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Descent had the player fly into robot infested mines in a hovercraft which escaped the "pure vertical walls" graphical restrictions of earlier games in the genre, and allowed complete freedom of movement and viewpoint in all three dimensions. Some consider this game to the first true 3D FPS. It also used a fully 3D polygonal graphics engine to render opponents (previous games had used sprites). Some people lose their sense of direction by not knowing which way is up. The MAC platform which never became known for many original games due to its much smaller user base than the PC, was however the birthplace of more story-driven FPS games due to Bungie's Pathways Of Darkness in 1993 but most famously with the Marathon trilogy of games which begun in 1994. Marathon was set in a scifi universe dominated by deviant computer AIs. The engine sported an impressive physics model that allowed grenades to arc through the air and the player to waft gently across wide crevices in low-grav maps. The game also included secondary weapons functions and info found on computer terminals in the game moved the story along. Bungie went on to later make the enormously popular Halo series which are spiritual sequels. On the PC, System Shock was a milestone, with a lot of puzzles and a deep story which you found out by finding data-disks on the bodies of the dead crew. You play as a hacker who, after a long cryosleep, wakes up as the only survivor on the spacestation. It brought innovations such as drugs which enhanced stats, and the ability to look up and down, jump and duck. A later release of the game on the growing CD-ROM market added an extensive amount of audio to the title, heightening the immersion and fear factor of the title significantly. Ambient audio combined with the vocal performance were an integral part of the game, providing clues as to hidden enemies, as well as allowing SHODAN to harass the player as they moved throughout the station.
Doom 2 exploded the trend of cashing in on a big hit game with a quickly drawn up sequel that changed little from the previous game. It improved multiplayer functionality with "out of the box" support for a vastly increased number of dial-up modems. It allowed for deathmatch and co-op between two players connected by modem. It also added LAN functionality which became a way for like-minded people to gather and play the same game for boasting rights as to who was best. Spear Of Destiny which itself was a quick sequel to Wolfenstein 3D triggered two mission packs which for fans is a cheaper proposition than paying full price for a full sequel. Rise Of The Triad took a somewhat more light-hearted approach to the violence. It had you battling against a cult leader and had quite a few new features such as jump pads, bullet holes in walls, gibs (enemies get splattered into chunks of meat), live remote taunts, rocket jumping, and Capture the Flag. Raven Software which has made some interesting FPS games over the years made Heretic (using Doom's engine) which continued with a fantasy theme first started in 1993's ShadowCaster. The player is the Heretic, one of the last survivors of the Apocalypse and has to battle a lot of legendary creatures with magic weapons. The ability to go under water and the use of items which allowed for example flight were new.
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4-Ever Doomed | Cypress Software | [top] | |
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On this disc you will find one of the largest collections of add-on DOOM levels and accessories available. There are over 1000 PWAD files and over 100 accessories for DOOM as well as a bonus preview of several PWADS and accessories for DOOM 2. That's over 1500 new DOOM levels to explore solo or to connect with others for exciting cooperative or deathmatch play! You'll also find saved game and level editors to help create your own DOOM worlds. | ||
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Absolute Mayhem | Quantum Axcess | [top] | |
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A collection of shareware action games for DOS, focused primarily on first-person shooter games. Shareware/Demo versions of the following twelve games are included: Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold, Catacomb Abyss, Corridor 7, Depth Dwellers, Doom: Knee-deep in the Dead (v1.2), Megatron, Nightmare 3-D, Raptor: Call of the Shadows, Shadowcaster, Spear of Destiny, Terminator: Rampage, Wolfenstein 3-D. In addition, approximately 50 add-on levels and several utilities for Doom are also included plus the official Doom FAQ companion guide. | ||
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Aliens [K] | RealTeam | [top] | |
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This rare early Korean FPS has only two levels that are not connected to each other and are available to run from the main menu through their own points; both can be traversed, but the conditions of this passage for each are different and are not prescribed anywhere. Immediately note that the game is almost entirely in Korean, but the text here in principle is very small: this, for example, the names of levels and names of rooms in the locations - that is, understanding the given words for the process is in no way critical. It has complexity, unexpected surprises, a wonderful atmosphere, and even some special charm (very much special, which is experienced far, far from everyone). The action takes place on a futuristic kind of object, in which, if desired, you can recognize a secret laboratory, a military base, a space station and much more. It is captured by large humanoid aliens with bright green skin, partly reminiscent of reptilians; more accurately about their appearance, almost nothing can be said because of the extremely low detail of the sprites - but notice claws, bone crests on the crowns and gray spines on the spine sometimes still succeed. These creatures are extremely hostile towards people - and, apparently, killed the entire staff of the object: our eyes periodically appear corpses of men lying in puddles of blood face to the floor. When firing on the aliens, they fly off the hardly discernible green scraps, and death is visualized by "fall" onto the floor with the transformation into an amorphous green mass resembling its kind of sweet cotton wool; it is unlikely that even the smallest child or the most hardened pacifist will be able to take it seriously. The circumstances of the demise of our protagonist in the case of an unfavorable confluence of circumstances, too, do not really show up: when getting damaged, the screen "blushes" for a moment, yes, but when the glasses are reset, the picture simply "dies away" (with a subsequent return to the main menu). | ||
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Blake Stone 2: Planet Strike | JAM Productions / FormGen | [top] | |
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This sequel to Blake Stone has 20 all-new levels (darker and more realistic changing light conditions) with wildly new designs, new wall/environment graphics throughout, with new hazards, like barriers and spikes. There are all-new alien-like guards (not the same three original guards), four new bosses, 3 morphing actors (first appear as statues, or other objects) with improved intelligence, and a real-time automap. It now has a new blaster weapon (anti-plasma cannon, can blast through doors), blastable ammo (you can accidentally destroy ammo packs), and a bobbing gun effect for realism. | ||
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Boom Power Pack | Lutz Schulze | [top] | |
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This is a typical Level-CD of the time as could have been found in the 90s in many computer stores or department stores. The CD contains 440 new levels in the form of individual levels or episodes. In addition, located on the CD, there are editing and sound level editors where you can even tinker with your own levels. The CD has an info menu but is not self controlled. There were several versions of this compilation. This is the first edition from Germany. This version has a cover completely in German. The lettering OHBOOM1 is printed on the CD. The CD is available in silver with a red BOOM print. | ||
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Cavemaze 3D | Acord Games | [top] | |
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You are Mordano, space-traveling explorer of distant worlds, who now is lost in the caves & rooms of the distant planet Zo, which is in the solar system of the star Iwo, where your starship crashed, and you are now desperately searching for a particular element you need to repair your disabled spaceship. You search through the rooms and caves, as hostile, rapid-moving aliens try to kill you as you engage in a wild adventure that sends chills through you if you are lucky to live so long. Features: Soundblaster music, First person, 3D Doom-like game, 20 levels, Freeware, Dosbox compatible. In Dosbox, use ctrl-F8 and ctrl-F12 to speed game up. | ||
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Christmas Carnage / Xmas Carnage [G] | Soft Enterprises / Kingsoft | [top] | |
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This game was developed in one month (and it shows) was developed for the Computer'94 Fair in Cologne. It has you playing the role of the Easter Bunny who hates Christmas and takes it out on Santa, his elves and angels, among others. You can use weapons like an axe and a machine gun through 5 levels. It uses the VR-6 3D Engine which was also used for The Hidden Below. | ||
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Cobra Doom Episodes Volume I-III | Cobra Computing, Ltd. | [top] | |
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This has three new episodes for the registered version of DOOM. 72 new Levels - challenging even the most battle-hardened among the "Doom"ed. | ||
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Cobra Doom II Episodes Volume I & II | Cobra Computing, Ltd. | [top] | |
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This is an unofficial Level pack for Doom II consisting of 60 new levels split into two episodes. The disks are 3.5" disk tablets. | ||
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Cobra Doom Utilities | Cobra Computing, Ltd. | [top] | |
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This typical level CD contains: 350 new levels for the registered version of Doom, new graphics, new sounds, Level and graphics editors, Tips and secret Cheats codes. It has more than 80 compressed HD disks worth of data. | ||
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Cobra Doom Utilities 2nd Edition | Cobra Computer Ltd. | [top] | |
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Shovelware level cd for Doom. Rare 2nd edition of Cobra Doom Utilities. It contains over 900 custom maps, 234 programs, 68 additional sound files, 45 text files and 43 new graphic packages for Doom. | ||
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Cobra Utilities For Doom & Doom II | Cobra Computing Limited | [top] | |
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Add-on levels for the registered version of Doom and more than 100 new add-on levels especially converted for the registered version of Doom II - Hell on Earth. They also feature new graphics, sounds, level and graphic editors, tips and secret cheat codes. There are more than 800 MB of data on these 2 CD-ROMS, the contents of more than 400 compressed HD disks. | ||
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Complete Doom Accessory Pack Volume II, The | Modern Microware | [top] | |
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This collection of extra levels and other related programs will enhance your DOOM experience like never before! We've collected work from hundreds of talented programmers to bring you the best to you. Extend DOOM in ways you've never imagined!! If you already have Volume I, this disc has only new or updated items, no duplicates! The disc contains 600 all new levels, as well as new sounds, graphics, and more. |
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Complete Doom Accessory Pack Volume III, The | Modern Microware | [top] | |
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This pack has 150 additional levels for DOOM II and 500 additional levels for DOOM - you can wade through even more mutants than before. There are no duplicateds from Volumes I or II. Modern Microware screens and test every level and every program. If it doesn't measure up, it won't be on the disc, pure and simple. There's also map editors, graphics and sound pathces, front ends, utilities and more. | ||
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Complete Doom Accessory Pack, The | Modern Microware | [top] | |
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This collection of extra levels and other related programs will enhance your DOOM experience like never before. There's collected work from hundreds of talented programmers. Hundreds of all new sounds and graphics. There's map editors, sound/graphics utilities, awesome movies of DOOM Hall of Famers' greatest victories, the complete DOOM programmers specs. It has the complete DOOM FAQ v5.6, and dozens of utilities to edit savegames, change map names, enhance network and serial play, record and play back movies, access devparm modes and more. | ||
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Corridor 7: Alien Invasion | Capstone / Intracorp | [top] | |
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In this game, which uses the Wolfenstein 3D engine, you hunt aliens on various spaceships. In the year 2012, it was finally possible to send a space ship to Mars. The scientists returned with a small object of unknown origin, which was supposed to be a proof for the existence of life on Mars. The object was placed in a special research facility, in the deepest place known as "Corridor 7". Exposed to gamma radiation, the mysterious object caused a portal to appear, which connected two worlds. Alien invasion began. It's time for you, a brave special agent, to descend into Corridor 7 where the fate of humanity must be decided. Transparent glass, a motion tracker and enemies that seem to morph from harmless adverseries break up the traditional shooting. Also included are some view-enhancers (infrared,...). It's not the best shooter, but it offers a solid entertaining game. The CD edition released in 1995 included a number of extra levels in addition to the disk version as well as full support for multiplayer over IPX, new weapons and Redbook CD-Audio. | ||
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Cyber Street | Criterion | [top] | |
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This is not strictly speaking a game, but a small program of demonstration realized in 1994 by the young studio Criterion to show the capacities of their 3D engine RenderWare, which would serve them to develop " Scorched Planet" and "Sub Culture". RenderWare will then be adopted by several other studios for PC games and PlayStation 2. In this street that is not cyber, we can move with the mouse (the keys 'Ctrl' and 'Shift' allow to change the height and angle of view) and shooting rats with the right button. You can also go to the Laines Hotel if it tells you. | ||
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Cyberstreet | Criterion Software Group Ltd. | [top] | |
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This is a small demonstration program produced by the young studio Criterion to show the capabilities of their 3D RenderWare engine, which would be used to develop Scorched Planet and Sub Culture. RenderWare will then be adopted by several other studios for PC and PlayStation 2 games. In this street which has nothing of cyber, you can move with the mouse (the 'Ctrl' and 'Shift' keys allow you to change the height and angle of view) and right mouse button shoot rats. You can "soar" over the street and shoot animals from above; for the same purpose (probably for the sake of obtaining some specific camera positions) the "Ctrl" keys are used. You can also enter the Laines Hotel if you like. A counter is displayed in the right corner of the screen showing how many rodents you have killed. | ||
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CyClones | RavenSoftware / S.S.I. | [top] | |
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The maker of RPG's like Eye Of The Beholder went into the action genre with this game and they didn't do a bad job. The name CyClones referred to Cybernetic Clones, the minions of aliens who had ravaged and devastated the earth. The player was cast as the cybernetic warrior Havoc who must battle against the aliens. A new, 100% in-house engine was created that could handle moving platforms, catwalks, sloped areas, and transparent textures. There are loads of puzzles and you can stash your health-kits. The athmosphere however is not up to par with Doom or System Shock. CyClones is a technically convincing game but it doesn't really offer something new. The CD features some crappy full-motion video and cinematics that are not available on the disk version. | ||
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Depth Dwellers: The Quest | TriSoft | [top] | |
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A shooter released as shareware. In this sci-fi driven outing, the player takes on the role of a trained soldier, the son of Earth's diplomatic ambassador, secretly sent down to a planet which is in peril, known as 'Ora', where its inhabitants were enslaved by a tyrannical race known as the RI. They want to plunder the planets' most rich resource, known only as 'Zendle' at any cost, as its properties would assist greatly in the creation of a new weapon's system to ensure the RI's dominance of Ora, and ultimately all neighbouring planets. Each episode begins with the chapter storyline displayed and your ultimate goal is also outlined here. Gameplay elements include rescuing the slave Depth Dwellers, who appear chained to walls, mining shackled with pickaxes, or found wandering aimlessly through the labyrinths. You set them free through your advanced beaming transport technology which dematerializes and then rematerialises the poor souls to safety. Objective-driven scenarios are brought forward, such as in one instance, having to destroy a communications system to prevent the RI from calling upon reinforcements. Various other assignments are given during the course of each episode. In every level, your primary goal is to find one or more keys which grant access to a transporter room, taking you to the next stage. Collect new and increasingly powerful weapons from fallen enemies, or find them stashed in a plethora of secret areas. A rapid fire pulse laser, rocket launcher, flame thrower and a strategic mine dispensing armament, among other goodies become at your disposal as you delve deeper into the mines. The weak graphics could not be saved with the inclusion of 3d glasses for a stereoscopic version. There were some new and good ideas in the game, but in the end it doesn't make up for a good shooter. |
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Doom + Accessories | id Software Inc. | [top] | |
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This contains three Shareware versions of DOOM, runnable from the CD directly. There's also Audio Editors, Map Editors, Graphics Editors, Front Ends/Shells, a DOOM FAQ and over 500 Levels/Maps. It also contains DOOM Insanity (Jokes about DOOM). | ||
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Doom Add-Ons | Unknown | [top] | |
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This is an unofficial collection of over 800 add-on levels and editors for the full registered version of DOOM. The CD is menu driven (DOS) and contains Doom-Shareware v1.6. Features: Hundreds of extra levels; Create your own levels; Graphics editors; Music editors; Many new audio files; Hints & cheats. | ||
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Doom Extras | Software Solutions | [top] | |
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This contains levels, characters, music effects, etc. for Doom 1 & II and Heretic. There's new 9-level episodes. | ||
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Doom Magazine | Virgin Interactive / MPO | [top] | |
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This compilation of Doom levels was an addon-disk for a French magazine. It contained 600MB worth of levels, 1200 for Doom I & II, plus dozens of editing utilities and shareware version of Doom. It also has patches giving new graphics plus docs. | ||
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Doom: Aliens!! | Justin Fisher / Software Evolution | [top] | |
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Extravagantly formed complete conversion of Doom - and in my opinion the best one. From the Aliens film, there are borrowed weapon noises and calls, as well as the well-formed Alien opponents, marine weapons and diverse levels. I have played it in singleplayer, as well as in the Co-op mode with a friend and it's extremely fun! - review by Sandon. This unofficial addon was sold commercially in Canada. It was the first total conversion for Doom (in fact the first total conversion for any game) and is one of the most famous. In the week following the release of Doom II, there was more discussion in the Doom newsgroups related to Aliens TC than Doom II. The popularity of the Aliens TC even reached outside the Doom community, for instance providing inspiration for the 1998 Dreamworks game Jurassic Park: Trespasser. Fisher was offered employment by various game developers (including Dreamworks for the team that would later make Trespasser), but declined in order to finish his university degree. | ||
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Doom: Companion CD-Rom / Doom Companion Edition | Limelight Media, Laser Magic | [top] | |
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This contains character & sound utilities, exciting game recordings, and maps of every level in Doom. You can also create your own Doom level with level editors. There's hints & cheat codes, sound editors, plus TONS MORE!!! It also includes Episode 1 - Knee Deep In The Dead. | ||
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Doomsday | Leo Martin Lim / Software Evolution | [top] | |
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Doomsday of UAC (commonly known by its filename UAC_DEAD) is a single-level PWAD. As part of their 10 Years of Doom feature, Doomworld named it one of the ten best WADs of 1994. One of the first ever fan-made Doom mods, UAC_DEAD features an attempt at creating realistic-looking vehicles and environments. It contains a replacement sky graphic, and uses careful flat and texture choices in places to simulate colored lighting. It also includes the first known instance of the self-referencing sectors trick, used to create both invisible stairs and an invisible chamber enclosing a cyberdemon. It also appeared on Maximum Doom as UAC_DEAD.WAD, as UAC_DEA2.WAD, and as E1M4 of DEATHM2.WAD. It was featured in Doomworld's Top 100 Most Memorable Maps, placing 10th. | ||
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DoomWare Developers Network CD Occurence 1 | CyTech CodeHouse | [top] | |
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All the Newest, PWADS, Editors, Hacks, Sounds, Patches, FAQ's, and Reviews in the known shareware universe for DOOM and DOOM II. A handy database program (CDGofer) shows you all the files and a synopsis of the description for each. It lets you extract or copy the files to your HD, print the full associated text file, and lets you effortlessly swim through half a Gig of files. All pWAD's ( over 1,000 ) are available for direct play in our WADFest directory on the CD. It includes a FULL mirror of infant2, CompuServe, and AOL Doom file areas, all on 1 CD-ROM!!! Files were continuously added, right up to production, so we have the latest DOOM II WAD's, editors, and conversion utilities in their own directory (as of 10/20/94). | ||
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Fortress | Diversions Software Inc. | [top] | |
