Retro games, abandonware, freeware and classic games for PC and Mac
Author: Gustavo - Published: 10 June 2020, 11:07 pm
Spear of Destiny is a first-person shooter developed by id Software in 1992 for DOS. Since this title was not released as shareware, id Software gave the publishing rights to FormGen.
The title was designed by id Software, one of the most influential video game companies known for creating classics such as Doom and Quake. Spear of Destiny is a direct prequel to Wolfenstein 3D, which was developed a few months earlier. The creation of this game counted with Tom Hall and John Romero as directors and designers, two of the company's co-founders, and also responsible for the previous release.
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Author: GN Team - Published: 9 June 2020, 3:09 pm
Indianapolis 500: The Simulation is a racing sim created by Papyrus Design and published by Electronic Arts at the end of 1989 for PC and Amiga.
The game was designed and programmed by David Kaemmer. At the time of its release, it represented state-of-the-art 3D racing simulations. It adopts 3D polygon graphics (simple polygons, so no texture-map) and features realistic behavior of the vehicles, especially for the crashes, and replays with different camera angles. It has only one circuit (the famous Indianapolis one), but this didn't prevent the game from becoming extremely popular. Amiga users had to buy an accelerator to have decent FPS, but the game was playable even on an Amiga 500. For the first time, many users had the chance to drive their cars in 3D, change the settings of the vehicles, and see them responding realistically. It was also amusing to generate massive crashes and watch the replays.
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Author: Gustavo - Published: 7 June 2020, 10:41 pm
Heroes of Might and Magic II: The Succession Wars is a tactical turn-based strategy game developed by New World Computing. It was published by The 3DO Company in 1996. Although the title was initially intended for DOS, it also had its versions in Windows and Mac OS.
The person in charge of bringing this game to life was the American director, designer, and producer Jon Van Caneghem, who also founded the company. The game is the sequel to Heroes of Might and Magic and, despite being unrelated, it is set in the same universe as the Might and Magic saga.
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Author: GN Team - Published: 7 June 2020, 2:05 pm
No One Lives Forever 2 is a first-person shooter with stealth elements created by Monolith and published by Sierra in 2002 for PC and Macintosh.
As you may imagine, NOLF2 is the sequel to No One Lives Forever, which was released 2 years before. For the ones that don't know what I'm talking about, it's an action-shooter set during the cold war, with a sexy and smart Scottish spy called Cate Archer as the hero. The title designed by Craig Hubbard takes inspiration from 007 films, but also from Austin Powers, with its humor, vivacious colors, and '60s music. But Cate is a real hero, like Lara Croft, and this time she will have to face ninjas in Japan and a squad of super soldiers in Siberia and Antarctica, plus of course a lot of Russian spies. At her disposal, she will have a lot of different weapons and disguised gadgets, as you can expect from a 007 movie.
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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.
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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.
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