Retro games, abandonware, freeware and classic games for PC and Mac
Author: Adam - Published: 15 December 2020, 8:25 pm
Sensible Golf is a sports game created by Sensible Software, released in 1994 for Amiga, DOS, and Windows 3.x.
Sensible Golf is a 2D golf game built around the Cannon Fodder engine. The game also relies on some of the game models used for Sensible Soccer, another title created by the same developer. The game engine was not built for a sports sim, so for sure, it has some limitations for a golfing game. Clearly it's more an arcade golfing title instead of a simulation.
Sensible Golf comes with 4 difficulty levels and 25 courses. It covers 72 holes in total; however, the layout was deemed less than realistic for most players. Many courses felt very similar in design and challenge, making Sensible Golf a commercial failure. The mechanics are straightforward. All you had to do is select the direction you want to hit towards and the overall power. However, the engine didn’t translate well to a 2D golf gameplay. It was tough to put off a ball on the green; it was impossible to get a perfect score in many cases. It was more about luck rather than developing a skill for it.
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Author: Adam - Published: 15 December 2020, 3:42 pm
1830: Railroads & Robber Barons is a conversion of a very popular game with the same name created by Avalon Hill. The game was developed by SimTex and released in 1995 for MS-DOS.
What makes this game unique is that it allows you to understand railroad economics and achieve success. You either win by earning a specific amount of money, or the AI goes bankrupt. Of course, you can easily lose if you don’t spend your money wisely and end up dealing with bankruptcy.
The game is created by a (now defunct) developer named Simtex. The company, created by Steve Barcia in 1988, was focused on creating a turn-based strategy game. Some of their best titles are Master of Orion and Master of Magic. 1830: Railroads & Robber Barons was a different game for them because it was focused more on the macroeconomic space rather than being a railroad tycoon title.
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Author: Gustavo - Published: 13 December 2020, 6:07 pm
Project Nomad is a space exploration game developed by Intense! Interactive and published by GameTek in 1993.
I'm going to be straightforward about this, I don't know what to think about Nomad. On the one hand, I see the game in theory, a mix of genres tied together with a complex and interesting story that honors other adventures of the same genre, with deep characters and innovative designs. Something like Oblivion in its time. On the other hand, I also see a title that aged badly. The mechanics of the game are very demanding and unfriendly, the combination of genres is simply confusing and there is a recycling of characters that seem to be made to become memes. But this is a title with many personalities that we will revisit for better or worst.
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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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