide us through the living room, den and kitchen of the big tree house down a sunny dirt road deep in Bear Country, with lots of rhyming dialogue, simple early 90s computer game animation, and music by George “The Fat Man” Sanger. | ||
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| Code: Europe | Synergistic Software Inc. / Compu-Teach | [top] | |
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Interactive education through the eyes of secret agent. You are the spy, who directed to one of the European countries to find out secret case. Each case is different and to solve the case you have to composite a puzzle items, which are given to you for the correct answers. Informers from different cities tell you something specific about country and then you need to answer a corresponding question correctly. If your answer is correct then you gain another clue and maybe puzzle item. After completing a puzzle you are tested by your boss. If you are successful then your rank is raised. | ||
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| Dandy Dinosaurs | Better Homes and Gardens / Multicom | [top] | |
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A Max The Dragon CD storybook. This has eleven easy-to-make craft projects for kids ages 3 to 9. Featuring video instructions that allow your child to complete projects in a single session. Spark your child's imagination, with games, an interactive narrated story, and plenty of engaging projects for children, each approved by Better Homes & Gardens, the family experts. Entertaining games teach important counting and observation skills. Meet the "Willow Tree Pals," Lovable characters sure to become your child's favorites. Join Max the Dragon and his friends as they throw a surprise party on Dandy Dragon Day, a day when dragons remember that everyone is special. "Read to Me" or "Let Me Play" feature lets your child decide how to enjoy the story. | ||
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| Disney's Aladdin Print Kit | Disney Interactive Studios | [top] | |
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From a faraway and exotic land comes the tale of a clever streetwise youth, Aladdin, and his quest for a better life. Destinies clash when Aladdin meets a flamboyant genie, an evil sorcerer, and the Sultan's beautiful daughter, Jasmine. Now you can recreate the non-stop adventure found in the animated feature film, Disney's Aladdin. Hours of fun and creativity for the entire family. Choose a favorite character or scene, add a personalized message and then print out your specially-made banner, poster, greeting card- and much more. Getting started is fast with an easy-to-use interface; works great with the keyboard or mouse. Nine expressive typefaces in a variety of sizes makes your message special. Editing text is easy with cut, copy, paste and delete commands. Lots of items to create, with many extra ideas in the manual. Frame your creation with an exotic border- over 20 in all. Launchable from Microsoft Windows 3.0 and 3.1 for added convenience. Pick your favorite character or place- over forty colorful images to choose from. Supports a wide range of popular color and black and white printers. Endless possibilities. Greeting cards, Banners, Place Mats, Letterhead, Character Cutouts, Posters, Calendars, and Invitations. | ||
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| Dr. T's Sing-A-Long Kid's Classics | Aztech New Media Corp. / Kidsoft Select | [top] | |
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Dr.T's Sing-A-Long is the award-winning series that encourages kids to sing and enjoy music. Arrangements are designed just for kids and are easy to learn and perform. Sing along as cartoon characters perform to classic children's tunes. "Doc" is your guide to the exciting and educational world of music, complete with scrolling sheet music and lyrics. Chosen "Music Education Product of the Year," Dr.T's Sing-A-Long features lively animations, CD music, scrolling lyrics, notes, and guitar chord grids. Prints full sheet music for all songs with lyrics and notes. Little Kids Mode lets young children choose any song by its picture. Turn vocals on or off or change notes to guitar chord grids. Each title comes with its own Songbook. Two different song collections are currently available. Kids' Classics includes 25 favorite children's songs: Baa Baa Black Sheep, Down By The Station, Frere Jacques, Hickory Dickory Dock, Humpty Dumpty, Itsy Bitsy Spider, I've Been Working On The Railroad, London Bridge Is Falling Down, Mary Had A Little Lamb, My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean, Oh My Darling Clementine, Oh Susanna, Oh Where Has My Little Dog Gone, Old MacDonald, Polly Wolly Doodle, Pop Goes The Weasel, Red River Valley, Row Row Row Your Boat, She'll Be Comin' 'Round The Mountain, Skip To My Lou, Farmer In The Dell, This Old Man, Three Blind Mice, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Yankee Doodle. | ||
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| Eagle Eye Mysteries | Stormfront Studios / EA*Kids | [top] | |
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Eagle Eye Mysteries is an educational game which incorporates some unique gameplay ideas not seen in many other games. A bit like Law and Order for kids, the game has over 50 different mysteries to solve, ranging from missing items to dug up skeletons to mysterious sea monster sightings to sculpture forgeries. With the help of Jake and Jennifer Eagle, you must interrogate suspects, gather information, and then decide on the culprit. Though intended to help improve reading comprehension and problem solving skills, Eagle Eye Mysteries can be a challenge for adults as well. | ||
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| EcoQuest 2: Secret of the Lost Rainforest | Sierra On-Line, Inc. | [top] | |
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In the second installment in this Sierra ecological educational adventure series, Adam explores the tropical rainforest in search of a cure of a disease afflicting the local natives, and a way to save the rainforest from destruction. After having seperated from his father, Adam must venture into the rainforest, discover the secret of the mysterious Forest Heart and find the lost City of Gold in his pursuit of a remedy for the Grove People. One of the game's innovations was the "Ecorder" display: a tricorder-like device Adam uses to learn about things he finds during his journey. | ||
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| Fatty Bear's Birthday Surprise | Humongous Entertainment | [top] | |
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Tomorrow is Kayla's birthday, and her favorite teddy bear, Fatty Bear has decided to help make it really extra-special. He's going to bake her a super-special birthday cake. But first, he needs to find the ingredients he needs to make the cake. Also, Gretchen a dutch-looking doll, is going to take care of the decorations. Fatty Bear will have to wander the house, looking for the items he needs to bake the cake. Along the way, Kayla's present, a puppy, gets loose and wreaks havoc. Fatty Bear has to find the letters the puppy took and get her back into her box. Several areas in the house are blocked until players can find the right ways to open them. This is an adventure game designed for children aged 3-8 that uses an enhanced version of the SCUMM engine originally developed for Maniac Mansion by Ron Gilbert who is Project Leader, Producer, Co-Designer and one of the interpreter programmers for this title. | ||
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| Fatty Bear's Fun Pack | Humongous Entertainment, Inc. | [top] | |
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You play against Fatty Bear in either Reversi (a classic game of strategy and logic), Lines & Boxes ( a childhood classic involving a grid of dots and the players draw lines to create boxes), and the card game Go Fish. Designed for kids 3-8, each of these games has 4 difficulty levels. In addition, you can play Tangrams, a centuries-old game where are shown a shape and given a number of smaller pieces and have to put them together to make the shape. The game gets harder as you progress. Finally, there is the Fatty Bear's Paint Set activity, which has 35 pictures to color. Although there are 5 basic colors in the palette, you can also mix up different colors - even different shades. | ||
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| Gus Goes to Cybertown | Modern Media Ventures | [top] | |
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Gus Goes to Cybertown by Modern Media Ventures is a puzzle-based adventure that involves finding the CyberBuds who are hiding in each of the four stores and the park. Gus, a very hip dog, must track down three CyberBuds who are hiding in each location, for a total of 15. Games are also hidden in each location, from spelling and number games to shape-recognition and pattern matching games. The park includes a timeline that shows Gus through time, from a Neanderthal to a futuristic spaceman. As the time changes, players can click on other items in the park to see them change as well. Gus Goes to Cybertown contains options to play in three languages: English, French, and German. The game is targeted at children ranging in age from three to seven. | ||
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| Just Grandma and Me, Mercer Meyer's Little Monster | Living Books / Brøderbund Software, Inc. | [top] | |
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This is a story book game, based on the book by Mercer Mayer. Experience the charm of the book in an entirely new way. It's the original interactive storybook - enhanced with hours of interactive fun and skill-building activities. In this endearing story, Little Critter and his Grandma spend a day at the beach where Little Critter rides a windblown umbrella, fends off a nasty crab, goes snorkeling and much more! Whether the story is new or familiar to them, kids will delight in exploring the freshly animated world of Little Critter and his lovable Grandma. Now in 4 Languages. Switch among English, French, German and Spanish on any screen, at any time. Click and drag the stickers to the right spot. You'll know when you've made a match. Play in the Sand. You've got all the tools you need to make sand castles at the beach. Just click, pour, and create. It's different every time. Skills developed include: word recognition, increased vocabulary, reading comprehension, computer literacy, foreign language skills, creativity skills, and shape recognition. In 1997, a 2.0 version was released which included upgraded graphics and Windows 95 support. | ||
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| Kid's Typing | Bright Star Technology / Sierra On-Line Inc. | [top] | |
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Typing lessons featuring an animated, talking character named Spooky who serves as the user's tutor. Creates new lessons based on the user's typing accuracy and speed. Includes puzzles, music, sound effects, and a parent's screen for monitoring a child's progress. You're about to meet a little ghost named Spooky who lives in the attic of a seemingly normal suburban family home. Spooky tries with all his energetic might to scare the family, but they don't seem to notice. Spooky is your personal typing coach. He'll show you where each letter is located on your keyboard and will tell you where to place your fingers. While you learn to type, you'll meet the family. You'll see Tammy on the phone most of the time and Timmy sitting on the dining room table. Dad is always watching TV and Mom is in the kitchen arranging flowers. You'll also meet Woody, the cat, who usually stays in the closet and peers out at the world. While you get to know the family, you'll learn to improve your typing skills, and the faster you type the more haunted the house becomes. You can go to the library from the attic at any time to practice your typing skills while reading classic stories like "Cinderella" and "Rumplestiltskin." To type some one-of-a-kind stories, venture into the encyclopedia set. Just click on the encyclopedia that has the letter you want to practice and a story will appear for you to type. Be careful, because these stories are real finger-twisters. No matter what game room you are in, Spooky will try hard to scare the family by turning on the blender, lifting the TV into thin air, and doing other unnatural things. The faster you can type, the scarier it becomes. | ||
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| Lavagna [It] | Fondazione Don Gnocchi | [top] | |
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One of a series of Italian educational games conceived for impaired kids, so there isn't much you can do to begin with. "Lavagna" allows you to create more or less narrow paths and then you have to try moving the mouse pointer thru the track until the end without touching the edges. It was developed by Don Gnocchi's juvenile foundation. | ||
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| Legends of Oz, The | Multicom Publishing | [top] | |
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Introducing the SillyOZbul of Oz! Join the lovable characters in the magic Land of Oz for their new adventures on CD-ROM. Enjoy the complete story of L. Frank Baum's classic The Wonderful Wizard of OZ, with faithful recreations of M. W. Denslow's original illustrations linked to interactive stories of all the characters you've come to know and love. This full-featured version also includes three entirely new adventures with SillyOZbul of Oz by Roger S. Baum, great-grandson of L. Frank Baum. With interactive animation, narration, a challenging game, and video from the classic movie "The Wizard of Oz," The Legends of Oz will delight the child in everyone. Relive the magic with nostalgic video from MGM's classic, songs, or play a SillyOZbul matching game. You'll watch in wonder as L. Frank Baum's complete original story and timeless film classic burst into life with The Legends of Oz, featuring three new adventures authored by Baum's grandson, Roger S. Baum. Marvel at the charm of W.W. Denslow's woodcut illustrations, then ask Dorothy or any of your favorites to tell you about their adventures. This time-honored story reinforces classical values in a way that children will enjoy and remember. | ||
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| Lenny's Music Toons | Paramount Interactive | [top] | |
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Controlling Lenny the penguin, you play several edutainment games with musical persuasion. Along with the games, many humorous things in his house can be activated. For instance, you can turn on the TV and you will see advertisements, ridiculous news reports and MPTV (a penguin-themed take-off of MTV). The graphics are very cartoony, fitting the target audience | ||
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| Literki - Cyferki [PL] | VIPS | [top] | |
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Literki - Cyferki is an educational game for kids. Moving a boy or a girl should be resolved verbal, mathematical or logical tasks by pushing objects. Verbal tasks are for example arranging letters according to a specific order, selecting the images starting with the same letter, completing the missing letters, matching shapes and colors, putting words. Math tasks rely on basic operations on numbers, such as addition, multiplication, stacking order of digits, matching digits to graphic symbols. Logic tasks are a simple intelligence tests, such as matching colors, shapes or objects. | ||
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| Mario's Early Years: Fun With Letters / Mario Teaches Words | Software Toolworks, Inc., The | [top] | |
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This is a collection of letter-related activities for kids ages 3 to 6 hosted by Mario and Co. Playing with either Mario or Princess Toadstool, you select from 10 different activity "worlds" each filled with different activities that range from letter recognition to sentence fill-in, letter-sound recognition, vowel recognition, etc. Each activity can be played in either Discovery mode, where you are free to do what you wish, or in Learning mode, where Luigi guides you through the activities. The game also includes a Parent's Information Center, which explains what each of the activities does and how to complement them. Options to configure the activities to each parent's wishes are also provided. | ||
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| Mario's Time Machine | Software Toolworks / Mindscape | [top] | |
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This is one of several educational games released in the early 90's featuring Mario, and has been compared to a similar educational game, Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego. It follows Mario as he travels through time, attempting to recover artifacts stolen by Bowser who is scheming to change the course of history. He and his Koopas are stealing items from world history and putting them in his castle. Determined to stop him, Mario has snuck into Bowser's castle so he can use the time machine to return the stolen objects to their rightful places. It uses a sidescrolling perspective and players must partake in a several mini-games to obtain the needed items. The Deluxe Edition released in 1996 was converted for play on Windows 95 and features full voice overs. It also includes a new library feature which allowed the player to do research on the historical places Mario ends up during the game. | ||
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| Math Rabbit Deluxe! | The Learning Company | [top] | |
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Math Rabbit uses a circus setting for four games that involve counting, number matching, and problem solving. Within each game, there are four math difficulty levels for the user (or parent or teacher) to choose from. If the user correctly answers all of the problems in a game set, he gets a ticket that he can apply toward the purchase of a toy at the prize center. “The set up of this title is excellent. The prize tickets are great incentive for kids to finish a game,” commented a parent reviewer. The games are fun for young children, and exercise a variety of beginning math skills. In the Calliope Counting Game, the user makes music on a pipe organ by counting out notes, either an original tune or a tune that the Rabbit leads. The Tightrope Show involves matching a number or equation that the rabbit holds up to a given number. In the Sea Lion Show, the user must uncover a number pattern by solving addition and subtraction problems. The Balloon Matching Game is a variation of the classic "concentration" game. Behind each balloon is a number, an equation, or a certain number of objects. The user must match the numbers with the correct number of objects or with the equation solutions. | ||
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| Mr. Drumstix' Music Studio | Howling Dog Systems Inc. | [top] | |
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A music creation program for kids ages 3 to 9. The game comes with a collection of several music-related activities, including a karaoke sing-along feature with any of the 20 classical songs included, plus a series of musical drills and exercises and the option to create any of your own compositions using a variety of settings and instruments. To guide you through the activities you get the help of either Ms. Florida Keys, Guitar George or Mr. Drumstix, and they also give advice and information on their respective instruments. | ||
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| My Math Tutor | I.B. Magazette Inc. / Keypunch Software Inc. | [top] | |
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This is an educational game feature three programs on one disk:1. Exponents Part I: This is the first of two programs designed to teach exponents. This part covers the multiplication of exponents. The program explains various concepts and then presents a various questions on the topics that were covered. Points are earned for providing correct answers. Exponents Part II: This is the second program which teaches about exponents. It is similar to the first part except it covers division of exponents. The programs presents various concepts and then asks mathematical questions related to the concepts that are covered. Mental Math: This program is designed to help practice addition and subtraction skills. The program presents a series of numbers one at a time; the goal is to add and subtract the numbers provided and provide the result at the end. Several skill levels are available; the easier skill levels use smaller numbers and provide more time to answer the question while difficult skill levels provide less time or have higher numbers. | ||
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| New Kid On The Block | Living Books / Broderbund | [top] | |
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With Living Books first interactive poetry book, children are encouraged to learn the meaning of words by exploring poems. They'll meet an ugly dog, a leaking baby and the exploding Bloders. They'll giggle at the antics of a chorus line of 40 dancing bananas and laugh as fearless Tillie eats her fiery chili. In this irresistible collection of 18 hilarious poems, Prelutsky displays and unerring instinct for subjects that appeal to children. A giant step beyond ordinary electronic books, Living Books are stories and poems touched by magic and brought to life with characters that talk and move and sing and dance. Wonderful worlds, begging to be explored, open up at each turn of the page. With sound effects, music, humor and lots of animations, it's a whole new learning experience. Simple to use means children just point and click. So they can repeat a favotrite part, go back or skip ahead, all at their own pace. Reading skills grow through word recognition. Words, phrases and lines can be highlighted individually; the computer then reads them aloud, and animations convey their meaning. | ||
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| Pepper's Adventures In Time | Sierra On-Line | [top] | |
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This point n' click adventure game is actually an edutainment (entertainment leading to education) title developed by Sierra, who were also responsible for other games such as the Eco quest and Dr. Brain series. The object of this game is to help a little girl called Pepper, solve puzzles based on history and logic, so that she can fix the mess caused by Dr. Fred's time machine. At certain points in the game, the player is even allowed to control her pet dog, Lockjaw. This is a fun game even for adults. | ||
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| Peter & Santa Claus | Arborescence / Living Media | [top] | |
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This invites children to follow Peter to the North Pole where they are welcomed into a wonderland of animated toys and games. Children can learn how to assemble toys in Santa's play room; color a picture of Peter at the North Pole; click on reindeer who will break into a chorus of carols; and race to see who can pack the most toys into Santa's sleigh before he takes off. | ||
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| Peter Pan: A Story Painting Adventure | Novotrade International / EA*Kids | [top] | |
