Published by Incentive Software in 1991, Total Eclipse 2: The Sphinx Jinx is a direct follow-up to the 1988 Freescape classic, Total Eclipse.
Continue reading Total Eclipse 2: The Sphinx Jinx, ZX Spectrum
Published by Incentive Software in 1991, Total Eclipse 2: The Sphinx Jinx is a direct follow-up to the 1988 Freescape classic, Total Eclipse.
Continue reading Total Eclipse 2: The Sphinx Jinx, ZX Spectrum
The ZX Spectrum version of Total Eclipse was the first version of the game released.
Using the legendary Freescape Engine, Total Eclipse is an Egyptian-themed exploration/puzzle game set in a primitive 3D world. Primitive because it was one of the first ever games to allow games-players to explore a 3D world in this way, and it worked quite well, in spite of the low frame rate and slowdown.
Starion is a classic space combat game, written by David Webb and published by Melbourne House in 1985.
The PC MS-DOS version of Tau Ceti was coded by Derek Baker at Comtec and published by CRL Group (Thunder Mountain in North America) in 1987.
It features gaudy, four-colour, CGA graphics, but is otherwise the Tau Ceti we know and love.
The 1986 Atari ST conversion of Tau Ceti – by Ron De Santi of Comtec – is much faster than the 8-bit versions and therefore more challenging. And what a brilliant challenge it is!
John Twiddy‘s C64 conversion of Pete Cooke‘s classic space shooter is arguably even better than the Spectrum original.
Graphically it’s a little chunkier, but the extra colours make a difference.
The Acorn Archimedes conversion of Bell and Braben‘s classic Elite was written by Warren Burch and Clive Gringras and published by Hybrid Technology in 1991.
It is considered by many to be the definitive version of Elite available, although that is both a matter of taste, and also a matter of actually getting the game to run in a RISC OS environment.
Developed by Imagineer, the Nintendo Entertainment System version of Elite is pretty good – considering that the NES isn’t particularly suited to generating wireframe 3D graphics. Yes, the wireframe 3D is slow (like in all the 8-bit versions of Elite), but not to the point where it makes the game unplayable.
Developed by Mr. Micro and published by Firebird in 1988 the Atari ST version of Elite is pretty much identical to the Amiga version – in terms of graphics and gameplay.
The 16-bit versions of Bell and Braben‘s classic space trading game, Elite, are a nice step up from their 8-bit counterparts.
The Amiga and Atari ST versions are faster and more colourful versions of Elite. Both were developed by Mr. Micro and published by Firebird in 1988.