Tag Archives: Cult Hit

The Great Escape, ZX Spectrum

Denton Designs made this smart little POW game for Ocean Software in 1986. It basically re-enacts the risky life of being a Prisoner of War during the Second World War, with a planned escape being top of the list of things to do, and is loosely-based on the 1963 film starring Steve McQueen.

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Raid on Bungeling Bay, Commodore 64

Raid on Bungeling Bay was Will Wright‘s first ever video game and it was released for the Commodore 64 by Brøderbund in 1984. Will Wright – in case you didn’t know – was a co-founder of Maxis and also designer of SimCity and The Sims.

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Rolling Thunder, Arcade

Rolling Thunder is a side-scrolling arcade action game, developed and manufactured by Namco in 1986.

You take control of Codename “Albatross” – a highly-agile secret agent and a member of the “Rolling Thunder” espionage unit. Your mission is to rescue your partner, Leila Blitz, from a secret society called “Geldra”, and who are holding her against her will somewhere in New York City.

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Tales of Phantasia, Game Boy Advance

This 2003 remake of Namco‘s SNES classic Tales of Phantasia was the first time the game had been officially translated into English.

While much of the game remains the same, there are a few differences.

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Tales of Phantasia, Super Nintendo

Tales of Phantasia is an RPG developed by Wolf Team, and first published for the Super Nintendo by Namco in 1995. As JRPGs go, it is quite memorable.

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Dragon Quest VI, Super Nintendo

Dragon Quest VI: Realms of Revelation was developed by Heartbeat for Enix and released for the Super Nintendo in 1995 in Japan. It is the sixth instalment in the Dragon Quest series, if you aren’t familiar with Roman numerals.

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Dragon Quest V, Super Nintendo

First released in 1992 by Enix, Dragon Quest V (five – or, to give the game its full title: Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride) is another fun-to-play JRPG that is simple but engaging, and also contains enough detail and surprises to feel worthwhile.

It was the first Dragon Quest game released for the Super Nintendo and sold over three million copies in Japan.

Like its successor, Dragon Quest VI, it wasn’t officially released in the West until decades later, but English fan translation patches for the game do exist and that is what I’m showing here.

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Final Fantasy VI Advance, Game Boy Advance

Final Fantasy VI Advance was released in Japan in 2006, and 2007 in English language territories. It’s a remake of the Super Nintendo original, developed by a Japanese company called Tose.

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Final Fantasy VI, Super Nintendo

Final Fantasy VI (six) is where the series started to move away from its ‘cute’ roots and into darker story-telling territory, foreshadowing the distant Final Fantasy VII. It was initially released on the Super Nintendo in 1994.

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Final Fantasy V Advance, Game Boy Advance

Final Fantasy V Advance is the third Tose-developed remake for the Game Boy Advance and was first released in 2006.

Again: it uses the same refined interface and beautifully-drawn and coloured graphics of the previous two Tose remakes and somehow manages to make the Super Nintendo original look a little drab in the process.

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