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One of the best releases in Electronic Arts' short-lived EA*Kids line, Peter Pan is a fun interactive storybook designed for kids aged 4-8. It's an animated adventure where children can really get involved and influence the story in several delightful and often unexpected ways. The game's controls are friendly and easy to use so that children as young as four will have little trouble coming to grips with them, even though the game is recommended for six to ten year olds. The story opens with Peter thwarting Captain Hook by stealing his treasure map. Hook in turn kidnaps Wendy and 'the lost boys' so you must now help Peter to rescue his friends and to overcome obstacles along the way. The game screen takes the form of an open paintbox with the story played out in the lid. Sometimes Peter will turn to you and ask for your help. At other times Tinkerbell will appear and implore you to help Peter quickly. This is purely for dramatic effect as the game does not rely on reflexes at all. To assist you in helping Peter are the Paintbox Pals - a group of animated paint tools. There is Sally Sprayer who can create instant creatures; Jazz Painter who lets you add a splash of colour to any scene; Winston Whoosh who will erase anything except the smile off your face; and Nick Lead for a join-the-dots solution to any problem. In addition, Sandy Hourglass lets you go back to an earlier scene so that you can try a different approach and Mark Bookmark saves your game and lets you quit when its way past someone's bedtime. IT features both speech and on-screen text to encourage r eading, as well as beautifully animated graphics. Highly recommended, especially for kids who love Broderbund's Living Books series but wish they were more interactive. | ||
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| Peter's Alphabet Adventure | Arborescence / Living Media | [top] | |
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This game is designed for kids of ages 4-8. Learn ABC's playing 60+ games, rhymes and activities. Animals help children learn the alphabet by associating their names - Anthony the Albatross to Zelda the Zebra - with their species. A short poem underscores the sound of the letter and the name of the animal before the child embarks on an adventure with each one. Children will have fun matching animal tracks with the creatures who make them or eggs with the birds that lay them, all the while learning their ABCs. | ||
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| Peter's Magic Adventure | Arborescence / Living Media, IMSI | [top] | |
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This is a Myst-like adventure game for small children. As Peter, they get to explore other planets, build a dinosaur, roam the ocean, shrink down and take a tour through the grass, and participate in many more activities. There's 14 exciting games and activities for hours of learning and fun. The game is open-ended and the options on each screen are so many that the game is different virtually every time. Using a simple point-and-click interface, children guide Peter from screen to screen, where they can uncover animations, sounds, and links to other places. Peter talks to the user and encourages him or her to explore every option as fully as possible. Best of all, no one wins or loses in this game, and no one keeps score. |
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| Peter's Numbers Adventure | Arborescence / Living Media | [top] | |
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Peter has found a mysterious map of number-shaped islands. As you explore the islands of zero through nine, you discover surprising objects, magical characters, and hidden number games. | ||
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| Ping & Kooky's Cuckoo Zoo | Susan Mahoney & Associates / EA * Kids | [top] | |
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You can learn about animals from all around the world, living side by side in our five habitats, which have been built especially to fit their needs. I am your tour guide Ping and this is my friend Kooky. We will take you for a ride on our train, traveling with you through the zones. Enjoy your stay and don't miss our famous parade before you leave. It's a game that was designed for small children from ages 3 to 7. You can move freely through the different areas of an animal park, take a look at the animals living there and learn about their names. In addition, there are also some small educational games like Hide & Seek, Alphabet, and Counting games, which are very easy and suitable for kids of pre-school age. There are five different areas in the game: Savannah, Rain Forest, Farm Grounds, PolarPark and Cuckoo Fest. The first four zones each contain a range of animals which are commonly found in each respective environment. The player can click them and hear Ping saying their names. In addition, each of them shows some funny animation. Last but not least, the Cuckoo Fest area lets you listen to some melodies, which are squeaked by several animals from the other areas. Having done so, you are also allowed to play your own songs by clicking on them. While traveling through the park, the game switches to respectable 3D graphics. You are looking out of the front windows and can see from the trees and surroundings, in which area you currently are. Whenever you enter a new part of the park, Ping moves in for a moment and explains what kinds of animals are living there. Now all you have to do is to press the 'Stop' button and open the doors. It has nice graphics and good sound with lots of speech. | ||
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| Putt-Putt Goes To The Moon | Humongous Entertainment | [top] | |
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Humongous Entertainment's cornerstone character blasts off into space in Putt-Putt Goes to the Moon. Kids must help Putt-Putt and his friend Rover - who was abandoned on the moon by one of the space missions - get back to Earth. The goal is to rebuild a rocket but the problem is that parts are missing, so kids will have to help Putt-Putt find them all. Celestial characters such as Governor Moonbeam and The Man in the Moon help them along the way, along with plenty of other strange aliens. Problem-solving skills are put to the test as the game continues, but there are breaks for activities such as one in which kids must count moon crystals and learn how to identify patterns in music before learning how to open a secret gate. Best of all, the game is different each time it's played. | ||
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| Putt-Putt's Fun Pack | Humongous Entertainment | [top] | |
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Everyone's favorite little car is back, and this time he's playing games. Putt-Putt and your child will be entertained for hours with Checkers, the Cheese King, Remember!, Circus Puzzle Blocks, Tic-Tac-Toe, and Pinball. Four different skill levels allow the games to grow with your child. Practice matching and pattern recognition, sharpen letter and spelling skills, develop logic and spatial relationship abilities, and most improtant of all, have a lot of fun. | ||
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| Reader Rabbit 3 | The Learning Co. | [top] | |
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This is part of the Reader Rabbit series, that is aimed at older children. When the Daily Skywriter News Company of World-ville needs some help, Reader Rabbit goes their to volunteer. In four different activities you try to match a word, or a sentence with seven word types who, where, what, why, how, did what and does what. In the activity Sneak peak you try to find a sentence that goes in a word type order and after finishing an entire story you get to see a cartoon based on it. After completing a story in all four activities you can make a newspaper based on them. There are 4 activities and each one makes a story for the latest edition of the newspaper. After you get a story in each activity, you can print the paper. Activity 1: What's the Scoop - Help Reader Rabbit give the story to the correct newsroom reporter. Read the phrase and tell what the sentence part it is. Activity 2: Clue Hounds - Fly around Wordville with Wilma and Orville Write in their plain. Read the mystery stories on the secret decoder and choose the correct phrases. Then see if you can solve the mystery. Activity 3: Sneak Peek - Help Sneaker Mole write her movie reviews. Pick out sentences that match the order of the sentence parts one Sneaker's big screen, than watch as your cartoon plays. Activity 4: Ed Words - Travel with Ed the editor on his bicycle all over town. Help Ed write his daily column by picking out just the right phrases to fill in the blanks. You can even write your own phrases. | ||
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| Richard Scarry's Busytown | Boston Animation, Inc. / Simon & Schuster Interactive | [top] | |
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This game takes place in the fictional world of Busytown, originally created by author/illustrator Richard Scarry for his educational picture books. Busytown is populated by cartoonish animals many of whom have typical and specific jobs in Busytown: policeman, fireman, schoolteacher, etc. Huckle Cat and his friend Lowly Worm star in this point and click game, often taking the place of the cursor during game play. From the main page - the town map - the player can select any location in the Busytown neighborhood to participate in an activity appropriate for that location. These include: The See-Saw - balance characters on a see-saw according to the numbers they are labeled with... an 8 on one end and a 5 and 3 on the other, for instance; The Fire Station - follow the instructions and a star-shaped "gleam" to load the fire truck, then put out a house fire; Bruno's Deli - find and serve the food each customer is asking for; Building a House - lay bricks and shingles and put other items into place at this construction site; Mr. Fixit - help Mr. Fixit build his latest invention by placing parts on his machine; The Delivery Truck - drive around Busytown delivering specific items, avoiding road construction and garbage cans; Dr. Diane - help Dr. Diane treat Norbert the Elephant's many ailments by placing bandaids and bandages on the named body parts; BusyTunes - play the jingles and songs and watch animation from each neighborhood location on the jukebox. The educational focus of Richard Scarry's Busytown is primarily on reading, as words for many objects in the game are given whether or not the activity on screen actually involves reading. Other early childhood skills covered are counting, shapes, adding and subtracting and following directions. It was remade in 1999 and featured improved voice acting, graphics and animation resembling the 1993 Busy World of Richard Scarry animated series. The gameplay is still the same and the original songs from the 1993 release are included. However, the Bananas Gorilla portion of the game was removed. | ||
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| Scooter's Magic Castle | Electronic Arts, Inc. / EA*Kids | [top] | |
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Would you like to have your own castle? With lots of chambers, secrets, puzzles and activities to do? Well, Scooter now owns such a castle, and he's very eager to see what he can find inside! And he can find quite a lot. Scooter's Magic Castle is an education game where you control Scooter, and by clicking on various items in the Castle you can interact with them, often starting a small mini-game. The activities available around the castle are numerous, ranging from simple memory tests to composing your own melody. During his travels around the castle's corridors, Scooter is assisted by a helpful owl, who acts as the game's options menu and can also teleport you to any chamber. | ||
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| Scrivi [It] | Fondazione Don Gnocchi | [top] | |
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One of a series of Italian educational games conceived for impaired kids, so there isn't much you can do to begin with. "Scrivi" allows you to create / save / load short texts using just a keyboard button or two (you choose the letter/number from the screen). It was developed by Don Gnocchi's juvenile foundation. | ||
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| Selfish Giant, The - Oscar Wilde's | Sanctuary Woods | [top] | |
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Multimedia presentation of the Oscar Wilde story about a once selfish giant who welcomes children to his previously forbidden garden and is eventually rewarded by an unusual little child. Features animation, sound, narration, and video. Offers 100 word definitions, activities, games, jigsaw puzzles, and information about trees, plants, castles, giants, seasons, and weather. | ||
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| Sitting on the Farm | Sanctuary Woods | [top] | |
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Build vocabulary, improve pronunciation, develop writing skills, have fun. Created by a team of teachers, artists, programmers and parents who know as much about kids as they do about learning, this interactive CD educates while it entertains. Which means children don't just turn the pages of an electronic book. They turn pictures into animations, words into songs, questions into answers. And that makes all the difference. You see, children who learn by doing, do better in school. With its varied levels of interactivity, it captivates, excites, and best of all, involves your child. So help your child develop important new skills while discovering how a little girl's peaceful picnic is disrupted by a parade of charming animals. A boy or girl reading partner teaches the meaning and pronunciation of words in three languages - and allows pre readers to learn along. When they record, play back and sing along with 8 different instruments, children have fun - and explore musical concepts and sounds. To sharpen creative skills, children can write a new story using the program's illustrations - then print and color them later. Educational Summary: Reading - Increase word recognition and improve reading comprehension; Vocabulary - Discover 700 nouns, verbs and adjectives in a visual context; Language - Develop word and phrase recognition and pronunciation in English, French and Spanish; Music - Learn basic musical notation and recognize eight instruments; Creative Writing - Write stories to accompany pictures; Science - Identify 24 animals and their 6 habitats; Computer Skills - Practice keyboarding skills. | ||
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| Slater & Charlie Go Camping | Sierra On-Line, Inc. / Sierra On-Line, Inc. | [top] | |
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Slater the Petrosaur, protagonist of Sierra's Oil's Well remake, has got himself a buddy in the form of Charlie, another dinosaur of indeterminate species. Together, they visit various locations and undertake various tasks toward the end of enjoying a camping trip in the great outdoors together. The game is presented as a series of static images, described in text at the bottom of the screen - then optionally narrated for children whose reading skills aren't yet up to keeping up with the plot. After each description has been read, the illustrations can be interacted with like a pop-up book, numerous hidden hot spots on every page yielding zany + whimsical animations. | ||
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| Spelling Jungle / Yobi's Basic Spelling Tricks | Bright Star Technology / Sierra On-Line, Inc. | [top] | |
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Spelling Jungle, also known as Yobi's Basic Spelling Tricks, is an educational adventure game created by Bright Star Technology and released by Sierra in 1993 for both Windows and Macintosh PCs. The program is designed to help strengthen reading, spelling, and logic skills in children ages 7–10. Spelling Jungle is an adventure game whose objective is to paddle to the head of the river to stop the river's flooding with the aid of Yobi and his pet bird Crackers. The game consists of two distinct areas: a puzzle map, where the player must spell out a particular word by collecting letter tiles in the correct order, and a spelling test, where the player must correctly spell a certain number of words before he may advance. The objective of the puzzle map portion of the game is to collect letter tiles by walking over them in the correct order in order to spell the given word. A puzzle map gives the player an overhead view of the area and provides the word that the player must spell for that particular round as well as a mnemonic at the bottom of the screen to help remember how to spell the word. Early levels are simple, requiring the player only to gather letters in the correct order, but the puzzles become more difficult as the player advances through the game. For later levels, while collecting letter tiles, the player must also avoid enemies, such as rhinoceroses and tigers, avoid hazards, like hot coals and bottomless pits, and make use of tools, such as boulders and vehicles, in order to gather all the letters. Once the player has collected all the letters in the correct order, most hazards disappear, but he must find a way to get back to his raft in order to move on to the next section. The second phase of each level consists of a spelling test, where the player is asked to spell words, starting with the one that was featured on the previous puzzle map. If the player spells the word correctly, his raft will move a little bit father forward. If the player spells enough words correctly, he will advance to the next puzzle map. | ||
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| Super Solvers: Gizmos and Gadgets! | The Learning Company | [top] | |
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Morty Maxwell, the Master of Mischief, has moved into the Shady Glen Technology Center and taken over as the head scientist! Your job is to accept Morty's challenge and prove that you are a better scientist than he is. Morty has locked the doors in the warehouse with science puzzles. Show him how much you know about science by solving the puzzles. Then go through the doors, find the best vehicle parts, and build faster vehicles than Morty builds. To make your job more difficult, Morty's sneaky Cyber Chimps are collecting vehicle parts, too. Outsmart the Chimps by throwing bananas to them and making them take a nap. Race against Morty and win all 15 of the challenge races. You will reclaim the Technology Center and be the head scientist! | ||
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| Thinkin' Things Collection 1 / Thinkin' Things: Toony the Loon's Lagoon | Edmark Corporation | [top] | |
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This CD-ROM program, designed for ages 5-10, has six activities designed to offer students experiences with a variety of thinking skills: memory, critical thinking, problem solving, and creativity. The Create mode allows students to experiment, explore, and create; and in the Question and Answer mode students answer a character's questions. In Oranga Banga students become familiar with the sounds of a variety of instruments; then Oranga Banga plays a pattern that the students try to repeat. In BLOX - Flying Shapes students develop an awareness of spatial relationships, and the differences and similarities in shapes, by using geometric shapes, motion, and sound. Feathered Friends teaches students visual discrimination; how to recognize, compare, and combine attributes; how to use parts to create a whole; how to complete patterns; how to recognize changes and attributes that create patterns; and how to hypothesize and test a rule. In Toony Loon students improvise their own musical patterns and tunes on unique xylophones. In the final activity, Fripple Shop, students are shown a variety of Fripples each with different attributes. Customers order fripples with specific attributes and the student must find them. Students may receive Fripple orders from customers by: clicking on the door (auditory and visual); clicking on a fax (visual only); or clicking the phone (auditory only). This Activity allows teachers and parents to observe how individual students learn. Thinkin' Things: Toony the Loon's Lagoon is an enhanced multimedia version of the award winner Thinkin' Things Collection 1. | ||
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| Thomas the Tank Engine 2 | Peakstar Software / Alternative Software | [top] | |
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The second game in the series tells about the adventures of the nice locomotive and his bunch of friends. This time the producers focused on a strictly arcade aspect of the game and served to the players - races with the participation of locomotives. There are four different routes, eight locomotives and two difficulty levels to choose from. The action is observed similarly to the original, with the difference, however, that the screen is divided into two parts (in the lower part we follow the actions of the opponent's computer). The philosophy of the game has not changed, you still have to complete the route in the shortest possible time. Traditionally, some rails will be torn off, and there may be other trains on the track. An additional difficulty is the need to refill the fuel - we do this by stopping next to a specially marked pump. Despite the option to split the screen, the authors did not think of implementing multiplayer mode. The struggle with a computer opponent is not as passionate, all the more so because in the product the competing locomotives move extremely correctly and do not make glaring mistakes. | ||
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| Tortoise & The Hare, The | InterActive Publishing Corporation | [top] | |
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This is a simple presentation of TH on cartoon slides with the text on the screen highlighted phrase by phrase while it is read. A listener can also click on any word to have it said or on any object to see and hear the word. The reading is enhanced with simple musical background and some sound effects. Print-your-own coloring book for hours of additional fun and reading enjoyment. The text is copyrighted by National Textbook Company, the producers of Tina la Tortuga y Carlos el Conejo/Tina the Turtle and Carlos the Rabbit (1972/90). An audio cassette is included with the same sound track (listed separately under 1993) and so are crayons to color the printable black-and-white slides. Richie and Tina are very good friends, but Richie wakes up one day in a very bad mood and cannot stop taunting Tina with the things she cannot do while he can. Tina gets angry and demands a race. Tina announces to him: "You go far little by little." | ||
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| Tortoise And The Hare, Aesop's Fable | Living Books / Broderbund | [top] | |
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See who makes it to the finish line in this classic title. This Living Book is a classic that has delighted children for untold generations. Includes dozens of hilarious new twists so the story remains fresh and full of surprises! This is the story about the race between the slow-and-steady tortoise and the hurry-up hare. Along the way you'll meet a score of delightfully animated characters - including Simon the story-telling bird. Based on the legendary Greek writer Aesop this classic story dates back more than 25 centuries. Includes the original storybook. In English and Spanish. The story is brought to life with characters that talk move sing and dance. With sound effects original music humor and animations it's a whole new learning experience. It is simple to use. Children just point and click. Repeat a favorite part go back or skip ahead all at their own pace. Reading skills are increased through word recognition. The computer can read words phrases and lines aloud. | ||