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Fortress is a single player, shareware, wave shooter. The player is in a fortified base on a distant planet which they must defend against enemy walkers that approach from all directions. The game display tells the player that an enemy is approaching from a bearing xxx degrees and the player has to rotate their turret and destroy the attacker before moving on to the next target. The turret is rotated with the left/right arrow keys and the mouse is used select and aim the guns. The game has three levels of difficulty, optional sound but no save game feature and no high score table - at least not in the shareware version. | ||
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Fortress Of Dr. Radiaki, The | DigiFX Interactive / Merit Studios | [top] | |
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A shooter with some humorous enemies including sword-wielding samurai, stealthy ninja warriors, robots with toasters for heads, mutated alligators among 15 different types. It has over 15 levels of play through which you make your way as you penetrate Dr. Radiaki's fortress until you get to the very top. | ||
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Gaminator | DP Tool Club | [top] | |
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Gaminator 2nd Edition contains 1300 levels for Doom, 90 levels for Doom II, 220 tools and editors for Doom, shareware Doom, etc. | ||
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Hidden Below, The (THB) | Soft Enterprises / Kingsoft, Ikarion | [top] | |
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You're a private detective who finds a lot of monsters under an old factory. The makers digitised real weapons (and your hand) and by looking at the textures you can see that they were inspired by real- life, not by drawings. Still the graphics don't reach the level set by Doom and are pixelated. There are some puzzles which are not very interesting. Although the levels remind people of System Shock, Hidden Below never reaches the quality of that game or Doom. It features VGA graphics which incorporate varying sized rooms and diagonally-angled walls. It is reputed to be the first PC first-person shooter in which you can look up and down. Sound is 16-bit and includes digitised speech. There are 20 big levels with changing textures, 40 different opponents with individual AI, auto-mapping to activate, and last but not least 14 different weapon systems. Rendered cut scenes aiming to use the full potential of the CD-ROM technology are included. Unusually for the FPS genre, a score is kept and high scores are recorded. | ||
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Kapture | Nate Goudie, Mike VanFleet | [top] | |
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An intense two player action/strategy game of "Capture the Flag" which takes place in the years following a nuclear holocaust. Both players compete head-to-head with non-stop, split-screen (first person perspective) action! Make use of your trusty handgun, land mines, scanners, compasses, med-kits, etc, while evaiding hazards like fire and spear traps (not to mention your opponent!). Requires 386+ and 256 colour VGA. | ||
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La Cosa Nostra | Tony L. Ford / Slade 3D Software | [top] | |
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This was made using the Pie in the Sky software 3d GCS (Game Creation System). You pick up items with the enter key. It's a mobster themed FPS game with the first episode as shareware, registered users get the second episode sent to them. The player takes the role of NYPD investigator Slade A. Ryker, who must stop the crime boss Girabaldi and his gang after they murdered his partner/brother-in-law and now hold his wife hostage. It was included on at least one shareware compilation containing the first episode of the game. The second level of the first episode's level track is the theme from the film The Terminator, hinting the soundtrack comprises various MIDI files found on the Internet, though the game's variety in terms of textures, graphics and sounds is more than most Pie in the Sky engine games. | ||
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Laura Beyer's Doom | Mike Helm, Kody Zander and Darryl Dewald / Laura Beyer | [top] | |
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Perhaps the most infamous of all unauthorized Doom products, this was sold for $20 and featured nine maps, replacing the first episode (with an install process that modified the Doom IWAD), and coming with three "bonus" levels. Some of the new graphics and sounds, are recognize as appearing in Eternal Doom (and many other WADs of the time). As to how the team assembled, it looks like almost everyone was (and still is) stationed in Creston, Canada, so I assume they were friends. Most of the new graphics and sounds are pretty bad, including the enemy replacements. Actually, the regular zombiman death is pretty good, but the baron, which appears to be a photographed action figure, is pretty painful, though the first time I got the call and response with his wake up and death noises I admit I smirked. Just a little. The textures aren't all awful, but the solid black with tiling brown squiggles blows, and while the well-known in-game advertisements aren't nearly as pervasive as in the demo level (here E1M9), I'd still rather not see them. Actually, with a few notable exceptions, texturing in the entire series is terrible. Granted, it's '94, but still. There are some neat stabs at special effects here and there, like demons falling in through the ceiling or several instances of the "crystal sector" effect put to good use. Most of the gameplay is pretty boring, though, dispatching spaced out segments of monsters that probably can't even see you because of what I can only assume is a bum reject table. If you lob rockets, you don't even wake them up half the time. Furthering this boredom are some big design flaws, like long, slow elevators, mazes, and stale architecture. E1M7 is perhaps my favorite level but even it is weighed down by reusing its greatest aspect ad nauseum. | ||
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Lost In Zapperstein | Acord Games | [top] | |
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You are bolted into a world inside your computer into the enchanted land of Neverwhere venturing to its capitol city Zapperstein where you are trapped in the Zargon prison fortress, from which you must escape in this fast moving Wolfenstein/Doom-like game! It uses Soundblaster music, has 20 levels and was made with Pie In The Sky engine. It is now freeware. | ||
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Lunicus | Cyberflix / Paramount Interactive | [top] | |
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The aliens have invaded and your job is to blast as many aliens and alien-robots as possible before they destroy you and the Earth. You start from a space station, where you wander around and interact with a few characters then fly to Earth. Once there, you are in a building with multiple floors; each similar floor is a simple maze in which alien robots (some flying) wander around and shoot at you. Different ammunition and other useful stuff is contained in cabinets. To enter the city streets you take an elevator and can then travel in a tank and blast away at more alien robots, both on the ground and flying. If your shields or ammo get low you can enter other buildings to replenish them. Game play is very repetitive, movement is clunky, and graphics are dull too. What makes this game notable is it's early use of CD-ROM ability to provide an original soundtrack, talking cyber puppets, 2 channels of digital sound, and over 5000 movie sequences. | ||
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Magic Carpet | Bullfrog Productions / Electronic Arts | [top] | |
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Magic Carpet is a first-person perspective game, in which you are a mage who flies on a, well, magic carpet and casts spells. The game has 50 levels, called "worlds"; each of those is set in a sea terrain with several mountainous islands. Your goal on each level is to amass enough mana within your castle to "restore the equilibrium" within the world. Once this happens, you can head to the next level. To collect mana, you have to find it (it is represented by golden spheres) and cast a specific spell to make it "yours". To collect this mana, you have to use a special spell to raise a castle of your own out of the ground. A balloon will appear over the newly created castle; it will proceed to fly around the level and collect "your" mana. Initially, your castle will be small and won't be able to hold much mana, so you'll have to keep casting the "castle" spell at it to make it bigger. The levels typically have monsters and rival mages in them. Not only they can hurt you with their attacks, but killing them is often necessary, as upon death they will release some of the mana you need to complete the level. To attack your enemies, you have a variety of spells at your disposal: fireballs, lightning bolts and meteors. There are also many other spells available to you - they allow you to heal yourself, surround yourself with a protective shield, teleport around, summon a skeleton army, or even modify the terrain by creating volcanoes and splitting landmasses. Not all spells are available to you from the beginning, though. Throughout all the levels, you are on your flying carpet, which can move in 3 dimensions. You can bring up a top-down map at any time. See also: #Magic Carpet: Hidden Worlds |
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Marathon | Bungie Software Products Corporation | [top] | |
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A security guard was accompanying a group of space colonists on their trip on the huge space ship, the Marathon. Suddenly, aliens of the Pfhor race attack the ship and massacre the colonists. What's worse, the aliens damage the omniscient super-computers on Marathon. One of them is heavily damaged, and the other becomes insane. Caught in the midst of the battle between the two AIs, trying to stay alive in the onslaught of the Pfhor, the protagonist begins a desperate fight for survival. Marathon is a first-person shooter exclusive to MAC, notable for pioneering the "free look" feature (moving the camera in all directions with the mouse). There are a variety of weapons that serve the hero in battle. Different types of enemies (organic or mechanical) take different amounts of damage depending on the weapon. The protagonist is also able to fire from two weapons (such as pistols) simultaneously. Shooting enemies is not the only thing to do in the game; it is possible to communicate with the damaged AIs of the ship by looking at messages they send you via computers. The story is unraveled primarily through those messages. It's a first-person shooter puzzle game with Doom-like graphics, set in a scifi universe dominated by deviant computer AIs and (unlike Doom or Quake). Marathon was ahead of its time, having an immersive plot ran through the series of games. The engine sports an impressive physics model that allowed grenades to arc through the air and the player to waft gently across wide crevices in low-grav maps (revolutionary, as Quake wasn't released for another year and a half). The mod (called scenarios) community was so active that Bungie, the game's makers, sat up and took notice, releasing professional tools publicly so that the users could create their worlds with even greater ease. Bungie Software later went on to make the super popular Halo series for XBox. In 2024, Classic Marathon, a fan-led port that has Bungie's blessing was released for free. It's powered by an open source engine called Aleph One using the original data files, with optional widescreen HUD support, 3D filtering/perspective, positional audio, and 60+ fps interpolation, just in case the original is too authentic. | ||
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MegaDoom Adventures | Pacific Media WorX | [top] | |
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Over 300 exciting new levels for use with the registered version of the popular adventure game Doom including: loaders, editors, creators, weapons, sounds, graphics, utilities, cheats, hints & an easy-to-use user interface. | ||
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Nitemare 3D | David P. Gray, Gray Design | [top] | |
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This 3D game comes from David P Gray, author of the popular HUGO trilogy. You go on a monster-hunt in an abandoned villa. Not surprisingly, the majority of your opponents are zombies. Enter the house of the evil Dr. Hamerstein aided by his host of nasty minions. He has captured your beloved sweetheart, Penelope, and imprisoned her to carry out his evil experiments. As Hugo, you venture into the horrific world of Dr. Hamerstein on your perilous quest for Penelope and a mystical mirror which leads to the "other side". Not only must you defeat the crazed inhabitants of the house including Dr. Hamerstein himself, you must also solve numerous puzzles along the way, some of which are easy, some not quite so easy. There's no blood or death animations. Killed opponents turn into flowers and there are a few puzzles. Basically it's a kids game with Wolfenstein graphics. | ||
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Operation Body Count | Capstone / Intracorp | [top] | |
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Wolfenstein-like graphics with a bland storyline. Terrorists have taken over the UN-building and guess what, you have to take them out. You enter through the canals where you first fight giant rats before you may take on the Arab terrorists. You have many guns: shotguns, uzis, gatling guns, grenade launchers, flamers, etc. The gameplay is obvious. You run about using guns on terrorists while avoiding their booby traps and giving orders to other members of your team (when you find them). The player can activate a proximity map, which appears in the corner of the screen, and does not "freeze" the game world to obstruct gameplay. The levels are bland and the game focuses on brutality rather than gameplay. | ||
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Red Babe | The Dark Cavern Productions | [top] | |
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This is a cheap Doom clone using the Pie In The Sky game engine. You awaken in a strange room with no exits in an alternate dimension where the beautiful Sharla is being held captive. There are six challenging levels of terrible taunting guards. Using your ninja kick, machine gun, grenades, and other weapons and the valuable clues that Sharla has left behind to help, you must rescue her. A full-body icon shows you where you've been hit by enemy fire and how badly. |
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Rise Of The Triad: Dark War (Wolfenstein 3D: Part 2) | Apogee | [top] | |
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A fanatical cult leader wants to dominate the world!
The game relies on brutality and a few innovations. Wounded opponents fall
on their knees to plea for their lives and start shooting again if you don't
finish them off. Sometimes you can go 'akimbo' (one weapon in each hand)
The levels aren't very interesting: lots of jumppads and elevations
but not very realistic or recognisable. It added to the FPS genre with its
use of photorealistic models and sprites, dark and quirky humor, advanced
multiplayer features, and introduced wanton and gratuitous violence in the form
of giblets (which would later be popularized by Duke Nukem 3D and Quake, and are
debatably a staple of most first-person shooters today).
To its benefit, the levels are huge and there are plenty of them.
You'll need lots of time to complete this game, but unfortunately after
a while you don't find anything new or interesting. It was the first game to
include: parental Lock of objectionable content, random game enemies (the same
enemy wouldn't always be in the same spot when you replayed the game), non-linear
episode progression (ending one specific level wouldn't always take you to the
next one), jump pads, bullet holes in walls, ability to jump on top of objects
in a game, live remote ridicule, enemies that play dead instead of just dying
immediately, rocket jumping, and Capture the Flag. RotT's deathmatch also
introduced a variety of inventive new ways of dispatching enemies, including
homing missiles, heat seeking missiles, flame wall bombs, fire jets, floor and
ceiling spikes, and weapons such as the Excalibat, a cursed Louisville slugger.
Other technical innovations included walls that could move inwards and crush
players, poison gas that required a gas mask to evade, fireproof jackets to ward
off flame-based weaponry, and enemies that could steal a players weapons and also
feign death. The CD Version (Super Triad) contains 32 game levels and 40
COMM-BAT Zones including the PowerPack, plus other Apogee shareware games and
goodies such as songs, sounds, textures, pics, the RandRott random-level generator,
and RTSMaker for making your own remote-ridicule sounds. The version 1.3 CD also
had RottED - Wayne Sikes' Level Editor.
See also: #Action Ware 14: Extra Levels for Rise of the Triad, #Arcade Explosion, Complete 3D-Action Accessory Pack, The, #Digital Warfare, #Hard R.O.T.T. Cafe, #PowerPack, #The Hunt Begins, #Extreme Rise Of The Triad, #Levelmania, #Mega Wad Vol.1, #Platinum 3D Action, #Rise of the Triad: Ludicrous Edition, #Ultimate Add On's Tournament Edition, #Ultimate Doom Companion, #Violence in 3D |
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Robinson's Requiem | Similaris / ReadySoft | [top] | |
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You crash down on a strange planet and have to survive. Robinsons Requiem is a complex game: you have to be concerned about water and food, cure illnesses and heal your wounds. To make a hat, which will protect you from the sun, you need needle, thread and some leaves (which are plentiful) Also you must make your own arrows if you want to shoot something. In the floppy version you could only move in 45 degree angles, while the cd version allowed for a more fluid motion. Robinsons Requiem was made to be a lifelike experience, a mix between shooter, rpg and simulation. It was quite hard, and deserved much more attention than it got in its days. | ||
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Rock'n Shaolin: Legend of the Seven Paladins (Chut Hup Ng Yee) / Euijeok: Im Kkeokjeong / Qi Xia Wu Yi 3D | Accend Inc, TWIM / SKC Soft Land | [top] | |
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Wonder why you haven't heard of this game using the famous Build engine (used for Duke Nukem and Blood)? Because the Taiwanese developers used the engine without paying for the license and as a result the game never came to North America and they weren't sued. It takes place in ancient China and has some nice ancient and mythic weapons as you protect the rulers from an overthrow plot. There are some tricky traps you must also avoid or disarm. Accend even licensed it out further to the Koreans, which adjusted some graphics and the story to squeeze the game into a Korean historical setting. | ||
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Santa's Rescue 3D | Pie in the Sky Software | [top] | |
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This demo for Pie In The Sky's Game Creation System is a full multi-level 3D family game, and fun for the whole family. It has great quality sound effects and music. Stop the evil ice wizard who has captured Santa. Explore the North Pole forests, and Santa's castle, undoing the wrongs done by the ice wizard. Finally, rescue Santa, and save Christmas! Your weapon is a candy cane. Assets from the game were later used in Deer Napped and Terror In Christmas Town. | ||
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Sensory Overload [MAC] | Reality Bytes | [top] | |
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First person action in this MAC exclusive early 3D FPS. Shoot down bad guys, pick up key cards, med kits and different types of guns. Solid looking graphics and smooth game play. The developer later went on to make Havoc and Dark Vengeance. The main character wakes up in a building that looks like an office building, around him there is a large number of bloody dead bodies. There is nothing to defend against possible threats; what has happened is unclear, and most importantly, he doesn’t remember anything and has no idea where he is. Almost immediately a weapon will appear and you can also use your fists, and with it the first enemies. Over time, what is happening will begin to clear up a bit - we will learn about Dr. Kraven, who wished to capture the whole world with a gang of henchmen. Low and pressing ceilings, on the strength of timid (if existing at all) "swing" at 2.5D, minimalist - almost like in Wolfenstein 3D- environment ... Even the weapons on the floor are not visible: you are only told in text form that you have found and taken it; well at least that it is displayed in the hand. Enemies are not particularly diverse - at least at the beginning (soldiers in armor, ninjas, and so on), but rather strong (even if they are killed even with their bare hands) and merciless; the life of the main character is very small, and the first-aid kits are far from every corner, so it’s more than real to die here. But what is already really interesting is the presence of various useful items or the possibility of simultaneous attacks in different ways: for example, you can run up to an enemy and shoot him point-blank - and simultaneously beat him with your fist with your free hand, as a result of which the unfortunate die much faster; it is clear that, to put it mildly, not too realistic - but it’s curious and not seen in every shooter. By the way, the maze-type level planning is relatively confusing (which was the norm for those times, and for players in old games - only a plus) - but there is an option to call the automap. | ||
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Spear of Destiny Mission 2: Return to Danger | FormGen | [top] | |
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FormGen, which previously released Spear Of
Destiny, made this mission disk which offer new textures and
opponents and a superior level design. Mission 2 continues the story
of the Spear (somehow the Axis gets it back again, and you must recover
it). Jump in the shoes of "B.J." Blazkowicz once again and go into 21
new Wolf levels with new, more detailed textures, as well as new bosses
and enemies, like machine-gun toting bats. Other additions include
better sounds, and some minor adjustments like for instance the
inclusion of crushed rats as indicators of secret doors, new prizes to
get, etc. They were later released on the "Spear of Destiny Super CD Pack" (94) from FormGen and a similar compilation from Activision (98). |
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Spear of Destiny Mission 3: Ultimate Challenge | FormGen | [top] | |
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FormGen, which previously released Spear Of Destiny, made this mission disk which offer new textures and opponents and a superior level design. It ends the Spear of destiny storyline as you continue through 21 new levels based on Hitler's new atomic research laboratory. They were later released on the "Spear of Destiny Super CD Pack" (94) from FormGen and a similar compilation from Activision (98). | ||
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Station Escape | Lary Myers | [top] | |
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This is a playable demo for Animation Construction Kit 3-D also known as ACK3D! The goal of the game is to escape the station. This contruction kit was part of a project created to allow you, the user, to design your own 3D games and applications. You can create your own maps and link them together together to form a 3D world of adventure. A variety of objects can populate this world, both stationary and moving, to add realism to the environment. This game engine was also used to make H.U.R.L. / Slob Zone 3D. This demo was included as a sample game on the bonus CD-ROM packed with the book Amazing 3-D Games Adventure Set, an instructional programming guide written by the author of ACK3D. This demo is not meant to be viewed as a full-fledged game, just a collection of routines to experiment with the engine. | ||
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System Shock | Looking Glass / Electronic Arts | [top] | |
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Released in the fall of 1994 this game is all about flexibility.
