Retro games, abandonware, freeware and classic games for PC and Mac
Author: Gustavo - Published: 1 November 2020, 2:06 pm
Jagged Alliance is a turn-based tactical role-playing game developed by Sir-tech Software and released in 1994 for MS-DOS by Madlab Software.
I remember watching my father play Jagged Alliance while I thought it was a scary game as a child. Several years later, I found out that it was an action game and decided to play it to understand why I was afraid of it. The answer was simple, let's say that seeing the realism in the dead eyes of the characters forcibly taught me the meaning of Uncanny Valley. Anyway, once I overcame my fears, I discovered that I was in front of a very complex game for its time, and this is why.
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Author: GN Team - Published: 31 October 2020, 10:59 am
Shinobi is an arcade game created by SEGA in 1987, ported almost immediately to the Master System and later to many other platforms.
In the game, you control a ninja ("shinobi" means "ninja," by the way) who has to fight against an evil terrorist organization called Zeed. You have your faithful shurikens at your disposal, but you can upgrade your weapons: you will find a katana (sword) or a gun during the game. And, of course, being a martial arts expert, you have punches and kicks. But most importantly, you have some special moves called "ninja magic," which are almost indispensable when facing big bosses.
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Author: GN Team - Published: 25 October 2020, 2:26 pm
Barbarian is an action game created by Psygnosis initially for the Amiga and released in 1987. It was later ported to Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Commodore 64, DOS, and other platforms.
Not to be confused with the beat-em-up created by Palace with almost the same name - Barbarian: The Ultimate Warrior, this one was simply called "Barbarian".
The title was designed by David H. Lawson - the same Lawson that co-founded Psygnosis and that some of you will remember for the never-released game Bandersnatch.
As usual for Psygnosis games, Barbarian has an impressive presentation, fantastic graphics, brilliant animations, and realistic sound effects. It was developed to astonish users. Remember we are talking about 1987, the Amiga 500 was released that year, and not many people owned the new computer made by Commodore. The few who did it proudly showed off their latest titles to friends and family, and Barbarian was one of them.
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Author: GN Team - Published: 24 October 2020, 4:50 pm
EGATrek is one of the best remakes of the original Star Trek game developed on mainframes in the '70s. Nels Anderson created EGATrek originally in 1988 for MS-DOS and released it as shareware, but continued working on it until 1994.
The author added graphics to the original game, which was based entirely on text. Unlike the original, EGATrek uses awesome hi-res 640x350 EGA 16-color graphics, hence the title. The display is designed to show all the useful information on the screen, like the galaxy map or the damage control view, things that, in the text-only version, needed to be activated with a specific command. Btw, in case you don't know the original gameplay, have a look at Rediscovering the 1978 text-only Super Star Trek Game.
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Author: GN Team - Published: 18 October 2020, 8:18 pm
Pegasus is an action game developed by Optimus and published by Gremlin in 1991 for PC, Amiga, and Atari ST.
In this title, clearly inspired by mythology, you are Perseus, and you have to fight Satan and his guardians. Thank god you have the legendary horse Pegasus to help you. In fact, in half of the levels (10 in totals), you will fly on Pegasus, and the game becomes a sort of shoot-em-up. While on the rest of the levels, Perseus walks, so it's more a platformer.
There are five different worlds with different styles. Fantastic graphics, huge sprites, with smooth animations and parallax scrolling. Despite the high number of enemies on screen, the game never slows down. Technically speaking, it's excellent. Unfortunately, in terms of game design, the game lacks some more interesting mechanics such as bonus levels, secret places, special power-ups, and so on. I wonder what would have happened if the developers had to focus on just one type of game.
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Author: Gustavo - Published: 17 October 2020, 12:04 pm
The Adventures of Lomax is a platformer created by Psygnosis and released in 1996 for Windows and PlayStation. It is considered a spin-off of the famous game Lemmings.
The artist who designed the game was Henk Nieborg, known for Lionheart and later for Flink, a game that shares many features with Lomax.
When I played my first PlayStation game as a kid, it was the classic Ape Escape. The first level was relatively small, but since it was the first 3D game I played, I felt it was huge, and I quickly lost myself climbing an enormous mountain (when I revisited the game a few years later, I realized that it was a three-meter hill). The point is that when I began to play games with this technology, I refused to return to the 2D platformers for years, and I was not the only one. This type of game was left behind, and the few that came out, whether good or bad, were destroyed by the critics. More recently, the market is much wider, and either by nostalgia or preference, these games may have the opportunity they were never given.
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