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| Treasure Hunt Math | Jacob+Jennings / Digitized Animation, Adventure LearningWare | [top] | |
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Elementary math (grades 1-6) in arcade-style game for home&school. Basic math operations, fractions and decimals. Prints certificates of achievement & math tests. Record keeping. Editor to add or customize math problems. Registered version includes MathTris, a falling-blocks style game & printed doc. | ||
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| Ugly Duckling, The | Morgan Interactive, Inc. / Kidsoft | [top] | |
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Another traditional story meets the information age when a homely duckling is born into an impatient family of ducks. More concerned with appearance than substance, the barnyard animals shun the strange-looking chick. Only after a long search and the passing of time is his true nature revealed: The duckling is actually a beautiful swan. This electronic retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's age-old fairy tale comes complete with animated characters and interactive hot spots. The narration is accompanied by highlighted phrases designed to bolster early reading skills. With elementary school children, adults can use this interactive storybook to illustrate what it means to be different, why it sometimes hurts, and what we lose when we dismiss those who don't match our requirements. As with similar programs, kids and parents can play with each page of the story, have the story read aloud from start to finish, or move to particular pages. The publisher rewrote the original story to fit in eight pages, resulting in a simple narrative that won't hold the interest of kids over the age of six. Over 500 click animations and sounds. Discover over sixty delightful characters that talk, sing and dance. 3 original sing-a-longs. | ||
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| Where in Space is Carmen Sandiego? | Brøderbund Software, Inc. | [top] | |
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This uses the original formula from the first 5 games in the series (Where In The World, Where in Europe, Where In America's Past, Where In Time, Where in the USA) and extends it to our knowledge of astronomy and space. Carmen has shifted to space with her gang of alien outlaws, it's up to the player to climb to the cosmos and track them down. This games uses the familiar gameplay of the Carmen Sandiego series to test astronomical knowledge. "On board the Acme detective Agency's outer space surveillance craft, your main source of information is the VAL 9000 computer. Val provides information about the history, science, and mythology of space that will aid you in your search. Your search may be extensive. The game includes 32 locations and 1100 clues!" The program features superb digitised NASA images of the sun, planets and moons, star searches, talking aliens, planetary fly-bys and launches of interplanetary probes. The original music score includes different themes for each planetary system in digitised sound. A clear manual is included. Also Included in the package is an astronomy booklet to enhance your enjoyment of the night sky. | ||
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| Word Rescue Plus | Redwood Games | [top] | |
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This is an official expansion pack to Word Rescue, featuring 45 new levels and three different music tracks, but no changes to the graphics or story line. It is a standalone release and does not require the original game to run. | ||
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| Zurk's Learning Safari | Soleil Software | [top] | |
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A pack of activities for kids ages 3 to 7 placed in the African Serengeti (well, sort of). The game comes with 5 different simple puzzle games that exercise shape/pattern recognition skills, plus an "Explore Story" where you lead Maya, the young lion cub, back to her mother; and a "Hide and Seek" adventure where you try to find several animals by observing their behavior, etc. Also included is a Parent's Guide with suggested activities and complementary material including photographs of every animal in the game, and background info of Africa. | ||
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Adult
| Dream Machine, The | New Machine Publishing | [top] | |
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Welcome to the futuristic The Dream Machine, where online hostesses lead you through a world filled with sexual fantasies. Wander the hidden halls and underground chasms in search of surprises behind every door -- scenes that focus on a multitude of sexual experiences and objects presented for your pleasure. After viewing each fantasy, tell your guide of your innermost obsessions and desires and she'll adapt to become the perfect sexual cybermate. The Dream Machine is a 3D rendered interactive world designed to keep you in the picture. By choosing only those doors that appeal to your individual nature and sexual preference, you "direct" the program to enter realms of erotic fantasy attuned to your imagination and personal desires. Developer Interotica dubs the film as "the virtual sexual experience" and promises to make your dreams become real. The program utilizes QuickTime technology for both PC and Macintosh and runs in resolutions up to 1024x768. The Dream Machine comes with a new True Type font created specially for the project called "CyberSlab." | ||
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| Interactive Adventures Of Seymore Butts, The | New Machine Publishing | [top] | |
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Follow the adventures of Seymore Butts and his camera and help him meet with the girl of his dreams. This full length interactive quicktime adventure features over 90 minutes of digital video with the freshest talent in adult entertainment. Starring some dudes and a lot of babes. The user joins Seymore and his video camera as he gets to know his new neighbor, the beautiful Brianna. Point of view camerawork and editing allow Seymore to stand in for the (presumed male) user, who "participates" in the adventures by making choices at certain points in the narrative; for example, whether Seymore asks Brianna to dinner, or offers her a soothing hot tub. When Brianna proves willing to have sex, the user clicks on one of a number of options. It includes Interotica Live video phone sex software. | ||
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| Mahjong Fantasia II [J] | Active Software | [top] | |
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This is a direct sequel to the first Mahjong Fantasia game. The story mode begins with a reminiscence of the events depicted in the first game. The hero, Ring, is back with his girlfriend Tania, but mourns the loss of the lovely elf Raspberry. He travels to the Village of Elves, where he discovers that there might be a way to resurrect Raspberry - but it involved finding seven sacred golden tablets, guarded by fearsome opponents, which must be defeated in a game of mahjong. Like its predecessor, it focuses on mahjong games, with extensive cut-scenes between them, and parts that have interaction in Japanese adventure-style, with menu-based verb commands to advance the plot. The game also has a versus mode, which allows to play mahjong against various characters from the story mode, a "vs. computer" mode, and a new training mode, which explains in detail the rules of mahjong. Just like the first game, it features an all-female opponent cast. Cut-scenes with explicit nudity appear after the mahjong victories. Mahjong Fantasia II: 2001 Edition, an enhanced version of the original was released later. The game was enhanced with redone graphics using 65,000 colors. There is now a voice-over and the music is available as MIDI BGM or using audio CD tracks, using the included 'Music CD'. You still play the role of Ring, venturing in a medieval fantasy world in a text-based interface with verb menu. That is the 'adventure' part. Fights are resolved by playing Mahjong against female opponents, who show their nude bodies when they lose. | ||
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| Penthouse Hot Numbers Deluxe | eleven Software / Magic Bytes | [top] | |
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Deluxe version of Penthouse Hot Numbers is a new game with several new features. It includes a topless dance intro sequence and a female voice, commenting the game, as well as graphics is made in SVGA mode with a higher resolution. Now the game includes 10 levels with Penthouse models providing their profiles. If the player beats the opponent, three pictures of the current model are shown, otherwise the player is asked either to continue the play session or leave it. There are three difficulty levels of opponent's AI, time-limit mode, and hidden fields mode. When all ten opponents are beaten, the results may be stored in top ten high scores table. The gameplay on each level is the same - the two opponents (the second either human or AI) compete on a 8x8 grid field. The players take turns and each one clicks on a field which has two effects: a part of the photograph is revealed and the player gets positive or negative points; depending on the field's colour. The catch is that one player can move the cursor only horizontally and the other is restricted to vertical movements. The game ends when no more moves are possible and the player with the most points wins. | ||
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| Penthouse Mahjong | Tiny Team | [top] | |
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Mahjong, which rewards successful players with images of half-naked girls. One of a series of naughty games that Penthouse magazine launched in the early 1990s. Here, there are 36 women that you will have to discover, but to achieve this, you will have time to test your patience. Indeed, the Japanese studio Tiny Team has set up a Mahjong system which is spread out on a screen which does not appear in its entirety. As a result, the initial 120 seconds (with a bonus of three to four additional seconds per pair of tiles removed) will pass at the speed of light, and you will often only see the outline of a shoulder or the beginnings of a thigh. All with pixels which provide artistic blur, as evidenced by the screenshots on the sheet. To have a chance of knocking down your board, you will have to find a way to unite your two tiles symbolized by a skull. Suddenly, the timing is interrupted, and a draw reconfigures your tiles according to a design established by the draw. The more pairs you have knocked down before the skulls, the more profitable the reconfiguration will be for you. On the other hand, if you can't find a way to bring your skulls together, you will be overwhelmed by a merciless timer, and you will have to start a game again. Your tester managed a few times to finish his board and venture into the next one: this allowed you to change the refrain, but the number of tiles was greater and there were two pairs of skulls. This gives an additional chance to complete the table, but it is random. You can enter the code that the game gives at the end of a table: it's a way to start from the highest table in your list. | ||
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| Pro Student G [J] | Alice Soft | [top] | |
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By the end of the 20th century, radical educational reforms have transformed the Japanese society. Students were split into opposing groups, and the more aggressive of those eventually formed a dominant organization named Order of Black Phoenix, centered on the cult of a mysterious person known as "The Queen". Outcast students have escaped to a secluded island near Okinawa. A wandering lazy and lecherous manga and anime fan named Gorō Endō teams up with a female teacher and a few students to lead an opposition force against the oppressive governing circles. This is a Japanese-style erotic comedy adventure. The player guides Gorō through a series of locations and encounters, selecting choices from a menu to trigger the next event and advance the story. Some choices have a traditional verb-object structure, while others incorporate context-specific actions, many of which are included for humorous effect. In 2008, the game was made freeware. | ||
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| Scissors 'n' Stones | PIXIS Interactive, Inc. | [top] | |
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Enter an arena of enticing women and get set to play the erotic game of your life in this all-out competition of high stakes. The stakes however, are not for money, but for articles of clothing... | ||
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| Sexy Fighter [Tw] | Master Designer Software, Sculptured Software / Cinemaware | [top] | |
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High school students release the devil who then controls the whole school by accident. The protagonist Meiya was going to defeat the queen of Hades to save the school. There are battles and upgrades in this game similar to role-playing games. The battle system uses a way of playing cards to attack and defend. You will step by step move around floors and rooms, find and use various objects, as well as talk with characters who are still in this suspicious school. In the name of the game there is a hint of a fighting component, and this is not a mistake. Fighting is here in a step-by-step implementation and in a very special version. It is well known that sorting out relationships between teenage girls can take much tougher and more uncompromising forms than fights in boys. The developers decided that in such battles, elements of a neat school uniform should be irreversibly and powerfully damaged. In short, with each missed shot, participants in such a hard sparring will gradually undress. The player who has reached the desired condition, namely, to a state of complete “nude”, is losing. Such an appearance means defeat in the fighting game, and a fiasco for the player himself also means an early end to the passage - Game Over. Therefore, there should be no mistakes in battle. You will fight with hostile schoolgirls, whose consciousness has already been enslaved by dark forces. But the “strawberry” is waiting for you not only in fighting games. She will sometimes delight the player in the gameplay. For example, our main character, going into the school shower room, will always be happy to wash, and this process is shown in detail by moving the camera from top to bottom. In addition to fighting games, you must necessarily communicate with the characters encountered. They will be schoolgirls, teachers, a half-dead zombie guard, a cook, a nun, and even a local exhibitionist, who must have "started up" in the vicinity of the school with a similar bias. On the way to your investigation, you will meet another good fairy. The right action, conversation or winning the match will open you a new branch of the passage. In the end, you will have to find the basement and there fight with the Queen of Dark Forces - the vampire Min Hou (冥 后), stripping her naked. This is the ultimate goal of the game - the only way you free the school from evil. With each match won, your RPG parameters will gradually increase. There are four of these parameters in the game: 命 - health, 恥 - bashfulness, 經 - experience or, in other words, experience (short for Chinese words от), 錢 - money. Of course, after winning a hand-to-hand fight, your heroine, according to the popularly recognized right of the winner, will be relatively honest in assigning banknotes of defeated schoolgirls to herself. Of particular note is fighting games. Here, for each move, the participants discard one of the five cards in their hands. Depending on the combination of suit and merit, the attack will be effective or not. Instead of a discarded card, a new one is issued again each time. The values of the fighting cards in the game are as follows: 回 - missed turn ， 攻 - attack ， 防 - defense, 脫 - to tear off clothes (this is the most powerful card, you need to protect it). Four colors: yellow, red, green and blue. Their seniority can be established empirically. The game menu contains the following elements: 調查 - investigate, 交談 - talk, 攻擊 - accept the battle, 使用 - use the item, предмет - move, 系統 - system settings. Some of the indicated items, when pressed, will offer sub-items on the same buttons. These will be new or old premises, where you need to go, or the choice of an item (for the "Apply" item). There are various objects: a Coca-Cola jar, a computer magazine, garlic, a cross, panties, dynamite, runes, a frog, a flashlight, a talking Kiki plush kitten (奇奇) and others. There is a slight drawback - the subject can be used for other purposes, and it disappears. Where to get it again is not clear. | ||
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| Strip-Poker | C-Soft / CDV Software GmbH | [top] | |
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In the game you play as a man with five girls to undress each of them in five card poker. The models are named Karin, Sybille, Dany, Lola and Evelyn. The pictures of girls are taken from "High Society" magazine. Girls speak to you in German. | ||
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Role-Playing Games
| Betrayal at Krondor | Dynamix, Inc. | [top] | |
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Set in Raymond E. Feist's Riftwar universe (the saga was co-written by Feist himself), this is a medieval fantasy-themed role-playing game. The story begins as Gorath, a moredhel (dark elf) renegade, who intended to warn the people of Krondor of the upcoming moredhel invasion, is attacked by an assassin. Locklear, a nobleman who serves the crown of Krondor, and a young magician named Owyn decide to accompany Gorath to Krondor, where they'll have to think of a plan to stop the moredhel leader Delekhan. The game's story is divided into nine chapters. Each chapter has a goal to achieve before moving on to the next one, but the player is given considerable freedom to explore the vast world of the game and undertake side quests. Gorath, Locklear, and Owyn are the first party of characters the player controls; however, characters may leave and others may join the party later, as dictated by the events of the story. Exploration takes place in a 3D world viewed from first-person perspective. Towns, however, are presented as a series of still screens representing locations (temple, tavern, in, etc.). Combat takes place on separate grid-based screens. The player moves the characters on these screens in a turn-based fashion, attacking physically, defending, and casting spells. Only two character classes are present in the game: fighters and magicians. Fighters use swords or crossbows (for long-ranged attacks); magicians can fight with staves, or cast spells. Characters have four attributes: health, strength, speed, and stamina. The latter is depleted when a character uses weapons or casts magic. The role-playing system of the game relies on skills. Each character has a set of skills, ranging from weapon proficiencies to abilities such as bartering or stealth. Skills improve after continuous usage. The player can "emphasize" a skill in order to make it improve faster. The CD-ROM enhanced version of the game released in 1994 includes additional goodies: 5-minute interview with Feist, Windows-based hint system, and Redbook audio soundtrack. | ||
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| Blade of Doom | Uwe Doerr / UD Software | [top] | |
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This is a first-person shareware RPG made in Germany. | ||
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| Bloodstone: An Epic Dwarven Tale | Mindcraft Software, Inc. | [top] | |
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A group of evil goblin-like creatures known as Taldor have attacked the clan to which the hero of the game belongs. In order to defeat the Taldor, the protagonist must assemble a party of adventurers, unite the warring tribes of the North and the South, and procure the ancient powerful axe Khamalkhad. Meanwhile, the minions of darkness will do anything in their power to stop the heroes... Bloodstone: An Epic Dwarven Tale is a prequel to the Magic Candle games. It utilizes the same engine as the third game in the series, and has a very similar gameplay. Turn-based battles take place in the same area as the exploration, without switching to separate combat screens. A few tweaks were applied to the gameplay; for example, characters no longer get tired when traveling. | ||
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| Burntime | Max Design GesMBH | [top] | |
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Deserts cover the globe, cities are destroyed, the end of every civilization is near. The few survivors search for drinking water and food. They eat all they can find. Like a Role-Playing-Game, you travel through the world and meet many computer-played characters. You want to rule the world. But there are other 3 characters with the same aim. You spend the most game time looking at the map, which takes up several screens. The position of the 4 characters, their occupied conquests, the cities, and the health condition of your character are shown on the map. The different settlements you can occupy are old factories, camping-grounds or ruins of old mega-cities. The five great cities are opened for all competitors and can’t be occupied. In these cities you cannot fight against your enemies. Sometimes you meet a human for changing news, items or take them in your party. There are different classes of computer-characters: fighters, engineers or doctors for example. Every character of your party can carry up to 6 items (food, weapons). These items are produced by the settlements you control. | ||
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| Castle of the Winds | SaadaSoft / Epic MegaGames, Inc. | [top] | |
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Castle of the Winds (CotW) is a tile-based roguelike video game for Windows 3.x. It was developed by SaadaSoft in 1989 and distributed by Epic MegaGames in 1993. The game is composed of two parts: A Question of Vengeance, released as shareware, and Lifthransir's Bane, sold commercially. A combined license for both parts was also sold. Although secondary to its hack and slash gameplay, Castle of the Winds has a plot loosely based on Norse mythology, told with setting changes, unique items, and occasional passages of text. The player begins in a tiny hamlet, near which he/she used to live. His/her farm has been destroyed and godparents killed. After clearing out an abandoned mine, the player finds a scrap of parchment that reveals the death of the player's godparents was ordered by an unknown enemy. The player then returns to the hamlet to find it pillaged, and decides to travel to Bjarnarhaven. When the player completes the first part of the game, they can then import their character, once saved, into the second part. It was later made freeware in 1998. | ||
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| Daemonsgate | Imagitec Design Inc. | [top] | |