It was both playable as shooter or as action-adventure, a choice which was
made in the beginning of the game. Compared to Doom there's a lot more story
and more (flexible) controls which of course makes this game more complicated.
As a novelty you could now look up and down, even jump and duck.
Unfortunately not a lot of people picked this game up when it was released,
which is a shame. The masses wanted action, with SS they got a lot more.
This was the most realistic setting ever. Loads of weapons (with upgrades),
various drugs (which enhanced stats), jumpboots, .. the list of novelties
was endless. If you took something to enhance your vision chances were that
after the effect wore off you would have some sensory deprivation.
The story: you're a hacker who, after a long cryosleep, wakes up as the
only survivor on the spacestation Citadel. You're still in contact with
earth through a neural uplink. It seems that the computer Shodan (with some
help?) has taken over the station and wants to expand it's powers. Of course
you have to fight the various robots and mutants through a lot of huge and
entertaining levels. There are a lot of puzzles and with the help of data-
disks and survivors the story gets revealed. Expect some great twists and
evil plots. Another novelty is that you have to go into cyberspace.
System Shock was regarded by many as the best game ever. The cd-version was
launched in 1995 and featured voice-overs and higher resolutions which make the
game playable even today. A milestone in gaming. In 2015, an Enhanced Edition was released that features: higher resolution support: up to 1024x768, and 854x480 widescreen mode; Mouselook support added; Remappable keys with three profiles to choose from -original controls, custom controls, and lefthanded controls; Some original game bugs fixed.
See also: #System Shock Remastered |
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Terminal Terror | Pie in the Sky Software / Expert Software, Inc. | [top] | |
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Terminal Terror is the sequel to Lethal Thender. The game had some new ideas and really evolved since Lethal Tender. There where innocent civilians (which if you killed them resulted in jailtime) and a inventory system which improved on the "hey , there's a medi-kit on the floor" situations . Grenades could be lobbed at opponents but the most inventive was the hit-detection. This was the first game with different hitboxes, so if an opponent would hit you in the leg you would start limping. This game is also more about sneaking than going berserk with the introduction of a device which showed if you were about to be heard (later seen in Thief). All in all a very innovative game, which was plagued by weak graphics. | ||
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Terminator, The: Rampage | Bethesda Softworks | [top] | |
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Just one year after Terminator 2029, Bethesda Softworks sends you back to fight more robots. This time you have to compete with the "Meta-Node", which has been sent in the past to overtake the Cyberdyne laboratories and to triumph over humanity. The game mostly takes place in the vast laboratories where the player has to search for the components of a superweapon with which you hope to destroy the Meta-Node . Once again you do battle against drones, infiltrators and other robots. The game is fully textured yet lacks in comparison to Doom. The surroundings look rather bland and textures seem to be repeated throughout. You will not be able to recognise a lot of detail. Like in the first game, you have the use of a minimap and a health-bar of your opponents, which makes it easier to decide whether to flee or make the best use of your weapons. Rampage had a higher price tag and higher system specs than Doom, but in the end Doom was just more fun - even the older Terminator 2029 had more things going for it. It's playable but don't expect something special. | ||
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Toolkit For Doom | Walnut Creek | [top] | |
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With 7600 files, 3500 news from the alt.games.doom newsgorup, and more than 500 ready to run add-on levels, this disc will surely provide you with hours of enjoyment. Included on this disc are extra maze levels, tools for map editing, Doom 1 utility programs, and documentation on id Software's Doom 1 and its special data files. The disc is set up so you can run the wads directly off the CDROM using our handy shell and your copy of the registered version of Doom (version 1). You'll have fun with the extreme carnage made possible with this disc. :) The disc is set up for RBBS, Opus, PCBoard, Wildcat, Maximus, file_id.diz, and Spitfire BBS software. | ||
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Toom Parade, The | CDV Software GmbH | [top] | |
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This German compilation contains around 150 Levels for Doom/DoomII as well as some Patches and Demos of various DOS Games. Due to the fact that the game hit the German index right after being released, the CD does refer to the games as Toom/ToomII, and by thus itself is named "The TOOM Parade". The menu itself on the CD is purely German, but you can easily make out the levels themselves by just browsing the CD and finding them in a folder labeled "levels". Only about 1000 CD copies were ever made. | ||
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Troubled Tower | Shane Conway | [top] | |
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You are Jack 'Calculator' Hayes, a mild mannered attorney until one day... Shane Conway Computer Designs, a large company, is also a front for a C.I.A. base held underneath the building. A secret militia group, led by the mysterious Master Dinkins, takes the building by storm. As you are walking down the street to get a cappuchino from the local coffee shop, you hear gunfire from inside the building. Remembering all those self-defense classes you took in the third grade, you enter the building. | ||
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Wads Of Wads | CD ROM Users Group | [top] | |
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A collection of level add-ons and other related files for Doom. This CD is as up to date as the 27th September 94, with WADS and utilities taken from the INTERNET, CIX and other ONLINE systems. We feel it represents the best collection of WADS available and good value too. | ||
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Wolfenstein 3D and Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold Companion Edition | id Software, Inc., JAM Productions / Laser Magic, Inc. | [top] | |
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This is a budget CD release which contains the shareware versions of Wolfenstein 3D and Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold. It also has dozens of unique new levels, level maps, character and level editors, hints, cheat codes, utilities, and information files...all accessible through and easy-to-use interface. The CD also includes a program to install the games and all the utilities onto your hard drive. | ||
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Wolfenstein 3D Super Upgrades | Apogee Software | [top] | |
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The Wolfenstein 3-D Super Upgrades package was a mail order special from Apogee offered to registered owners of Wolfenstein 3-D. The package contained add-on levels and utilities for the game. In addition, version 1.4G of Wolfenstein 3-D was included. The prime feature of the upgrades pack was WolfMaster, a menu driven level selection utility originally released as shareware. This allowed access to over 800 custom Wolfenstein 3-D levels. Two other utilities were included: Wolf Creator and MapEdit. The creator utility allowed for simple creation of random levels. MapEdit, on the other hand, was a full-featured map editor that allowed you to create your own custom levels for Wolfenstein, Spear of Destiny, or Blake Stone. These "Super Upgrades" were not authorized by id Software and thus must be considered unofficial. In May/2006 it was released as freeware. |
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Wolfenstein: Evil Blood | Mega Mouse Software / Software Evolution | [top] | |
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This is an unofficial modification for Wolfenstein 3D released as shareware. It contains altered graphics featuring excessive gore. The levels have also been edited to add much larger numbers of enemies. It contained a version of Wolfenstein 3D to run the package. | ||
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Alien Breed: Tower Assault | Team17 Software Ltd. | [top] | |
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This is a Fairly good conversion of the third game in Team 17's popular Alien Breed series for the Amiga. Tower Assault is the only other game after the first one that made it from the Amiga to the PC. The plot is very mundane, but adequate: a scientific outpost on a far off planet has been attacked. Nothing is known about the attackers, since all communications have been destroyed. A team of marines is dispatched to investigate and destroy the unknown invaders. As their dropships enter the atmosphere and approach the base, the defence lasers, damaged in the onslaught, move into action. They launch wild bursts of laser fire at the approaching marines who, completely unexpecting such an attack, are unprepared. From the ensuing chaos one ship, flown by rookies Nash and Jordan, manages to make a crash landing. From the wreckage steps a soldier, and the mission begins. Tower Assault retains the great action of the first game while multiplying the suspense tenfold, via great sound effects and level design. While the game is fun in single player mode, it's the multiplayer mode that is the real star of the show. The first player co-operates with the second player taking the role of Nash, the rookie who is killed at landing in the single player game. You both share a single screen unable to move far enough apart as two be on different screens, but the scale of the game means this is not a problem. It might initially seem that this option would make the game easier, but there is still only the same amount of ammo, and it must be divided between two players. This can stretch the co-operative feeling in the game, as players can often find themselves fighting for the pick-ups rather than dividing them fairly. It was probably with this in mind that the designers made it so that your bullets couldn't hurt the other player. If you are tired of kill-them-all deathmatch games, this improves upon its predecessor in every respect - gameplay, graphics, and level design. It's also much more difficult this time around, so anyone new to the genre should be prepared to meet a frustratingly endless horde of aliens. The floppy version is widely considered to be the worst version of the game. It does not include a large number of the levels, and does not feature the non-linear gameplay of the original. The CD-ROM version however retained the non-linear level structure of the original, as well as the FMV intro and outro sequences from the AmigaCD32 version. | ||
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Alone In The Dark 2 | Infogrames / I-Motion, Interplay Productions | [top] | |
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In this first sequel of the acclaimed survival horror series, you are again Edward Carnby, a supernatural private eye investigating in 1924 the disappearance of a friend who was looking for a kidnapped girl named Grace Saunders. The trail of clues leads to an old mansion named "Hell's Kitchen", the home of the pirate One-Eyed Jack and his ghoulish gang. You soon find they are planning along with a witch a voodoo sacrifice that will give them immortality. In part of the game you play as Grace who has different abilities compared to Edward, and she cannot use any weapons to fend off an attack. Instead, she can sneak around and avoid the bad guys. If Grace is caught by a pirate, the game will end. This game has more action sequences than the first and the enemy AI is very good so you will die many times. The CD-ROM release added a full Red Book audio reworked soundtrack, dialogue speech (in English only) and a new playable section of Grace Saunders not present in the original disk version, which connected the mansion and the ship areas. | ||
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Bodyworks Voyager: Mission in Anatomy | Mythos Software / Software Marketing Corporation | [top] | |
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This is an educational game cum shoot-em-up probably influenced by the movie Fantastic Voyage where humans are shrunk and injected into a human body. Players go through a course learning the basics of human anatomy and test their combat skills against various infections. Based on the anatomy reference guide BodyWorks, this game puts you in control of an innerspace craft in the year 2094. Your mission? To beat back the insidious threat from super-bugs that are invading the human body. Start as a space cadet and work your way through the Academy with missions and awards to increase rank. The missions themselves include a first-person shoot-em-up environment with invaders coming thick and fast for non-stop fun. Other aspects of the missions involve identifying parts of the anatomy and their operation, providing a valuable educational tool. | ||
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Creature Shock | Argonaut Software / Virgin Interactive | [top] | |
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The story takes place in the year 2123 when faced with a delicate problem of overpopulation, mankind is forced to find other worlds to settle in space. The ship The Amazon disappears and leaves only a distress signal transmitted by the ship's probe. You must, with the help of the Lynx FTL Scoutship, attempt to find out what happened. The game is a rail-shooter (your course is predetermined and you simply shoot things as they appear) interspersed with FMV cutscenes. The FPS section is basically a maze inside an asteroid in which you will encounter various different aliens. Each alien has a weak point which you have to shoot. There are also two 3D sections where you are on a spaceship. You have a weapon, three bombs and a energy field. During your combats, the power of your weapon will decrease the more you use it, and recharges itself more or less when you stop firing. It has nice graphics. Astounding, in fact, given that it was made in 1994, long before the advent of 3D accelerators. The graphics are so wonderfully textured and smoothly animated that they put most other games of this time to shame. However, your targeting cursor is *automatically* pegged to the aliens, so the only way you'll miss your shot is if you can't click fast enough. | ||
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Cyberia | Xatrix Entertainment / Interplay | [top] | |
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In the year 2027 the world is controlled by two rival super-powers, the western-bloc Free World Alliance and the east-bloc Cartel. Transmissions from an FWA spy reveal the location of a secret multi-national laboratory deep within Siberia, the "Cyberia Complex", where a mysterious weapon is being developed. FWA leader Devlin frees a cyber-hacker named Zak from prison and sends him to infiltrate the complex and discover the true nature of the Cyberia weapon. Unfortunately, the Cartel is also interested in the weapon and will stop at nothing to get it. Not only must Zak make his way past the Cartel forces sent to stop him, but he must also overcome the Cartel agents which have already seized control of the complex. To make matters worse the Cyberian scientist's genetically engineered creations are running rampant in the same area as the weapon, and Devlin also appears to be have something up his sleeve. Despite its lackluster gameplay, Cyberia is one of the first game titles that combines computer technology and Hollywood film technique to form visually stunning graphics and cut scenes. Atmospheric pseudo-3D environments are pre-rendered with location lighting. Developed on state of the art Silicon Graphics Workstations, realistic character movements are animated using digitally captured motion to generate "synthetic actors" with new levels of fluidity and precision. The CD-ROM quality musical score and sound effects are recorded by Thomas Dolby Headspace production studio. Digitized speech are played with stimulated lip synchronization. If you have enough patience to get through the difficult shooting parts on rails (similar to Dragon's Lair or House Of The Dead), you will be rewarded with adventure interludes. In these sequences, you control Zak himself from a third-person perspective. During these sequences, you will walk around the complex, shooting soldiers that appear along the way, and solving puzzles. Puzzles are typically straightforward Myst-style logic puzzles, but quite a few are interesting physical puzzles that require a combination of reflexes, observation, and good timing to solve. A partial version, called Cyberia: Mission Norway, only containing about half of the game was bundled with sound cards and other types of hardware. | ||
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Descent | Parallax Software / Interplay | [top] | |
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In Descent you fly a spaceship rather than go on foot.
It's a mix between a regular 3d-shooter and something like Wing Commander.
It's noted for popularizing
the use of true 3D rendering technology and providing the player with six full
degrees of freedom to move and to look around. Descent uses a software renderer due
to the fact that affordable 3D graphics accelerator cards were not mainstream as
yet. While Doom uses sprites to render enemies, Descent features fully-3D-polygonal
enemies. Other than Doom and its successor Quake, Descent does not use BSP trees
to speed up rendering, but a system of connected cubes forming bigger rooms and
tunnels connecting them. This geometry allowed for very efficient visibility culling,
and the first true three dimensional rendering environment of the time. Another
significant improvement over Doom was that Descent used sprites (two dimensional
bitmaps) only for powerups and not for opponents. With true 3D enemies, the game
introduced a higher level of realism. Descent had a dynamic lighting system that
enabled the use of flares to light areas, as well as laser blasts and explosions.
