The Sega Master System version of Ultima IV was ported and published by Sega in 1990. It is a faithful adaptation of Richard Garriott‘s classic RPG that uses a menu system instead of keyboard commands, and it plays very well.
Continue reading Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar, Sega Master System
Ultima: Quest of the Avatar on the NES/Famicom was developed by FCI and published by Pony Canyon in 1990. It is the most different Ultima IV port available – in relation to the original – and has been altered to play more like a classic JRPG. Which is not a bad thing. In fact: some may even prefer this over the original.
The sequel to Castle Master continues where the first game left off: you’re still trapped inside Eternity Castle and must escape to finally complete your quest.
Castle Master II: The Crypt was the final Freescape game to be released for the Spectrum (or any system it found its way on to), and was only made available as a double pack with the original Castle Master, not long after the first Castle Master‘s release in 1990. It was again developed by Incentive Software/Major Developments and published by Domark.
I’ve written about a variety of Castle Master versions on this website (Amiga, PC, Amstrad CPC, and even Commodore 16/Plus4), but I haven’t yet covered the original ZX Spectrum version, which was developed by Major Developments (an internal team at Incentive Software) and published by Domark in 1990.
Defender II was programmed by Jeff Minter of Llamasoft and published by Arc Developments in 1990. It is a home computer-only sequel to Williams Electronics‘ classic arcade game, Defender. The game includes a version of the original Defender, and its sequel, Stargate – as well as Minter‘s own Defender II.
Mindroll is a 16-bit conversion of Stavros Fasoulas‘ classic Commodore 64 ball-rolling maze game, Quedex. It was converted by Silent Software and published in North America for the Amiga and PC by Epyx in 1990. As far as I know it wasn’t released in the UK or Europe, which is strange considering that the game originated there.
ActRaiser is an interesting Japanese fantasy action game that was developed by Quintet and published by Enix on the Super Nintendo in 1990. It has side-scrolling, platform-based hack-and-slash sections, with an interesting overhead ‘God game’ component.
Thunder Force III is a shoot ’em up developed and published by Techno Soft for the Sega Megadrive in 1990. It drops the overhead view stages from the first and second games and is entirely side-scrolling, which personally I find a little disappointing.
This 1990 arcade game from Konami plays fast and loose with the storyline, locations and situations from James Cameron‘s famous film, Aliens, but is still reasonably enjoyable to play.
The King of Grabs 