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Daemonsgate is a fantasy role-playing game in which you control a party searching the land of Hestor for a wise wizard possessing knowledge necessary to stop an invading demon army. The game uses three-quarters overhead perspective and boasts a conversation system with over 70000 words. | ||
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| Dark Sun: Shattered Lands | Strategic Simulations, Inc. | [top] | |
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Dark Sun: Shattered Lands is a turn-based computer role-playing game that takes place in the Dungeons and Dragons' campaign setting of Dark Sun. It was released for DOS in a somewhat unfinished state in and later patched to a more workable version. It was later re-released on CD-ROM as part of the AD&D Masterpiece Collection in 1996. The game takes place in the fictional land of Athas, a dying and hostile desert world. The locale is Draj, a city-state ruled by a powerful sorcerer-king. Nearby are several "free cities", surviving in the desert thanks to the hard work of their citizens. Upon the completion of the pyramid in Draj, the Sorceror-King desires to make a great sacrifice of blood by sweeping the desert and destroying the inhabitants of the cities not under his control. The player controls a party of up to four gladiators, condemned to fight in Draj's arena until they die, so naturally the first order of business is escape. Upon escape, the party must unite the free cities to resist Draj's army. The game has a mouse interface and is basically point and click to move around, equip the party, talk to people, pick up things, etc. The gameplay is faithful to AD&D's rules in most cases. | ||
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| Dungeon Hack | DreamForge / Strategic Simulations, Inc. | [top] | |
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This is a fantasy role player's dream come true. If dungeon crawling is what you crave, your search for an unlimited world in which to battle monsters and explore deep dark places is over. This is a veritable treasure trove created to furnish fans of the fantasy role playing genre a fully customizable game containing all of the basic elements needed to provide endless hours of play. A random dungeon generator with the capacity to develop over four billion (yes, billion) different dungeons ensures variation in each game. Unlike many fantasy role playing games, it provides the user with a single-character generator which draws from six possible races and twelve character classes, including a multi-class capability. Each new game generated allows complete user-controlled customization in both dungeon generation and game options. A few of the options include dungeon size (10 to 25 levels), dungeon structure (objects, creatures, traps), monster frequency, food and treasure availability, magic traps, pits, water levels, multi-level puzzles, enemy spell strength and much more. Dungeon Hack has a full complement of magic spells (more than three dozen mage and cleric spells), monsters (nearly fifty) and weaponry. Auto-maps and dungeon seed keys (passwords) are generated with each dungeon allowing specific replay of any dungeon or exchange with a friend. | ||
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| Elder Scrolls: Arena | Bethesda Softworks / U.S. Gold | [top] | |
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This is a first-person computer role-playing game. Like its sequels, it takes place in the continent of Tamriel, complete with wilderness, dungeons, a spell creation system that allows players to mix various spell effects into a new spell as long as they have the money to pay for it, and numerous other game features that were ahead of its time. The Emperor, Uriel Septim VII has been imprisoned in another dimension and impersonated by Imperial Battlemage Jagar Tharn. The only way to bring him back is to find the eight pieces of the Staff of Chaos. After the pieces have been collected, the hero battles with Tharn in the Imperial city. Ria Silmane, just prior to the start of the game, is apprentice to Jagar Tharn. During his usurpation of the throne, Tharn is unable to corrupt his apprentice and so he murders her. She is able to hold herself together long enough to direct the player's character how to escape from slow death in the dungeons through a teleportation device called a shift gate. Past that point she lacks the power to manifest physically and appears to the player in dreams. The central quest requires the player to obtain various artifacts. Each time such an item is found, Silmane appears the next time the player rests to provide the general location of the next such item. It was easy to die in the dungeon the players start in, as powerful enemies could be encountered if the player lingers too long. However, this effect slowly withered away as players became more powerful and more aware of the threats that loomed everywhere. Arena is noted for its large environment, which is significantly larger than the sequels. This is due to the game's randomly generated areas which allows for large numbers of different combinations for each area. Combat is performed by using the mouse and dragging the cursor across the screen to attack if a melee weapon is used. Arena was originally released on CD-ROM and 3.5" floppy disk. The CD-ROM edition is the more advanced of the two editions, featuring enhanced speech for some characters and CGI video sequences. In 2004, on the occasion of the game's 10th anniversary, the game was made freeware. | ||
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| Excelsior Phase One: Lysandia | 11th Dimension Entertainment | [top] | |
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Excelsior is a tile-based RPG (in the vein of the early Ultima games). It places you on the planet of Lysandia with the goal of eliminating the chaotic presence threatening the planet. The game follows traditional RPG concepts, including character creation, a variety of weapons and magic spells, skill sets (such as swimming, music, and seamanship). The game provides a number of quests and side-quests designed to bring your character closer to completing the goal of liberating Lysandia. | ||
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| Eye of the Beholder III: Assault on Myth Drannor | Strategic Simulations, Inc. | [top] | |
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This is the third and the final part of Eye of the Beholder trilogy and wasn't done by Westwood this time. While boasting of their exploits in the the previous game, the party is approached by a man with a tale of a dangerous lich who threatens the surrounding area. Without hesitation the party agrees to deal with the lich, and the mysterious man teleports them into yet another adventure. The game is more or less the same as the prequels, the battles play out in the same way as in previous entries. Characters can fight mano-a-mano, or they can throw things, weapons, arrows, etc. Open spaces have been added to the game as well as the ability for the entire party to attack at once. New high level monsters, spells, and equipment can be found as well. | ||
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| Fates of Twinion, The | Sierra On-Line, Inc. | [top] | |
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The solo version of the sequel/add-on to the original Shadow of Yserbius, the graphical multi-user dungeon game on The Sierra Network (which at this point had become known as the Imagination Network). Once again brave warriors and wizards are needed to enter dangerous dungeons and uncover the secrets of the evils that plague the land. Using the same engine as the original, the sequel provides more of the same: a pure dungeon romp with squared-off dungeon maps, random encounters, and treasure-strewn halls. While gameplay remains the same, Sierra tried to get the most story and diversity out of the engine and produced a somewhat more complex game, with a wider range of puzzles, traps, and turns. In 2020, a fan-made remake was included in Medievalands which has the original Shadow of Yserbius. | ||
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| Hong Gildong-jeon [K] | A+ / SKC Softland | [top] | |
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This was at times hailed as the first Korean RPG, during the temporal collective amnesia regarding the 80s home computer generation. In more recent times, this claim had to be corrected to "first Korean colored RPG for MS-DOS PCs", which sounds much less impressive. However, it can also be labeled as the first to follow the JRPG route a la Dragon Quest, because previous games all either stemmed from Western influences or were action RPGs. As one of the many games based on the story of Hong Gildong and thanks to its screentexts kept completely in Hangeul (it even sacrificed the full VGA color palette for a higher resolution to make it more readable, though everything other than the text was just upscaled) in a time when even the wave of Taiwan-localizations had just started to catch some current, it caught a bit of attention. A+ sold 7,000 copies of the game, which wasn't that bad for a Korean game in 1993, but even then most reviews weren't that favorable because of a number of flaws. First and foremost stands the obfuscated design, that often leaves players not knowing what they are even expected to do. Then there's the overly simple and boring combat system, especially due to the lack of a party, which really limits the tactical depth. The rest is done by a fair share of bugs and glitches, as well as some more incomprehensible decisions like having an option to throw away items permanently while pretty much everything picked up except weapons and armor is quest-related. | ||
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| Ishar 2: Messengers of Doom | Silmarils | [top] | |
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Following the defeat of Krogh and the banishment of the powers of chaos, Ishar became a cultural and intellectual centre in Kendoria. Over time people came to the island and settled there and a city, named "Zach's Island" developed. Shandar, a monk of chaos, entered the city along with settlers from the northern lands. His trading in hallucinogens soon made him rich and powerful. Eventually Shandar controlled "Zach's Island" and had many followers and worshippers. He built a strong fortress, a second Ishar, to challenge the empire. In the sequel you can import saved characters from Ishar, or create your own team. In the game you have to explore the magic land (dungeons, tree-cities, mountain paths with real graded height effect), fight the enemies, join the allies and relax in towns, which even have medieval nightclubs. Now the area is 3 times bigger, and innovation is your ability to use pet animals as allies in battles, and create magic potions. There are day and night cycles. This game has a combat system that's more ergonomic than in the first Ishar, and a day-night cycle in which shops are closed at night and the nightclub is closed by day. Saving the game does not remove gold from the player any more. | ||
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| Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos | Westwood Studios, Inc. / Virgin Games, Inc. | [top] | |
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The Dark Army is on the move again, led by the evil sorceress Scotia. Her goal is obvious: To destroy Gladstone Keep and its inhabitant King Richard. Scotia herself has recently become more powerful after acquiring "the Mask" from the Urban Mines, gaining the ability to shape shift. She is virtually unstoppable and able to infiltrate Gladstone Keep, poisoning King Richard. If it were not for the intervention of Sorceress Dawn, this monarch would surely be dead. In order to find a cure for the King's secret, a band of heroes must set out on an adventure, and keep themselves alive from the Dark Army forces. This is a Real-Time 1st Person Perspective, Dungeon Crawler Role Playing Game. Players begin by choosing from four selectable hero classes, including: Mage, Warrior, Rogue, and a balanced all-round hero. Each has their weaknesses and strengths but all abilities in this game can be upgraded. The game does not feature manual character development, instead the game introduces a semi-automatic form of leveling up, where skills of the hero and the companions are divided into: Fighting, Magic and Rogue skills. Each skill level will increase when killing enemies using a particular type of attack: Melee weapons increase the Fighting skills, Magic increases the Magic skill and Ranged weapons increases the Rogue skills. In the course of the game players will form a party of up to 3 heroes in the quest for the cure. The player is able to equip these characters with new weapons and armor in a "paper doll" styled interface. The CD-ROM version featured Patrick Stewart as the voice of King Richard. | ||
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| Might and Magic V: Darkside of Xeen | New World Computing, Inc. | [top] | |
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This is the fifth installment of the Might and Magic series. This time, the player controls a party of 6 heroes to save the Darkside of Xeen. The game is the completion of the huge quest that begun in Might and Magic: Clouds of Xeen and also brings to an end the story of the battle between the star travelers Corak and Sheltem, which started already in Might and Magic: Book I. The game uses nearly the same interface and graphics as Might and Magic III: Isles of Terra. Only small enhancements were made, e.g. that the player doesn't encounter any Non-Player Characters (NPCs) randomly but have to select them via a mouse click. All over the gaming world, there are pyramids which work as teleporters as soon as part four of the series, Might and Magic: Clouds of Xeen is installed. In 1994, World of Xeen, a special version of Clouds of Xeen and Darkside of Xeen rolled into one, with two differences: One, your characters are able to travel from one game to the other, doubling the size of the world available for exploration. Two, CD-ROM technology has made possible the use of digitized speech in all places that call for it. | ||
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| Princess Maker 2 | Gainax Co., Ltd. | [top] | |
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A hero saved the human race from utter annihilation by the gods. This same hero then was charged by the heavens to take care of young seed dropped from there. This seed becomes his daughter, and her guardian will be watching her progress. In Princess Maker 2 the player assumes the role of a father to the blessed daughter of the heavens. For the next eight years, the hero will nurture and guide her in the path of the player's own choosing. It is possible to choose the path of the zodiac-influenced daughter by scheduling her to jobs and schools, which will raise her statistics (strength, combat skills, cooking, faith, etc.) Each month allows the player to designate three different tasks for her to follow. Balancing between character development, stress level, health and financial income is the focus of this game. Mini sub-quests and various plot options revolve around the young lady adventuring in the wilderness, provided that she's strong enough to tame the wilds. The player can equip her with armor and weapons to fight off wandering random monsters in turn-based combat. The game starts with the daughter at age ten, from which point the player guides her until her adult years. Choices made during the course of the game will determine her eventual marital status, accomplishments and her relationships with other people. There are 74 unique endings in the game.
See also: #Princess Maker 2 Refine |
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| Quenzar's Caverns | Pulse Ventures Ltd. | [top] | |
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This is a shareware, single-player dungeon crawl type of game. The story behind the game is simple enough, the player is a mighty hero/heroine who has decided to rid the realm of Quenzar an evil wizard who is plotting to take over the kingdom. The game has two skill settings and, according to the accompanying description, an experienced player should complete it in under an hour. There is no save game function. The game area is split into four parts. In the upper left is a game map which consists of a 10x10 grid where each cell is a room. In the centre is a compass rose which the player uses to navigate the map and above this are two picture slots which show the current room’s contents. On the left are the characters statistics, strength, amount of gold found etc and below that are buttons for attack, defend, flee and so on. Underneath all of this is are two text boxes one describes the current room, the other lists the actions taken and their results so any messages are received here and in battle the results of each strike are shown here. The game plays in a window or in full screen mode and has randomly generated environments so each game should be different. The game environments are numbered and the player has the option of playing a random game or a specific numbered game, number 8655 is used as the tutorial game and is described in a walkthrough which, if played perfectly, can be completed in twenty moves. The object of the game is to find Queznar and kill him/her. However before the player can enter the lair they must search the rest of the rooms for the key and additional equipment, that means fighting monsters and avoiding traps and not wasting any weapons so they are fully armed when they enter Queznar's lair. | ||
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| Ragnarok / Valhalla | Norsehelm Production / Optyk | [top] | |
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Valhalla (Ragnarok in the US) is a medieval fantasy based roguelike game with Viking/Norse (Scandinavian) mythology as its main theme, reflected by various events and creatures within the game in accord with the mentioned mythology. It is the year 999 A.D. The player is a young Viking and like many other Viking's at that age, are worried and anxious of the Ragnarok prophecy - the Norse version of Armageddon i.e. the end of the world. Determined, the young viking sets out to leave the village and thwart the prophecy, or at least prolong its coming with the help of the good Norse gods and some personal human intervention. The world of Valhalla itself is divided into three realms. There are also five minor planes and countless other areas outside the boundaries of space and time. Each realm has its own unique terrain and set of monsters. The main three realms are: Midgaard – Land of Mortals, Asgard – Land of Gods, Niflheim – Land of the Dead. Each new game in Valhalla is completely unique, including shopkeeper locations and the items sold, making Valhalla as a whole, a completely repeatable game. | ||
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| Reaping the Dungeon | Frontline Software | [top] | |
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Reaping the Dungeon is a turn-based, randomized dungeon crawler in the vein of Rogue and Hack. Below the surface of Jupiter, a machine runs out of control and floods the underground tunnels with synthetic creatures. You must descend into the depths to find and destroy the machine. The adventure is split into a freeware episode of 15 levels titled The Weapon Recovery and the second episode The Machine, which contains 50 more levels and must be purchased. The basic challenge is to explore each dungeon level and collect treasure while fighting enemy creatures in simple hit-vs.-hit fashion. Precious metals and gems can be sold in shops to buy better weapons and equipment; raw crystals gained from defeated enemies help improve your character’s abilities, such as damage ratio, sight range or performance speed. Through battles and careful exploration, your protagonist becomes increasingly more powerful and efficient. All level layouts and contents are randomly created. Each level introduces one new creature and at least one new map element or item. Reaping the Dungeon adds a number of original elements to the genre: The drop shaft that leads down to the next level relocates in random intervals. It must be found and tagged. Data chips scattered throughout the level reveal its current location; In addition to weapon/device energy and health, your character has an oxygen pool. Each step consumes oxygen, which makes uncoordinated running-around in the dungeon wasteful and potentially life-threatening; Energy, health and oxygen can be harvested from cell plants, which grow in a five-step life cycle. Good timing is essential to maximize the cell harvest; Reaping the Dungeon’s magic system is based on rare mushrooms that give special powers for several turns, such as improved sight range, perfect weapon proficiency, seed planting or the ability to walk through walls. Reaping the Dungeon’s graphics consist entirely of customized 16-color ASCII characters. The sound is limited to PC Speaker noises. | ||
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| Red Crystal: The Seven Secrets of Life, The | QQP | [top] | |
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You are in the land Darkmoore which is reigned by the evil Lexnor. And because you are playing an RPG you have to defeat him. For this purpose you travel through Darkmoore to conquer dungeons and maximize your fame. You can choose between five classes. The screen is divided into two parts. On the left side is always our hero, the right side is reserved for various indexes like a map. This is, if you play alone. Quite unusually for RPGS of its time you can play the game with a friend - the second player is seen on the right side of the screen. Before every fight you can try to bribe your enemy. | ||
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| Shadow of Yserbius, The | Ybarra Productions, Inc. / Sierra On-Line, Inc. | [top] | |
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Although called The Shadow of Yserbius, this Sierra redirection of the game from an online multi-player fantasy game to a one-person role-playing version actually encompasses two games: The Shadow of Yserbius and The Fates of Twinion. The games come with both single- and multi-player modes, literally thousands of opponents to encounter and a vast world filled with hundreds of inventory items and quests. Considered "dungeon-quests" by the designers, at the time of release (1993), these two game had a support system for multi-playing at the ImagiNation Network on the Internet. In true role-playing fashion, however, the player builds his or her character based on unique strengths, weaknesses, endurance and abilities. Level advance requires acquisition of experience and spells, quest completion and combat prowess. In The Shadow of Yserbius, you can choose your character from eight races and affiliation with one of six guilds. Male or female preference is accommodated as is choice of philosophy: harmony or chaos. Gameplay is seen from a first person perspective and the crux of the story is revealed slowly as you gain access to the many hidden areas of the dungeons. In 2019, a fan-made remake called Medievalands was released. | ||
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| Shadoworlds | Teque London Ltd. / Krisalis Software Ltd. | [top] | |