The dynamic lighting also allowed more gradations of light in the mines, which gave
a more natural and realistic appearance to in-game lights. Descent offers excellent competitive
multiplayer game play over a LAN. It's also touted as being one of the first games
that allowed on-the-fly joining of multiplayer games, whereas in Doom it is
presumed that all players have to be queued prior to initiating the match. There
are 27 levels corresponding to 27 different and unique mines (and also three
secret levels). The first three begin on the Moon, the fourth on Venus, the sixth
on Mercury, and these levels also make up the shareware version. In the commercial
release, the path continues out towards Mars and on towards the moons of the gas
giants Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and finally until Pluto and Charon. There
are 3 secret levels, which can be accessed by secret exits that are placed as an
alternative to the regular exits in certain levels. It features ten weapons; five
primary weapons and five missiles. A shooter fan with a good orientation will like
Descent. See also: #Arcade Explosion, #Beyond The Meltdown, Complete 3D-Action Accessory Pack, The, Descent Addon: Levels Of The World, Descent: Dimensions Unofficial Addon, Descent Mission Builder, #Digital Warfare, #Doomsday Disk, The, #Levelmania, #Mega Wad Vol.1, #Superdead, #Stellar Combat: Mission Pack, #Ultimate Add On's Tournament Edition, #Ultra Level Add-On, #Violence in 3D |
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Desert Strike: Return to the Gulf | Electronic Arts, Inc. / Gremlin Interactive Ltd. | [top] | |
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The first game in the Strike series. A year after the Gulf War, a self-styled general named Kilbaba (Muababa in the GBA version) takes over an Arab Emirate and threatens to start World War III against his western enemy, the United States. The whole world holds its breath as the President has chosen you to destroy Kilbaba and his terrorist army before he launches a nuclear attack on the world. You must fly a specially designed AH-64A Apache in top-down view on a series of missions to rescue missing-in-action characters, destroy power plants, blow apart SCUD missiles, etc. to take out the enemy defense while trying to find out Kilbaba's plans. | ||
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Iljimae-jeon: Manpa Sikjeok-pyeon [K] | Danbi System / LG Electronics Inc. | [top] | |
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Manpa Sikjeok-pyeon is based on the Chinese Ming Dynasty story of Yi Zhi Mei ("Iljimae" in Korean), a mysterious thief who steals from the rich to give to the poor. The story involves the search for a magic bamboo flute that alone can put an end to wars. The material, however, is treated very loosely, with added characters and locations (including futuristic ones) that have little to do with the original tale. The game is an arcade on-rails shooter with an over-the-shoulder pseudo-3D view, similarly to Space Harrier. Unlike that game, all three controllable protagonists are confined to the ground. Their main method of defense is shooting at enemies, but they can also use melee moves with a chance to evade enemy attacks. Stages also contain obstacles, many of which can be destroyed. Power-ups include weapon upgrades, autofire, and health-restoring food. If a player collects a special ticket in a stage he gains access to a store, where all these items plus upgradeable super-attacks can be bought. Stages usually end with a boss battle. Cooperative two-player mode is available. | ||
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Jump Raven | Cyberflix / Paramount Interactive | [top] | |
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Jump Raven is the second title released by Cyberflix. The game is set in New York in an undefined period in the 21st century. All wildlife appears to be extinct as man has scorched the entire earth with war. Before it was too late, all animals' genetic code has been stored in biodiversity pods to bring them back safely when the ecosystem has recovered. However, a gang steals the pods and the Environmental Security Agency (ESA) brings in bounty hunter Raven to return them and preserve the animals' future. Building on the technology of Lunicus, in Jump Raven the character Raven uses a hovercraft to move around the city. The game starts in a command center where the player can read up on the events that led to the global disaster, outfit the vehicle with different types of weapons, and interview candidates for the position of co-pilot in the hovercraft (Nikki, Chablis, Limbaugh, Thrash, Lark or Dogstar). Their in-game comments bring a different atmosphere to the gameplay. While flying, there are three boroughs to search for pods: The Bronx, Brooklyn and Manhattan. The hovercraft can be moved around, it can switch between a hover and a fly mode, and players need to aim and fire weapons. As that is too much for the player to handle, tasks can be delegated to the AI co-pilot. When the pods have been found, a boss character guarding the exit needs to be taken out. While playing, the game area takes up only half of the screen. The rest is reserved for incoming video messages (including taunting opponents), general options, weapon selection, a radar, a compass, and basic statistics about ammo, fuel, shields, the pods and cash. While searching the cities, targets such as jets, sleds, helicopters, tanks and armoured cars need to be engaged. When low on fuel, shield power or weapons, the fuel truck, weapons lady (in a helicopter) and the repair bay can be visited. |
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Microcosm | Creative Assembly Limited / Psygnosis | [top] | |
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In this rail shooter similar to Novastorm, you are in the year 2051 where two mega corporations battle it out for supremacy over an overcrowded, overpolluted planet. CyberTech Industries, the dominant company on the planet, is being challenged by Axiom, who blames the former for their president's death. To gain revenge, they secretly inject CyberTech's president, Anton Korsby, with a virus that threatens to take over his body--and ultimately destroy himself and CyberTech. Your mission is to enter Korsby's body, destroy the virus, and defeat the organism that controls his brain. It's a 3D action shooter that takes place entirely within the human body. You pilot your way through various parts of the anatomy, blasting virii and enemy ships, while gaining power-ups and faster, stronger craft to aid you in your mission. Eventually you will make your way to the brain, where you must stop Grey M, the entity that controls Korsby's body. Microcosm makes heavy use of full-motion video and features high-resolution fractal graphics (to simulate the walls of veins and arteries), digital music and sound effects. | ||
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Modem-3D | Amazing Graphics | [top] | |
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Play an authentic multiplayer adventure over modem with 3-D and 256 colors in VGA. It is a game with virtual reality graphics, texture-mapped, excellent cinematographic graphics which is played either as singleplayer or as a multiplayer game via modem with a continuously updated list of the 40 best scores. It has context-sensitive help and support for Sound Blaster, joystick , mouse, and in-game chat, multimedia fun you'll play for years. It's similar to Battlezone or Spectre, with battling tanks in a landscape with the occasional structure to hide behind and pyramid enemies too. | ||
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Novastorm | Psygnosis | [top] | |
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Novastorm is part racing and part combat, with everything taking place on a track (meaning it's a rail shooter where your movement through the game environments is pre-determined but you can move your ship on screen to avoid obstacles and enemy fire as well as shoot yourfoes). It's from the same developers responsible for the Wipeout series, so you can expect the same high-speed action. The goal of the game is to save the human race from renegade computers that have threatened humankind's existence. You fly the Scavenger 7 spacecraft through trenches and over mountains, shooting at oncoming targets. The terrain interacts with you, which offers some cool effects, but it can also destroy you. In other words, don't get caught up in all the visual glory of the game, or you'll pay the ultimate price. You can also find power-ups, battle huge bosses, and generally blast anything on the screen. Your primary tactic must be to enhance the power of your scavenger spacefighter by collecting gold, silver and bronze "tokens" which you can exchange for extra weaponry. You begin with a single-shot laser cannon, but you will be able to replace it with a double-shot and even with a triple-shot model. Many other weapons are available, like the spread shot, the orbiter (an external self-powered drone that will sweep in an orbit around your ship), a wingman (a remote, unmanned, powered microvessel), a drone, aka trailer, homing missiles, a shield etc... You will fly through magnificent 3D texture landscapes (the game's exciting full motion video sequences incorporate fractal engine technology, allowing smooth video transfer. The PC version features a completely reworked soundtrack by Rik Ede with additional enhancements to the sound effects and voices and is considered the best version and an almost entirely different experience. The rendering and level layouts were also significantly improved from the console versions. Although only on one disc and the FMV not full-screen, the video encoding and quality is comparable to the 2-disc Playstation version. | ||
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Quarantine | Imagexcel / GameTek | [top] | |
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This is not a shooter in the strictest sense. You accept missions while driving a taxi and plow through the city. You play the part of a taxi driver, desperate to escape from the violent prison city of Kemo. Deliver passengers to their destinations, so you can earn money to upgrade your cab, and take on undercover missions in the hope that somehow you can find a way out. An impressive array of cab-mounted weaponry will help you to survive. One of the first truly irreverent and unpretentiously violent games, Quarantine has achieved cult classic status among action gamers as one of the few games that provide pure, unfiltered, visceral fun of killing pedestrians and everything else that got in your way. Graphics and sounds are great for the time it came out and like GTA, you have complete freedom to ignore the grand plot as long as you like. It's very entertaining. | ||
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USHF: Beyond Armageddon | Future Simulations | [top] | |
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U.S.H.F. -- United States Hover Force is a hovercraft combat training simulator. The flight model utilized in this simulation is unique. Many things have to be considered when piloting your hovercraft. As your hovercraft travels forward and builds momentum, it will continue to travel forward until gravity and wind resistance eventually slow it down. This effect is particularly evident when turning at full throttle. It is possible to be traveling forward with the nose of your craft pointed to the side until the thrust from the engines overpowers the momentum. Driving a wheeled vehicle on ice at high speed would be one example of a hovercrafts flight model. To make sharp turns, use reverse thrust, then turn. You will discover that you can maneuver very effectively using this technique. The turret mounted on top of your ship can rotate 360 degrees as well as up and down. When you have selected a target (by pressing joystick/mouse button 2 or |
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Virtuoso | Motivetime / Elite Systems | [top] | |
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You play as a rock'n roll hero who is playing a virtual reality computer game. Wow, now that's original! At least it's in 3rd-person view which was rare for the time and has a digitized actor as your player. You can choose from three different episodes: Mars, The Haunted House, and Underwater World. Each episode has 7 or 8 maps. The game came with 7 cd hard-rock songs to accompany the gameplay. | ||
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Zephyr: The Ultimate Competitor | New World Computing, Inc. | [top] | |
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Zephyr is a futuristic combat/racing simulator setted in outer space. The premise of the game is that on the 24th century mankind has overpopulated earth and is forced to settle on different worlds around the galaxy looking for resources and space. The world of the future however, is not a happy one, and it's ruled by rival ultra-gigantic corporations that struggle against each other for the rights to settle and exploit worlds. The battles for those right are made through organized vehicular combat at the Interplanetary Battle Circuit and the races are fought on hovercraft-like vehicles called "Zephyrs". You play a Zephyr pilot and proceed through a set of linear plot-related missions fighting for the corporation of your choice. Each offers a customized Zephyr and each has advantages and disadvantages. The game itself is a cross between Doom and Hi-Octane. you have to race around maze-like cyberpunk locations (wastelands, cities, etc.) from a first person view and shoot your opponents with an independent turret-mounted cannon and collecting power-ups such as energy, shields, etc. to win the races. | ||
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Drift | Dirk Vandenheuvel | [top] | |
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Drift is a single player, freeware, Asteroids variant. The game is entirely keyboard controlled and is slightly unusual in that firing the gun causes the ship to move in the opposite direction. The story behind the game runs as follows "The year is 5300 and you are in command of the brand new experimental DriftRunner V3X22 (yep... a major improvement over the old V2X22 series). Humanity has colonized huge parts of the galaxy but the mysterious Vhol Drift has never been successfully explored. Strange aliens with strange technology live inside the dangerous Drift and it is said that he who successfully explores the Drift will be both famous and rich. So, your mission is clear. Enter the Vhol Drift and try to penetrate as deep as you can. But beware... the asteroid field gets more dense the further you go and encounters with the evil Polygunzz are also more likely. You have to shoot and destroy all the asteroids (and other obstacles) to clear a path through the Vhol Drift to make it possible for Terran exploration crafts to enter the Drift and exploit its resources and discover its mysteries. The task will not be easy but if anyone can do it, it surely is you..." | ||
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MegaBlast | Marco Ravoni | [top] | |
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This is a shmup made using Klik & Play. | ||
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Purple Dinosaur Massacre | John Dondzila | [top] | |
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This is essentially a killing simulator for Barney the Dinosaur, the popular children's television character who can be quite annoying to an adult and especially teenagers. While this is by no means a triple-A development game, it is still very satisfying if you're one of the many people who hate Barney with a passion. The game is very straightforward, you are given a machine gun which is mounted at the center of the screen, and you merely move the barrel left and right while firing at the various Barneys on the screen. And various Barneys there are. You have your basic walking Barney, a Barney who floats in the air using balloons, and another Barney who gleefully floats on a cloud (until you gleefully knock him out of the sky). Purple dinosaurs aren't the only objects that face your wrath however. Bunnies, flowers, clouds, even the sun can be shot at and killed. Needless to say this game is not meant for children, despite looking like its textures were created using Microsoft Paint. | ||
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Space Dude | Andrew Lim | [top] | |
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This is a Space Invaders style shmup made using Klik & Play. | ||
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Wings of Thunder | Mike Layer | [top] | |
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This is a single player game which was designed using Domark's Flight Sim Toolkit. It was released as a complete and free game but the author did ask for a donation if the player enjoyed the game. There's a detailed story to this game which is summarised below. In the future the world is at peace, weapon stockpiles are a thing of the past. Scientists have collaborated on creating artificial humanoid life which they called 'mandroids'. To see how clever and resourceful these mandroids are fifty were dumped in a secret location and left to their own devices for five years. When the time is up humanity is alarmed to find that there are no longer fifty mandroids but thousands upon thousands and they've developed weapons such as rocket launchers and they are on the move. Agents infiltrate the mandroid homeland and plant homing devices in key locations. The objective of the game is to fly into mandroid territory, tune into the frequencies of these beacons and destroy everything. There are twenty two missions in all, one for each homing beacon. The game is controlled with a combination of keyboard commands and a joystick | ||
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1942: The Pacific Air War | MicroProse Software, Inc. | [top] | |
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1942: The Pacific Air War is a flight simulation set in World War II, more specific the Pacific War between Japan and the United States. The focus is on the realistic simulation of the ten aircraft, this means for instance that there is no indicator for ammo. The game features several missions which can be either played independently from each other or in two campaigns for the United States or Japan. The goals are mostly to liberate an area, to defend an area or to destroy a specific target. The special feature of this game is that it also can be played as strategy game. On an overhead map the player gets presented with the position of all aircraft and he can order his troops around. The player can take control over every aircraft he wishes to and switch between both modes instantly. He can also record his performance and cut small movies with different camera angles out of them. See also: #1942: The Pacific Air War Scenario |
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Aces of the Deep / Command: Aces of the Deep | Dynamix, Inc. / Sierra On-Line, Inc. | [top] | |
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Take command of one of seven German U-Boats during WWII and hunt down and destroy allied convoys. This is never an easy task since their escorts and aircraft are waiting to ruin your day. The level of realism, and with it the difficulty, can be set by enabling or disabling ten options, e.g. unlimited ammo, clear sight or even invulnerability. Campaigns can be started in one of several time slots, allowing you to play for the entire war if you wish. During these campaigns you gain medals and promotions which includes the command of better submarines. You can also choose to play a single mission where you can set certain variables, e.g. number of ships or weather conditions. Specific missions aren't required because the engine "rolls up" convoys and targets, meaning every time you play the missions will change. The type and location of these missions depend on the historical time and the used submarine. The submarine consists of several rooms where you can access the functions and instruments you'll need, e.g. the logbook in the captain's room or the fuel and battery prompt in the engine room. However, the most important functions can be brought up at any time, this includes the sea map where you set waypoints. The crew can take over certain tasks, e.g. identifying ships. The later released CD-version Command: Aces of the Deep in 1995 adds additional multimedia features of video interviews with former German U-boat captains, updates the graphics to a higher resolution, and includes the Expansion Pack. See also: #Aces of the Deep: Expansion Disk |
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Armored Fist | NovaLogic, Inc. | [top] | |
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Armored Fist offers realistic armored warfare in numerous tactical theaters. The player can choose from an extensive line-up of modern-day armored vehicles utilized by U.S. forces, in addition to those commonly used by Soviet troops. The game was one of the earliest tank sims to offer a mission editor with broad capabilities. Six linear campaigns are offered in addition to a training campaign. The underrated cousin of NovaLogic's more popular Comanche: Maximum Overkill and its sequels, Armored Fist is a fun tank simulation that tries to woo both the arcade and simulation fans, and ended up attracting neither camp. Weather patterns, including nighttime and passing clouds, are depicted in breathtaking detail, and it is obvious that NovaLogic has greatly refined the Comanche engine to yield less pixellation and more detail. Drive close to the lake, and you will begin to see your tank's reflections in the rippling water. Armored Fist is a rare case of graphics that truly enhances the playing experience. The Enhanced CD version adds extra VERY cool animations when you lose/win a mission, etc. | ||
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Battle Chopper | Parnoramic Software | [top] | |
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A lone Apache battle helicopter surrounded by hordes of hostile Hindus and other flying monsters is supposed to rescue the downed pilot of the fourteen that remained deep in the enemy's rear. A pretty difficult task - and exactly the goal of this free game. The goal is to break down to the downed pilot, pick him up and get him to the base, under the fierce fire of everything in sight at the moment. Directions to an impatient passenger and then to the base is shown to a helicopter by navigation arrow. In order for Apache to go where he is, he must point his arrow at the arrow to point to his weapon systems. It is not easy to save the pilot of the fourteen, especially when the Hind are furiously attacking. It is important to note that the helicopter can withstand only a limited number of enemy hits and has no bottom tanks. So it can be shot down, but it can also fall off the sky without a drop of fuel. Then he is unlucky both his pilot and the unfortunate man waiting to be rescued. Just classic Game over. If, on the other hand, players succeed in completing the task and bringing the boy from F14 to safety, he can look forward to the next mission. As in every shooter, the Battle Chopper can also find bonus fuel, weapons, and flares on the battlefield (delusional targets that are being discharged due to the confusion of thermally guided enemy missiles). | ||
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Comanche CD | NovaLogic, Inc. | [top] | |
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This is a compilation of Novalogic's voxel-based simulations of the helicopter RAH-66. It contains the following games: Comanche: Maximum Overkill (base game), Comanche: Global Challenge (add-on), Comanche: Over the Edge (add-on). In addition, the compilation offers ten bonus missions. It was re-released in 1997 by Softkey (The Learning Company) as Comanche CD Special Edition including a demo of America Online, and Windows 95 compatibility. | ||
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CyberStrike | Simutronics Corporation / Microprose Software | [top] | |
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In this online mech shooter, it's kill or be killed. Move or die. Match wits against real players in CyberCity. Collect Power up modules to boost performance on your own personal Cyberpod. The longer you stay alive, the more powerful you become. Four teams of four players each compete for control of precious city squares. Work together or play head-to-head as you strive to blast your enemies out of their pods. Talk to your teammates or taunt your opponents. Strategy, skill and lightning reflexes are the only things that will keep you alive in this deadly world. It's multiplayer virtual reality at it's best. Weapons include lasers, bombs, missiles, etc. There's over 50 different upgradeable power modules. It was originally accessed through General Electric's internet service provider GEnie in February 1993, then later offered in retail via Microprose on November 1994. Simutronics finally moved all their games to their own domain, play.net, in 1997. "CyberStrike Classic" as this came to be known is no longer playable but the sequel CyberStrike 2 is still active. | ||
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Dawn Patrol | Rowan Software Ltd. / Empire Interactive Entertainment | [top] | |
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Having simulated modern-day planes with Flight of the Intruder, and World War 2 with Overlord, Rowan brought World War 1 to life in this flight simulation. It is structured around an interactive gallery with pilot biographies, all of which modify as the game goes on and events unfold. 150 missions are featured, each with fully inter-linked briefings. There are 13 different planes to fly, both British and German. See also: #Dawn Patrol: Head to Head |
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Delta V | Bethesda Softworks LLC | [top] | |
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This is a futuristic flying game. The plot casts you as a captured Nethacker forced to Netrun for the mercenary Black Sun Corporation for their own greedy purposes. Just what is Netrunning? in the year 2306 5 megacorporations control the world, each of which requires lots of data and information to mantain their position at the top of the food chain. If a certain data can't be obtained peacefully they then resort to hacking the other corporation's net with cybernetically enhanced individuals (such as yourself) that can cruise the Networks in virtual vehicles called Traces. This then means that as a Netrunner you have to "race" in futuristic trenches and several other Tron-like settings while avoiding ICEs and other countermeasures and trying to achieve mission objectives like capturing a certain data file, clearing up a Net of intruders, etc. |
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Earthsiege / Metaltech: Earthsiege | Dynamix / Sierra Online | [top] | |
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Command heavily-armed HERCs against relentless
automated Cybrids in this MechWarrior-ish first-person sim. Customize
your units, manage resources, collect salvage, research new technology,
and more to beat back the Cybrid invasion. It has nice graphics and
good single-player campaign mode. Due to technical limitations of the
time, the terrain is mostly flat and featureless, other than occasional
jutting rocks and small hills. This excellent 3D action game with
an intriguing plot has many types of mechs to control and fight in
furious cockpit action. Vehicle models and some buildings feature
textures. This is the first game in the game series
which eventually evolved into the Tribes series. On Oct 30/2015, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Tribes franchise, Hi-Rez Studios released the whole series as freeware. See also: #Earthsiege - Expansion Pack |
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Earthsiege: Speech Pack | Dynamix / Sierra Online | [top] | |
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A Speech Pack for Earthsiege was available for separate purchase from Sierra. This add-on provided audio speech for the characters in the game to accompany the standard text speech. The Speech Pack was included in later CD releases. | ||
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F-18: No Fly Zone | DOE Entertainment / Geni U.S. | [top] | |
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This is a single player arcade style shoot-'em up. The player takes on the role of a fighter pilot who must shoot down recurring waves of enemy aircraft as they fly towards their plane. There are power ups to be collected which will boost the weapons capabilities or repair the ship. The game has ten levels and a stereo soundtrack. | ||
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Fleet Defender / F14 Fleet Defender | MicroProse Software, Inc. | [top] | |
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Fleet Defender is a single player F14 combat sim with many finer details represented, including the ability to switch between the pilot and rio seats. This is the type of simulation where the player is a realistic part of a mission and not necessarily a 'rambo.' The game was re-released in 1995 as F-14 Fleet Defender Gold for Windows and new additions. | ||
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Grey Wolf: Hunter of the North Atlantic | Diversions Software / Pro One Software | [top] | |
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You get an acute sense of isolation playing Grey Wolf, the world’s first Visual Basic game released on CD-ROM. The verbal responses to your orders sound as if they are coming in over a cheap radio. (This was later explained to be a recreation of verbal orders transmitted through the voice tube, or gooseport. In that context, the voices sound authentic). On the plus side, you can examine the boat from bow to stern and view some really pretty graphics of the diesel room, torpedo room, and a very clean control room. But this wolf feels like a ghost ship--with all those places to visit there is no crew. Now I know that no sim has a simulated crew graphically depicted, but they don't offer a bow to stern tour, either. As you move from one compartment to the next, you see everything but sailors. The graphics of surface ships are sketchy at best, mere side view silhouettes with some detail. Convoys seem to consist of three ships in most cases, with the occasional warship mission of two destroyers. There are no prolonged depth chargings to fear here, sailor. If they get a lock on you, you dive deep and pray. Your fate will become clear soon. You can tell from the pinging of the sonar if you're in peril. Depth chargings include some good cut-away scenes. The TBT and periscope views are cramped and restricted, which would be tolerable if you had the option of scanning the waves from the bridge, but you don't. The view topside is solely through the field glasses. You feel as though you’re searching the confines of a shoe box, not the vast Atlantic Ocean. Nothing gives you the feel that you're at sea better than the simple topside view. Contrasting the blinders you feel without the bridge view, Grey Wolf features the best wave action this side of Aces of the Deep. The layered, undulating blue waves put Silent Hunter to shame. You target is constantly in motion and you do feel the need to brace yourself. How about realism? Well, you do have limits on your fuel and batteries, and you carry a limited number of torpedoes. The Jane's 688(I) crew must be moonlighting in Grey Wolf because the crew here achieves reloads in less than a minute. Maybe ProOne felt that realistic 30 minute reload times would put off players. While taking damage, you may be told you must surface to affect repairs, which keeps you honest. The performance profile of your GW U-boat is much too good, though. Changing depths, headings, and speeds happens in a third of the time it should take. Grey Wolf has a decent interface, and the mapview has a static quality, which is what is needed in a simulation. No miniature ships here with wakes and real-time course changes. The drawback is you are limited to one patrol zone per mission. Each mission begins with an assignment to patrol a grid. And at the beginning of each patrol, the surface ships are present and awaiting your torpedoes. There aren't any random searches, just point and shoot. Grey Wolf features decent if simple mood music, always a plus. And the cut-away scenes are varied and pleasing. When you leave port you are shown a sleek U-boat cruising away from the heavily-fortified submarine pens and out to the ocean. Grey Wolf offers many afternoons of diversion. The designers did put some time and thought into it, and there are some nice interior scenes of the boat. If you want to introduce a younger player to classic games of the early 90s Grey Wolf works well. And if you are a naval/subsim connoisseur and want to try a rare sim Grey Wolf is the perfect candidate. | ||
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Helicopter Mission | Rauser Advertainment GmbH / Bundeswehr | [top] | |
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In this game you are the pilot of a battle helicopter of the Federal Armed Forces (Deutsche Bundeswehr) to fly search and rescue (SAR) missions and supporting missions in countries abroad. The perspective and gameplay slightly resemble that of similar games from the period, such as Electronic Arts' Strike series. In the beginning the player gets to choose a copilot. You may choose between a male and female copilot. If you chose the woman, the game will tell you that women , thus essentially forcing you to go with a man. This reflects the laws of the time, when women were not able to serve in such roles in the Federal Armed Forces. This has been changed in mid-nineties and is not relevant for gameplay. The player can chose his helicopter from the BO 105, the Bell UH-1 D an the Sea King MK 4. Nearly every mission can be accomplished with each of them. After a short briefing the player is in control of his helicopter to save civilians from accidents, flood and provides them with dropping food packets and sand bags on broken dikes. There are no fighting missions in the game. | ||
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Ice Hawk | Amorphous Designs | [top] | |
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This is an interactive arcade style space fighter simulation game with 3D terrain and models. The game runs at 640x400 screen resolutions in 65,000 colours with real-time Gouraud-shaded 3D animations. You have been sent on a covert mission to cut off supplies to the enemy's weapons manufacturing plants by destroying their mining convoys on the ice planet, Valkor. Although the mining ships are no match for your maneuverability, they are heavily armored and defended by a squadron of enemy fighters. | ||
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Inferno: The Odyssey Continues | Digital Image Design Ltd. / Ocean of America, Inc. | [top] | |
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As a sequel to DID's sci-fi space simulation Epic, Inferno continues the storyline of the Raxxon - Terran conflict that began at the time of Epic. The premise offers more plot developments than the original game: you are a Terran pilot who was ambushed by the Raxxons, who transformed you surgically into one of their own. Enraged, you killed all the Raxxons on board the station to regain your human form. With renewed vigor and thrist for revenge, you vow to eliminate their race once and for all... The game's engine is an improved version of the one in TFX. | ||
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LineWars 2 | Vektor Grafix Ltd / Image Works, Konami, Inc. | [top] | |
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This is a 3-D space shooter a la Wing Commander but on shareware. You are some sort of space marshal/cop, and have to complete 10 scenarios (with 10 goals each) of missions that range from asteroid blasting, to pirate elimination, patrols, escorting ships, etc. The game uses a polygon-based engine, with graphics that put the emphasis on line-drawing and very radical lightsourcing as a way to convey the lack of visibility on space thanks to pockets of darkness created by asteroids, etc. This makes for less dogfighting and more hunting-like action as the main gameplay objective. The game is now freeware. | ||
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Overlord | Rowan Software Ltd. / Virgin Interactive Entertainment (Europe) Ltd. | [top] | |
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Overlord is a combat flight simulator by Rowan Software. It was released in 1994 for the Amiga and PC MS-DOS platforms. It is based on Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of continental Europe during World War II. The player is tasked with flying a series of historically accurate missions for the Royal Air Force, flying Spitfire IX, Hawker Typhoon, and Mustang III aircraft. | ||
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Pacific Strike | ORIGIN Systems, Inc. / Electronic Arts, Inc. | [top] | |
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This is a flight simulator which uses a slightly modified version of the RealSpace engine from Strike Commander. You play a World War 2 pilot and get to fly in various historic missions such as dogfights, bombing runs and missile attacks, many of which are based on real battles. The US and Japanese planes of the time, and their weapons, are brought to life. One thing that makes Pacific Strike unique is that rather than a simple retelling of historical battles, the course of World War II is affected by the player. Failing to destroy particular targets will ensure that they remain problems in future missions, and doing extremely well will allow the allies to be more successful. Thus regardless of the actual course of the war, events unfold. For this reason it's possible to can end the war prematurely before Hiroshima was bombed or end up in a situation where American forces surrender to the Japanese.
