Retro games, abandonware, freeware and classic games for PC and Mac
Author: GN Team - Published: 14 December 2018, 8:31 pm
TV Sports Basketball is the second game in the tv-style sports simulations series created by Cinemaware.
The game was created for the Amiga and then ported to MS-DOS. Following the example of TV Sports: Football, released one year before, Basketball adopts the same style, with different camera angles, change of view depending on the ball's position, cutscenes, crowd sounds, announcer's previews, and more. It's really like watching a basketball match on TV.
But it's not just about the presentation and atmosphere. TV Sports Basketball is one of the best sports games made for the Amiga, with plenty of stats, available moves, and options. You can decide to control your favorite player or follow the one with the ball. Choosing when to pass or shoot is fundamental because the defense will try to block or steal the ball. You will have to decide the best times to substitute players because sometimes players from the bench will allow you to win, just like in real life. You can edit all your athlete's attributes and create your custom teams. Stats influence the performance, for example, the shoots' accuracy, but there is just enough randomness to make things fun and challenging.
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Author: GN Team - Published: 8 December 2018, 2:44 am
The Lost Vikings is a puzzle platformer created by Silicon & Synapse (former name of Blizzard Entertainment) and published by Interplay in 1993. It was released for SNES, Genesis, DOS, and Amiga.
Designed by Ronald Millar, the game puts you in control of three Vikings: Eric the Swift, Olaf the Stout, and Baleog the Fierce. Each of them has his abilities, and you will have to combine them, controlling each character in turn, to solve the puzzles. You can, for example, use Olaf's shield to defend your heroes from attacks, while Baleog activates a switch firing an arrow with his bow. If you have played Trine, you know what I mean. Just like the popular Frozenbyte's success, even if the game seems a classic side-view 2D platformer, The Lost Vikings is, in fact, a puzzler. Completing the game will require recurring characters switches and good problem-solving skills.
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Author: GN Team - Published: 2 December 2018, 10:02 pm
Harpoon is a naval wargame created by Three-Sixty Pacific and published for MS-DOS in 1989, then ported to Amiga and Macintosh in 1990.
Former naval officer Larry Bond took inspiration from a real military simulation called NAVTAG to design a board game called Harpoon in 1980. In the game, you can choose to be a commander of either the Soviet or NATO forces in one of the several war scenarios, and employ more than 100 real weapons and pieces of equipment.
The board game became very popular and the author himself, together with Tom Clancy, used it to test the naval battles of The Hunt for Red October and later Red Storm Rising, a book that the two wrote together.
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Author: GN Team - Published: 24 November 2018, 4:25 pm
The Abbey of Crime Extensum is the 2016 remake of the 1987 ZX Spectrum game "La abadía del crimen" by Paco Menéndez and Juan Delcán.
This free adventure was developed by a Spanish team of fans of the original game: coding was made by Manuel Pazos, and the graphics by Daniel Celemín. It was released in 2016 on the official website and Steam.
La Abadia del Crimen (or "abbey of crime") was a game inspired by Umberto Eco's novel and Jean-Jaques Annaud's film "The Name of the Rose". Unfortunately, the original makers never got the rights to use the novel's title, so they had to release the game with a different name. Despite this, the plot of the game, the characters, and the locations are exactly the ones of the movie.
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Author: GN Team - Published: 20 November 2018, 2:05 am
SimTower: The Vertical Empire is a simulation game developed by Japanese company OpenBook and published by Maxis in 1994 for Windows 3.x and Macintosh.
The game was initially developed by a young Japanese programmer called Yoot Saito, who released the game in Japan with the title "The Tower". Will Wright (creator of SimCity) discovered this innovative simulation and convinced Maxis to contact Saito, in order to release the game outside of Japan. That's how The Tower became Sim Tower.
Like the other open-ended "sims" by Maxis, the goal is to build and make a profit, in this case, the goal is to build a skyscraper. You can add apartments, restaurants, offices, elevators, and more. As long as the tower advances in level, additional facilities become available. As usual, random events can ruin your plans. In Sim Tower, you can receive a phone call from terrorists that have placed a bomb in the tower. Who knew Die Hard was popular in Japan too?
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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.
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