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In this sequel to Shadowlands, you find yourself commanding a team of explorers through a deserted space-station, trying to discover what happened to the crew. Along the way you must solve puzzles, fight baddies and do masses and masses of exploring. You have four characters to control in this real time RPG, and the designers have done their best to remove all the numbers usually involved in RPG's (dexterity/wisdom etc) and replaced them with friendlier looking graphical bars. Another good idea is the way you can put your characters in formation instead of having to move them one at a time. The other big innovative game system is the clever use of light: Teque's "Photoscaping" system which means you can only see a few feet in front of you and you can use flares and torches to light up areas. | ||
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| Stone Mist 2: Legend of the Overfiend | Bit Brother Software | [top] | |
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This is a 3/4 perspective, animated VGA role playing game. The world is called Stone Mist, a huge medieval domain, similar in technological achievements accomplished during Earths own Middle Ages. All of Stone Mists gods, legends and lore are based on the actual beliefs and superstitions of the people during the Middle Ages. A heavy dose of Norse mythology is also present in the cultures of Stone Mist. Stone Mist is an entity, its own world, a world wracked by violence looking for a hero. After this shareware game is registered, you get an expanded game world and new lands to explore. Also new chapters in the "Druidic Sanctuary" saga. Now take on quests to retreive an ancient axe, new magical herbs and spells and more exotic locales to explore. The continuation of the Stone Mist saga, finally entreach yourself with the most evil of all beings in the world. Restore the Earth Goddess to her majestic throne and watch all be reborn through her leadership. NEW game features: a revamped magic system, more spells, more weapons, new monsters, lots of new locales to visit and more. Also includes more printed docs and an all inclusive atlas of the Stone Mist world. | ||
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| Tower of Silka, The [MAC] [J] | Panyome / Asumu | [top] | |
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This is a dungeon crawler rpg game released in Japan for MAC made with Hyper Card. On your play screen there are several menu gauges which show combat level and other stats like life value. When this goes to zero, you will die. This value decreases in battle with monsters, but can recover by using "herb" or resting. Search button - you may find a treasure box with a tool if you look for it in the appropriate place. In the place where there is a treasure chest, the Fairy Cannonvale Beach teaches, but when a monster appears, you overlook it, and must look for yourself. Rest button - life only recovers the value according to the level. Gold is money. It can be obtained by killing a monster or selling tools to merchants. You can also buy useful tools from merchants. Merchants appear on their own when appropriate. Equipment button - the current equipment will be displayed. To actually equip, you have to click on the tool listed below and do "use". The TOWER Save Button saves the current game. When you save and exit, the next time you start, you can play through the continuation. Experience value - as you experience the battle with the monster, it increases. The level rises when this exceeds a certain value. Import button read the saved game and play it from the continuation. When fighting a monster, you can attack, defend or try to escape. | ||
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| Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds | Looking Glass Technologies / ORIGIN Systems | [top] | |
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This takes place one year after the events of Ultima VII: The Black Gate. To celebrate the defeat of the Guardian, Lord British invites the Avatar and his companions to his castle. However, in the night of the feast the Guardian attacks again, encasing the castle in a giant gem of blackrock. Deep in the sewers of the castle, another blackrock gem is found, created as an aftereffect of the attack. This gem is a teleporter to other worlds controlled by the Guardian. Now you, the Avatar, must travel to these worlds in order to free the castle from the Guardian's spell. This sequel to Ultima Underworld plays almost exactly as the original, with its 3D world, action-oriented combat, and magic and dialogue systems. The storyline is more connected to the main Ultima series and the game world is larger and has more variety: besides the usual castles and dungeons there are such diverse locations as an ice world, a totally alien place called Talorus and the enigmatic Ethereal Void. Graphics and sound have also been improved: the size of the viewing window has been increased, there are all-new monster graphics and the game now features digitized sound effects. |
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| Ultima VII, Part Two: Serpent Isle + The Silver Seed | ORIGIN Systems, Inc. | [top] | |
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The events of the game take place eighteen months after those described in Ultima VII: The Black Gate. Batlin, the leader of the Fellowship has disappeared, as well as Iolo's wife Gwenno. A map is found that points to the Serpent Isle where the Guardian is still planning to destroy Britannia. Lord British sends the Avatar and his companions to this new land. Once there, the Avatar discovers that a great imbalance is upon the isle and it is up to him to fix it. To do so, he must learn the philosophies of the original inhabitants of this land, who worshipped giant serpents symbolizing the principles of Order, Chaos and Balance. Serpent Isle uses virtually the same game engine as the first Ultima VII, with some slight modifications in inventory management and NPC portraits (which are now digitized images of actors). The story, however, is more linear and also more extensive. Unlike earlier Ultima games, many tasks have to be accomplished before the player is able to advance to a different area. There are also many scripted events that advance the plot, though the free-roaming is still retained to a large degree, with a vast amount of locations to visit, items to collect, and NPCs to interact with. Combat is handled similarly to the previous game, with a simple real-time point-and-click management of the Avatar's actions, while his/her party members are being controlled by the AI. The Silver Seed is an add-in disk for Ultima VII, Part Two: Serpent Isle. It added a new scenario with 5 quests, in which the player has to go back in time to find the silver seed which would heal the lands. In order to fit in with the original story line, these quests needed to be completed before finishing the original game. The main appeal of the game was a few useful items such as a keyring for storing the many keys could be found and a few interface improvements such as new hotkeys. See also: #Ultima Collection | ||
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| Unlimited Adventures | MicroMagic, Inc. / Strategic Simulations, Inc. | [top] | |
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This allows players to create their own fantasy role-playing games, especially those set in the Forgotten Realms world, similar to SSI's AD&D Gold Box series. The game is required to play the worlds created with it. In Gold Box games the player typically controls a party of adventurers, leading them through cities and dungeons (presented in first person perspective), talking to people, finding treasure, buying things in shops, fighting battles, etc. When combat begins, the screen switches to a top-down perspective where the player can control each party member while they fight the opponent. This is also how games created with Unlimited Adventures look. Construction Set - The basic elements of each created game (i.e. design) are its modules, that is, the levels that the player will be travelling through. The designer builds the modules by arranging walls and choosing floors and ceilings. Then comes the most important part - setting up the events. The events control everything interesting that happens in the game: combats, text messages, Non-Player Characters (NPCs) joining/leaving the party, the party visiting a temple/shop/tavern, etc. Unlimited Adventures comes with a lot of art, depicting various monsters, characters, items, etc. It is also possible to import own art. There are a lot of pre-made monsters (e.g. goblins, dragons, zombies, etc.) and humanoid enemies (e.g. brigands, bandits, evil mages, etc.), which the designer can edit freely. It also comes with a complete example design, "Heirs to Skull Crag". | ||
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| Warriors of Legend | Synergistic Software, Inc. / Virgin Games, Inc. | [top] | |
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The kingdoms of Lemuria enjoyed a time of peaceful existence before the visitors came, the "Black Circle," or coven of sorcerers from Lortai. King Osric the Great, one of the few survivors, made a plea to all the heroes of the land to rescue his kingdom. Warriors of Legend begins with our warriors' quest to restore Lemuria its former state. Warriors Of Legend is a RPG with preset characters, the last made by Synergistic with the World Builder engine that powered Conan The Cimmerian and other similar games. You have a top-down map of the land to control long trips between cities and the like. There is a side scrolling view when in town and in close quarter battles. | ||
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| WarWizard | MicroGenesis | [top] | |
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WarWizard was a fantasy role-playing video game that was released as shareware in 1993, first for Amiga, then ported to MS-DOS for IBM-compatible computers. It was developed by MicroGenesis, a small company founded by Brad McQuaid and Steve Clover in 1989. Today, the game is most notable as the commercial start for McQuaid, Clover, and artist Milo Cooper, who would later work together at Sony Online Entertainment on EverQuest and at Sigil Games Online on Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. The player acts as a "WarWizard", a powerful magic-using character that fights and completes quests. WarWizard features VGA graphics and sound effects, but touted greater emphasis on gameplay than on anything else. One notable feature of the game was its combat mode, which featured the ability to target specific parts of an opponent's body, hampering movement or disabling the opponents altogether, rendering them unable to flee from the battle or to retaliate. The same thing could also happen to the player, WarWizard, himself. The game was made freeware in 2009. | ||
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| Whale's Voyage / Distant Frontiers | neo Software Produktions GmbH / Flair Software Ltd. | [top] | |
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Explore the Alien planets of the 24th century, with their sinister worlds and cities inhabited by strange sometimes violent people. Learn to tell friend from foe, as you try to outwit traders with your merchandise, the competition can be intense, but the rewards great, as you strive to financially secure your race. Select your genetically created crew members and take off in your "Rustbucket" of a spaceship to the other solar planets, whilst battling against marauding pirate ships that will try to hinder your trading progress. | ||
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| Worlds of Legend: Son of the Empire | Mindscape Inc. | [top] | |
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The game continues from Legend with four adventurers celebrating their victory over chaos in Trazere. A messenger interrupts the celebration with news of the Emperor's murder and a power struggle among four warlords. The adventurers ride to the Imperial castle and are greeted by Aunt Sushiana who instructs them to find the murderer in the palace vaults. After the party has dealt with him, Sushiana tells that to reunite the realm, they must collect four shards of an amulet and awaken the eternal champion to defeat the warlords. The party consists of four characters, all different classes: Berserker, Troubadour, Assassin, and Runemaster. Each character has a unique ability. The sex and clothing of the characters can be changed before starting the game. The game has a world map view where the party travel between cities while avoiding armies of the warlords. In the dungeon areas the party solves puzzles and fight monsters. The dungeons are depicted from an isometric viewpoint. The Runemaster is able to create a variety of spells and magical weapons from runes and other ingredients. | ||
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Platformers
| Adventures of MicroMan, The | Brian L. Goble | [top] | |
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You are MicroMan, stuck inside a computer. You must run, jump, and shoot your way out. Along the way are cannons, enemies, ladders, invisible bricks, powerups, and more! You can gain the ability to get heat-seeking bullets, to jump higher, to fire 3 shots at once and more! Large bosses appear once in a while. The registered version consists of 2 episodes: Adventure 1: Crazy Computers and Adventure 2: Savage Stones. The shareware version contains Adventure 1: Crazy Computers only. The original freeware/demo release titled only MicroMan was later reworked into the first episode of The Adventures Of MicroMan. In 2003, HipSoft released MicroMan's Crazy Computers, a remake with updated graphics. It adds shooting accuracy percentage and a visible timer to countdown the effect of power-ups below the health bar. All of the familiar mechanical enemies are back, as well as the three weapon upgrades and super jump ability, moving platforms, platforms that fade in and out of existence, transporters, and the mirror room where MicroMan is mirrored vertically and horizontally. This time there are four massive levels to complete with multiple save points in each. | ||
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| Alien Carnage / Halloween Harry | Interactive Binary Illusions, SubZero Software / Apogee Software, Ltd. | [top] | |
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This is a side-scrolling platform cartoon-style game that features agent Halloween Harry who has to save the world from aliens who want to take over control of Earth by turning its population into green-skinned zombies. Some of the enemies reference Aliens, Gremlins, and Elvis Presley. Harry is helped by controller Diane, who gives him information via a video link. The game features 256 colour VGA graphics and background music. In the game, Harry has to shoot zombies and aliens with his flamethrower and other weapons, rescuing hostages along the way. Instead of jumping, Harry uses a jetpack to reach higher platforms. His jetpack shares ammo with his flamethrower, which means it is best for the player to use both sparingly. Harry can eat and drink junk food to gain health, and upgrade to different kinds of ammo by using ammo dispensers. Harry needs to collect coins dropped by killed enemies to buy this ammo. He can also pick up other power-ups with various effects. He can use computer terminals scattered across the levels to save his progress. An instant hit for Apogee after its release as shareware and subsequent commercial game under the new name Alien Carnage, Halloween Harry is a great platformer that features cool weapons, numerous levels, tough enemies, and many power-ups. There was a sequel named Zombie Wars. In 2000, a full patched version for modern systems was released as freeware. | ||
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| Baron Baldric: A Grave Overture | Animation F/X / Manaccom Pty Ltd. | [top] | |
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Baron Baldric is quite known among Apogee fans - but the main character, Baron Baldric, was later reused for an isometric game called Mystic Towers. This game is considered very rare since the registered version was only sold in the Australian territory. The story behind Baron Baldric: A Grave Overture takes place under Castle Pedabouch. You have to search for the family treasures in the tomb: it was told that, centuries before, Baron Baldric's ancestor, Baron Lazarus Pedabouche studied an evil Wolf-Magic and turned into a cruel tyrant: fortunately, when he seized Rosie, a local milk-maid, he was stoned to death by his own subjects. Rosie died too, and was doomed to haunt the whole castle until the ancient baron was slain. A Grave Overture reminds of classics like Impossible Mission 2 and the earlier Montezuma's Revenge because of many elements bringing the game far from the action genre. You have to find flints to light lamps when they go out, and regularly eat food to survive the maze. | ||
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| Beethoven's 2nd | Rozner Labs Software Group / Hi-Tech Expressions, Inc. | [top] | |
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Beethoven's 2nd is a platform game where you get a chance to wear the metaphorical shoes of Beethoven - that lovable, big dog from the movie. Your four puppies need to be rescued and brought back to their mom. As a responsible father and guardian you'll first need to find the puppy, avoiding dangers such as bad-tempered cats, mean dogcatchers, acorns which have a habit to drop down just when you pass underneath, and careless skateboarders. You can bark at these opponents to scare them away. And if you'll find a source of water (such as a rubber hose), you can make yourself wet and then - in a tense situation - shake off the water, eliminating everyone in the vicinity. Once you find your pup, you'll find out that getting him back to his mom is no easy task. While your puppy can - thankfully - walk on his own accord when you put him down, you'll still have to carry it over obstacles, and you'll be forced to fight all the enemies again while doing it. | ||
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| Billy the Kid Returns! | Alive Software / American Software Laboratories | [top] | |
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It's 1875. Your name is William Bonney. You're 15 years old. And you're in jail. But not for long! Billy the Kid Returns is the story of Billy the Kid, the infamous criminal from the late 19th century. You'll have the chance to play through several crucial moments in his life (and a few made up ones) in hopes of improving upon the Kid's own adventures. The game features ten levels, which range from the Kid's escape from jail, a search for hidden treasure, an ambush by the Apache, a fight against some deadly Senoritas, and his final confrontation against sheriff Pat Garrett. The game has side scrolling, platforming and top-down view stages. At the beginning, you must avoid soldiers and guard dogs, but in later stages you must evade wild animals, other rustlers, gunmen who're after your head for bounty, and snipers hidden in buildings. You only have one way to defend yourself: your gun, which you can use to kill nearly every enemy in the game. You can also pick up other items like apples, stars or tools to raise your score. Picking up cooked meat raises your available lives by one. | ||
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| Bio Menace | Apogee Software, Ltd. | [top] | |
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Bio Menace is a typical but quite enjoyable early platformer by Apogee. Despite the cliché defeat-aliens-that-invade-Earth plot, Bio Menace offers huge levels, fun power-ups, and detailed EGA graphics that is a step above Commander Keen (the engine of which powers the game). On the downside, the game has many annoying bugs. For instance, sometimes when you restore the game, you'll find yourself back on the previous level you’ve been through already. It is no wonder that the game includes a lengthy troubleshooting section, but it’s still likely that you will come across one or two bugs before finishing the game. This nuisance aside, Bio Menace is a fun shareware platformer that isn't Apogee's best, but is by no means their worst either. Worth a look if you like platform games or Apogee's classics. Formerly shareware, 3D Realms released the game into the public domain in December 2005. | ||
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| Blues Brothers: Jukebox Adventure, The | Titus France SA | [top] | |
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This is the sequel to The Blues Brothers, taking them through different side-scrolling platform levels. There are also power-ups that can be gathered until the jukebox to progress to the next level is found. It features improved graphics, bigger levels, and naturally more records than ever to collect. The game stars the Blues Brothers, a duo of popular musicians comprising Jake and Elwood. The game is based on a hit movie of the same name, which was in turned inspired by the real Blues Brothers band (although the band members bore little resemblance to their movie counterparts). Gameplay is standard side-scrolling platform fare, except that various monsters, power-ups, and items are modified to fit with the Blues Brothers theme. Instead of shooting fireballs or laser, Elwood or Jake throws records (LP) that cut through monsters. These records are depletable, so you must be on a lookout to collect more of them whenever you can. You can control either Elwood or Jake, although they are not very different (Elwood, being a bit more portly than Jake, seems to move a bit slower though). With vibrant graphics, varied and inventive levels, and - of course - rocking Blues Brothers soundtrack, it's a must-play for all fans of the duo, and a good introductory-level game for newbies. | ||
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| Captain Dynamo | Codemasters Software Company Limited, The | [top] | |
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Insane genius Austen van Flyswatter has stolen a huge collection of diamonds, and retrieving them involves navigating a succession of fiendishly-designed arrangements of platforms and traps. Does that sound like a job for a retired superhero? Captain Dynamo thinks so, and aims to recapture them for their rightful owner. Gameplay is platform-based, with 12 (6 in Amiga version) vertically-scrolling levels, each containing around 50 diamonds - the more of these you can collect, the higher your score. Some will require advance planning to reach, while you will often be dependent on booster pads to reach the higher sections of a level. | ||
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| CJ's Elephant Antics | Genesis Software / The Codemasters Software Company Limited | [top] | |
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CJ the baby elephant has fled captivity, and is desperate to reach his home in Africa. That means trekking halfway around the world, armed only with an infinite supply of peanuts and a handful of bombs (fortunately more can be collected as you go along). You start with nine lives, but the game's design is such that a lot of deaths will be unexpected, so prior knowledge of the layouts is essential to get through most sections of the five levels without losing lives. The two-player mode involves the screen following the lead player, so the latter can lose lives by getting too far behind. With lots of precise jumps across vertically-progressing ledges involved, a lot of skill and timing is required. | ||
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| Cruel World | Makh-Shevet | [top] | |
