Tag Archives: adventure

Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness, GameCube

Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness is the successor to Pokémon Colosseum and is another third-generation spin-off from the main Pokémon series. It was developed by Genius Sonority and published by The Pokémon Company exclusively for the Nintendo GameCube in 2005.

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Pokémon Colosseum, GameCube

Pokémon Colosseum was developed by Genius Sonority and published by The Pokémon Company in 2003 in Japan and 2004 everywhere else. It is not considered part of the main Pokémon series, but is a third-generation spin-off made exclusively for the Nintendo GameCube.

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Pokémon Gold Version, Game Boy Color

Pokémon Gold and Silver Versions were developed by Game Freak and published by Nintendo in 1999 in Japan and 2000 everywhere else. They are ‘second generation’ Pokémon games and were released simultaneously as twin titles, as has become the norm with Pokémon games.

These were the first proper, full-colour Pokémon games, with graphics that have been created to take advantage of the Game Boy Color‘s extended palette (Pokémon Yellow, which preceded this game, didn’t really do that; the graphics were simply colourised from the black and white originals). And you can tell from the very beginning that the visuals in Gold/Silver are a step-up from what we saw previously.

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Golvellius: Valley of Doom, Sega Master System

Developed by Compile and originally released for the MSX in 1987 Golvellius was converted to the Master System by Sega in 1988. It is an action RPG with overhead, flick-screen exploration, Zelda-like sword-based combat and scrolling sections through caves.

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Pokémon Yellow Version, Game Boy Color

Pokémon Yellow (aka Pokémon Yellow Version: Special Pikachu Edition) is a remake of Pokémon Red/Blue/Green that was released for the Game Boy Colour in 1998.

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Pokémon Red Version, Game Boy

Pokémon Red Version was the very first Pokémon game and it was released for the original black and white Game Boy in 1996.

Like all subsequent Pokémon games it came as a pair of releases, so that players could have Pokémon exclusive to their version of the game and so that trading was required between versions – if you wanted to catch every single available Pokémon. Some might view that as cynical, but it wasn’t really intended to make people buy both versions, just to encourage link-up play and trading between them. It does however mean that you can’t catch all the available Pokémon if you only have one version of the game, and have no way of trading with someone else who has the other version.

In Japan, Pokémon Red (originally titled Pocket Monsters: Red) was accompanied by Pokémon Green (Pocket Monsters: Green), but in North America and Europe Pokémon Red was accompanied by Pokémon Blue, which is basically a remake of Green.

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Astroclone, ZX Spectrum

This 1985 release from Hewson Consultants is basically a futuristic variation of the classic Avalon/Dragontorc games by Steve Turner. It uses similar presentation and game mechanics to those games, with a central character moving around pseudo 3D rooms, exploring and solving puzzles.

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Defenders of Oasis, Game Gear

Not to be confused with Beyond Oasis on the Sega Megadrive, Defenders of Oasis is a turn-based Role-Playing Game for the Game Gear that is based on the “One Thousand and One Nights” middle-eastern folk tales, also known as “Arabian Nights“. It was developed and published by Sega in 1992.

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The Lord of the Rings, ZX Spectrum

Developed by Beam Software and published by Melbourne House in 1986, The Lord of the Rings is a text adventure game made by essentially the same team who created the classic Spectrum text adventure, The Hobbit.

Was it the first official Lord of the Rings game ever made? Possibly. There were definitely many unofficial Lord of the Rings rip-off games on the market before this, but this is arguably the first properly-licensed Lord of the Rings game for home computers.

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The Dizzy adventure series

The Dizzy adventures are well-known and much-loved on the ZX Spectrum. Created by The Oliver Twins, they feature an anthropomorphic egg called Dizzy who somersaults when he jumps and solves item-based puzzles, often in an attempt to rescue his friends, the “yolkfolk“.

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