GamesNostalgia

Retro games, abandonware, freeware and classic games for PC and Mac

iten

Latest Game Reviews

Captive

Captive

Author: GN Team - Published: 6 June 2020, 4:35 pm

Captive is a sci-fi RPG created by Antony Crowther and published by Mindscape in 1990 for the Amiga, Atari ST, and MS-DOS.

The game uses a first-person perspective, with movements in the four directions in a pseudo-3D environment. Very similar to Dungeon Master or Eye of the Beholder, but instead of the fantasy settings, we have space stations. The hero is locked in a prison, but he can lead a group of droids using a remote control. The droids are the "party" that you control in the game. They can buy and use weapons and upgrade their body parts during the game. As long as you advance, you have shops that sell more powerful upgrades. The combat mechanics are pretty interesting because the weapons' effect changes depending on the type and position of the droid in the formation.

Read More

Conquests of Camelot: The Search for the Grail

Conquests of Camelot: The Search for the Grail

Author: GN Team - Published: 1 June 2020, 5:38 pm

Conquests of Camelot: The Search for the Grail is a graphic adventure by Sierra On-Line, released in 1990 for PC, Amiga, and Atari ST.

The game was written and designed by Christy Marx. It's set in medieval Arthurian mythology, with Arthur, Launcelot, Gawaine, and Galahad searching for the Holy Grail, a quest that will take our hero to Jerusalem.

Some technological choices are strange, considering the game was released in 1990. One year before, adventure game fans had the chance to try Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade, with 256 colors VGA graphics and a verb-based, mouse-driven interface. Instead, Conquests of Camelot uses the Sierra AGI engine, like King's Quest III: To Heir is Human or Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards. This means it has a mix of point-and-click and text parser: you move the hero around the screen and examine objects with the mouse, but when you want to perform an action, you have to type (e.g., "take clothes"). The graphics are amazingly drawn, but the colors are limited to 16, basically EGA graphics on all platforms. Such a pity. But the bad news ends here. Because Conquests of Camelot is an excellent adventure. The plot is well written, and most importantly, instead of being made almost entirely by the usual inventory-based puzzles (like 90% of the graphic adventures out there), you have to talk with people, solve riddles, succeed in small mini-games, and more. You can also finish the game differently; completing all the quests is optional.

Read More

Return to Ringworld

Return to Ringworld

Author: Gustavo - Published: 31 May 2020, 12:35 pm

Return to Ringworld is a science-fiction point-and-click adventure game developed and published by Tsunami Media in 1994. The title that came out for the DOS is based on the novels of Larry Niven, first published in 1970 under the name Ringworld.

Tsunami Media already has experience with this saga, having developed and published Ringworld: Revenge of the Patriarch in 1992-1993. Return to Ringworld is the last part of the franchise of games that, apart from the previously mentioned, features the original Ringworld tabletop RPG from 1984.

Read More

Hexen II

Hexen II

Author: Gustavo - Published: 31 May 2020, 12:00 pm

Hexen II is a dark-fantasy first-person shooter developed by Raven Software and published by id Software in 1997 for Windows and 2002 for Mac.

The development company founded in Wisconsin in 1990 was already known for the Amiga RPG Black Crypt. But its most significant success is the Heretic / Hexen saga, where Hexen II is the third entry of the series. Legendary John Romero, the co-founder of id Software, was involved in the design of the game, which was initially going to be called Hecatomb. When Romero left the company, Activision, that had the rights for the distribution of the game, pressured Raven Software to divide it into two parts: they became Hexen II and Heretic II.

Read More

Pools of Darkness

Pools of Darkness

Author: Gustavo - Published: 29 May 2020, 6:35 pm

Pools of Darkness is an RPG game published and developed by Strategic Simulations Inc. The title was released in 1991 for DOS, 1992 on Amiga and Mac, and in 1993 for NEC PC-9801.

Pools of Darkness is the third and last installment of the Pool of Radiance series started in 1988, probably the most famous saga of the SSI "Gold Box" collection, that includes also Buck Rogers and the Krynn series.

The game uses the Dungeons & Dragons Campaign Setting of Forgotten Realms. The history is initially set in the city of Phian. While the current council is on a diplomatic mission with the protagonists, an evil god called Bane takes over the land of Faerun. Furious at the success of the main characters in the previous entries, Bane rips the cities from the ground and covers them with a mantle of darkness and several storms. The player's goal is to finish off both the tyrant and his lieutenants, to bring peace and light back to the city.

Read More

Civilization II: Test of Time

Civilization II: Test of Time

Author: GN Team - Published: 27 May 2020, 11:16 pm

Civilization II: Test of Time is an enhanced version of Civilization II, created by MPS Labs and released in 1999 for PC.

As we know, the first Sid Meier's Civilization, the turn-based strategy game created by Sid Meier and Bruce Shelley, was a huge success. The series saw a sequel in 1996, with Sid Meier's Civilization II (not mentioning the spin-off Sid Meier's Colonization, released in 1994). Civ II, faithful to the formula, but with improved isometric graphics, compared to the top-down 2D view of the first title, was again a hit. However, in 1999, the situation was not so good for MicroProse. After several legal issues, Activision released its own "Civ-style" game called Civilization: Call to Power, while Civilization 3 was not on the radar yet. So MPS decided to create this extended version of the original Civilization II, compatible with the new 32-bit Windows and, most importantly, enriched with several unique scenarios.

Read More