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Made by Israeli developers, this is a tribute to the famous game Prince of Persia, having identical gameplay and looking very similarly to the classic platformer. The hero is an innocent citizen who was thrown into a deep dungeon without trial and explanation. The goal is to escape from prison. Just like the prince, the hero must perform a variety of runs and jumps, fight enemies (skeletons and others) in real-time combat, and occasionally solve environmental puzzles. | ||
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| Dangerous Dave 4 Goes Nutz | Softdisk Publishing | [top] | |
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In this fourth and last game in the series, Dangerous Dave has to rescue his little brother Delbert from the evil Dr. Nemesis who has hidden him in a mental hospital. Blast through levels of zombies using your shotgun. It's the weirdest of th series with hypodermic-armed zombies and wackos on wheels. Nine wacky levels will keep you entertained, although they become a bit repetitive after the first few levels. Like in the previous games, you can aim the gun in several angles, and must wait for Dave to reload his gun from time to time. These realistic touches make the game a lot of fun, and require a bit of thinking to the typically mindless genre. If you like other games in the series Dave Goes Nutz is a must have. If you enjoy platform games in general, the game's humor and great gameplay makes it a time well spent. | ||
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| Dangerous Dave's 3 Risky Rescue | Gamer's Edge / Softdisk Publishing | [top] | |
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This sequel did not involve the creators who had gone on to form id Software, but were done by their old employers at Softdisk using the Keen Dreams engine. Dangerous Dave is back in this gory and macabre adventure. Battle wolves and other man-killing creatures with your shotgun attempting to rescue Dave's little brother Delbert from the castle of the evil Dr. Nemesis. There's 11 levels and more monsters than the previous. The game features the same campy humor as the first two games, challenging levels that are very varied and well-designed, and more secret levels that are a lot of fun to discover. After the claustrophobic level of Dangerous Dave in The Haunted Mansion, the breezy outdoor scenes in this game are refreshing, and provide excellent backdrops for more diverse monsters and their attacks. Gigantic spiders drop down from trees, and you can jump on tree branches to explore the vertical environs. Overall, an excellent platformer that truly deserves its "cult" status. By many opinions this game was considered the goriest game before 1994 (it was defeated by Wolf 3D). | ||
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| Dino Jnr. in Canyon Capers / Huckleberry Hound in Hollywood Capers | Artcrew Productions, Design Productions, Quex Development Ltd. / Villa Crespo Software Inc., Alternative Software Ltd. | [top] | |
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A small boy, Dino Jnr. He needs to complete 5 stages in each of the 4 worlds (Under World, Sea World, Canyon World, and Sky World). There is no save/load or password access, so this should be performed during single gameplay session. The goal is to clear each level of gems (increasing your score), hearts (increasing your life energy), and golden statuette (increasing your score also) jumping from the bottom of the level to its top and/or vice versa. Different obstacles such as lethal drops, flying balls, bubbles, rolling rocks, spitting fire, inhabitants of the four worlds, etc. are present, and your jumping skill allows you to avoid them. If you lose your current energy as a heart, you'll be regenerated at the same place with another heart. There are three hearts to exhaust until game over. There are three attempts to continue the game after it is over, but all the scores will be cleared on each attempt. The highest score is stored. After completing the game once you may replay it again, but the gameplay will be harder. Bonus levels are also available after completing the world stages. In Europe, the game Huckleberry Hound in Hollywood Capers was based on the famous animated series created by Hanna-Barbera Productions about sweet blue dog Huckleberry 'Huck' Hound that speaks with a southern drawl and wants to find an appropriate job. So Huck as amateur Hollywood actor should complete many acts in the different scenes (Under World, Sea World, Canyon World, and Sky World), which may be available later by entering the proper code, using three takes. The goal of gameplay is to clear each level of diamonds (increasing your score), hearts (increasing your bone energy), and Oscar (increasing your score also) jumping from the bottom of the level to its top and vice versa. Different obstacles such as lethal drops, flying balls, sticky, icy, or moving ground, teleports, inhabitants of the four Worlds, etc. are present on your way, and your jumping skill allows you to avoid them. Your take is finished if you lose your current bone energy. The player's highest score will be stored. After completing the game once you may replay it again, but the gameplay will be harder. A bonus level is also available. | ||
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| DJ Puff | The Codemasters Software Company Limited | [top] | |
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The player is DJ Puff the fire breathing dragon, set out to fry all your enemies in one puff. The objective of the game is to collect certain 'discs' spread across the game. These discs are either placed in hard to reach places or appear after you defeat certain types of monsters. Basically you have to blast your way through or fly (jump) through treacherous terrain: water and bamboo sticks are one of many terrain types that can kill your character. Blasted monsters turn into 'bonus fruit' (yes, fruit) of which you can obtain for additional points. A unique attribute of DJ Puff is that you can modify the speed to a very wide range, therefore the current CPU speed can be modified to suit the player (from Zzzzz speed to Lightning speed) | ||
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| Duke Nukem II | Apogee Software, Ltd. | [top] | |
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In this installment of Duke Nukem, Duke is taken away by aliens (I believe the same race from Duke Nukem 3d) that want to suck out his brain and use it to conquer the Earth. Duke escapes and now must fight for his life. The game consists of four episodes, the first available as shareware. Not to be confused with the second episode of Duke Nukem 1, it is the second Duke Nukem game. Beautiful graphics, for that time of course, and an absorbing gameplay with super sound made this a beautiful platformer, worthy to follow the classic Duke Nukem original. Large levels full of bonus containers, complicated jumps, mean monsters and all the classic Duke Nukem running-and-jumping-action make for hours of enjoyable fun. | ||
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| Flashback: The Quest for Identity | Delphine Software International / Strategic Simulations / U.S. Gold | [top] | |
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The year is 2142. You play as Conrad B. Hart, a man who has lost his memory. After barely escaping from hostile aliens, Conrad's bike crashes on an unknown planet. Conrad finds himself in the jungle, and from now on his quest for survival and his lost identity begins. During one of his investigations, Conrad discovers a plot to take over Earth involving aliens called Morphs who disguise themselves as government officials. "Flashback" is a platform action adventure. Your navigate Conrad over the platforms, performing various moves. You can simply jump or do a longer run-and-jump, run, climb, hang off ledges, and pick up objects lying on the ground. To defend yourself, you shoot enemies with your gun and also use various objects (such as stones) to harm or to distract them. It features fully hand-drawn backdrops and for its time remarkably fluid rotoscoped animation of walking, running and jumping movements, reminiscent of Prince of Persia. Later a version on CD-ROM was released with new cinematic scenes, better animation between levels and added voice actors to the character's dialogue. On Dec 4/2018, Flashback: 25th Anniversary was released. A refreshed version based on the SNES graphics and also offers a new Modern mode featuring enhanced graphics, remastered sound effects, and a Rewind option (allows to move back), and a tutorial. | ||
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| Gateworld / G.O.R.G. | Homebrew Software / Microforum | [top] | |
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Captain Klondike's ship has crash-landed on an unknown asteroid. He must find a way to collect fuel for his ship, looking for treasure and adventure along the way. Collect coins, gems, and power-ups. Battle strange creatures. Avoid traps and solve puzzles. It all leads to the final confrontation with the mysterious G.O.R.G. as you journey though lush alien worlds and over 30 levels in this side scrolling jump n' shoot platformer. Features complete soundtrack, 3 skill levels and animated story and epilogue sequences. It includes over 50 megabytes of sounds, incredible graphics and over 35 planets to explore. In 1995, it was later released as G.O.R.G. with added SVGA video, voice clips and sound effects, cut scenes, and changed the sprite of the main character (he wears a helmet in GORG, but not in Gateworld). | ||
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| Heroes: The Sanguine Seven / Heroes The Tantalizing Trio | Jeffrey Fullerton / Safari Software | [top] | |
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The game bears similarities to many other platform games of the time such as Duke Nukem and Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure, but still has unique differences. One key feature of the game is the ability to play as seven different "super heroes" each with their own abilities, weaknesses, and strengths. The game features EGA/VGA graphics, PC Speaker sound effects, Sound Blaster FM music tracks, and 360° of smooth parallax scrolling. A jail break has occurred and five of the most notorious outcasts have escaped and eluded authorities successfully, recruited many villains into their army of mass terror and destruction, and have wreaked havoc all over the city of Megalopolis. The villains seem unstoppable, as the police force has failed over and over again to bring the band of bad buddies to justice. As a last resort, a team of super heroes are summoned in an attempt to restore justice in the once proud city of Megalopolis. The gameplay in Heros is like most platform games. The player's goal is to find the exit on each level while avoiding villains and other hazards. All heroes can jump, shoot, and use their unique special abilities. They may also collect miscellaneous items that are scattered around the levels to obtain points. Every ten levels you will face one of the five bosses. The game consists of a total of fifty levels. There are a total of eleven levels in the "Heroes: The Tantalizing Trio" shareware different from the retail game. Some enemies come in different kinds; some chase the player, and yet others fire projectiles at the player. On certain levels the player can find fruit which restores a certain amount of the hero's health. Power gems are scarce but important to the completion of the game. Gems increase certain attributes of the heroes, such as their health, ammo, or jump. Gems can only be used once. The Control Room is the main room in the game. In the control room, you can use power gems, save the game, view the demo, and select the hero that will attempt the next mission. Games can only be saved when exiting a level and returning to the control room. When a hero's health drops down to zero, a protective bubble surrounds the hero and a message is relayed to the Control Room demanding assistance. The score will be reset to the original score that the player had before he entered the level. In addition, any power gems that the hero had in his/her inventory are lost forever. Keys are not lost, and are transferred when another hero picks him/her up. The player must then select another hero, to enter the level and pick up the fallen comrade. If all heroes fall, the game will end. In June 2005, Jeffrey Fullerton released the full version as freeware for personal use. | ||
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| James Pond 2: Codename: RoboCod | Vectordean Ltd. / Millennium Interactive Ltd. | [top] | |
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In his second adventure (the first on PC), James Pond must retrieve the toys Dr Maybe has stolen. Pond has been armed with an Inspector Gadget-style stretch device, which he can use to view higher areas or claw onto ceilings so as to slide across them. The gameplay takes place across worlds themed around particular types of toys, such as sporting goods, candy and aircraft. The levels scroll sideways, although a small amount of vertical movement is included. On each level Pond must collect 2 penguins and reach the exit, although there are usually multiple exits and lots of secret areas to explore. After completing each pair of two worlds (each of which has three sub levels), a boss must be faced. | ||
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| Jason Storm in Space Chase | Safari Software Ltd. / B&N Companies, Inc. | [top] | |
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This is a shareware side scrolling platform game in three parts, each with smoothly scrolling 16 color graphics. Part One was released as shareware with the full game being available for purchase. Later episode three was released individually as Space Chase 3. The game's emphasis is on a combination of action and adventure. The levels are maze-like and the player will need to locate objects such as keys, switches, and moving platforms to get through. The three episodes in this game are Part One : City Under Seige - Agent Jason Storm has just receives his toughest assignment. He must locate Evil Guys Inc. and destroy them and all their forces before they take control of the planetary government. Part Two : Fortress of Doom - The battle continues on the island stronghold of Evil Guys Inc. Part Three : Showdown on Orbit - The leaders of the "Evil Guys" have managed to escape, and now they have retreated to a heavily fortified fortress above the earth. It is up to Major Jason Storm to secretly enter the fortress and stop them before the people on earth are destroyed. There are ten levels in this episode. | ||
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| Jetpack | Adept Software / Software Creations | [top] | |
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You are an explorer trying to gather green gems from more than 100 small dungeons. You have a jetpack and an electric...tazer, phaser, whatever. Your jetpack consumes fuel and extra fuel can be found over the map. You can also pick up enemy freezers and invulnerability powerups. Your tazer thing can cut through some materials to get through the level successfully, but it cannot hurt enemies. You can also use teleporters and ladders. Ice and grass can hinder your progress. In 1998, the game was made freeware. | ||
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| Jetpack Christmas Special | Software Creations | [top] | |
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This is a freeware edition of Jetpack featuring new, Christmas themed levels from the original developers. In this game the player takes on the role of Santa Claus. Their task is to explore levels "full of treasures and peril" and collect all the gifts and presents they contain. As with the original game exploration involves flying about with the aid of a jetpack until the level is cleared at which time a portal will open giving access to the next. The game includes the level editor and support for up to eight players using keyboard and/or joysticks. | ||
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| Jim Power: The Lost Dimension in 3D | Loriciel SA | [top] | |
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In in this altered and expanded port of the original Amiga title, Earth has always blocked "The Lost Dimension" and now its alien guardian, Vaprak, threatens to annihilate Earth to free its brethren in the dimension. Special Agent Jim Power has been sent in alone to send Vaprak back into "The Lost Dimension". Armed with your upgradeable blaster, space ship, and jet pack, you will blast and jump you way across "The Lost Dimension" taking down its inhabitants before any contact from them takes your life. | ||
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| Krusty's Super Fun House | Audiogenic Software Ltd. / Virgin Games, Inc., Acclaim Entertainment Inc. | [top] | |
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Krusty the Clown's Fun House has been overrun by rats. You must help him to herd the rats into trap machines to clear them out. In order to do so, Krusty must manipulate his environment to set up pathways so that the rats are headed in the right direction. Objects that Krusty move around include blocks, fans, and pipe pieces. The trap machines are operated by other recognizable Simpsons characters: Bart, Homer, Sideshow Mel, and Corporal Punishment. | ||
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| Magic Boy | Blue Turtle / Empire Software | [top] | |
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This cartoony platformer game stars Hewlett, a boy wizard who accidentally released monsters and turned his master into an elephant. Hewlett has to correct his mistakes and imprison the monsters. In order to do that, he must visit places like the beach, under the ocean, in a dump full of plastic things and into the future. Hewlett has to defeat his enemies by forcing them into his magical bag and dumping them at key positions. If the monster is left in the bag for an extended period of time, Hewlett will lose a life. Losing too many lives with result in game over. He also must get through four areas: Sand Land, Wet World, Plastic Place, and Future Zone. There are also several power-ups that help him on his quest. | ||
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| Monster Bash | Apogee Software, Ltd. | [top] | |
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No Apogee game has ever had as many gruesome graphics as Monster Bash, with over EIGHT MEGS of animated/scrolling EGA graphics in all three episodes. Johnny Dash's bash 'em smash 'em adventure takes him into the evil Under World of Count Chuck. The story starts when Johnny's dog Tex is kidnapped by the Count, along with hundreds of other pet dogs and cats. The friendly bed monster under Johnny's bed tells Johnny where Tex was taken, and how Johnny can use his secret closet passageway to get to the Under World himself. Count Chuck plans to turn all the pets into an army of undead monsters. Johnny grabs his slingshot and leaps into his closet. The Count will not turn his dog Tex into a monster, not if he can stop him...! Monster Bash is full of scary action and haunting puzzles. For instance, Johnny can climb, crawl, shoot his slingshot in several directions, fly a broom, and a lot more. And Johnny's super charged slingshot can shoot rocks, rockets, fireballs, and other surprises. There also more enemy creatures and monsters than ever seen in an Apogee game. In Oct/2021, Monster Bash HD was released remastered in HD with multiple layers of parallaxing, environmental effects, smooth gameplay, and retouched graphics. | ||
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| Nicky II | Microïds | [top] | |
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The sequel to Nicky Boom; this time Nicky must find out who has been removing ladders and blocking off caves in his homeland. The gameplay is essentially platform, with multi-directional maze-like levels. Beating the obstructions requires occasional brainwork – hidden ladders are easy enough to uncover, and there are lots of hidden sections to look for. The levels are colourful, and the game has a cute look making it appear suited to younger players. Mirrors are placed around the levels, which transport you to a random place. | ||
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| Pac-in-Time / Fury of the Furries | Atreid Concept SA / Kalisto | [top] | |
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You control a cute, round creature called Tiny, who must defeat "the wicked one" who has captured the King, and turned all the Tinies into mindless monsters. Fortunately your Tiny has special powers. It can transform himself into a swimmer, rock eater, fireball spitter, or rope swinger during its quest. The game takes place on a huge island separated into eight regions: Desert, Lagoon, Forest, Pyramids, Mountains, Factory, Village, and finally the Castle. For the US release, the title was changed to 'Pac-In-Time'. It's exactly the same game. Only the characters were changed : the not-so-known European Tinies (from the Skweek, Super Skweek, Tiny Skweeks/Brainies/Tinies games) were replaced by the widely known Pac-Man. | ||
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| Prehistorik 2 | Titus France SA | [top] | |
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This sequel takes up the story of its predecessor, for another caveman-era platform game. The hero must use his club to crush animal enemies, many of which then release bonus items to collect. He no longer needs to feed his clan, so there is no required minimum food target, unlike the original game. Other bonus items are located around the levels, while yet more can be found by using your club creatively and adventurously. There are bosses and passwords after every few levels. The creators added a lot of detail to the game, which indeed increases the entertainment factor. If the player runs for a long distance and then stops, the caveman will be out of breath. There are ten levels plus three bonus levels. There are various hidden secrets in this game, one shows some extra credits, and there's even a collection of holiday photographs of the development team. | ||
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| Prince Of Persia 2: The Shadow And The Flame | Broderbund Software | [top] | |
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In this sequel to the popular platform puzzler, your identity has been taken by the evil Grand Vizier Jaffar whom you defeated in the original Prince of Persia. Banished from your palace, you must fight to reclaim what is yours and save the Sultan's lovely daughter. The story is told through still cutscenes and full voiceover, which was pretty impressive for a disk based game. You begin the game running across the castle rooftops, only to escape on a barge and end up on a desert island. You trek through caves, ruins and the usual castles, at least giving a change of scenery lacking in the original. One of the more amusing additions is that you can actually now control the shadow from the original game. The penalty is steep - you lose a LOT of your life bottles, permanently - but you can trek around the levels without fear of being killed. The graphics are more infinitely detailed, there are more enemies, and even a bigger variety of puzzles. The wonky controls are still present. It's even more frustrating than its predecessor, especially with the new enemies like the incredibly annoying snakes. It makes you wish they'd given it more than a comestic overhaul and maybe made it just a little less difficult. The time limit (75 minutes) doesn't start until about halfway through the game | ||
