Tag Archives: Iconic

The Hobbit, PC

The 1983 MS-DOS version of Beam Software‘s classic text adventure, The Hobbit, allows you to choose between 40 or 80 column display for the text parser, and whether you want to play the game with pictures or not.

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Maniac Mansion, NES/Famicom

The NES/Famicom version of Maniac Mansion was developed and published by Jaleco in 1990 and is still worth playing today. It’s a fine port of a great game and translates well enough to Nintendo‘s machine that it arguably plays even better than the C64 original (although many will cry “Sacrilege!” to that).

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Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!, NES/Famicom

Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! was developed by Nintendo R&D3 and was first published by Nintendo in 1987. It is considered by many to be one of the greatest boxing video games ever made, with well-animated cartoon-style characters and an intuitive and responsive control system.

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WipEout 2097, PlayStation

The 1996 sequel to the original WipEout, WipEout 2097 was released as WipEout XL in North America and Japan, but I’m sticking with the name that the developers intended – not what the US marketing dingbats decided they would call it… WipEout 2097 was not initially intended to be a sequel to WipEout, but an add-on pack, but this was later changed as the game approached its release date.

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WipEout, PlayStation

Developed and published by Psygnosis in 1995, WipEout is a futuristic racing game, set in the year 2052, where you compete in an Anti-Gravity (AG) Racing League piloting dart-like vehicles that float above the ground and zip around tortuously-designed race tracks against similar opposition.

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Cobra, Commodore 64

The 1986 Commodore 64 version of Cobra – based on the Sylvester Stallone film of the same name – is infamous for its sheer awfulness. It is based on the more successful ZX Spectrum game, designed and programmed by the late Jonathan Smith, but has lost a great deal in translation to the C64.

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Knight Lore MSX2 Remake, MSX

This 2009 MSX2 remake of the classic Knight Lore was created by Manuel Pazos and Daniel Celemin of Retroworks, and it is a fun addition to the ever-growing number of Ultimate remakes on the internet. The same guys who made this also made the MSX2 remake of Alien 8, which I quite liked.

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Katamari Damacy, PlayStation 2

Katamari Damacy – meaning “clump spirit” – is a third-person action game that involves rolling-up items onto a ball called a ‘Katamari‘. You play as ‘The Prince‘ – a small, green boy who is the son of ‘The King of All Cosmos‘ and who pushes the Katamari around the landscape, making items stick to it, which in turn makes it grow in size. The aim of the game is roll-up a Katamari of a certain size in each of the game’s various levels.

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Star Fox 64, Nintendo 64

Star Fox 64 – also known as “Lylat Wars” in PAL regions – is the sequel to the classic Star Fox on the Super Nintendo. It was developed and published by Nintendo and first released in 1997. The game was critically and commercially successful, selling over four million physical copies, making it one of the best-selling games on the Nintendo 64.

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