Tag Archives: action

Castle Master, ZX Spectrum

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.

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Rastan, Arcade

Rastan – also known as “Rastan Saga” in Japan – is a scrolling hack and slash arcade game developed and manufactured by Taito in 1987. It features a barbarian warrior who must embark on a quest to slay an evil dragon.

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Alex Rider: Stormbreaker, Game Boy Advance

Alex Rider: Stormbreaker is an isometric action/stealth/fighting game, based on the 2006 film Stormbreaker, where you play as teenage spy Alex Rider who is recruited by MI6 to investigate a shady individual called Herod Sayle. The game was created by Razorback Developments and published by THQ in the same year as the release of the film.

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Operation Thunderbolt, Arcade

Operation Thunderbolt is the sequel to the classic 1987 arcade game Operation Wolf. It was developed by Taito and first released in 1988, and is a first-person, simultaneous two-player shoot ’em up that uses cabinet-mounted positional gun controllers to shoot at the screen.

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Operation Wolf, Atari ST

Taito‘s classic mounted gun arcade shooter, Operation Wolf, was ported to the Atari ST and Amiga by Ocean Software and first published in 1988. At the time it reviewed quite well, but my feeling has always been that it was never really any good to begin with. I had an Atari ST back in 1988 and remember not being that impressed with the game, even though magazines at the time were generally praising it.

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Operation Wolf, Amiga

The 1988 Amiga conversion of Taito‘s classic gun-based arcade game, Operation Wolf, was developed by Ocean Software and was reasonably well recieved at the time of release, but the fact is: it hasn’t stood the test of time that well, and it isn’t anywhere near as good as the original reviews made out. It’s just merely okay.

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Planet of the Apes, Game Boy Advance

The Game Boy Advance version of Planet of the Apes is somewhat different, visually, to the Game Boy Color version, although it is basically the same game underneath. Graphically, the GBA version goes for a “digitised”, more realistic look, which I don’t think is as appealing as the pure 2D drawn look of the GBC version. It makes the game look more like an early ’90s Amiga game, which I think dates it significantly.

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Planet of the Apes, Game Boy Color

Planet of the Apes for the Game Boy Color was developed by Torus Games/Visiware and was first published by Ubisoft in 2001. It is based on the 1968 film of the same name, which in turn was based on the 1963 book by Pierre Boulle. Actually, to be more accurate, the game follows the plot of the 1970 sequel, Beneath the Planet of the Apes, more closely than it does the first film, where Brent (played by James Franciscus) crash-lands on a post-apocalyptic Earth on a rescue mission to find Taylor (Charlton Heston), and eventually finds himself held prisoner in an underground city run by telepathic humans.

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Planet of the Apes, PlayStation

The PlayStation version of Planet of the Apes was developed by French company Visiware and published by Ubisoft via Fox Interactive in 2002. The game was also released for Windows, and that version was released the previous year in 2001. It was actually the first video game ever to be based on the Planet of the Apes franchise. Although it is part of the same family of releases as the Game Boy Advance and Game Boy Color versions, it is a third-person 3D game and not a 2D platform game, like the handheld versions.

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Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, PC

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is the fourth game in the Deus Ex series and a direct sequel to Deus Ex: Human Revolution. It was developed by Eidos-Montréal and published by Square Enix Europe in 2016. You once again play as augmented super-spy Adam Jensen and the story is set two years after Human Revolution.

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