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| Rusty [J] | C-Lab | [top] | |
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This Japanese side-scrolling platformer takes the whip-swinging mechanics of Super Castlevania IV and combines it with the open-ended level structure of Vampire Killer on the MSX2, while mixing in bits and pieces from every other Castlevania entry in the series, minus Simon's Quest and Symphony of the Night onwards. The biggest change is that instead of controlling a strong-willed muscle man in tight leather, you control a strong willed sexy woman in tight leather. Yes, the dominatrix archetype so beloved by the games industry is here in full force - and with a healthy amount of bare breasts in some places too. Persevere and the game reveals some astonishingly excellent level design. Eight of the game's ten stages revolve around your basic key-and-locked-door structure, with the goal being to find keys based on the four playing card suits (spades, clubs, diamonds and hearts), which open various doors. The ingenious thing is how each level is shaped, doubling back on itself almost like a bizarre pretzel. Most early Castlevania games are extremely linear, and although there have been awesome set-pieces in the series, like swinging through a rotating corridor or exploring a wrecked galleon, it's almost always a one-way corridor crawl. In contrast Rusty manages to convey a sense of exploration in almost all stages, without feeling like it's backtracking, plus there are rewards for those who investigate off the beaten path. The music is exceptionally good - and consistently so. Every level has its own unique theme, and throughout they are all fantastic. Hard rocking guitars are mixed with techno and classical music, with each note and chord pumping you up for whatever comes next. | ||
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| Santa's Xmas Caper | Zeppelin Games Limited | [top] | |
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While riding on his slide, Santa loses all his presents in this platform game. The gifts scattered all across the country, Santa must traverse multiple-scrolling platform-levels collecting them back. When they are all collected, an exit opens granting him access to the next level. Each level is crowded with spiky pitfalls, slippery platforms and cute-looking but nasty baddies. By throwing snowballs, the baddies can be stunned for a short while. Complete all seven levels and Christmas will be saved. | ||
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| ScubaVenture: The Search For Pirate's Treasure | Apogee Software Productions / Softdisk Publishing | [top] | |
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Your father had located the sunken remains of the Barbarosa, one of the last terrible pirate ships to sail in Caribbean waters. But he disappeared mysteriously during a diving trip. Now it's your turn to go to the Barbarosa to solve this mystery and fulfill your father's dream of treasure. You play a diver who must find the treasures of the Barbarosa, a sunken pirate ship. In search of those treasures you encounter the inhabitants of the Caribbean waters and pirate ghosts. You must survive all of the creatures that lie inside the ship. There are a total of eight levels and to complete the level, you must find the special treasure and find the exit. You are also armed with a spear gun and bombs to defend yourself against the sea creatures. The game engine used is the id Software platformer engine developed for Commander Keen: Goodbye, Galaxy and Keen Dreams. | ||
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| SilkRoad: Legend of Gero [J] | Sprite | [top] | |
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Manipulate the silk of Maikyara, you must clear the stage of all the fruit on the screen within the time limit. Since the fruit is also in place that is surrounded by walls, by dissolving the ground with spurting spit of silk, you can make a path to the bottom. Since Gero can only use the number of fruit eaten, and the wrong order can melt blocks to eat fruit, you may no longer be able to go to the place where other fruit are located. You can kill yourself when you are no longer able to clear the screen. If the time limit expires, the water level of the sea will gradually risen. Touching the water and the game is over. | ||
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| Sink or Swim | Zeppelin Games Limited | [top] | |
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Your name is Kevin Codner – rescue mariner extraordinaire, answering the distress call of a sinking cruise liner, the SS Lucifer. You set off in your little submarine and board the ship where a horde of passengers desperately need your keen oversight and "shipsmarts". In 60 levels you have to rescue as many passengers (dubbed the Dim Passengers) as possible. At the beginning the passengers fall through a tube in the level. Similar to Lemmings you have to find a way for the passengers to the exit of the level. In order to do so, you must blast hindrances such cargo boxes and bulkheads with bombs or, when no bombs are left, reposition the boxes with a crane. There are also conveyor belts in the levels. If the belt moves in the wrong way, the passengers either can't use it or may even be transported to their dooms, being dropped off into water, fire or steam jets. You can usually choose the direction of the belts by pulling a lever. There are several types of scenarios that Kevin Codner (you) are faced with throughout the game. Of course the puzzles get progressively more difficult, involving things like patching up cracked pipes to stop a lethal jet of steam from cooking the distressed passengers. You can blast away obstacles and stack crates in creative manners. For instance, you can have them fall onto each other to form a bridge across a gap or to provide shielding from fire. This is usually done by hoisting them onto conveyor belts using a crane. Each level has a certain "save limit", meaning you have to save at least a certain amount of passengers. This again is akin a bit towards Lemmings, and lots of levels have a built-in time limit, represented be water pouring into the compartment, rising ominously. When the water rises high enough, the passengers will get carried along with it, and they can only swim for a short period of time before getting exhausted and drowning, so you'd better be on time with some assistance. At the end of each level you receive a password (again, Lemmings-style) so that you may pick up your game from the current level without having to progress through them all from the get-go. | ||
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| Skunny: Back to the Forest | Copysoft | [top] | |
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This is the first of seven games to feature the Skunny Squirrel character, and the first of three Skunny platformers. It was released under the shareware license. Skunny Hardnut must rescue all of his friends from the evil King Toad, who captures them while Skunny is on holiday in the Bahamas. In order to rescue his friends, Skunny must find "superhealth nuts" to obtain the power to defeat King Toad's henchmen. | ||
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| Skunny: In The Wild West | Copysoft | [top] | |
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After his trip back to the Ancient Rome in Skunny: Save our Pizzas, Skunny the squirrel just wants to get back home. But instead he finds himself in the America of the Wild West. It turns out that his mother has altered the time machine because she wants his son to fix old injustices. Skunny shall get back the sheep that have been stolen from the farm of Skunny's parents back in 1909. This is a shareware platform game with ten levels in which all stolen sheep have to be freed. To reach this goal Skunny has to jump from platform to platform, cross seas or abysses and protect himself from hostile animals and persons with his weapon, a water pistol. While some enemies disappear permanently after being shot, others appear again after a short period of time. Getting hit or touched by an enemy results in losing energy and sooner or later in losing one of the four lives; falling down a platform Skunny loses a life immediately. Then he has to restart from the beginning of the level or a savepoint. In this case all already saved sheep are still saved but all enemies are back. Skunny can pick up water for his pistol, items that restore his health and can carry a box. He can put it down wherever he wants and use it to jump to higher platforms. | ||
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| Skunny: Lost in Space | Copysoft | [top] | |
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All TV Satellite dishes have been stolen by a horde of crazed Schnozes. Astronauts were sent to the Moon to retrieve the dishes but have been captured by the villains and are now being forced to take part in bizarre alien rituals. The secret agent Skunny Hardnut is then sent to the Moon rescue the astronauts and retrieve the dishes, equipped with the state of the art Moonbuggy. This is a rework of Atari's Moon Patrol. Skunny has to scroll all the way right at each level, firing the Moonboogy's twin lasers against enemies and jumping craters. The Moonbuggy has limited ammo and energy. As he wanders throughout Moon's landscape, he can collect lives, ammo and health items. The player can choose any of the ten levels to start playing (two in the shareware version). The game features a "smart" save feature, which automatically saves the game if the player exits the level during gameplay. | ||
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| Skunny: Save Our Pizzas! | Copysoft | [top] | |
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Meet Skunny, a squirrel with attitude. Skunny has been given the job of getting back the recipe of the Pizza that has been stolen by the "Evil Chef Of Cadiz". Skunny must travel back in time to ancient Rome to retrieve the recipe. On his final mission he must confront the "Chef Of Cadiz" and do battle with the crazed chef whom was once described as "A person you could feed your mother in law to!" In this game Skunny the squirrel must travel back in time to ancient Rome to stop an evil chef from changing history by destroying the invention of the pizza so he can make a cheap imitation that everybody will have to eat. The gameplay is basically jumping from platform to platform and onto the heads of roman legions. It features: 256 color graphics painted by one of the best artists in the business, parallax scrolling and masked foreground objects, interactive springs/catapults, timer bombs for blowing away those nasty sprites, bribes for getting through doors, secret sections full of goodies, automatic "smart" save, ten levels, and you can produce your own screenshots using the built in PCX screen grabber. | ||
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| Sleepwalker | CTA Developments / Ocean Software Ltd. | [top] | |
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This original platformer stars a toon dog called Ralph who must stop his sleepwalking master Lee from waking up. Ralph must bridge gaps, beat up baddies, stop Lee falling into water, inflate his own body and float above obstacles, and generally be a selfless version of man's best friend. Between each of the major levels, there is a dream sequence where Ralph can collect various tokens and trigger what he "really" thinks should happen to Lee. The are six huge parallax scrolling main levels and five bonus levels. The player can monitor Lee's sleep level with a bar at the top of the screen. If the bar reaches zero, Lee wakes up and the player loses a life. If this happens three times (or five depending on settings) the game is lost. The player controls the dog in order to manipulate either Lee, or the objects he is likely to walk into, to see him safely to the end of a level. The frequency of these pitfalls increases as each level progresses and, as it does, the player has to spend more time strategically neutralising threats, far in advance of Lee's actual position in the level. Although it's possible for Lee to die, resulting in a loss of life and restart of the level for the player, the dog is invincible, surviving otherwise fatal incidents with comedic effect. If all the levels are successfully completed Lee finally returns to his bed and crawls back in. The game was made to promote the charity Comic Relief. All profits from sales of the game went to the charity. | ||
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| Smuś [PL] | L.K. Avalon | [top] | |
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Smuś is a platform game. The hero of the game was kidnapped by Ice Baron. The player must help him escape from the old ruins. There are nearly 250 rooms to overcome. In each of them, the protagonist encounters baron knights, Indians and birds. The small dragon dies after contact with poisoned water and spikes. An additional complication are the moving platforms and the time limit - exactly 9999 seconds. Blue buttons allow to replenish the fire and open the bars blocking the way. | ||
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| Tears Of Fury / Boksu Mujeong: Bunno-ui Nunmul [K] | Family Production / SKC | [top] | |
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For the freshman work of one of Korea's most popular developers of the 1990's, Boksu Mujeong is surprisingly obscure. This is partly due to the fact that even Family Production didn't treat the game very well. It was their only title not included in a 1997 compilation of their works until then. But since Family Production the company still didn't exist when it was released, the rights for the game might have been with SKC. Only 2,000 copies of the game were sold. The futuristic action platformer was very obviously inspired by Prince of Persia, and uses similarly wonky controls. The hero wields a gun with limited ammunition, though, and can climb up and down poles. | ||
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| Tex Episodes 1-12 [It] | Simulmondo | [top] | |
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This is another series of interactive adventures sold in Italian newspaper stands based on the Tex Willer comic books. The episodes are as follows: 1 - Mefisto, 2 - Il Drago Rosso, 3 - Spettri, 4 - San Francisco, 5 - Diabolico Intrigo, 6 - Lotta Sul Mare, 7 El Morisco, 8 - Dramma Al Circo, 9 - Il Fiore Della Morte, 10 - Kento Non Perdona, 11 - Duello All'Alba, 12 - La Mano Rossa. | ||
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| Tex Piombo Caldo / Burning Lead [It] | Simulmondo | [top] | |
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Burning Lead is a fairly rudimentary platform where we control Tex through the desert or other scenarios, threatened by dozens of Indians to be filled with bullets (like game's name suggests). These arcade long phases are alternated with small interludes illustrated by static images (comic strips). During interludes, the player have to choose what Tex must say or to take small decisions. But the invincible Tex can be defeated? The most special thing of the game is this: Tex is in your hands, and then if you make the wrong move you will see him die (and many times!). | ||
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| Tom & Jerry | Software Creations Ltd. / Hi-Tech Expressions, Inc. | [top] | |
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This is a side-scrolling platform game in which the famous cartoon characters are the main characters. Tom has mouse-napped Jerry's nephew Tuffy, and has him in the attic. Playing Jerry, you must move through various levels of the house to reach, and free Tuffy. Jumping and running to move around and avoid obstacles, Jerry is also armed with a pocket full of marbles which he can throw at enemies (such as spiders or toy soldiers). He can also use mouse holes to get teleported around the level. He can also pick up power-ups which can give him more lives, and stronger throws, etc. The developer later made the game freeware. | ||
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| Xargon | Epic MegaGames, Inc. | [top] | |
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The game is a side-scrolling platform game very similar to Jill of the Jungle, but with improved graphics. In the game, the main character, Malvineous, must journey through strange landscapes as he seeks to destroy the evil Xargon. He's an archaeologist studying strange ruins in Madagascar. While attempting to translate the glyphs on the walls of one Blue Builder structure, a strange gas was emitted, and Malvineous slowly lost consciousness. Malvineous then had a dream-encounter with a talking Eagle, who gave him cryptic warnings. He then awoke in a strange land, the area in which the game takes place. He began exploring the world, finding hostile creatures and robots, while recording his findings in journal entries. He eventually encountered an evil entity named Xargon, who seems to have been a tyrannical ruler. Volume 1 was released as shareware, but volumes 2 and 3 must be purchased commercially. Initially, Malvineous is armed with a "laser bullet", allowing only one shot on-screen at a time. Various weapon upgrades are available, including thrown rocks, extra laser bullets, rapid-fire mode, and limited-ammo fireballs. These can be obtained as power-ups within a level, or purchased using emeralds. In 2008, the game was made freeware. | ||
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| Yo! Joe! Beat the Ghosts | Scipio / Hudson Soft Company, Ltd. | [top] | |
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Graffiti artists live a hard life. Joe and Nat are always on the run, trying to escape New York's police. When they reach a mysterious castle, there's no way of knowing they're in deep trouble already. This is a platform game featuring two characters. The protagonists can jump, crawl, kick, beat, slide, and swim. They are even able to hold their breath when under water. If you are playing the game solely, "Joe" is your character of choice. A friend can take on Nat's part at the same PC. The game's purpose is to get rid of "Professor X", who is the bad guy. The players can attack opponents using several weapons, including molotovs, chainsaws and nunchakus. It doesn't offer save games. The copy protection requires the original disk at every start-up. | ||
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| Zool | Cygnus Software / Gremlin Graphics Software Ltd. | [top] | |
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His name is Zool. He is a Ninja in the 2345th dimension, 6 worlds each with 3 stages. In this platformer, you can run, jump, climb walls and shoot the enemies. In the levels are also some power-ups for Zool. There are life-spending hearts, smart bombs, shields, more powerful jump-skill and a twin Zool. This "twin" makes all your motions a few seconds after you do. In the options you can change the difficulty and the game-speed two times, the continues and the background music (Rock or Funk). | ||
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Casual Games
| Bubble Dizzy | The Codemasters Software Company Limited | [top] | |
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This eschews the usual arcade adventure format of Dizzy games, instead being a simple action game. You must guide Dizzy through the underwater worlds, collecting pearls as you go. Dizzy starts at the bottom of the sea, and you have to get him to the top. You do this by jumping across bubbles, which only have a limited time before bursting. Enemies to avoid include sharks, octopuses and swordfish. Dizzy has limited oxygen, but more can be collected from O2 canisters. After completing a level, you get a bonus for the amount of pearls you collected and the amount of oxygen you have left. | ||
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| Champ Pac-Maniac | ChamProgramming Corporation | [top] | |
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This arcade conversion with VGA graphics was designed and programmed by CHAMProgramming from the time period covering 2/93 to 4/93. Atari 800 fans will recognize the graphics and game play from the 1983 version of the game. The program-code was written using Borland C++ (though the code is strictly C), the graphic functions are written in assembler. | ||
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| Chessmaster 4000 Turbo, The | The Software Toolworks, Inc. | [top] | |
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This was the first 32-bit title in the Chessmaster series offers features designed around the processors of the time. Modem and LAN play is available for the first time. Boards are viewed in 2D or 3D, and include many custom sets, with game options selected from surrounding windows and drop-down menus. Entering moves is now easier - if you click on a square which only one of your pieces can move to, it will move their automatically. Full games (including 500 recreated real-life classics) can be analysed from an expert perspective, and a library of common opening move sequences is included. Computer players act in a variety of ability levels and play styles - some are prepared to play for a draw, others are focused on keeping the centre of the board tidy, and so on. | ||
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| Complete Chess System | Oxford Softworks | [top] | |
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This is a Chess game that allows you to play a match against your computer. The game comes with a set of historical games played by pros. With a skill level similar to those of national champions the game is meant for professional chess players. The game of chess is played in top-down 2D with icons depicting the various pieces or in 3D from the player's perspective. | ||
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| Eight Ball Deluxe | P.A.S. Systems / Amtex | [top] | |
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This pinball simulator was the first one to simulate a real pinball machine. With support to high resolutions (1024x768) it only includes one pinball game. As special features the player can change the voltage levels and an un-common magnet ball option that allows guiding the ball and discovering the different combos for a best score. | ||
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| Epic Pinball | Digital Extremes / Epic MegaGames | [top] | |
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Epic Pinball is a 1993 pinball video game developed by James Schmalz and published by Epic MegaGames (now Epic Games). The initial release pre-dated Schmalz' Digital Extremes name. The game is played seen from a 2D top-down view within a scrollable window with plain raster graphics in 320x240. The music is composed in the PSM-format. It was noted for being programmed entirely in assembly language. It is written for the x86 computer family for MS-DOS. The game was originally distributed on floppy disks in 3 separate packs of 4 tables each:
Pack 1 (Android, Pot of Gold, Excalibur, Crash and Burn), Pack 2 (Magic, Jungle Pinball, Deep Sea, Enigma), Pack 3 (Cyborgirl, Pangaea, Space Journey, Toy Factory). The original shareware version (and an early retail version) included only the original "Android" table. Later shareware versions and retail versions contained an updated version called "Super Android" (although it's still referred to as "Android" in the game, the table was changed to say "Super Android") Another table, "African Safari", was included in the "Full Edition" (the CD-ROM version), in addition to the tables from the three packs.
