The MS-DOS version of Dune II: The Battle For Arrakis was the original, first released by Westwood Studios in 1992. The Amiga version followed shortly afterwards, in 1993.
Aka “Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty” in North America.
The MS-DOS version of Dune II: The Battle For Arrakis was the original, first released by Westwood Studios in 1992. The Amiga version followed shortly afterwards, in 1993.
Aka “Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty” in North America.
Developed by Blizzard North and first published by Blizzard Entertainment in 1997, Diablo is a classic point-and-click action/RPG that features quests, monsters, real-time combat, magic, and dungeon-delving, in a way that is meant to appeal to those who prefer a more immediate style of gameplay, than the more ‘hardcore’, turn-based style of many RPGs. And – as a result – Diablo was a smash hit, and spawned a series that still (infamously) persists to this day.
The 1987 PC MS-DOS version of Argonaut Software‘s classic 3D shooter, Starglider, was ported by Realtime Games Software, who did the excellent Amstrad and ZX Spectrum ports. Unfortunately, the game is available only with four-colour CGA graphics, which does diminish the look of the game significantly.
The Amstrad CPC version of Argonaut Software‘s classic 3D shooter, Starglider, was developed by Realtime Games Software, who also coded the excellent ZX Spectrum version. It could be argued that it is even better than the Spectrum version, because it runs faster and also uses more colours in the polygons, although the game does have a smaller cockpit and play window than the Spectrum version.
Argonaut Software‘s Starglider, when it first came out, was a flashy release. It came in a big blue box, with a novella, a manual, and a single floppy disk. Magazines were raving about it, and I remember buying it… for the ZX Spectrum. LOL.
The Atari ST version of Argonaut Software‘s pioneering 3D shooter, Starglider, first came out in 1986 – a year before the Amiga version (for some reason – I don’t know why).
Xanadu Next was developed by Falcom and published for Windows PCs in Japan in 2005. It is a continuation of the Dragon Slayer series and a spin-off from Xanadu: Dragon Slayer II. The game remained untranslated into English until a worldwide release by XSEED Games in 2016. And I have to say: it’s a wonderful game, and is arguably the pinnacle of the long-running franchise.
The 1989 Apple IIgs conversion of FTL‘s Dungeon Master was created by the original developers and is therefore a perfect port of this classic Role-Playing Game. The game requires a minimum of 1MB of RAM to run, like the Amiga version, and a processor running at 2.8MHz or above makes it playable at the right speed.
The sequel to Vradark’s Sphere on the ZX Spectrum, Vradark’s Revenge is another fantasy-based Roguelike from the same development team, SaNchez, only this time it has been created specifically for the ZX Spectrum Next, which is an enhanced, modern ZX Spectrum remake/variant that first came out in 2017.
Vradark’s Revenge was initially released in 2022 and an emulated version, that runs in Windows, was later released on Steam in 2023 through publisher “Drunk Fly Oy” (which is a bizarre company name if ever there was one).
The Amiga CD32 port of Cannon Fodder was developed by Arch Rivals and published by Virgin Interactive in 1994. Of course the game does have mouse support (as if it wouldn’t…), and it plays extremely well. In fact: some may argue that this is the best version of Cannon Fodder ever released.