A very good 1989 homebrew conversion of Cinemaware‘s classic Defender of the Crown, programmed by The Cat, from Hungary.
Tag Archives: 1989
Little Ninja Brothers, NES
Little Ninja Brothers is the second game in the “Super Chinese” series* and the predecessor of Super Ninja Boy on the SNES. It was developed and published by Culture Brain in Japan in 1989. North America got it in 1990 and Europe in 1991.
It is an excellent one or two-player level-grinding RPG, with random battles, but instead of turn-based combat you get real time beat ’em up action instead, and works very well.
Boxxle, Game Boy
Boxxle is the Game Boy conversion of the classic box-shifting game, Sokoban. It was released in Japan in 1989 and in Europe and North America in 1990.
Phobia, Commodore 64
I hate this game so much! 🙂 Phobia is one of the most difficult and unfair side-scrolling shooters ever made, and the surprising thing is: it’s a Tony Crowther game. I expected more from such a talented coder…
Qix, PC
The 1989 PC MS-DOS conversion of Taito‘s classic arcade game Qix was programmed by the Alien Technology Group and is excruciatingly difficult. At least: that’s what I found.
Ghouls ‘N Ghosts, Commodore 64
The Commodore 64 conversion of Ghouls ‘N Ghosts is surprisingly good, even though everything in it looks a bit tiny.
H.A.T.E., ZX Spectrum
Costa Panayi‘s final game on the ZX Spectrum was published by Gremlin Graphics in 1989. It is an isometric shoot ’em up in the mould of Zaxxon, and it is technically very impressive.
Total Eclipse, Amiga
The third Freescape game, Total Eclipse, was released on 8-bit home computers first (ZX Spectrum, C64 and Amstrad CPC), and later appeared on 16-bit machines, including this excellent Amiga conversion, published by Domark in 1989.
Xenon 2: Megablast, Amiga
This 1989 shooter was designed by The Bitmap Brothers but programmed by The Assembly Line – a collaboration that resulted in one of the best-remembered Bitmap Brothers‘ games.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure, PC
This excellent LucasArts point-and-click adventure game was first released in 1989 (to coincide with the film of the same name) and preceded the classic Fate of Atlantis by three years.
I have to admit that this one passed me by until now, and I’m still recovering from the shock of discovering a new SCUMM adventure from the same core team who gave us Fate of Atlantis, Day of the Tentacle, Monkey Island, and Sam & Max…
Continue reading Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure, PC
The King of Grabs 