Developed and published by Ocean Software for the NES in 1992, The Addams Family is a cute and spooky platform game based on the 1991 Paramount film of the same name, directed by Barry Sonnenfeld.
The NES version follows much of the standard Ocean template for most of the game and it very much has its own look and visual style, and a few unique features of its own.
Originating on the Amstrad CPC, Spindizzy is a genius piece of coding and game design. It is an isometric exploration game, where you play as a spinning gyroscope (called GERALD) trying to collect gems across a large map of screens. It was designed by Paul Shirley, and the Spectrum port was handled by Phil Churchyard. Spindizzy on the Spectrum was published by Electric Dreams in 1986.
Anteform is a tiny, futuristic RPG, written for the PICO-8 development platform, and was first released in 2019. It uses the same game engine as Minima and was written by the same guy, Feneric (aka Eric W. Brown). It’ll run on Windows, Mac, Linux and Raspberry Pi.
Written for the PICO-8 development platform and first released in 2018, Minima is a miniature version of the early Ultima games and runs on Windows, Mac, Linux and Raspberry Pi. It’s a tiny RPG with exploration, a scrolling overworld, first-person dungeon crawling, turn-based combat and movement, and NPCs to talk to.
Another superb tribute to Ultimate‘s isometric adventures, this one called Melkhior’s Mansion. It was created by BitGlint Games and could be described as an “isometric Atic Atac“, although there is definitely more to it than that.
Released in 2015 by author Adam Strange, Viva Mortis is a brilliant tribute to the classic isometric Ultimate games.
Wycheweald is a rare thing on the ZX Spectrum – an actual Role-Playing Game, with a first-person viewpoint and turn-based combat. It was created by Red Zebra and first released in 2023. And, while it is a little slow to play, it is well presented and quite absorbing. That is: if you like these kinds of esoteric RPGs. Which I do! 🙂
Developed by Strategic Simulations, Inc., Pool of Radiance is a ground-breaking AD&D RPG for 8-bit computers. It was first released in June 1988, in America, and later published in Europe by US Gold, and in Japan by Pony Canyon.
This adaptation of George A. Romero‘s 2005 film, Land of the Dead, was developed by Brainbox Games and published by Groove Games.
Road To Fiddler’s Green was released not long after the film came out, and it utterly fails to capture any of the ‘fun’ of the film, or the visual style of it.
Continue reading Land of the Dead: Road To Fiddler’s Green, XBox
The PlayStation version of Konami‘s Azure Dreams is an excellent level-grinder, and this Game Boy Color version is also very good, but differs somewhat from the original.
It still takes place in the provincial city of Monsbaiya, and you are still a Monster Hunter. Whereas the PlayStation version uses a 3D isometric viewpoint, this one instead goes for an overhead, 2D view. With titchy characters and intricately-detailed locations rendered as flat pixel art.