See also: #Pacific Strike: Speech Pack |
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Pacific Strike - Speech Pack | ORIGIN Systems, Inc. / Electronic Arts, Inc. | [top] | |
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This add-on pack for Pacific Strike adds speech to the inflight communications. | ||
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Retribution | Gremlin Interactive Ltd. / Astros Productions | [top] | |
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Decent 3D shooter from Gremlin that tries hard to enhance the immersion with Wing Commander-style "interactive screens" between missions.The plot: as the name implies, fight to avenge the fallen of your race that have been "harvested" by the evil Krellans (no relation to Star Fleet games). Cutscenes and digitized speech both add to the atmosphere. Between missions, you can wander around in the base talking to different characters (who look remarkably similar to pilots in Wing Commander 1), who often have tips or info on the backstory. The 3D landscapes in Retribution are very smooth and detailed, with good gouraud-shading effects similar to NovaLogic games. Gremlin touted their technology as logi-scape real time landscape generating technology incorporating new "Deep Horizon' format, and the results are great to look at. Retribution is a very challenging game that gets very hard very fast. With eleven major campaigns, each with 4 highly strategic missions, and 8 training missions to enhance performance, Retribution will keep the most expert of pilots occupied for some time | ||
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SSN-21 Seawolf | Electronic Arts Inc. | [top] | |
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In this sequel to 688 Attack Sub, the player controls the nuclear submarine SSN-21 Seawolf. The theatre of war is set during a conflict between Russia and NATO countries. The player has to go through 33 different missions (which can be played in any order or as part of a campaign) on the Atlantic Ocean, Black Sea, Baltic Sea, Red Sea. In comparison with the predecessor, the game has been greatly improved in terms of audio-visual presentation. It also offers multiplayer gameplay through link-up or a null modem solution. | ||
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Star Crusader | Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. | [top] | |
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Star Crusader is a space combat simulation, released in 1994 by Take Two Interactive. The player assumes the role of Roman Alexandria, a crack pilot for the Gorene Empire in their conquest to assume control of the Ascalon Rift. The five races native to the Rift, previously enemies, join forces to resist the Gorene expansion and as Roman Alexandria, you are confronted with an ethical dilemma in deciding which side to fight for. As wing leader, the player assigns to pilots to primary and secondary missions. Secondary missions consist of gathering equipment, conquering/protecting territory, or rescuing pilots. Additionally, pilots can be assigned to flight school to receive new recruits. Wingmen have their own skill sets indicating how good they are at flying, shooting, and following orders. The player gives orders to wingmen to attack, disable a target, or escape from battle. Missions consist of destroying particular objectives, capturing ships, or performing reconnaissance. A special stealth ship is used for said recon missions. Fighters come in two varieties: quick and maneuverable attack fighters and slow, but heavily-armed strike fighters. During combat, pilots fight against these two types of fighters as well as capital ships and bases. All craft are armed with laser cannons, but each race developed its own special secondary weapons such as plasma torpedoes and vector cannons on Tancred fighters.
See also: #Star Crusader - Bonus Disk |
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Star Crusader - Bonus Disk | Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. | [top] | |
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This is a bonus 21 extra missions. However, it is not the Grimnada Expansion Pack. Half of it is just the previously listed demo. Since it works with the release-version of Star Crusader, all other alien ships can be hex edited into a PREVIOUS.GAM file. It installs on both the diskette and CD versions of Star Crusader, but the CD version can't access it by default for some reason. The CD version can run it if a PREVIOUS.GAM from the diskette version is used. (PREVIOUS.GAM merely notes which files to load.) WARNING: Installing the Bonus Disk on the CD version breaks the medal system. The game remains playable, but Roman will never earn a medal in the main campaign. Reinstalling the CD version presumably fixes this. The first half of the mission tree is an exact duplicate of the demo. New missions start after “Unfriendly Fire” by encountering the Zemun. This tree contains hexadecimal codes for each mission. Change the first byte in PREVIOUS.GAM to switch missions. | ||
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Star Reach / Space Federation | Techtonics, Interplay Productions Inc. | [top] | |
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This is set in space in the 23rd century. After an unsuccessful peace attempt between the seven alien nations present in the galaxy, war spread out with each nation trying to take control over the others. Gameplay is real-time, simultaneous action/strategy and blends economic strategy with outer-space combat. The player is in command of an expedition to conquer and control a galaxy of alien worlds. Victory is achieved by controlling every planet in the galaxy or by destroying enemies' headquarters. The player is in control of a vast fleet to assist in setting up colonies on other planets that can be used to take advantage of the available resources for production of goods for trade or production of weapons. | ||
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Star Wars: TIE Fighter | Totally Games / LucasArts Entertainment Company LLC | [top] | |
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You are a member of the Imperial Navy, eager to fight the Rebel Alliance and other scum to strengthen the rule of Darth Vader and the Emperor. The follow up to X-Wing is a space combat simulation set in the Star Wars universe. There are 7 campaigns, taking in over 50 missions. You often have wingmen who can be given orders to help you out. The detailed storyline is driven by cutscenes. You will fly a variety of craft from the lowly Tie Fighter to the speedy Tie Interceptor to the high-powered Tie Advanced. On each of these, balancing engine/laser/shield ratios in real time is crucial to getting the most power and safety.
Also see: #Defender of the Empire, #Star Wars: Tie Fighter Collector's CD-ROM, #Stellar Combat: Mission Pack |
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Star Wars: TIE Fighter - Defender of the Empire | LucasArts Entertainment Company LLC | [top] | |
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This is a campaign disk for Star Wars: TIE Fighter. Emperor Palpatine has ordered Vice Admiral Thrawn to stop the traitor Admiral Zaarin who controls the TIE Defender research platform. The disk contains 22 missions for titular vehicle, a new spacecraft, and allows players to fly the new TIE Defender. | ||
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Star Wars: X-Wing Collector's CD-ROM | LucasArts Entertainment Company LLC | [top] | |
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The enhanced CD-ROM version of Star Wars: X-Wing features 6 new missions, various tweaks, bugfixes, easier versions of some old missions, improved graphics, redesigned cutscenes, bonus missions, and voice-overs for the mission briefings and the in-game radio messages. The in-flight engine is also upgraded to the one used in TIE Fighter, which is, in fact, an improved version of the original X-Wing engine, modified to support Gouraud shading and other rendering enhancements. In addition, the two Tour of Duty extensions are included: Imperial Pursuit and B-Wing. X-Wing (1993) begins, seemingly, a few months prior to A New Hope and involves helping the Rebel Alliance with salvage, gathering intelligence, and ambushing Imperial forces. However, the second tour is driven mostly by the interception of the Death Star plans by secretly modified Imperial communication satellites, which prompts the player to help deliver the plans to Princess Leia Organa and eventually stop the Death Star at the Battle of Yavin. The third tour shows the Rebel Alliance desperate to discover the location of the Death Star while the plans are en route to the Rebel Alliance High Command. The expansion packs – Imperial Pursuit and B-Wing – focus on helping the Rebel fleet evacuate Yavin IV after the destruction of the Death Star, along with protecting the Rebel fleet while searching for a new base. The game concludes with the rebels moving into the Hoth System and setting the stage for The Empire Strikes Back. In 1998, Star Wars: X-Wing Collector Series included an enhanced version to run optimally under Windows 95/98, and now 3D accelerated graphics. But it omits many of the small movies and animations found in the Collector's CD-ROM and original floppy disk editions. It does not use the iMUSE interactive MIDI soundtrack from the original game release and the Collector's CD-ROM edition, which is instead replaced by the static Red Book audio-based John Williams movie soundtrack. Furthermore, while previous versions could be played satisfactorily with only a mouse and keyboard, the Collector Series required a joystick to run the game. | ||
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Subwar 2050: The Plot Deepens | Particle Systems Ltd. / MicroProse Ltd. | [top] | |
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An expansion disk for Subwar 2050, this features a few new subs and weapons across three new campaigns: The Bermuda Triangle, The Mediterranean and The North Cape. In each of these campaigns, you'll be launching your attack sub from it's home carrier to protect the interests of multinational corporations engaged in mining, research and development under the sea. | ||
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Take Back [K] | Ecstasy / Goldstar Software | [top] | |
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This is a Korean space combat simulator very similar to Wing Commander, with the same mixture of dogfights and space opera cut scenes. It reportedly sold 6,000 copies within its first two months, and was also published in Taiwan. Ecstasy also started work on a sequel using real time polygonal graphics but it was never released. | ||
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Tornado: Operation Desert Storm | Digital Integration Ltd. | [top] | |
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Tornado: Operation Desert Storm is an add-on for Digital Integration's Tornado flight simulator. The disk includes 20 pre-programmed missions for the Tornado IDS and ADV variant. The new warzone also supports campaign play like the original programme. New aircraft, vehicles and ground objects were added and the colour schemes of the 3D objects are updated for the new desert scenario. | ||
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U.S. Navy Fighters | Electronic Arts, Inc. | [top] | |
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U.S. Navy Fighters allows players to fly US naval aircraft over Ukraine in a war against Russia. The game features a campaign, single missions, an in-game single mission creator, and a quick mission creator. See also: #Marine Fighters, #Quake 'em, Super Fun Levels, Action Ware 17: Extra Missions for U.S. Navy Fighters |
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Veritech: Variable Flight Simulator | RYLO Software | [top] | |
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Veritech: Variable Flight Simulator is a flight simulator based on the Veritech/Valkyrie fighter featured in the Robotech/Macross anime series. In this game you are able to fly a Veritech fighter. You are unable to transform into the giant robot Battleoid mode, you are only able to transform into only the Fighter and the Guardian/Gerwalk modes in this game. The initial release (version 1.4) contained four missions, the first mission being a training mission. The flight simulator portions of the game were built using Flight Sim Toolkit. | ||
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VR Slingshot | John C. Schultz, and Ixion inc. | [top] | |
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This is a game that was designed for use with Stereo 3D LCD Shutter Glasses but which can be played in a normal DOS window. It claims to be the first game to combine: 1. Real-time computational fluid dynamics airflow simulation; 2. Real-time physics-based interaction; 3. Advanced flying and driving simulation; 4. Stereoscopic 3D graphics, 3D sound. There are two games available Energy Duel and Cyberball and in both games the player flies a spaceship, a vipercraft. In Energy Duel the player attempts to shoot the their opponent's vipercraft. Cyberball is played on a football like arena and the object is to capture a ball and fly it through your goal to score points. Games can be played against the computer or against another player over either a modem or a direct link. The game has four levels of difficulty and four practice levels. It was released as shareware which just had the Novice level of Energy Duel, Cyberball was present but in demo mode only. It has many keyboard controls but the craft is flown via the joystick. | ||
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Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger | ORIGIN Systems, Inc. / Electronic Arts, Inc. | [top] | |
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At the time, this was the most expensive video game ever made, at approximately $3 million. The war against the Kilrathi is going badly for the Confederation. Its flagship, the Concordia, has been destroyed, battles are lost on all fronts. War hero Colonel Christopher Blair is transferred to the old carrier Victory. Take the role of Blair and ensure the success of the Confederation's last-ditch attempt for victory: the destruction of the Kilrathi homeworld. It has the usual mix of space battles and cinematic storytelling. Changes from the first two games include SVGA graphics, the use of texture-mapped polygons instead of bitmaps for spaceflight sequences and real Hollywood actors appearing in the cinematic scenes. The game made the transition from animated cut-scenes to full motion video, one of the first computer games to do so; it was frequently marketed as the world's first interactive movie. It pioneered the use of CGI backgrounds and greenscreen work; all sets were added digitally during post-production. See also: #Chartbusters 16 |
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Wing Commander: Armada | ORIGIN Systems, Inc. | [top] | |
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Set in the popular Wing Commander Universe, this game sees you in command of either the Terran or Kilrathi empires in a bid to conquer a sector of space. This game provided 2 distinct modes of play with Armada being entirely tactically based and a far easier quick play method much like the mission creation facilities of Chuck Yegar's Air Combat of 5 years previous. This game also featured multi-player support both in Quick play and Armada modes. The game could be played either in split-screen, network, serial or modem modes and was one of the first multi-player 3D space sims. | ||
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Wing Commander: Privateer - Righteous Fire | ORIGIN Systems, Inc. / Electronic Arts, Inc. | [top] | |
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A little-seen add-on disk for the original Wing Commander: Privateer, it added a new plot line with the religious zealot "Retros" out for conquest, along with more weapons and goodies to buy for your ship. While Burrows is docked, the Steltek weapon is stolen from his ship. He travels to Oxford, where he meets someone who help him in return for flying missions against the Retros, a homicidal band of religious extremists lead by a man named Mordecai Jones. The informant adds that Governor Menesch, who sells weapons and ships to the Retros and pirates, was probably behind the theft of Burrows' weapon. A Retro defector tells Burrows the location of the Retros' headquarters and warns they have made copies of the Steltek gun. Burrows realises he must defeat the Retro leader Jones and destroy all copies of the powerful weapon. It differs from the original Privateer in that there is no way to "lose" by failing a mission. If the player does not successfully complete a mission, he is offered the chance to try again. It was also included in the full talkie Privateer CD-ROM. See also: #Wing Commander: Privateer - Gemini Gold | ||
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85-doeeussuda! | Ppashya Ppashya / Object Square | [top] | |
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This is a fan-made parody of Konami's Parodius games (which were in themselves parodies of the Gradius shooters). The reason for the title is because Dr. Hal, the main character, is 85 years old. It is also because the pronunciation is similar to 'Parodian'. Initially it became an unfinished game that became a space mia when clearing Stage 1 Boss due to loss of source during production. In the second episode made in 1997, Sakje-doiutsuda!100K special, it was a work that participated in the 100k contest of the Hightel Game Production Club. To meet the 100k capacity limit, too many parts were 'deleted' and even the title was deleted. It was the winner of the 100k Competition. It even used the 'title screen' as a 4 stage boss. It is a game that allows two players to play simultaneously, 1P is Dr. Hal, 2P is Dr. Hal's granddaughter 'Oxygen'. It's a parody game, so it's worth seeing the producers, the main character, and the ambassadors of the villain boss 'Salmosa'. Salmosa is a parody of Dr. Venom ( the villain of the story after Gradius 2 and Moai is turned into Dolharbang. Even if you can't give it the title of Korea's first PC game, you can ignore the achievements made at that time of "first Korean game that looks like a real game", which showed a high degree of completeness by incorporating the proper gag elements, parody, and sound effects. Being one of the "first pioneers" that must not be forgotten by Korean game companies, this game is worth respecting. | ||
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Alien Alley | The Coriolis Group | [top] | |
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This is a vertically scrolling, fast action video game. The player controls a defending spaceship, flying though the cosmos. Advancing alien spaceships make difficult foes as they advance on the lone defender, firing plasma cannons at will. How long can the defender hold out until he is finally overrun? Only you can say... This was created as an example for the book PC Game Programming Explorer, by Dave Roberts. It demonstrates many of the game programming concepts and techniques described in the book, including joystick, mouse, and keyboard programming, fast page flipping animation, VGA palette effects, music and sound, and a scrolling background. PC Game Programming Explorer includes all the source code used to create Alien Alley as well as the source code for many other projects developed in the book. | ||
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Alien Arcade | Robert Cavey, Sean Callahan / Luxenberg Software | [top] | |
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This is a full-screen desktop games collection aimed at younger players. The games are all controlled with the mouse, and all have the same theme of aliens and outer space. The graphics are colorful and cartoony, and the arcade action is designed to be non-violent and kid-friendly. Each game has its own highscore table. Ctrl-P is used to pause a game, Ctrl-A to stop playing the current game and choose another one to play, and Ctrl-Q to quit Alien Arcade altogether. The games run at 640x480 pixel resolution, but only a 512x342 pixel region of the screen is used for the games. Outside this is a static border featuring background art (such as the surface of a planet, or the inside of a spaceship) which changes randomly each time you play. There are six games in the collection. Andromedroids: in this game you build up robots one piece at a time, by dropping them into one of seven assembly bins. There is also a recycle bin for dropping unused parts, and a special bug bin for dropping Mercurian Metal Bugs that may appear. Dropping the bugs in any other bin will cause damage to your robot parts. Fungus Patrol: you control a ship in the middle of the screen that can only rotate, but if you click the mouse, the ship shoots out in a straight line on a bungee cord, touches the edge of the screen, then snaps back to the center. Green fungus encroaches in on you from the edges of the screen, and you clear it up by hitting it with your ship, which has a big suction nozzle on the front of it. The fungus can damage your bungee cord, and if it is completely eaten away, the game is over. Nerdoids: you control a ship at the bottom of the screen that can only move left and right, and shoots comic books. Moving across the screen, on multiple levels, are orange aliens wearing glasses. If you hit an alien with a comic book, they will start reading it. If you hit an alien already reading a comic book with another comic book, they drop the one they are holding. The aim is to have all aliens still be reading a comic book when they leave the screen. The aliens will also randomly drop calculators and pocket protectors, that can subtract 5 comic books from your arsenal if they hit you. Quasar Klutzes: you control a ship at the bottom of the screen that can only move left and right, and shoots bananas. There are blue aliens walking back and forth on multiple levels. The aliens are clumsy and will either slip on bananas, or two aliens may collide trying to grab the same banana. They will then start falling towards the bottom of the screen, but if they hit your ship while falling you lose 5 bananas. Your goal is to cause all the aliens to fall. There is also a robot dog that sometimes appears, and drops clouds of gas that subtract 2 bananas from your ship if they hit you. Quasar Rain: this game takes place "underneath" Quasar Klutzes. Blue aliens and banana peels are raining down from the top of the screen, and you control a spring-loaded platform that slides left and right at the bottom of the screen. When an alien hits you, they are flung over to a wall of bunk beds on the left side of the screen. The aim is to avoid letting 3 aliens fall off the bottom of the screen (although the instructions assure us that the fallen aliens will be caught by a safety net, just off-screen) and also to avoid the banana peels, as they lose you points. Stink Snakes of Saturn: you control a ship on the left edge of the screen that can only move up and down, and shoots pies. Yellow snakes appear from the right and slither towards you. If you hit a snake with a pie, it turns into a smiley face, that you can collect for a point bonus. You have a limited number of pies. If a pie misses, it will bounce back towards you, and you can collect it again. However, if a snake gets past you to the left edge of the screen, you lose 5 pies. When you have no pies left, it is game over. | ||
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Arya Vaiv | Megadream Software / Dongleware Verlags GmbH | [top] | |
