Tag Archives: influential

Eye of the Beholder, Amiga

Eye of the Beholder for the Amiga was developed by Westwood Studios and first published by SSI in 1991. I believe it came out at the same time as the MS-DOS version, so is one of the original versions. And it truly is a brilliant game.

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Dig Dug, Arcade

Dig Dug is a cute arcade digging game from Namco that was a cult hit during the early to mid-1980s. It was first distributed into arcades in 1982 and was much cloned by other game developers, and was also officially ported to many home systems of the time, including for the Atari 2600 and Mattel Intellivision (among many others).

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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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Ultima Special

Richard Garriott‘s famous Role-Playing Game series began officially in 1981 with “Ultima” for the Apple II. It was a pioneering mixture of single-player adventuring, combat and levelling, with humble beginnings, starting out on early 8-bit systems and working its way up to modern PCs in the 1990s. The Ultima series was always evolving; always innovating, and constantly proving to be a considerable influence on story-based, single-player RPGs, and the fantasy adventure game market in general.

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Ultima IX: Ascension, PC

Ultima IX: Ascension is the ninth and final instalment of the core Ultima series and was developed by Origin Systems and published for Windows-based PCs by Electronic Arts in 1999. It was the first Ultima game to use polygonal rendering in a full 3D environment.

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Ultima VIII: Pagan, PC

Ultima VIII: Pagan is the eighth entry in the Ultima series and was developed and published by Origin Systems for PC MS-DOS in 1994. Like its predecessor (The Black Gate), Pagan goes for a darker, more mature tone than most of the previous Ultima games, and it is also more puzzle and action-oriented.

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Ultima VII Part Two: Serpent Isle, PC

Serpent Isle is an oddity in the Ultima series in that it is a direct sequel to the previous game – Ultima VII: The Black Gate – which uses the same game engine, but with a few enhancements. It was published by Origin Systems in 1993 and only ever appeared on the PC, running under MS-DOS.

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Ultima VII: The Black Gate, PC

Ultima VII: The Black Gate is the seventh game in the Ultima series and the first part of the “Age of Armageddon” trilogy, and was first released for PC MS-DOS by Origin Systems in 1992. The game is highly-rated among RPG fans and even series creator, Richard Garriott, describes Ultima VII as “the most masterfully-executed” of the Ultima series.

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Ultima VI: The False Prophet, PC

Ultima VI: The False Prophet is the sixth game in the Ultima series and the third and final game in the “Age of Enlightenment” trilogy. It was first released by Origin Systems in 1990 and the PC MS-DOS version was the original target platform. There is no Apple II version of this game. It is also the most complex game in the series so far.

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Ultima: Warriors of Destiny, NES/Famicom

Ultima: Warriors of Destiny on the NES/Famicom was developed by FCI and first published by Pony Canyon in 1992. It is the fifth entry in the Ultima series and this console port is a simplification of the original game.

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