Retro games, abandonware, freeware and classic games for PC and Mac
Author: Gustavo - Published: 12 December 2020, 2:58 pm
Companions of Xanth is an adventure game published in 1993 by Legend Entertainment.
Making a video game based on a book is really a risk. The title is not judged by its quality as a videogame only but also by its fidelity to the source material. Besides, even if these two things are met, there is always the fan's subjective view of the developers, which can cause a conflict that can ruin the first ones' experience. How could a game based on such a particular style as Piers Anthony's go with all the ingredients for disaster? Ladies and gentlemen, this is Companions of Xanth.
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Author: GN Team - Published: 12 December 2020, 12:19 pm
Eye of the Beholder is a popular role-playing game developed by Westwood Associates for Strategic Simulations Inc. It was released in 1991 for MS-DOS and Amiga. Later, it was also ported to SNES and SEGA CD.
The gameplay was like another iconic title, Dungeon Master. Still, thanks to the license from TSR, Eye of Beholder offered official D&D settings and rules based on Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2nd Edition (AD&D)—specifically the Forgotten Realms world and the famous city of Waterdeep. As you know, we are talking about a first-person dungeon crawler with movements in 4 directions in a pseudo-3D world. Combat is real-time, a real innovation that makes the game much more thrilling than other games with turn-based fighting.
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Author: GN Team - Published: 8 December 2020, 9:10 pm
Gunfright is an action-adventure/shooter created by Ultimate Play the Game initially for the ZX Spectrum in 1985. It was also ported to MSX and Amstrad CPC.
The game developed by the Stampers brothers is built with the "Filmation" engine. Filmation was written for the legendary Knight Lore, which made the isometric perspective popular in computer games. In this case, we are talking about the second release of this engine, so it has several enhancements compared to the first release. Gunfright and Nightshade are the only games ever built with the Filmation2.
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Author: Gustavo - Published: 5 December 2020, 1:21 pm
Star Command is a 1988 space role-playing game released by Strategic Simulations Inc initially for MS-DOS, then Amiga and Atari ST.
One of the things I learned from the world of video games is that developers take a huge risk when they approach a space theme. There's nothing complicated about this setup, but time has proven that these adventures are usually either a resounding success or a hopeless failure. The big question is, in which of these two categories does Star Command fall? Surprisingly in both, and I will tell you why.
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Author: Gustavo - Published: 28 November 2020, 7:09 pm
A.G.E. (Advanced Galactic Empire) is a 3D first-person space sim created by Coktel Vision and released in 1991 for the Amiga, Atari ST, and DOS.
Among retro games, the first adventures to experiment with 3D are those in which the magnifying glass is held with a more critical eye. One could say older titles like Super Mario Bros (to mention a game we all know) have graphics and mechanics that aged well since they are unique to that time. Meanwhile, those pioneering releases in 3D technology suffer since we can not avoid comparing them with more current games. This is my dilemma when trying to give an opinion about a video game like A.G.E., with a simple story and little mechanic, depending exclusively on its graphics.
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Author: GN Team - Published: 25 November 2020, 10:09 pm
Virocop is a third-person shooter created by Graftgold and published by Renegade in 1995 for the Amiga.
The game programmers, Steve Turner and Andrew Braybrook, took inspiration from their previous titles for the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64: Quazatron and Magnetron. In fact, the main character of Virocop is a robot called D.A.V.E., which must destroy all viruses infecting the "Gamedisk." But the similarities with these 8-bit titles almost end here because Virocop is a game designed and programmed from scratch, specifically for the Amiga. And because of this, it uses all the features of this machine. The music, sounds, animations, graphics are some of the best seen on this platform. I mean, seriously, look at the screenshots! Even the ECS version, which has fewer colors than the AGA one, looks amazing. But most importantly, Virocop is an extremely polished game, with really high-quality programming. The level design, maybe, in some cases, is a bit challenging, but nothing too difficult.
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