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Another representative of numerous group called 'space shooters', this was originally on Amiga in 1993. With classic cosmic ship under your command you have two usual objectives to fulfill - destroy everything and try to survive. There are 4 similar levels further split into two parts. Second part is always harder because the end of it is occupied by huge/powerful boss. You start the mission with a few lives in stock and two problems: the ship is too slow and equipped with basic single fire only. Try to shoot to bits special transport so you'll be awarded with "Speed Up" (to accelerate movement of your ship) or "Power Up" (to increase power of one and only weapon in this game). Other collectible items are "500", "1000", "5000" points and finally "1 Up" (one life). There is no time to rest during the mission because you're constantly threatened by hundreds of enemies and different obstacles. Get ready for flying types like bombs, orbs, various ships and ground types like shooting turret, laser gates and many more. | ||
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Asteroid Mayhem | NecroBones | [top] | |
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This is a single-player, keyboard controlled, space shooter in which the player blows up rocks and aliens with the objective of achieving a high score. | ||
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AstroFire | ORT Software | [top] | |
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This is an Asteroids variant, but with a few twists: instead of asteroids there are monsters of sorts to shoot at, there are power-ups (two kinds of weapons) and shields (which means a single blow doesn't kill the player character), and players can also set whether or not they want momentum enabled. Episode One: Into The Storm was released as shareware, on registration the player received two further episodes, 'Whirlpool of Death' and 'Heart of Fire' each of which has different background graphics and enemy craft. In 2013, the game was made freeware. | ||
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BattleStar | Vivvid Technologies | [top] | |
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A true arcade type game featuring high resolution (VGA) vector and bitmapped graphics. Full SoundBlaster sound track and digitized sound effects. Fast action and very intense. | ||
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Battlestar 2 | Vivvid Technologies | [top] | |
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A unique space arcade game that is challenging and lots of fun. Great 256 color graphics and "voxel type" 3d terrain add to the fast action of the original. Shareware version includes Save/Restore. Sound Blaster very much recommended. | ||
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Biobombers | Javier Asensi Perez / Epsilon Soft | [top] | |
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Mixing genres is always an experiment, although there are things that are so close to each other that you just want to cross them. For example, virtual shooting gallery and Paratrooper, as is the case with the Spanish game Biobombers. So, we control the gun, which is located at the bottom of the screen, on the surface of the planet, and can move horizontally. Our goal is to conduct aimed fire from a laser cannon at the advancing three flying aliens and protect our home planet. But we will have to shoot not just in a certain direction, but exactly where the cursor-sight is pointing at the moment: everything that passes through the beam on the way will remain unharmed - bear this in mind. If it becomes very unbearable, then you can launch a rocket that destroys all the enemies on the screen, but the number of such projectiles is extremely limited and is being replenished very slowly. Opponents are divided into several types, both externally and aggressively: for example, flying eyes will attack very rarely, but they appear in large numbers with each wave, and among them there are owners of a very large amount of health, not outwardly different from their fellows. Next, we will meet more agile and more often shooting little aliens, bombers, and then bosses, which will not be easy to cope with. After all, we initially have only three lives, and although they can be replenished when we collect a certain number of points given out for the destruction of opponents, we die the first time, and there are no bonuses that could make life easier. Externally, the game looks great: VGA-graphics in the resolution of 320x200 allows you to display colorful and large sprites of enemies. | ||
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Cannon Fodder 2 | Sensible Software / Virgin Interactive Entertainment, Inc. | [top] | |
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After the success of Cannon Fodder, a sequel was inevitable. The basic gameplay remained the same – guide a team of soldiers through a succession of levels populated by trees, huts and lakes. The major change is that the plot involves time travel, rather than straightforward war situations, and this means levels taking place in different scenarios including a strange ‘Alien Planet’. The levels include a variety of vehicles such as jeeps, tanks and helicopters, which can be used to shoot or even run down enemy soldiers. Standard bullets are joined by collectible grenades and rockets – use these wisely, as nothing else can destroy huts or vehicles. Finding strategic defense positions can be vital as well. | ||
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Canyon | Unknown | [top] | |
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Free vertical shmap for Windows 3.x from unknown Korean developers inspired by the alien attack movie Independence Day. Not only is it made for a platform that is not the most suitable for the genre, but it is also very odd in itself. The player controls a fighter jet and flies through a winding canyon that widens and narrows. Enemies - obviously of alien origin - attack exactly one at a time and do not fly towards, but start chasing the player from behind, leading to the same shooting. To destroy the enemy, you must be able to rebuild to the bottom of the screen in order to be behind him (which the enemy resists, substituting himself) and from there to fire. All this in a tight space. Enemy ships, always the same, do not have the smallest health reserve. The player's car has even more, but it is still not enough, because it is consumed very quickly. There is practically nowhere to evade the shots of the pursuers, and getting into the boundaries of the canyon is also fatal. Fortunately, sometimes the enemy goes "behind the canyon" on his own and gets stuck there, dying pretty quickly. | ||
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Cheesy Invaders | Cheesy Software | [top] | |
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This is a clone combo of Space Invaders and Galaxian. Strange aliens are trying to attack earth and you have to stop them. You aim with your mouse and just shoot the aliens by clicking with your mouse. You fight against races known as The Planets, Mac and Cheese and TV adjusters. The game also features a short viewing high score and funny "game over" and "you lost a life" sound. | ||
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Combat Robo Zakato | Makkoya / Nesco | [top] | |
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This is a scrolling shoot-'em-up with a mecha as a main character. Zakato can move in 8 directions, but only shoot forward horizontally. the game doesn't play exactly like a scrolling shoot-em-up, because the screen scrolls horizontally or vertically only if the player character moves in the correspondent direction. The player can choose various weapons and limited ammunition types for each mission; however, all weapons can only shoot forward. The player can turn the mecha around by pressing a separate button. Stages usually end with boss battles. | ||
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Combat Tanks | Red Herring | [top] | |
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This is a fun 2D tank combat game. You must destroy all the enemies and go on to the next level. You can play by yourself or against a friend on the same PC. Enemies include tanks (obviously), bazooka toting infrantry, bomber planes, and death choppers. Its distributed as shareware, and in the unregistered version the death chopper comes after you until you register the game. | ||
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Comet Busters! | Steven Hugg / Hamco Software | [top] | |
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You think you've seen it all? Play the mutant offspring of the grandpappy of video games -- with much awesome graphics, sound, and arcade action for Windows 3.1/95. It's an Asteroids-style game for one to four players. The player must blast all the comet chunks to advance to the next level. But there are evil saucers, alien cronies, and flying chunks of dead planets all waiting for you. You can play single player on one PC, or multiplayer over modem, serial cable, or TCP/IP network (the Internet!). You also have four special abilities: Hyperspace, Shields, Disrupter, Cloak (only useful for multiplayer). You can play full screen in any game. Another feature is tournament mode, where two to four players compete to see who is the last one left on each level. In this mode, you can choose between having the rocks bounce, be destroyed when you shoot them, or no rocks. It features support for sound cards, or the PC speaker. You can also have MIDI music, even make it random. It was the first *decent* arcade-style game for Windows (I believe) and had awesome multiplayer support. | ||
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Cyberdogs | Ronny Wester | [top] | |
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If anyone remembers the top-down shooters Loaded or Chaos Engine, Cyberdogs is a freeware game with the same basic gameplay. You must choose your character and his weapons that you will fight with. In your mission you must destroy the enemy and retrieve the lost items. | ||
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Day 4, The: Icarus | Mirinae Software Inc. / Soft Town | [top] | |
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Icarus is (despite the number in its title) the third installment in the Korean-made series of horizontally scrolling sci-fi shoot-em-ups. Once again, Captain Lee and his friends must stop an army of mechanized creatures from destroying Earth. Power-ups either change the weapon's properties or enhance the current weapon by extending the shot, adding three-way fire, etc. Picking a different weapon, however, reverts to its default weak form. The player has a choice between two pilots, but their ships differ only in their default weapon. For the first time in the series, there is a two-player co-op mode. The two spaceships, controlled simultaneously, can be combined to form a giant mecha. | ||
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Decimation | RREALogic / Cause N 'Effect | [top] | |
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This is a shoot 'em up with some attacking ships in style of Galaxian. The "spaceship" under our control automatically moves forward, however we can accelerate or slow down this movement, and also direct it to the sides. There are two types of weapons: a laser cannon with infinite ammunition ("Ctrl") and rockets ("Alt"), of which, in turn, there are two "sets" (the number of "charges" in both is limited); switching between them is carried out by pressing "Tab". The ship has a certain amount of health, visually displayed in the form of a yellow horizontal bar with the inscription "Shield" on the right side of the screen, decreasing as damage is received. Below there are two red bars with divisions: the left one, "Power", means the stock of the currently used means of killing (when using a laser cannon, it is always at its maximum), the right one, "Temp", which is zero by default, is the motor overheating. The laser cannon does not affect the latter in any way - but when using missiles, the corresponding scale begins to fill up on the sly, and if you allow it to reach the maximum mark, our "ship" will explode. Within the framework of the current "wave", it seems that there is no way to reduce the last named indicator, but when moving to the next stage it is automatically reset. Below, in the form of the corresponding symbols, the number of the above-named ammunition of both types we have is displayed (regardless of which weapon is "active" at the moment). - but when you use rockets, the corresponding scale starts to fill up on the sly, and if you allow it to reach the maximum mark, then our "ship" will explode. Within the framework of the current "wave", it seems that there is no way to reduce the last named indicator, but when moving to the next stage it is automatically reset. Below, in the form of the corresponding symbols, the number of the above-named ammunition of both types we have is displayed (regardless of which weapon is "active" at the moment). - but when you use rockets, the corresponding scale starts to fill up on the sly, and if you allow it to reach the maximum mark, then our "ship" will explode only after two hits (although the missiles, of course, they have enough and one), move faster and "smarter", attack more violently, and their "charges" themselves are much more deadly - and with all this, there are also a lot of them within the wave, and new units continue to arrive along its "course". It is important to take into account that ammunition fired by both types of opponents, in the event of the death of the latter, continues to exist for some time and move towards us, so contact with them should be avoided; knocking out such "shots", alas, is impossible. The third level is relatively calm and somewhat resembles a puzzle (!): On it you must carefully fly between asteroids, collisions with which lead to damage to the ship's shield. Of course, the aforementioned cosmic bodies can be destroyed, but when they hit, they always break into two of their analogs, smaller in size, collisions with which are a little less painful than with "whole" variants; to blow up these objects, taking into account the automatic movement of the ship, you can simply not have time, and the free space, in contrast to the "usual" levels, is very small, that is, it is almost impossible to maneuver. But, we repeat, this "wave" (officially it is also called by this word) can be easily passed by looking for "corridors" in the stream of asteroids and carefully flying through them. | ||
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Desert Storm Command Deluxe | Pod Bay / MVP Software | [top] | |
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This game is a compilation of four different arcade games with common idea - US operation in Middle East. First-person shooting, chasing the truck by tank or defending the base from the air force are the missions, which must be completed by you to show your experience in arcade playing. | ||
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DOOM II Screen Saver | GT Interactive / id Software | [top] | |
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This is an officially licensed product that consists of a Windows 3.1 and up 16-bit screen saver with four different modes: Skeet, Firework, Barrel, and Duel. Skeet - An arch-vile at the bottom left corner of the screen waits for monsters to march in from the right. It launches the monster into the air with its flame attack, while the Doomguy raises either the shotgun or chaingun at random from the bottom of the screen to take a potshot at the monster. Occasionally the Doomguy misses, leaving the desktop gradually more and more riddled with bullet and buckshot holes. Firework - Monsters and marines randomly ascend from the bottom of the screen and explode into more copies of the same monster, with accompanying highly repetitive "ooh" and "ahh" sounds emanating from an unseen crowd. Barrel - The desktop is randomly littered with explosive barrels, which the Doomguy attempts to shoot in time to kill the monsters, who sometimes escape unscathed. During this mode, other random events also occur, such as a flock of lost souls crossing the screen, Doom marines pressing switches which drop them into holes or mysteriously cause them to gib, and monsters emerging from portions of the desktop which open up and then close like doors. Duel - Two random monsters emerge and do battle across the desktop. The pairings often result in unlikely victories, such as a shotgun guy defeating a revenant. Nothing ever seems to beat the almighty cyberdemon, however. | ||
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Dragon's Power, The | Dongleware / Megadream Software | [top] | |
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Sadness, tears and hopelessness lie over the once prosperous land. Spirits and demons from the realm of Skuptor hold the chains of power in their hands. No human being is able to stop them. And yet there is a way to free the land from the reign of evil: Use the power of the dragon. This is a class shoot 'em up. This game shows you what's in your computer: gentle scrolling over lovingly designed and animated landscapes, numerous extra weapons and bonus items and always new opponents that challenge your skill and ability to react. The original music and the fantastic sound effects always invite you to play a new game. But be careful: the bosses are already waiting. | ||
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Eardis: Revolution Force | Soft Action / Bogo World | [top] | |
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This shoot-'em-up was supposed to mark the revival of the 'new' Soft Action after the scandal of a bugged release version of Fox Ranger II and much more the accusations made public by former Soft Action programmger Kim Hakkyu about internal issues like unpaid salaries and disproportionate amounts of overtime. The game is brutally hard for all the wrong reasons. In the first stage players circle around huge mother ships to destroy their much-too-tough installations, which also prevent your bullets from reaching the attacking enemies. Decent weapons are extremely rare, and it's even impossible to pick up powerups during the invincibility window after respawning. Ironically, the game shows a shield bar for both players, which can even be filled up (it starts at 50%), but everything kills instantly, anyway. The music is the same midi greatness as ever, but like Fox Ranger II, sound effects are all the same annoying piano bleeps. Visually the game appears almost like a tech demo, with some new impressively implemented feature in most levels, be it crazy parallax scrolling or pseudo mode-7 effects that resemble Axelay. | ||
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Evasive Maneuvers | Exaggerated Software | [top] | |
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This is a single player side-scrolling shareware game similar in style to Defender. The player has control of a spaceship which must move left to right across the screen which is moving right to left. The spaceship needs fuel. This is obtained by shooting fuel supplies this enabling the ship to fly longer and extending the game. There are missiles, mines and other obstacles to be avoided and these too can be shot to gain points. When all lives have been used up the player may get a chance to enter their name on the high score table. The game can be controlled via keyboard, joystick or mouse. Level / Scenario 1 "Imperial City" was released as shareware with three other levels "Infrastructure", "E.N.I.A.C. 9", and "Desert Valley" making up the full registered version. It was later made freeware. | ||
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Flying Tigers | Ticsoft | [top] | |
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This is a simple overhead shooter in the spirit of Raiden and Raptor. In the year 2047, a terrorist organization has developed technology that allowed them to travel back in past. They contacted the Axis powers in 1943 and started selling weapons to them in an attempt to conquer the world. An elite group of fighters known as the Flying Tigers are sent to put an end to this nefarious plan. | ||
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Flying Tigers II | Ticsoft | [top] | |
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Obviously a sequel to Flying Tigers, this game makes us the pilot of a hi-tech ship, known as "Flying Tiger". According to the story, you are fighting "techno terrorists" who have begun a sinister plot to destroy all the Flying Tigers. Whatever, let's just go shoot some planes. Similar to Raptor, this is a typical vertical-scrolling shoot 'em up, where you have to survive until end of level. Planes attack you relentlessly, and each four levels you get to fight several bosses - very powerful and strong planes. You can also come upon zeppelins of steel (don't ask), warships and active volcanoes. While you'll be flying over the sea most of the time, you can also encounter patches of land with ground installations of them; all of these can be blown up. During your mission, you'll find weapon upgrades (which also heal you a little). The yellow bonuses change the type of your main weapon (which is basically a machine gun), while the blue ones give you a secondary weapon - such as lasers, missiles or flaming napalm. You can shoot the bonuses to change the weapon contained within them. At the end of every level, you get bonus points for the planes and buildings you destroyed. | ||
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Frigate Commander | Pandemonium / Digital Workshop, Winstream | [top] | |
