While I wouldn’t call myself a Pokémon fanatic, I do really enjoy the games because they are so well made, and because I love level-grinders. Pokémon Pearl (and its companion, Diamond) is considered by many as one of the best games in the series, and people still love to play it now.
Compared to previous generations, Pokémon Pearl has lots of new features, and compared to later generations: the series hasn’t yet started to collapse under its own weight.
The follow-up to the classic PS2 game Dragon Quest VIII is another fine level-grinder, with cheerful, colourful graphics and mesmerising gameplay. Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies was developed by Level-5 and published by Square Enix on the Nintendo DS in 2009.
Getting straight down to it: Dragon Quest IX (nine) is similar to the previous game in the series, but with a few fundamental changes…
The third Phantasy Star game, subtitled Generations of Doom, was released for the Megadrive by Sega in 1990.
Pier Solar and the Great Architects is a famous homebrew Role-Playing Game released in 2010. It was developed by a team called WaterMelon and was initially released on cartridge exclusively for the Sega Megadrive.
Since then, though, it has been ported to a number of different platforms, including HD remakes for Dreamcast, PlayStation 3 & 4, Wii U, PC, XBox One, and Android.
Continue reading Pier Solar and the Great Architects, Megadrive/Genesis
The Immortal is a legendary RPG from Electronic Arts that was originally released for the Apple IIgs, then later ported to other systems, including this 1991 Megadrive conversion which is arguably the best version of The Immortal out there.
Legend of Mana is the fourth game in the Mana series. It was once again directed by Koichi Ishii and was published by Square on CD-ROM for the PlayStation only in 1999.
Sega‘s classic Golden Axe is a scrolling beat ’em up first released into arcades in 1989. It is fondly-remembered, often re-released, and has been converted to many other systems.
What’s so good about Golden Axe, then?
The Commodore 64 has a version of Design Design‘s classic Halls of the Things and it looks and plays very similarly to the original Spectrum version. Which is no bad thing, because this is a challenging and fun little action game.
Pokémon Ruby Version – released the same time as Pokémon Sapphire Version – was developed by Game Freak and published by Nintendo in 2002 in Japan and 2003 everywhere else. It is known as a ‘third generation’ Pokémon game.
Dragon Skulle is the fourth and final game in the Sir Arthur Pendragon series, from legendary publisher Ultimate Play The Game. It was first released in 1985 and actually received lukewarm reviews in much of the press at the time.
