Retro games, abandonware, freeware and classic games for PC and Mac
Author: GN Team - Published: 17 June 2022, 10:05 pm
Xenomorph is a sci-fi RPG set in space, developed by Pandora and published in 1990 for the Amiga, Atari ST, MS-DOS, and - strangely - Commodore 64.
The title is clearly inspired by the movie Alien. In fact, the xenomorph is the race of the famous aliens of the film. Despite the settings, the game is a classic dungeon crawler, very similar to Dungeon Master in terms of gameplay. The perspective is first-person pseudo-3d, with movements to the left and right by 90°. Combat, as well as all the rest of the actions, are in real-time.
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Author: GN Team - Published: 20 May 2022, 8:07 pm
Tau Ceti is a mix of action, adventure, and space simulation initially developed for the ZX Spectrum by Pete Cooke in 1985. The game was also ported to Atari ST, C64, and MS-DOS. An improved version, called Tau Ceti: The Special Edition, was released for the Spectrum 128K and Amstrad CPC in 1987.
Cooke, also the author of Tower of Babel, had the inspiration for the game playing Gyron, another ZX Spectrum hit. Gyron was using some interesting graphics routines, and Cooke studied them in order to replicate them. Soon he was able to create something similar to draw a 3D world with shadows and a day and night cycle. Today it doesn't seem exceptional, but you should not forget it was 1985, and those were 8-bit computers.
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Author: GN Team - Published: 5 May 2022, 1:46 am
Alien³, or more simply Alien 3, is the videogame based on the sci-fi horror movie with the same name, the third of the series.
The game was developed by Probe Software originally for the Mega Drive / Genesis console, but it was converted to Amiga, Master System, and Game Gear. A reduced version was also released for the Commodore 64, while the SNES version is an entirely different edition. All the versions were published in 1992.
The game's plot starts precisely like the movie, with Ripley waking up from the cryosleep and realizing that two aliens had entered the ship before the takeoff. The monsters killed everybody (apart from Ripley, of course) and forced the vessel to land in Fiorina 161, a prison planet. But once the game starts, you will notice it is pretty different from the movie. Ripley is armed with a big gun and has to fight tons of aliens, explore the levels and try to save hostages. Not exactly the plot of the movie.
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Author: GN Team - Published: 24 April 2022, 9:02 pm
RoboCop 2 is an action game based on the popular science fiction film released in 1990, featuring the famous cybernetic cop. Like many other movies-to-game conversions of the '90s, it was published by Ocean Software, which took care of both the 8-bit versions (ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64) and 16-bit versions, including Amiga and Atari ST.
Special FX developed the Amiga version of the game. The studio did a great job integrating the film elements with the game, even though the videogame needed to be released at the same time as the film, so only preliminary assets were available. Following the plot, our hero Robocop will need to destroy the nuke factory, then try to arrest the evil Cain, who will take the form of "RoboCop 2" at the end of the adventure. Several cutscenes with digitized images of the movie are shown in the beautiful HAM graphic mode of the Amiga. It's a kind of lesser-known - not so popular - technical feature, so we strongly appreciate this choice.
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Author: GN Team - Published: 30 March 2022, 8:58 pm
Softporn Adventure is a text adventure created by Chuck Benton for the Apple II in 1981. The game was programmed in AppleSoft BASIC.
Initially released by Benton with his own company Blue Sky Software, the game became famous when it was re-released by Sierra On-Line (known as On-Line Systems at the time).
It is one of the earliest examples of erotic video games. Many remember the famous "hot tub" game cover, with three topless women in a jacuzzi. Interestingly, one of them was Roberta Williams, co-founder of Sierra On-Line and the King's Quest series creator.
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Author: GN Team - Published: 28 February 2022, 2:15 pm
Conan: The Cimmerian is an action-adventure with RPG elements created by Synergistic Software for PC and Amiga and released in 1991 by Virgin Games.
The game is officially based on the character Conan the Barbarian created by Robert E. Howard. At first sight, you might think that Synergistic made a sword and sorcery beat 'em-up, like Golden Axe or - even better - Sword of Sodan, but the truth is Conan is a much more complex game. There's a plot, first of all, not as trivial as you might think. The RPG aspects are well developed, with different ways to solve the quests. The graphics are fantastic, really hi quality pixel art. Maybe the perspective during city exploration is strange. Still, some screens are gorgeous, probably because this is a game where all the 5-bit / 32 colors of the Amiga have been used, unlike many Atari ST titles ported to Amiga, where colors were limited to 16.
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