Retro games, abandonware, freeware and classic games for PC and Mac
Author: GN Team - Published: 30 October 2023, 8:38 pm
Little Samson is a fantasy platform game developed by Takeru and published by Taito in 1992 exclusively for the NES. After its release in Japan and the USA, it also arrived in Europe in 1993.
Taito is undoubtedly more famous for its legendary arcade games, but in the 1990s, it also ventured into creating titles for the 8-bit Nintendo console. In this case, we have a platformer with fairly standard mechanics, featuring gameplay not too dissimilar from Capcom's classic Mega Man. However, Taito's style shines through with its colorful arcade-style graphics, which, at least in part considering the hardware difference, evoke memories of the wonderful Bubble Bobble.
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Author: Adam - Published: 24 October 2023, 8:34 pm
MUSHA, also known as Musha Aleste, is a vertically scrolling shooter created by Compile for the SEGA Genesis/Mega Drive and released in 1990. The full title is M.U.S.H.A.: Metallic Uniframe Super Hybrid Armor.
The game, known in Japan as Musha Aleste - Full Metal Fighter Ellinor, belongs to the Aleste series, which began in 1988 with Aleste, known in the Western world as Power Strike. Initially, it was intended to be called "Aleste 2," but it was decided to make it a spin-off due to a change in the setting. In fact, the shooter has a much stronger connection to Japanese mythology, featuring demons, ninjas, and giant robots. Instead of the classic spaceship, you pilot a mecha (Gundam-style) called M.U.S.H.A. and must combat a supercomputer threatening Earth.
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Author: GN Team - Published: 21 October 2023, 12:25 pm
Doctor Who: The Gunpowder Plot is the last of the graphic adventures featuring the eleventh Doctor, portrayed by Matt Smith. The game was released for free by the BBC in October 2011.
The BBC had previously released four episodes in 2010 under the title Doctor Who: The Adventure Games. The Gunpowder Plot was written by Phil Ford, who also wrote the fourth chapter of the previous series, "Shadows of the Vashta Nerada." Sumo Digital was the development studio once again, and this adventure also had Charles Cecil and Steven Moffat as executive producers.
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Author: GN Team - Published: 20 October 2023, 5:08 pm
Moebius: The Orb of Celestial Harmony is a role-playing game initially created by Origin Systems for the Apple II and published in 1985. The game was designed and programmed by Greg Malone. In 1987-88, DOS, Atari ST, and Amiga versions were released. In 1989, Origin published a sequel called Windwalker.
Moebius strongly reflects its 8-bit origins and is reminiscent of Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar, another title from Origin to which it is clearly inspired. Like in Ultima, you'll have to explore a large world (actually, four different worlds) from a top-down perspective in search of the infamous Orb of Celestial Harmony. However, what sets Moebius apart is its combination of RPG mechanics with side-view beat 'em up-style combat.
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Author: GN Team - Published: 15 October 2023, 9:32 pm
Twintris is a Tetris clone developed by Svein Berge for the Amiga in 1990 and published by Digital Marketing. The following year, it was also released under the name Super Twintris as a cover disk for the Amiga Power and Amiga Action magazines.
While falling into the category of amateur games, Twintris has nothing to envy when compared to commercial games. In fact, it is the perfect example of how, during the Amiga era, a passionate developer could create a game of exceptionally high quality by fully utilizing the hardware's capabilities. Often, this didn't happen, and it disadvantaged Amiga games that suffered from the classic "multiplatform effect," also known as "lowest common denominator" – games that were developed for less powerful computers and then converted without improvements to speed up release times in order to be available on multiple platforms. This was somewhat the misfortune of the Amiga, as many of its games were primarily ports from the Atari ST version. Original Amiga titles like Ambermoon and Lionheart are the exception.
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Author: GN Team - Published: 8 October 2023, 1:28 am
Transport Tycoon is a simulation game created by Chris Sawyer and published by MicroProse in 1994 for PC MS-DOS.
Chris Sawyer, who had started his career by converting Elite Plus and Frontier: Elite II to MS-DOS, had a great passion for Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon. He came up with the idea of improving the famous strategy game by adding an isometric view for a more immersive experience. He also wanted to introduce new means of transportation, which is how the development of Transport Tycoon began.
Regarding the visual aspect, Sawyer did much more than introduce isometric graphics. Firstly, he chose to adopt an SVGA resolution of 800x600, which was much sharper than the classic VGA resolution of 320x200. Additionally, to manage all the game elements, he developed a button and window interface, a kind of Windows-like operating system specifically written for this game, which ran on MS-DOS. Every window could be moved, and all were updated in real-time. Compared to other games released in 1994, Transport Tycoon seems (and indeed is) light years ahead.
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