Retro games, abandonware, freeware and classic games for PC and Mac
Author: GN Team - Published: 19 January 2019, 3:17 am
Ishar 2: Messengers of Doom is the second chapter of the fantasy RPG saga created by French studio Silmarils. The game was released in 1993 for the Amiga, Atari ST, and DOS.
Like the first Ishar: Legend of the Fortress, the gameplay is real-time, based on a first-person perspective that allows you to travel in and interact with a pseudo-3d world. Technically speaking, this makes the game similar to other dungeons crawlers like Dungeon Master and Eye of the Beholder, but the graphics and atmosphere are totally different. Mainly because the world is not just made of dungeons; for the majority of the time, you are outdoor, traveling through towns, forests, swamps, and mountains, a choice that made the game quite innovative at the time (and probably started a new genre, think about The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall and the other titles of the series for example).
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Author: GN Team - Published: 12 January 2019, 2:05 am
Arabian Nights is a platformer created exclusively for the Amiga by Krisalis Software and released in 1993.
Designed by Simeon Pashley (the same guy that programmed the Manchester United games as well as other soccer games), with Darren Hebden, this game is made of 10 levels with different styles, full of hazards, enemies, and puzzles. The animation is superb, both on the intro and the game itself. The cute Sinbad is animated at 50fps, with nice humorous touches. The programmers promised additional effects on accelerated Amigas (030+), but it's not clear if they are there or not.
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Author: GN Team - Published: 31 December 2018, 7:53 pm
New Year Lemmings 1991/1992 is a fanmade version of Lemmings, created by a developer called "Gaston^Splatt." The game was released on the public domain during the 1991-1992 Xmas holidays.
This unofficial version of Lemmings is based on Holiday Lemmings, but the author was able to reverse engineer some elements of the game. The lemmings are using the standard sprites (they are not wearing the Santa costume), and five new levels were added. One of the maps is built using the text HAPPY NEW YEAR 1992. Twenty-seven years later this is still fun to play. Happy new year!
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Author: GN Team - Published: 31 December 2018, 4:18 pm
Castlevania II: Simon's Quest is a platformer action-adventure game created by Konami in 1987 for the Famicom. It was released in North America for the NES in 1988.
This is the second game in the extremely popular Castlevania series designed by Hitoshi Akamatsu. Compared to the predecessor, Simon's Quest has different gameplay. At first sight, it is a classic platformer, but when you start playing it, you realize the game is different. You can explore the world freely, and go back to places you have already visited (as you can do in Metroid, hence the term "Metroidvania" to define this kind of game). The gameplay is non-linear, with many RPG elements including levels and stats that advance with experience, inventory system, new weapons that you can purchase in the shops using the coins you obtained. Castlevania II is also one of the first games to have implemented a day and night cycle. During the night the game is more difficult, enemies are stronger and, as you can expect, shops are closed.
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Author: GN Team - Published: 29 December 2018, 6:53 pm
Pushover is a puzzler developed by Red Rat Software and published by Ocean in 1992 for the Amiga, Atari ST, DOS, and SNES.
The game, whose concept was created by Charles Partington, can be defined as an "advergame" since it was sponsored by Quavers, a famous British snack food brand. But unlike many other sponsored titles, Pushover is a brilliant game, with excellent animations, beautiful original music, funny cartoonish graphics, and an excellent intro. But most importantly, it has 100 levels with clever puzzles and gameplay that becomes addictive very soon.
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Author: GN Team - Published: 23 December 2018, 3:28 pm
Galactic: The Xmas Edition is an unreleased game created by Stavros Fasoulas in 1993 exclusively for the Amiga.
It's a mix of a platformer and a flying multidirectional shooter, vaguely reminiscent of Robotron: 2084 and Bubble Bobble.
The Finnish developer was well known for some excellent C64 games, including Sanxion and Quedex. That's why some previews of the game appeared on CU Amiga and The One. Finnish magazines also gave the early version of Galactic an excellent rating. But in the end, Fasoulas was not able to find an official publisher. So he decided to release an unfinished version, renamed Galactic: The Xmas Edition, on the cover disk of the January 1994 issue (out in December) of The ONE magazine. Perfectly in time for Christmas.
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