Tag Archives: pioneering

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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Forgotten Worlds, Arcade

Forgotten Worlds is a classic Capcom arcade shooter from 1988, with simultaneous two-player coop, a rotational aiming system, and intense bullet hell action set across a landscape of the desolate Earth in the 29th Century.

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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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The Oregon Trail, Apple II

The Oregon Trail is a classic Apple II strategy/adventure game where you play as settlers travelling in a covered wagon on The Oregon Trail in 1848. As you might imagine, the trail is hostile and survival on it is brutal, so you have to prepare for your trip in advance by buying food, clothes, ammunition, spare parts, and oxen to pull your wagon.

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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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Wolfenstein 3D, Atari Jaguar

id Software‘s classic first-person shooter, Wolfenstein 3D, was ported to the Atari Jaguar by John Carmack and his by-then-famous band of merry programmers and artists, and – unsurprisingly – it’s an excellent conversion. The game was published by Atari Corporation in 1994.

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Syndicate, Atari Jaguar

Bullfrog‘s classic tactical action game, Syndicate, was published for the Atari Jaguar by Ocean Software in 1995, and while the game works well enough it does suffer a bit from the switch from mouse to gamepad controls.

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Flashback, Atari Jaguar

Delphine Software‘s classic Flashback was ported to the Atari Jaguar and first released by US Gold in 1994. It is a close to perfect conversion of this superb platform adventure game.

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