Tag Archives: combat

Ranarama, ZX Spectrum

Steve Turner‘s classic Ranarama originated on the ZX Spectrum in 1987. The game is an overhead Gauntlet derivative where you play as a frog (actually a wizard’s apprentice, called Mervyn, whose botched spell has turned him into a frog), who must fight his way through various levels of a maze, defeating warlocks and taking their runes.

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Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising, Game Boy Advance

Developed by Intelligent Systems and published by Nintendo in 2003, Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising is the sequel to Advance Wars and is a turn-based tactical strategy war game with cartoony graphics and a variety of single and multiplayer game modes.

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Miracle Warriors: Seal of the Dark Lord, Sega Master System

Miracle Warriors: Seal of the Dark Lord on the Sega Master System is a very simple turn-based RPG that looks terrible but is surprisingly absorbing when you get into it. It was developed by Kogado, initially for the PC-88, then later it was ported to the MSX, Famicom and Master System. The SMS version was first released in 1987 by Sega.

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Half-Life, PlayStation 2

This conversion of the classic PC game, Half-Life, to the PlayStation 2 was handled by Gearbox Software and it features the main single-player game, Half-Life: Decay (a cooperative multiplayer version of the main game), and a head-to-head deathmatch component that uses split screen. It was first published by Sierra On-line in 2001.

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Half-Life, PC

Half-Life is a classic first-person shooter (FPS) that is regarded as one of the best video games ever made. It was Valve‘s first game and was first published in 1998 by Sierra On-line. Half-Life came out at a time when the market was becoming saturated by FPSes, and it completely changed the way video games were made by developers – and were perceived by the general public.

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Sláine, Amstrad CPC

Developed by Creative Reality and published by Martech in 1987, Sláine is another attempt to bring a popular 2000AD comic character to life in a video game, and it is unfortunately another failed experiment.

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Mystic Ark, Super Nintendo

Developed by Produce! and published by Enix in 1995, Mystic Ark was only ever released in Japan for the Super Famicom, although an English fan translation does exist, making the game playable to Western audiences. And it is a very good RPG, well worth playing now.

Mystic Ark has been described by some as “The 7th Saga II“, and while it does share some similarities with The 7th Saga (by having a circular monster radar and also featuring some of the same monsters) it is not really a sequel as it plays quite differently.

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The 7th Saga, Super Nintendo

The 7th Saga is an obscure Japanese Role-Playing Game developed by Produce! and published by Enix for the Super Nintendo in 1993.

The story and gameplay of The 7th Saga are fairly simple – at least when compared to other SNES RPGs, like Seiken Densetsu 3 – but the game moves at a quick pace and also has a few unique features of its own that make it memorable.

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