See also: Silverball |
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| Even More Incredible Machine, The | Dynamix, Inc., Jeff Tunnell Productions / Sierra On-Line, Inc. | [top] | |
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The general objective of the games is to create a series of Rube Goldberg devices: arrange a given collection of objects in a needlessly complex fashion so as to perform some simple task (for example, "put the ball into a box" or "light a candle"). Available objects ranged from simple ropes and pulleys to electrical generators, bowling balls and even cats and mice. The levels usually have some fixed objects that cannot be moved by the player, and so the only way to solve the puzzle is carefully arrange the given objects around the fixed items. There is also a "freeform" option that allows the user to "play" with all the objects with no set goal or to also build their own puzzles with goals for other players to attempt to solve. This was an extended version of the original The Incredible Machine and had around 160 levels, about twice the amount of levels in the original game, and also had quite a few more parts. | ||
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| FunPack | WayForward Technologies Inc. / WizardWorks Group Inc. | [top] | |
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This compilation of special full versions of shareware/freeware titles was first released on floppy disk and included the following games: Blitzer, Block Breaker, Chomp, Emlith, Hyperoid, Jewel Thief, Warheads for Windows. The collection was later reissued on CD-ROM with Jewel Thief replaced with Squash! (although the jewel case does not reflect this fact). | ||
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| Grandmaster Chess Deluxe | Capstone Software | [top] | |
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This is a chess game with multiple skill levels and various sets of boards and pieces. Other features include pull-down menus, an analysis mode, a VCR-like replay option and the ability to give the player a chess rating. It contains a myriad of customizable settings, including 3-D and 2-D boards, multiple skill levels (five), an easy to use menu-driven mouse oriented interface and nice graphics. The deluxe CD-ROM edition contains in its repertoire a library with nearly 12,000 positions drawn from more than 4,000 opening variations and an option to add your own opening positions as well but still with no meaningful analysis function to steer you right or wrong. Also, the game contains a very nice collection of boards and pieces to use with fully customizable display options. | ||
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| Holiday Lemmings / Christmas Lemmings | DMA Design / Psygnosis Limited | [top] | |
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As opposed to the Xmas Lemmings free demos released in 1991 and 1992, this is a full retail release. The gameplay remains exactly the same as the original Lemmings game, requiring the player to lead the required number of lemmings to their exit by giving them the appropriate "skills". The difference between these games and the original game are the Christmas/snow-styled graphics of the levels, and that all the Lemmings wear Santa Claus suits. It has difficulty ratings "Flurry" and "Blizzard" with 16 levels each. This was later made freely available after the release of the 1994 version. | ||
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| Hoyle Classic Card Games | Sierra On-Line, Inc. | [top] | |
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The fourth (comparatively little-known) installment in Sierra On-Line's Hoyle series is actually a remake of Hoyle: Official Book of Games - Volume 1 with VGA graphics and an additional two games: Bridge and Euchre. It offers a collection of eight popular card games: Bridge, Euchre, Old Maid, Gin Rummy, Hearts, Cribbage, Crazy Eights, and Klondike. In addition to reading the basic rules for each individual game, players can now access an interface tutorial and a glossary of game-specific terms, as well as customize a range of options. During gameplay decks and tables can be changed to your favourite style. This version has also speech. It's apparently the last volume in the series to feature animated characters from other Sierra titles such as Leisure Suit Larry, Robin Hood, Roger from Space Quest, King Graham from King's Quest, Dr. Brain and Willy Beamish. Quarky from Quarky & Quaysoo's Turbo Science, and Pepper from Pepper's Adventure's in Time. And instead of playing against the animated versions of the people that created the game, we get "old time" characters with names like Dinky, Crazy Jack, and Fairbanks. | ||
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| Incredible Machine | Dynamix, Inc. / Sierra On-Line, Inc. | [top] | |
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Undoubtedly one of the most unique games ever produced for the PC, The Incredible Machines 1 is a dream come true for anyone who as a child likes to tinker with gadgets and toys. It is a puzzle game par excellence and beyond: you have to use wacky gadgets and tools given for each level to accomplish objectives. Using animated parts, players need to assemble a Rube Goldberg-type contraption to solve a simple puzzle. A "design your own" option is also available where the player can design and activate his or her own wacky machine. Puzzles start out relaxing and get fiendish very quickly, as later levels require not only ingenuity but also precise timing. A true classic. | ||
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| Jurassic Park Screen Saver | Asymetrix | [top] | |
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The Jurassic Park screen saver captures the thrills and excitement of the movie on your computer screen. Watch film footage and animated sequences featuring human and dinosaur characters from the movie. Listen to the squeals and roars of dinosaurs on the loose. Savor the terrifying delights of the movie without leaving your desk. In addition, the screen saver protects your screen from wear, provides password security for your computer system, and offers a selection of wallpapers to use as backgrounds. It also allows you to assign special dinosaur sounds to certain system events, such as starting an application. And you can customize many of the screen saver options to create your own Jurassic Park environment on your desktop. | ||
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| King's Table: The Legend of Ragnarok | Imagitec Design Inc. / Mirage Technologies (Multimedia) Ltd. | [top] | |
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A version of an old Norse board game called King's Table. The game has black and white teams, like chess, but each team has different pieces and a different raison d'etre. The white team has a total of 13 pieces, the most important one being Odin the King, who starts in the centre of the 10x10 board and moves in the same way as a chess King, whereas black has 20 pawns and four other pieces. White wins if Odin can reach one of the corner squares; black wins if it surrounds Odin on all 4 sides. The pawns actually move the same way as chess queens, but pieces are captured by surrounding them on 2 sides (although some special pieces must be surrounded on 3 sides). The specials are chosen from the selection at the start of the game, and have a variety of abilities, some 'borrowed' from chess. The presentation of this interpretation is similar to Battle Chess, with bold 3D graphics and lots of animation. | ||
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| Kwik Snax | The Codemasters Software Company Limited | [top] | |
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Dizzy must rescue four of his 'Yolkfolk' chums in this game, from Cuckoo Land, Ice Land, Cloud Land and Zak's Castle. Like Fast Food it doesn't directly resemble the main series of arcade adventures, instead being a single-screen action game, resembling Pengo. The basic idea is to move around a maze of blocks collecting fruit, but the twist in the style is that you push the blocks in the maze to kill or trap those enemies. After every level is completed a short bonus screen appears where more fruit can be collected. During play various other tokens are released, such as bonus points, a smart bomb and control reversal. | ||
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| Lemmings 2: The Tribes | DMA Design Limited / Psygnosis Limited | [top] | |
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The sequel to Lemmings has a plot describing how the Lemmings have split into 12 distinct tribes, each of which has their own landscape and their own cultural identity - they include Egyptian, Circus and Highland. However, Lemming Island is now in danger, and you must complete 10 levels for each tribe in order for them to reunite and reassemble the Talisman from the 12 pieces. Across the 120 levels there are over 60 skills, although no more than 10 are in use on each screen. The Classic tribe has the ones from the original and is perhaps the best option for first-time players. The others range from digging methods such as a scooper (diagonally downwards) and club basher (horizontal), building skills such as a planter (takes time to produce the desired raise to the landscape) and a sand pourer, and various methods of movement including a Pole-Vaulter and a Skater (the only Lemmings who can cross ice). Some of these are only subtly different to others, and their exact uses are unclear, but there are 4 Trainer levels where you can select any combination of skills and experiment. Unlike the first game, the player is rewarded for saving as many Lemmings as possible, rather than simply passing or failing. The ultimate aim is to save all 60 Lemmings through all levels, thereby earning a Gold Medal for that tribe - Silver and Bronze are also on offer. The player can also go back over levels in the hope of saving more Lems. Because there are 12 tribes, and the player can switch between them at any point, you have to be stuck 12 times in order to be unable to progress. The game saves progress rather than using passwords as in the first game. | ||
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| Magiczne Karty [PL] | VIPS | [top] | |
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The game is all about moving, replacing or discovering cards. You can choose from a set of 8, 18 and 32 cards and 3 levels of difficulty, as well as several types of boards and puzzles. The first riddle requires you to identify two of the same cards, the second - organize tabs by changing their position, and the third - the bottom should be covered with the upper card, but you can only move the upper with one vacancy. The cards can be pictures, letters and digits. | ||
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| MicroProse Entertainment Pack Vol #1: Dr Floyd's Desktop Toys | MicroProse Software, Inc. | [top] | |
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A collection of various "wacky" games for Windows designed for use in an office environment. Dr. Floyd to the rescue! You've got an assignment burning a hole in your desk. Your boss is jumping down your throat. And there's another sleepy board meeting in 15 minutes. It's time to escape with Dr. Floyd's stress-smashing Desktop toys for Windows. With the whimsical and wise Dr. Floyd as your talking companion, you'll drop cages on slippery snarks. You'll crack codes to reveal startling truths. Spark intricate and colorful spider webs at the touch of your finger. And pound penguins, poodles, or even your boss with a mouse driven mallet! But the fun won't stop there. Because Dr. Floyd gives you eye popping screen savers to protect your work from snooping co-workers. And he even wakes you from the hypnotic slumber of work with clever commentary. Listen to the deranged doctor's side-splitting remarks and your day will be over before it even starts. How can you possibly concentrate on spreadsheets when a loathsome snark is razzing you in Snark Hunt? Start your career as a super sleuth by cracking the letter codes in Cryptograms. Diamonds are forever in Kye, the game that pits you against moving blocks, roaming monsters, spheres, and one-way doors! Skip that board meeting and clobber things in Wallop! Instead of filling out forms, fill in the diverse and fun shapes in Pentominoes. | ||
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| Moscow Nights | Black Legend Ltd. | [top] | |
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This compilation includes the following Russia based games: Blockbuster, Balda, Caterpilar, Crazy Money, Domino, Drop-Drop, Flopper, Lift, Magic House, Monolit, Noble, Picker, Plates, Regatta, Sky Cat, Sprut, Squares, TipTop, Virt, XOR. | ||
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| Opus 'n Bill Brain Saver | Ant Software / Delrina Corporation | [top] | |
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Collection of satirical animated screensavers based on comic strip characters Opus the Penguin and Bill the Cat by artist Berkeley Breathed. Some of them contain cartoon violence and sexually suggestive humor. The initial screensaver landed the company in court as its Death Toasters module depicted Opus taking shots at a number of flying toasters, a well-known emblem in Berkeley System's Flying Toasters module from their After Dark screensaver. Berkeley Systems sued for copyright and trademark infringement. The following court case was fought by Delrina on the basis that a software-based parody should fall under the same First Amendment protection offered to the press. Judge Eugene Lynch found in favour of Berkeley, citing that a commercial software product was not subject to the same exemptions as parodist literature, and that the toasters were too similar in design. Delrina subsequently removed the wings from the toasters and replaced them with propellers in order to avoid trademark infringement. The module was also renamed from "Death Toasters" to "Censored Toaster Module". Thanks to the publicity from the court case, sales of this new version ended up being triple what had been expected. Updated modules for this particular screensaver were sold for the next couple of years. | ||
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| Oxyd Magnum! | Dongleware Verlags GmbH | [top] | |
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The third entry in the Oxyd series is also the first to be released on a purely commercial basis. Like its predecessors, it is a real-time puzzle game where the player maneuvers a rolling ball through a series of landscapes. Each landscape contains a number of "oxyd stones", which reveal colored symbols when hit; if the next stone you strike is an exact match, the two are unlocked. To complete a level, all matching pairs must be exposed. Oxyd magnum! is single-player only, and contains 100 levels - each with a password, to let you continue later from the same point. The levels get progressively harder as new elements are thrown into the mix: pits, bumps, mazes, teleports, hidden passages, sliding and rotating blocks, deadly water, laser beams (and mirrors), tiles that reverse your controls, and many more. Some levels feature additional balls (controlled simultaneously or in turn), and others offer special items that let you manipulate the environment. | ||
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| Pinball Dreams | Digital Illusions CE AB / 21st Century Entertainment Ltd. | [top] | |
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The first in a line of pinball games from 21st Century and Digital Illusions, with four tables covering themes such as the wild west for Steel Wheel, space rockets for Ignition, a haunted graveyard for Nightmare and pop music for Beat Box. In 1994, Pinball Dreams Deluxe pack mashed Pinball Dreams 1 + 2 into the same menu (the list of tables now scrolls up and down), added a settings menu where you can change the number of balls, table angle, and screen mode (in case you don't like playing in the bizarre 320x350 screen mode), and also - the most interesting addition - a History section, with details, photos, and flyer posters for some of the more famous real-world pinball tables like Bride of Pinbot and Terminator 2. It also adds some frivolous rendered intros to all the tables. | ||
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| Pool Shark | Slash / GT Interactive | [top] | |
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With breaks that snap like breaks and balls that glide like balls, POOL SHARK brings the pool hall to you. You're in control of the table with precision shooting, banking swerving and spinning of the ball. You'll line up kinetically perfect shots with the special zoom-in zoom out feature and movable camera angle. Spend time practicing the trick shots before you chalk up a cue and challenge an unsuspecting friend to a game. Do the hustle with these features: Play classic 8 ball by stand and table rules, British 8-ball by coin-op rules or U.S. 9 ball by tournament rules. Zoom in feature for precision shots; Four skill levels; Multiplayer tournaments or one to two player modes in six games of heavy duty challenge; Realistic snap and pool sound effects; Red hot trick and practice shots; Rotating table ton gsuge perspective and angle. | ||
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| Pub Poker | Russell Oates | [top] | |
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This poker game was made with Visual Basic published as shareware on Compuserve. Some challenges in programming: detecting screen resolution and resizing every thing in code appropriately; fitting it all on a 1.44 MB diskette; reducing memory usage by using integer constants given the VB runtime’s interpretive design; dealing with the Windows GDI API; fitting ~1,000 voice responses into the application; creating a compiled Windows Help file. | ||
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| Scrylis | Goldy Games / PC Mania | [top] | |
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A mental challenge to drive you crazy. There are 50 levels in 3D, different difficulty settings and all of it against the clock. The game is clearly inspired by the Rubik's Cube and similar puzzles. We have two rings with faces of squares of different colors, and shifting the faces of the lower body, it must be “redone” like the upper one - and time goes on, reducing bonus points and threatening to take away “life” under the measured ticking timer. Control - using the cursor left-right rotate the whole “assembly” around the center “one step”, up and down - turn the segment of the lower body facing the player “across the donut”; shift'y rotate the "ring" of these faces, respectively, left and right, alt and ctrl - rotate the upper body. The keys Q, A, O, P simply rotate the player's point of view "in three dimensions" (and also switches the palette in CGA mode). Like any "rubicoid", it delays, but, fortunately, at the start you can choose the level from the first to the "current". | ||
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| Sid & Al's Incredible Toons | Dynamix, Inc. / Sierra On-Line, Inc. | [top] | |
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This is a spin-off of the Incredible Machine series. It features cartoon characters and items instead of pseudo-realistic contraptions, but the goal is the same: to build hilarious machines reminiscent of the pictures of Rube Goldberg. Sid Mouse and Al E. Cat have probably never heard of Tom & Jerry, but they're just as single-minded: any means to hurt the adversary is a good one. They get plenty of means in Incredible Toons. 100 puzzles need to be solved, each one a 2D machine of which crucial parts are missing. Your task is to choose useful objects from a separate window, position them on the screen and start the machine to see if it's working. A simple example: a piano hanging from a rope needs to be dropped on Al. To accomplish this, you place open scissors next to the cable and drop a ball on them - voila, the rope is cut, Al crushed. However, most puzzles are far more complicated; for example, you might first have to lure Al under the Piano with a fish, which needs to be transported to the right location by conveyor belts. The puzzles involve a score of contraptions, ranging from simple ropes and pulleys to balloons, trapdoors, catapults, bombs, electrical hairdryers and motors. Sid and Al are accompanied by several other cartoon characters, such as the lady elephant Eunice who will toss things around, or the pet dragon Bik that ignites objects with his fiery breath. The gameplay is spiced up with cartoon animations -- Al chasing Sid is a sight to remember. If you’ve solved all of the puzzles, you can built you own challenges with the comfortable editor. Oh, and be sure to learn Sid & Al's lessons well -- you never know when you need to get rid of a mouse with nothing but some cheese, a trapdoor and an anvil. | ||
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| Silverball | Digital Extremes, Inc. / MicroLeague Multimedia, Inc. | [top] | |
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Silverball is basically a commercially published version of the game Epic Pinball. The game engine is nearly the same, only the tables themselves are different. It comes with four tables: Fantasy, Blood, Snooker Champ, and Odyssey. Some distributions (Silverball Plus 2) include two extra tables, Warbot and Duel, which are more or less the same as the Excalibur and Magic tables from Epic Pinball with some different art and music. Finally, a seventh table, Nova, may or may not be a part of the game. | ||
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| Skunny Kart | Copysoft | [top] | |
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Though most of the Skunny were side-scrollers, this one is a Mario Kart clone. Race around a quasi-3D track as one of the characters from the series of Skunny games. Many tracks to choose from that take place all over the world. Also includes a battle mode in which you may fight off the computer or a friend. The game was developed on the Wacky Wheels-engine. | ||
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| SkyRoads | Bluemoon Interactive / Creative Dimensions | [top] | |
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This was a polished-up remake of the developer's first commercial game – Kosmonaut. The three months we spent developing this very addictive piece of entertainment was probably the best paid off time in Bluemoon's history so far: although released as small scale shareware title in 1993, they managed to sell the game all over the world, getting LCR distribution deals for it from U.S. to Taiwan. You could play this game just for the amazing sound tracks, but the gameplay is also very catchy. Simply, you need to steer your space vehicle along the course, jumping and dodging blocks that will wipe you out when you're flying along at light-speed. Balancing acceleration and fuel usage becomes tricky when you've got a time limit to beat with hardly any fuel in the tank. Your reflexes and timing will be the difference between getting home safely and floating aimlessly through space. It was later made freeware. In 2005, a fan-made Flash remake, SWFRoads, was released. It's required to reach the end of each road without crashing into an obstacle or falling through a hole in the floor. Use the arrow keys to move around and accelerate, and the spacebar to jump. Along the way, different floor tiles will have different effects: the sticky tile will slow you; the boost tile will speed you up; the slippery tile will make you slide; and the burning tile will destroy you. There are eighteen roads to play, taken from the original SkyRoads. The game includes a level editor and the ability to load custom levels created by other players. | ||
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| Star Wars Chess | Software Toolworks, Inc., The | [top] | |
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This is a chess game where the pieces are characters from the Star Wars universe. When pieces are taken, an animated battle is shown, much like in Battle Chess. The graphics look less 3D but more cartoony than that game though. | ||
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| Take A Break! Pinball | Dynamix, Inc. / Sierra On-Line, Inc. | [top] | |
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This contains a set of 8 pinball tables based upon various popular Sierra games: Larry's Big Score (Leisure Suit Larry series), Lots in Space (Draxon: Level 2 - Nova 9: Return of Gir Draxon), Flipped Out Willy (The Adventures of Willy Beamish), Nova 9 (Draxon: Level 1 - Nova 9: Return of Gir Draxon), Planet Xenon in the Beginning (Planet Pinball: Level 1 - Space Quest series), Quest for Daventry (King's Quest series), Reformation Day (Planet Pinball: Level 3 - Space Quest series), Spaced Travel (Planet Pinball: Level 2 - Space Quest series). | ||
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| Terminator 2: Judgment Day - Chess Wars | IntraCorp, Inc. / Capstone Software | [top] | |
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A chess game based on T2, featuring sounds and characters from the movie as pieces. Captures are animated a la Battle Chess, but the battles take place off the board, in futuristic wastelands and similar stages. The game offers several difficulties and play styles to choose from, along with time control, ratings on the USCF scale over different time-frames and other niceties. Oddly enough, there's no 2D board. | ||
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| Trump Castle 3 | Capstone Software / SoftKey Multimedia Inc. | [top] | |
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Sequel to Trump Castle II introduces 640x480 cartoon graphics instead of real photos, dealer voices, and also allows you to play as female or male player inside Trump Castle - A Casino Resort by the Bay. Multi-player for up to 5 players (human/computer) may be flown at hot-seat or with a modem. As in previous games, you are allowed to win money in one of the six games - Roulette, Blackjack, Baccarat, Slots, Poker, and Craps. But now each of game has more variations and editions. For example, Poker has five modes: Texas Hold 'Em, 5 Cards Stud, 5 Cards Draw, 7 Card Stud and Poker Slot Machine. From the very beginning player in 3rd-person perspective mode should explore the Trump Castle filled with different bright characters including Elvis-clone, singers, stewards, etc., find the proper room and stand in front of table or slot machine. The game view is switched either in 1st-person perspective or in above-the-table mode, where the main game process is flown. Player should set bets, play the games, and collect as much money as he or she can. The number of players, their looks, and modes may be adjusted with Character Editor. The game may be saved in progress to load it later. | ||
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| Windows Blackjack / Blackjack for Windows | WizardWorks | [top] | |
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Features: Pull down menu allows you to choose a variety of playing options. Play one of four hands or have the computer play all screen. Also displays card count with percent change of player or dealer making 17 or busting. Enter rules for your favorite casino, with 1-8 decks and $1 - $500 table stakes, put is splitting and double down rules. Each player can have their own play strategy including basic, no-bust, bet adjustments and strategy review. Your play strategy can be modified easily for hard hands, soft hands and pair splitting, hit or stand depending on card count. Teaches card counting at any speed from 3 seconds per card to 1/10th of a second per card. | ||
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