Retro games, abandonware, freeware and classic games for PC and Mac
Author: GN Team - Published: 16 November 2018, 8:16 pm
Dragonflight is a fantasy RPG created by Thalion Software and released in 1990 for the Atari ST and Amiga, with a DOS conversion published in 1991.
Erik Simon wrote the game concept, and Udo Fischer started developing it as a private project before the two friends decided to found Thalion Software. The game was very ambitious, and it took three years to complete it finally.
Inspired by the Ultima series, Dragonflight offers a vast world to explore and a complex storyline. Exploration happens from a top-down view, but the game switches to a pseudo-3D view (like Dungeon Master) when you are underground. You can visit cities, complete side quests, meet NPC, learn magic recipes, and more. The gameplay is totally non-linear. Technically excellent, probably the only downside of Dragonflight is its release date. Thalion's RPG would have been a great success if it had been published two years before, but in 1990, unfortunately, it already looked a bit outdated. Nevertheless, if you liked the Amberstar series (which Dragonflight is considered the precursor), you really have to try it.
Read More
Author: GN Team - Published: 16 November 2018, 2:00 am
Space Crusade is a computer adaptation of the 1990 Games Workshop boardgame set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. The video game was created by Gremlin Graphics and released in 1992 for the Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64, and other platforms.
It's a squad management turn-based game set in space, where the player controls a team of five marines fighting against aliens. Each mission has a different goal, but in most cases, you have to terminate all the aliens. Before starting you can select one of the three available factions - Blood Anges, Imperial Fists, Ultra Marines - while the computer always controls the aliens.
Read More
Author: GN Team - Published: 12 November 2018, 2:14 am
No Second Prize is a superbike racing sim for Amiga and Atari ST created by Thalion Software and released in 1992.
Designed by Erik Simon, the game features fast 3D graphics based on filled polygons, thanks to the routines written by the excellent programmer Chris Jungen. The game was running smoothly even on a standard Amiga 500.
The game allows you to choose between 6 different races and 20 different tracks. One of the game's best features is the mouse-based control that allows exact movements of the motorcycle with extreme simplicity.
Read More
Author: GN Team - Published: 9 November 2018, 9:40 pm
Ambermoon is the second game of the never-finished Amber trilogy created by the German studio Thalion and started with Amberstar.
Designed by Karsten Köper and Erik Simon, the game was published in 1993. Like Lionheart, released one year before, Ambermoon was an Amiga exclusive. The studio pushed the Amiga hardware to its limits, using the top-notch coding skills of the programmers Jurie Horneman and Michael Bittner to achieve something almost impossible: a real-time 3D engine with texture mapping running smoothly on an unexpanded Amiga. The world exploration still happens in a top-down view, but with colorful and detailed graphics that constitutes a visible improvement compared to Amberstar or Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny and also Ultima VI: The False Prophet. However, the real innovation was inside dungeons: while Amberstar was switching to a pseudo 3d first-person perspective (like Dungeon Master), Ambermoon puts the player in a real 3D environment. The most similar thing to Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss you can see on an Amiga.
Read More
Author: GN Team - Published: 2 November 2018, 9:44 pm
Neuromancer is a graphic adventure created for the C64 by Interplay, loosely based on the cyberpunk novel by William Gibson.
The game was programmed and designed by Troy A. Miles with the help of other famous names such as Michael A. Stackpole (Wasteland, Star Trek: 25th Anniversary, The Bard's Tale III) and Brian Fargo, founder of Interplay.
The writers made an excellent job creating a story set in the same universe of the sci-fi novel, but different enough to make it interesting for the ones that already know the book. You will have the chance to visit Chiba City and meet several characters created by Gibson. Cyberspace combat and database hacking are also part of the game. In addition to the more traditional adventure mode, Neuromancer has a 3D grid representation of the cyberspace. Not mentioning some RPG elements, like "skill chips" that can be used to improve the main character's skills.
Read More
Author: GN Team - Published: 20 October 2018, 1:02 am
Midwinter is a first-person action-adventure game with strategy elements created by Mike Singleton for Maelstrom Games. It was published for Atari ST and PC in 1989 and later ported to Amiga in 1990.
The game is set in a post-apocalyptic world entirely covered by snow. The player initially controls Captain John Stark (a future Stark from Winterfell?), who has to protect the island of Midwinter from the invasion of the evil General Masters' forces. The captain must recruit several people to help him organize a guerrilla army strong enough to stop the enemy.
Read More