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A modest and forgotten Windows-based arcade classic about a large anti-submarine ship Depth Charge. This British game is quite simple in appearance (16 VGA colors, MIDI music, Sound Blaster sound effects), and in its inner world, not too different from the standards of the subgenre: of course, this is not at all a disadvantage, because everything is done very decent and fun. In the upper part of the screen, our BOD moves along the sea smooth surface, controlled with the help of the left and right arrows, and also, of course, the space gap, which allows dropping mines to enemy submarines sailing below in the water column. The latter differ both in the direction of travel, and in speed, and in size, but they are the same in their unlawful striving to make us a dirty trick: periodically torpedoes are emitted from the ship, which should be dodged in every possible way. The information panel is located on the right side of the screen: first of all, here you can monitor your score, comparing it with the current global record. Points are awarded for the destruction of submarines in accordance with their tactical and technical characteristics - ranging from 300 for large, slow and close to the surface to 2800 for small, nimble and deep. At the same time, you can earn a fine: every mistake, that is, a mine that peacefully reached the seabed, takes twenty points from us (note that, traditionally for the subgenre, you can release no more than five charges at the same time); In addition, the unintentional injury of one of the whales, occasionally swimming by, for some reason, including at a considerable depth, is punishable by a -1000 points. In addition to regular torpedoes, some very generous submarines, dying, send us farewell gifts - useful bonuses displayed in the form of relatively large balls. Those are strongly recommended to catch: in an unexpected package, you can hide both extra points (a random number in the range from 1000 to 5000 - or even a fixed jackpot of 10 thousand), as well as replenishment to “health” (about which below) or an extra “smart” bomb". The latter is an additional, extremely powerful type of our weapons, the stock of which is displayed on the information panel below the points counter. Initially, we have three of them, - during the game, the supply of charges can be replenished up to eight inclusive. Such bombs are used by pressing the "S" key, instantly destroying all the submarines on the screen. Below the window with cells of “smart bombs” the name and scale of the current enemy attack wave are visible: as we succeed in hitting the targets, the red bar decreases from right to left. As soon as the required number of conventional submarines is destroyed, a kind of “boss” will appear, proudly referred to here as “end-level guard”. It represents a particularly large, fast and aggressive flagship submarine, continuously shooting at us with torpedoes and sinking not from one, like all the others, but from several hits. “Smart bombs” also do not completely destroy the guards, although they inflict damage on them much more tangible than ordinary mines, but on the other hand, bonuses from such a formidable enemy arrive in greater numbers (although it’s not easy to catch them between torpedoes ). Under the name of the enemy, on the panel on the right, there is a less pleasant indicator - the level of damage to our vessel, clearly displayed in the form of the same red bar, but already arriving in the direction from left to right. After three or four hits of enemy torpedoes into our ship, the latter begins to sink - be sure that sooner or later this sad event will happen, alas. But the game does not end there yet: we are given a limited amount of time to save our crew. The “test tube” at the bottom right slowly fills with water, counting out the precious last seconds allocated to the ship, while the five lights to the left symbolize the five lifeboats that need to be launched into the water by pressing the “A” key and using the arrow keys bring to the right edge of the screen, avoiding enemy torpedoes . A flashing light means the currently active part of the evacuees, while the burning ones - safely saved. After that, the final result is shown to us: for each boat that successfully left the screen, we get 2500 points; In addition, depending on the accuracy - that is, the percentage of mines that have avoided a banal fall to the bottom - we also get the corresponding bonus additive (for example, with perfect accuracy of 100% hits, our current score doubles). | ||
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Fun Pack 2 | WizardWorks | [top] | |
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This is a compilation of 7 Games for Windows 3.1. It includes: Time Warp, Hurricane, Destroyer, Tale Gunner, Gecko Chase, Stellar Warrior, Runner. | ||
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Galaga 94 | APSS Austria | [top] | |
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This is based on Galaga the classic vertical shooter from Namco. It's a fixed screen shooter in which the player moves right and left shooting at waves of alien spaceships as the swoop around the screen raining bombs and such like. The player starts with a ship that is capable of firing three rockets, i.e. only three rockets can be in flight on screen at the same time. For every twenty aliens destroyed the game will send a 'bonus bringer' craft, destroy that and a bonus items will be dropped. Bonuses range from having more missiles on screen, shields, an extra life to a straightforward points increase. | ||
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Guarder [K] | Daekyo Computer | [top] | |
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This Korean shooting game continues a trend of shmups with alternating vertical and horizontal stages started by Fox Ranger II and the (possibly unreleased) freeware game Yoke Town. The game also features bonus stages played in cockpit perspective. | ||
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Highway Fighter | Omega Integral Systems | [top] | |
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This is a scrolling top-down shooter, where you control a car equipped with advanced weaponry, sent out to destroy a world-threatening criminal organization. Each level is a long, winding road along which the car drives, facing various enemy vehicles coming at him from the opposite direction. Close contact with the edges of the road or with the enemies will result in destruction. The car is equipped with a laser cannon with which to destroy the opponents. There are a couple of pick-ups that can be found on the way: a weapon upgrade, a bonus that allows the car to destroy enemies by running into them, a bomb that instantly clears the screen of enemies, and three types of shields: a rotation shield (it orbits the car and destroys bad guys on contact), a side shield (prevents the car from destruction from the edges of the road) and a forward shield (destroys enemies in front of the car). | ||
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Highway Hunter | Omega Integral Systems, Safari Software Ltd. / Epic MegaGames, Inc. | [top] | |
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Five years earlier Axis of Allied Nations gained control over Earth. They immediately placed up terraformers to make life more hospitable for themselves. The downside? It is killing the human race. You were once a rebel, but you got caught and has been used as an engineer to build a new weapon for the aliens. The MASTER (Multi-Attack Super Turbo Energy Ranger). One day when oppurtunity strikes, you steal the MASTER and escape. Now it is time to do some serious payback. This is a spiritual precursor to Safari's more famous shooter Tyrian is just as enjoyable and addictive as Tyrian is. It's also inspired by the arcade shooter SpyHunter. The gameplay is quite similar to other space shooters, you kill everything you can see and pick up powerups along the way, then you kill a big boss at the end of each level. The thing that sets it apart, however, is that you are operating a car and thus are confined to driving on the road. Which means that you don't have as much room to avoid enemies as you have in other games. It has excellent music, really nice design and sprites, and plays very smoothly. The 15 levels are all designed with a good balance. Not too hard, and not too easy. However, the game is lacking that certain something to reach the full 5-point mark. It just fades into the row of other space shooters, with little (apart from driving instead of flying) to set them apart. | ||
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IAS | Sigmatek Studio / Bogo World | [top] | |
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This is a sci-fi horizontally scrolling shoot-em-up. The player controls a fighter craft, defending a human space colony against the onslaught of enemy ships and mechas. The gameplay is similar to most other games of the genre and involves shooting or avoiding the incessantly advancing enemy craft while collecting power-ups on the way. The latter are distinguished by their color and change the player character's weapons, including laser fire, missiles, a slow yet powerful charged energy shot, etc. The secondary weapon has to be activated with a separate button and functions somewhat differently than in other comparable games, specifically targeting enemy missiles. The player character's health is measured by an energy bar; once it is depleted, the game is over. | ||
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Illusion Blaze | Family Production / SKC Soft Land | [top] | |
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This is a Korean-made sci-fi horizontally-scrolling shoot-em-up. The player controls either of the two available spacecraft that must traverse hostile areas, dealing with regular enemies and bosses on the way. Power-ups include weapon upgrades, protective shields, and weapon-switching orbs. Like in Thunder Force IV, there are four types of weapons distinguished by their color; if the player has collected the corresponding orbs, it is possible to switch between them at will. Also like in Thunder Force IV, the player can select between four different initial stages. | ||
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Jetstrike | Shadow Software / Rasputin Software | [top] | |
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MIS, the FBI, NASA, the KGB, MOSSAD and even top secret agents from the North Beckinsdale Pigeon Fancier's Association swung into action immediately. They were swiftly halted in their tracks when they received a top level order warning of a massive campaign of bribery of government officials in all countries. It appeared that any overt attempt to destroy SPUDD would result in the downfall of most of the world's governments. SPUDD-controlled leaders would soon rise to replace them. As the situation has worsened by the day, and SPUDD's forces have grown from strength to strength, the various agencies have now put together an underground task force which they hope will combat the growing threat. This elite task force comprises one agent (yourself - nice of you to volunteer by the way), a highly trained mechanic called Harry, and a field support officer to assign missions. The plan is that you will "borrow" aircraft from local air forces and carry out secret strike missions on SPUDD forces while they are still small enough to have to stay hidden. Hopefully, by damaging their supply lines, factories and control centres, you should be able to ruin their plans of world domination. However, if you wreck too many expensive aircraft, your sponsors will not be able to cover for you, resulting in your sent back to the secret agent's Basic Training School. You must stop the devious SPUDD forces by attacking them with your "borrowed" aircraft. Your Commanding Officer will give you a mission objective which you have to try to achieve without being shot down, blown up or crashing into mountains. It's a 2D side-scrolling action game like Brøderbund's Wings of Fury. The great difference between these games is, here it's possible to use 32 aircraft and 6 helicopters in several combat-missions or to be a part of the Aerolympics. | ||
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Last Day, The | Guy Moss, Julia Boswell / Europress Software, Maxis Software | [top] | |
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As Lieutenant 'Big L.', a player has to rescue his team of raw recruits from trouble, shooting off evil prehistoric creatures. At start of each level, Big L. arrives at a location by his spaceship and finds his men surrounded by enemies which are quickly getting closer. He has to run up to every recruit to pick the guy up and carry him back to the ship, luckily it's possible to run and shoot at the same time. When one of the men is wounded by an enemy, he must be picked up within a few seconds, otherwise he "explodes" and dies. On each level it is sufficient to rescue at least one of the men, but if they all die it's a game over. When all of the men are either rescued or dead, the ship takes off and leaves but Big L. stays to kill the rest of the enemy and complete the level. There are several power-ups. All actions are mouse controlled. The game was made with Klik & Play. | ||
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Mission Alphatron | Andy Key / Continental Software Ltd. | [top] | |
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This is a variant of Scramble. Like in the arcade game the player controls a spaceship through a side scrolling cavern blasting everything in it's way. The ship has two weapons: a laser that can destroy anything that is in front of it and bombs that can be dropped on ground installations. There are several different types of enemies including rockets, missiles, mines and fighters. Fuel is limited and can be replenished by shooting one of the many fuel tanks scattered throughout the game. If it runs out the ship will explode. Other installations such as buildings and radar stations can also be destroyed The player has three lives and when they are gone the game is over. Bombs can only be used in the original MTX release. In later ports only the laser is available. The game was later made freeware. | ||
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Operation Inner Space | Software Dynamics, Inc. | [top] | |
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This is an arcade-style shooter taking place inside a rather familiar environment: the player's computer. Evil forces have invaded, seizing control of the player's system, and setting loose program icons to cause mayhem. It's up to the player to round up the renegade icons, all the while battling other hazards inside the inner space of the player's computer, and working with - or fighting - the other AI-controlled pilots that populate the system. The game builds its gameworld dynamically from the contents of the player's hard drive, so the game never plays exactly the same way twice. There are racetracks, a dueling arena where the player can settle scores with rivals without interference from the IS Enforcers, and a strange Inner Demon whom the player must ultimately learn to defeat in order to win the game. The player can select from dozens of ships and their variations to play, or create them using the Ship Factory, and upgrade the player's ship capabilities with weapons and equipment bought from the ambulance or salvaged from destroyed ships. At the time of its release, Inner Space's AI was revolutionary. Various factions competed to complete the same goals as you, and actions you performed towards NPCs were remembered by them for the rest of the game. NPCs also had moods and motives simulated, such as anger at others for attacking them. The game also includes a screen saver. The developer went on to make the popular After Dark screen savers too. | ||
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Orion Project, The | The Local Group | [top] | |
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This is a single player space shooter released as shareware. In this game the player controls a space ship which is controlled entirely with the mouse, although a game pad is optional. One mouse button fires the thrusters, another fires the guns, while moving the mouse rotates the ship. The game area is divided into nine quadrants. The objective of the game is to explore these quadrants for for alien ships and communications devices. These must be destroyed in order to save the Jason group in the Orion space station. The shareware game is a limited four quadrant version of the full game in which the objective is to destroy the alien's main satellite. | ||
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Prairie Dog Hunt 2: Judgment Day | Diversions Software Inc. | [top] | |
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They're back and they're more elusive than ever. Better graphics. Faster P. Dogs. Gruesome exploding animation. New sounds.... ooooh, looks like fun. The second game in the Prairie Dog Hunt series, this replaces the Whack-A-Mole concept with a scrollable panoramic field. Prairie Dogs pop out randomly for a few seconds, and you can shoot them with one of four kinds of guns: the Pellet Gun, .44 Magnum, the Shotgun, and the SPAS-12. The bigger the gun, the less precise your aim needs to be, but kills are also worth less points. The number of prairie dogs can be set between 10 and 100, and there are four difficulty levels. | ||
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Project-X | Team17 Software Limited | [top] | |
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Six levels of horizontally-scrolling shooting await in this R-Type style action game from the makers of the Alien Breed and Worms series. The attack waves vary in style, with some attacking you from quite fiendish angles. These give off blue power-up tokens, which are used towards selecting one of many weapons. There are 4 front-firing options (guns, plasma, magma and laser-beams - guns can be built up quickly but lack top-end power compared to the others) as well as speed-up (only requires one token), side-shot, up to 3 homing missiles, build (a quick super-destructive blast that only functions when you aren't using auto-fire) and stealth (a period of invulnerability). Each level has a very different setting, and an end-of-level boss to defeat. The chance to resume from the level you died at is offered up to level 3. | ||
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Purple Dinosaur Pulverizer | John Dondzila | [top] | |
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Another fan-made parody by the same author of Purple Dinosaur Massacre, this unleashes three more waves of purple reptiles on players. In the United States, from 1992 to 2010, the children's television series "Barney & Friends" was released, in which the protagonist was a purple dinosaur named Barney (ordinary actors played along with actors dressed in animal costumes). This series enjoyed an ambiguous reputation due to, let's say, a high level of stupidity and collected a fairly large number of haters, including the author of this game. There's three single-screen levels: forest glade, city and desert with cacti. On each you need to shoot dinosaurs until the kill scale is filled to the end. Each missed opponent fills in another scale - gaps - and if it is filled, the game will end with the well-known two-word inscription. All dinosaurs die from one hit, despite the wide variety of species. There are ordinary pedestrians, there are those flying on airplanes, flying carpets, UFOs, or balloons, there are those descending on parachutes or balloons, and, finally, there are those taking off on a jetpack. The main guarantee of a successful game is accuracy. The stock of cartridges is not very high, but quite often ammunition falls from the sky on small parachutes. At the end of each level, the number of reptiles increases sharply, but if the skip scale did not have time to fill up strongly by this moment, then this will not cause any special problems. At the end of the game, the viewer will be shown thanking us for getting rid of the hated series. The graphics in the game are made with great care: the death of each type of dinosaur is well animated, sometimes even the type of animation depends on whether we hit the head or the legs. The first and third backgrounds, of course, are plain, but the abundance of details does not interfere with aiming. Sound and musical accompaniment is available and also leaves a positive impression. If you hate the dinosaur Barney, then do not miss the opportunity to deal with him. However, for the game to be liked, such feelings do not have to be experienced. For everyone else, this is just a good and uncomplicated virtual shooting range. | ||
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Quatra Command | DOE Entertainment / Geni U.S. | [top] | |
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This is a simple vertical scrolling space shooter, where a lone pilot has to investigate the Quatra sector, shooting at and dodging incoming starfighters. 10 levels of gameplay with increasing difficulty, collect health, photon and shield bonuses, player starts with three lives. You start with three lives, infinite ammo, and a couple of tricks up your sleeve or at least the potential for them. In addition to shooting normally, you can get a "photon" power-up which allows you to fire "photon shots" with your alternate-fire key. These are able to hit cloaked enemies. You also can generate a force field for a period of time - in fact, you begin with one briefly to keep you from being wiped out before you even have a chance to start. The setup is pretty nice, if you manage to survive that long. Yes, this game is hard, at least at the default settings (the number of objects can be adjusted and the default medium speed setting is a bit fast). Not only do you have to worry about enemies, but you also have to avoid crashing into planets and asteroids. You only have a few power-ups, which give you photon shots, force fields, and healing. The power-ups all have the annoying habit of falling up instead of down, and they can be negated by other objects if they collide. Overall, it's simple but creative. A really nice feature of the game is that it automatically resizes itself to your resolution. The bigger your screen, the more play area you have, which is pretty neat. You may want to auto-hide your taskbar for the visual appeal, but it doesn't adversely impact anything to have it there. | ||
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Raiden | Seibu Kaihatsu Inc. / Acer | [top] | |
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In the year 2090, Earth is invaded by extra-terrestrials. The World Alliance of Nations has developed a supersonic attack fighter, Raiden, to defend the Earth. A pilot must take control of the experimental fighter to destroy the alien warships that just happen to look like odd variations of typical military tanks and planes with gadgets attached to them. Raiden is an over-head vertical-scrolling shooter, based on an arcade game of the same title. It features two forms of weapon upgrades and two types of missiles (normal or homing). You start the game with several bombs which you can use to destroy most enemies on the screen to get yourself out of a jam. Each level ends with a large boss or bosses. It successfully enhances the vertical-shooter excitement of an all-time arcade favorite with brilliant sounds and exceptional speed and motion. All the ingredients of a great shooter are here, but the extremely unforgiving gameplay will leave newbies wishing for an easier game. Two versions were released - a 3.5" floppy disk version and a CD-ROM version which features over 42 minutes of CD audio music. | ||
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Raptor: Call Of The Shadows | Cygnus Multimedia Productions Inc., Mountain King Studios Inc. / Apogee Software Ltd. | [top] | |
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This is a vertically-scrolling shoot 'em up. It features smooth scrolling VGA graphics, a variety of enemies on ground, air and sea, and an original soundtrack. After completing each level you have the option of upgrading your ship with a powerful arsenal of weapons and goodies. Some weapons are effective on only ground or air targets, while some are on both. There are some really advanced weapons like the auto-track mini-gun which can effectively destroy almost any kind of targets without aiming the ship. Dying in shoot'em ups can be annoying, especially if you have to start all over the beginning. However, in Raptor you can save your game between each level. If you have enough credit you can even buy multiple shields for further protection. The 2010 edition of Raptor: Call of the Shadows includes improved graphics and native support for higher resolutions (640x400, 960x600 and 1280x800). Standard graphics are also available. A 2015 Steam edition runs natively on Windows and adds Steam achievements. | ||
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Revenge of the Mutant Camels | Jeff Minter / Llamasoft | [top] | |
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This typically zany Jeff Minter title sets you as a mutated camel, with an optional support one mimicking your moves elsewhere. The hordes of enemies to be taken on include falling umbrellas and drinks machines. Shot enemies release tokens ranging from points bonuses and energy recharges to control-reversers and poison. Speaking of controls, the game uses the same system as Llamatron, which means that you fire automatically in the direction you're moving, but pressing the fire button allows you to rotate the direction of fire while immobile. This allows enemies in different parts of the screen to be attacked from less precarious positions. There's 42 levels in the once shareware game for DOS based on the original 1984 Commodore 64 game of the same name. In 1997, it was made freeware.
