Tag Archives: adventure

Castle Master, Amstrad CPC

Castle Master is a first-person 3D adventure game set in a haunted castle, where the aim is to destroy spirits before they overwhelm you. The game uses the famous Freescape engine, which was an early 3D engine for creating polygonal environments. It was developed by Incentive Software and first published by Domark in 1990.

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The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, GameCube

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess was developed and published by Nintendo for the GameCube and Wii in 2006 and is an unusual, beautifully-produced game with stunning visuals and evocative gameplay. It was the final first-party release from Nintendo for the GameCube.

Twilight Princess features involving, varied, and ever-evolving gameplay, with a more mature-looking Link in the title role (possibly in response to criticism of its predecessor, 2002’s The Wind Waker, due to its cartoony, cel-shaded graphics). The story involves Link trying to stop Hyrule from being engulfed by a corrupt parallel dimension called The Twilight Realm.

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The Kristal, Amiga

The Kristal is an obscure British adventure game based on an un-produced theatre play written in 1976 (called “The Kristal of Konos“), developed by Fissionchip Software and published by Addictive Games in Europe and Cinemaware in North America. The fact that Cinemaware picked up The Kristal for distribution in the US and Canada is a surprise in itself, as that kind of thing didn’t happen very often back in 1989 when this game was first released.

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Pokémon Black Version 2, Nintendo DS

Pokémon Black Version 2 is a direct sequel to Pokémon Black Version (and White Version 2 is a direct sequel to White Version), and was released for the Nintendo DS in 2012 by The Pokémon Company. It was again developed by Game Freak, and takes place once more in the Unova region.

The story this time is set two years after the events of Black and White and the criminal organisation Team Plasma have returned as ‘Neo Team Plasma‘, and the player must once again thwart their plans to rule the world.

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Pokémon Black Version, Nintendo DS [Part 2]

What makes this game really special, though, are the new features and the incredible density of content. Few games have the sheer level of detail as Pokémon Black and White do.

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Pokémon Black Version, Nintendo DS [Part 1]

Released in 2010 for the Nintendo DS, Pokémon Black and White are fifth generation Pokémon games that take place in the Unova region. They were once again developed by Game Freak and published by The Pokémon Company. I tossed a coin and chose to play Black Version for this playthrough, which is what these screenshots are from.

I took over twenty thousand grabs while playing this game and whittled them down to a thousand, then to 400 of the best shots. And because I’ve got quite a bit to say about Pokémon Black Version I decided to split this article into two parts.

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Nightshade, Commodore 64

The Commodore 64 conversion of Nightshade was coded by Shahid Ahmad and published by Firebird in 1986. It is a reasonable, if slower, version of the original game from Ultimate. What is more interesting, though, is the enhanced version, released by Nostalgia in 2016.

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Nightshade, MSX

The MSX conversion of Nightshade was first published by Ultimate Play the Game in 1985. It is identical to the original Spectrum version, barring a few small differences.

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Nightshade, Amstrad CPC

The Amstrad CPC conversion of Ultimate‘s Nightshade was first released in 1985. While it does benefit from some extra colours in the sprites and backgrounds, it does lack colour overall. Unlike the Spectrum original the buildings are not colour-coded, and the player character (a unnamed knight) doesn’t change colour depending on his infection level, which is slightly disappointing. The Amstrad version does look a bit weird, in terms of its use of colour. Filmation games usually look better on the Amstrad, but not in this case; it looks a bit jaundiced with its dominant yellow and orange colour scheme.

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Nightshade, BBC Micro

The BBC version of Ultimate‘s classic Nightshade is very good. It runs pretty quickly (most of the time) and the controls are responsive, which is all you can hope for in the game like this.

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