See also: #Attack of the Mutant Camels |
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Space Nightmare | Microdem | [top] | |
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Very fast arcade action game, take your favorite ship and kill enemies on planets and in the space. Smooth scrolling in all directions. Animation at 60 frames per second. Features SUPER VGA 640x480x256 and VGA 320x240x16. Music and digitized sound blaster support. When starting the game you get to choose between one of three ships. Dynamite only fires forward, but is one of the faster ships, upgrades simply add more projectiles. Blaster is slower, but upgrades add increasing amounts of spread shots which can effectively blanket the upper screen with bullets. Lastly Cancer fires forward only at first, but upgrades add shots going backwards and to the sides equally. The enemies are mostly mobile air units of some type. They will often fire a burst of bullets directly at you, so dodging is absolutely necessary. The hit boxes for your ships are quite large. You can end up being trapped by several barrages and can’t avoid taking a hit. This wouldn’t be a problem if being hit didn’t take _all_ your power-ups, which leaves you very vulnerable. Whilst you can take more than one hit before dying, this is severely punishing. | ||
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Spy Master | L.K. Avalon | [top] | |
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This is a side-scrolling platform shooter. The player directs the character of Charles Cat, CIA Special Agent known of the other L.K. Avalon game Saper. This time the goal is to destroy the neo-Nazi secret base in the Andes. The game consists of three stages: the jungle, secret base and laboratory. Agent uses the gun and explosives against hostile soldiers and tanks. Player can also destroy some of the elements of the environment, such as rocks and photocells. The controls are simple - apart from walking agent can only shoot, jump and climb. | ||
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Stalker 1: Path of Fire | MM Software Productions | [top] | |
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In a world contaminated by the radiation of a nuclear power plant accident, you are a "Stalker." Much of the land is highly radioactive and mutated creatures roam in search of food. You look pretty tasty to them. As a Stalker, you wander from zone to zone, seeking nourishment and what treasure you can find. There are many hazards along the way. A strange platform game in which you have to gain enough points to access the "exit zone." To do this you must destroy the creatures that come after you, avoid the "radiation zones", the radioactive pools, and try to keep going. The game is loosely based on the popular Russian sci-fi novel Roadside Picnic by Strugatsky brothers. In the novel, stalkers are professionals who enter the so-called "zones" - areas that contain various anomalies due to extraterrestrial activity - to retrieve artifacts apparently left by aliens, for scientific study. One of the sought-after artifacts is the "Golden Sphere" (referenced in the game) that allegedly can grant wishes. The term stalker was further popularized as a new type of adventure tourism, called stalking, emerged after the Chernobyl disaster. | ||
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Star Century War General | Fun Yours Technology | [top] | |
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This is a beautiful horizontal scroller with a good anime story based on Gundam style elements in space. There are two heroes in the game: man pilot - Late and anime-girl pilot -Easy Lover. They will be eliminating billions of enemy ships together. Every mission has a detail briefing. In the action you can see dialogs between pilots, HQ and enemies. The music is dynamical and very impressive, because it was used some of the classical musicians compositions. You will fly on assignments either alone or alone. Before the mission, a detailed briefing is always displayed, and you can also change the ship's armament configuration (裝備 更換). Your character has a significant set of game parameters, namely: the level of pilot training (等級), qualification (技能), the first type of weapons (裝備 一), the second type of weapons (裝備 二). Elements of "pumping" are represented by three characteristics: survivability (生命力), strength of spirit (精神 力) and experience (經驗 值). These three parameters are divided into current (prefix - 目前) and maximum (prefix - 最大). The action itself is incomparable. In the game settings (游戲 設定), you can select four levels of difficulty (the easiest - 簡單). There are so many different objects on the screen that you just do not have time to recognize them. The queues from your lasers and rocket launchers, in fact, merge into one continuous stream. Shoot by pressing the Ctrl and Alt keys. If you are flying in a pair, then for some reason only one of your ships gets damage. All "holes" are displayed on the indicators at the top of the screen. At the bottom edge is a steady improvement in your skills. Your experience grows as the number of destroyed objects increases. Then, in the extreme right position, the coveted Level Up occurs, and the indicator is reset to zero, after which the accumulation begins again. At various stages of passage of any level, there are interactive inserts, and we can observe the constant development of the plot. Sometimes in the conversation pilots even meet anime enemies, who mutter something like: "... I'll take your life, Earthman ...". At the end of each mission you are waiting for the boss. This is usually a huge and hard-to-kill creature. Well, inter-mission inserts develop the most sensual part of the story - the relationship between the pilot and his young war girlfriend. The graphics are also wonderful. The screen resolution of 320x200 is absolutely not critical for perception. Of particular note is the multidimensionality. There are a lot of layers that are scrolling at different speeds (all kinds of meteorites, pieces of metal, opponents, broken ships, etc.). For example, there are asteroids, which from falling into an enemy fighter. Even the lowest layer first appears static, but then, after a while, you begin to understand that it also shifts. In each mission the background displays their unique cosmic landscapes. There is a good 3D animation in the intro and in the inter-layer inserts. Melodies are all very dynamic, there are modern arrangements of classical music. Despite its Taiwan origin, the game became known outside of Asia. This is evidenced by lists of pirate collections of the 1990s, where this game often appears. Of course, the presence of hieroglyphs in the texts makes it very difficult to understand. But for this in the settings (游戲 設定) there is a switching of the game mode (模式) from the plot-emotional (劇情) to the usual action-less action (高分). Therefore, this gameplay will be understandable to any user. | ||
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Star Hammer | Silver Lightning Software / Homebrew Software | [top] | |
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You could think of Star Hammer as Wing Commander in 2D. You are the pilot of a combat space ship which has to destroy enemies or protect friendly shuttles. The game features 40 linear missions with the main goal to defeat an enemy alien race. In a topdown perspective you steer the ship through the space and shoot at enemies. Your ship has different weapons and a shield which decreases when enemies hit your ship. On the upper left corner is a mini map which shows friend and foe. Several in vector graphics animated cutscenes play during the campaign. | ||
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Star Wars II | Gimminuk's (Hitel ID 00770) | [top] | |
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This is an unofficial Star Wars inspired shmup from South Korea. The Chaos forces attacked for 103 years when a huge meteorite came toward Earth. Because of that, there was no more life on Earth. So the search for a star in the same condition as the Earth begins. A few months later, a report came to find the Second District, but there was an intelligent creature living there. Now the battle has begun. It's a public shooting game that was uploaded to the domestic network. It's similar to 1942, and the graphics are quite gorgeous. You can play alone or with a friend, choosing the most liked of the five proposed ships (X-Wing, Y-Wing and other familiar). All of them have simply amazing firepower, firing simultaneously with lasers (or similar) and rockets (including homing ones) with an infinite ammunition, and also have a super-weapon for which you need to pick up charges. Opponents are also spacecraft acquaintances in the series of films or very similar to them, differing in the manner of attacks and behavior. It is interesting that the health scales are not provided, but we are not killed by any attack: first, the ship may start to smoke, but over time this will pass: apparently, regeneration takes place. But only one drop-down bonus - an additional charge for a super-weapon, since its own fire power increases due to the increase in level as the enemies are destroyed; The progress of the experience is displayed at the bottom right. | ||
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Super Beemger | Soft Town / Mirinae Software Inc. | [top] | |
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This is a horizontally scrolling shoot-em-up, from the makers of The Day series, in which the player controls a transformer spaceship, fighting mechanical and organic aliens in deep space and their bases. The game's defining feature are the ship's special moves, which are executed by pressing down a button. Among these moves is mecha transformation, energy recharge, an offensive shield, and a powerful attack that destroys all the enemies on screen. All these moves deplete a special energy bar, which gradually refills itself. The player can select between three fire rates, which influence the speed of the regeneration. When in mecha form the ship can fire straight and spreading shots typical for shoot-em-ups. However, the normal form relies exclusively on homing weapons that hit multiple enemies but cannot target individual enemies directly. Switching between these two forms is essential to survival. | ||
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Supernova | Dataware | [top] | |
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It is your job as a starship pilot to destroy the octahedral crystals that are causing the supernova of the sun. As you travel to your destinations, you will receive resistance from those in the galaxy who have other plans. Fight your way through space to complete your mission in this 3D shooter game. | ||
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Theatre of Death | The Software Shed / Psygnosis Limited | [top] | |
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This is an isometric tactical war game similar to Cannon Fodder, but much more advanced. You are a commander of squads of soldiers, which you have to guide through missions in various terrains from the grasslands, desert and snow to the Moon, using a variety of weaponry at your disposal such as pistols, machine guns, grenades, rocket launchers, landmines, and even tanks, APCs and choppers. | ||
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Time After Time, Adam the New Age Warrior in | Antares Bros. | [top] | |
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This is a single-player, shareware shooter made with Game Maker. The story behind the game is that Doctor Vladimir Von Technoface is making a bid for world domination. He is a renowned genetic physicist who has discovered the secret of time travel. Using this technology he is visiting Nazi Germany (1945) to take samples of Hitler’s brain, Medieval Europe (565) to find the Breath of the Dragon, the Jurassic Period (145,000,000 B.C.) to sample the mighty Tyrannosaurus Rex, and the future (3500). Once he has his samples he will create a mighty army and take over the world. The game is keyboard or joystick controlled. In it the player takes the role of Adam - A New Age Warrior who must shoot or bludgeon his enemies out of existence as he makes his way through the levels and across time. The game has sound, a high score table, two levels of difficulty and one unique feature, when an order was placed the purchaser could send in a photograph of themselves and it would be their face that appeared on the game’s main character. | ||
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Total Carnage | Midway | [top] | |
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The war of 1999 left the country of Kookistan in shambles in this port of the 1991 arcade game and sequel to Midway's arcade classic Smash TV. Naturally, a dictator named General Akhboob took control of the beleagured nation and began creating an army of radioactive mutants. With a virtually impenetrable stronghold, a bunch of hostages, and a legion of mutants under his command, the evil despot will stop at nothing but world domination. Only two men have the courage and idealistic naivete to take on Akhboob and his forces: Captain Carnage and Major Mayhem, also known as the Doomsday Squad. As Captain Carnage or Major Mayhem, it is up to you or you and a friend (in simultaneous action) to rescue the hostages while shooting hundreds of mutants bent on your destruction. As you walk and run forward, backward, left, right, and diagonally through 20 battlezones of nonstop action, you'll always have your machine gun by your side. Additional weapons which you can find along the way include grenade launchers, rocket launchers, plasma machine guns, flame throwers, spray-fire rifles, defensive blades, and an assortment of bombs. | ||
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Traffic Department 2192 | P Squared / Safari Software Ltd. | [top] | |
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This is a top-down shooter focused around an original sci-fi storyline and dialogues, combined with fierce action sequences. You are Lt. Velasquez, a pilot in the Seche Traffic Department, an organization which now serves as the people's army in repelling the invading Vultures. Velasquez has a personal grudge against the Vultures because, when she was a small child, they destroyed her father's hoverskid as he was returning from a long mission. The game progresses through a complex storyline with many twists and turns with well-rounded action sequences in the middle. The game comprises three distinct episodes: Episode Alpha - Process of Elimination, Episode Beta - Cyborg Psychosis, Episode Gamma - Ultimatum. Episode Alpha was initially released as shareware, though it was later released commercially, with the remaining episodes being available for purchase. In 2007, the game was made freeware. | ||
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Trap Shooting | Diversions Software Inc. | [top] | |
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This is an arcade game of shooting at targets (clay pigeons) for Windows 3.x. First, let's have a look to the Configure menu. Select the difficulty of the game (Easy, Moderate or Hard). No surprise Hard mode is the fastest. From this menu you can also enable or disable sound effects, using the check box. Here we go now, playing with the mouse : right click to toss the clay pigeon into the air, then, aim the crosshairs and left click to fire at the target. A round ends after 25 targets. Two last things: the registered version has no 'nag screens' ; running on recent computers, the game is way too fast, even in Easy mode. So consider using a slowdown utility. | ||
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Tubular Worlds | Creative Game Design / Dongleware Verlags GmbH | [top] | |
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This was a fairly popular shareware side-scrolling shooter that unfortunately was never well-known in the United States. The game features a variety of weapons and enemies in 4 different episodes totalling 16 levels. You play the role of a senior cadet at the country's elite school for fighter pilots. Your final exam involves flying the gauntlet of four virtual cyber worlds and destroying the Warlords encountered there. Be warned! At the end of each combat segment a very powerful Warlord will be waiting for you. Gameplay is definitely a cut above average shooters, which is a pleasant surprise given that it was marketed as a shareware title. The game sports very good graphics, excellent controls, nice sound effects and overall good level design. Weapons come in a wide variety, and you can even configure them (as opposed to new powerups overriding whichever weapon you were using before). The game is a bit repetitive in mid-game, though, and your ship can die from a single shot (from a powerful enemy). Still, there's enough to please shooter fans here that makes it well worth a look. | ||
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Xatax | Pixel Painters Corporation | [top] | |
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In the 25th century humanity was attacked by a mysterious alien force known as the Xatax. The aliens began to attack the planets of the galactic Alliance, consuming the life force of their inhabitants and growing stronger after each victory. Accustomed to several centuries of peace and virtually disarmed, the humans have no other weapon at their disposal but an ancient starfighter, which has been taken from the Interguild Museum and restored to combat condition. This vessel is humanity's last and only hope. Xatax is a side-scrolling shooter in which the player must defend the remains of the Alliance's guilds against the titular aliens. This is accomplished in a traditional shoot-em-up fashion, fighting waves of alien ships and stationary turrets. The player-controlled ship can become stronger by collecting power capsules dropped by defeated enemies. The game features three different worlds, of which the shareware version only contains the first. | ||
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Xerix II: The Caverns of Mars | Brendan Reville / Twillight Software | [top] | |
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Guide a space ship through two different levels and destroy or avoid the many enemy obstacles in alien structure, which is Earth's danger. The project has been codenamed XERIX: the eXtended Enemy Response and Infiltration eXperiment. Your mission is to destroy the alien structure. Awesome shoot 'em up arcade action. Battle a bizarre alien force in the depths of the caverns of Mars. With 256 color parallax scrolling, 1 or 2 simultaneous players, an engrossing story line and an amazing digital soundtrack. Initially a shareware game, the full game was later made freeware. | ||
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XQuest | Mark Mackey | [top] | |
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This is a Crystal Quest variant, where you pilot a little spaceship and collect gems. The game is mouse controlled, but you don't control the ship directly. Rather, you thrust the ship in any direction and it retains its inertia. Once you collect all the gems, the exit at the top of the screen opens and you can fly through to the next level. There are obstacles like mines and bad guys of increasing difficulty that come out of the sides. You can collect power-ups such as rapid fire and spread fire. XQuest 2 is an upgraded version with: Two player support (alternating, that is), for that competitive boost: Three new enemies - the impregnable Vince, the dangerous Tribbler and the enigmatic Repulsor; Improved pixel-based collision detection - no more "But I was miles away from the wall when I blew up!" blues; several different difficulty levels - Wimp or Novice level for the beginners out there, Tricky or Inhuman level for those XQuest gods; Some prettier fonts; Some extra surprises on the higher levels for those who thought they had this game beaten; A slightly larger exit on the first few levels; New powerups; A nicer demo interface; Improved sound support, including support for high IRQs and DMAs other than 1; Joystick and keyboard support, for them what don't understand mice; The whole shebang actually requires less memory than version 1; Lots of bugs have been fixed. | ||
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