Tag Archives: pirates

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.

Continue reading Ultima IX: Ascension, PC

Ghoul Patrol, Super Nintendo

Ghoul Patrol is the 1994 sequel to Zombies Ate My Neighbors and it features gameplay and graphics very similar to its predecessor, which is no bad thing on the face of it, considering that Zombies Ate My Neighbors is a fun game.

Continue reading Ghoul Patrol, Super Nintendo

Booty, Commodore 16/Plus4

A 1986 conversion of a hit ZX Spectrum budget game, the Commodore 16 conversion of John F. Cain‘s Booty is about as bad as a video game can get.

The game constantly dumps unfairness on you, and is about as entertaining as being crawled on by a Brazilian Wandering Spider.

Continue reading Booty, Commodore 16/Plus4

Skull & Crossbones, Arcade

I hadn’t seen this 1989 arcade game from Atari Games before, until I played it recently, and even then I found it on the Commodore 64 first, then realised that it was an arcade conversion.

Skull & Crossbones has all the ingredients of a classic arcade action game, but – having played it extensively now – I can see why it failed…

Continue reading Skull & Crossbones, Arcade

Blackwyche, Commodore 64

Blackwyche is the third game in the Sir Arthur Pendragon series, following on from The Staff of Karnath and Entombed. It was written by Dave and Bob Thomas and published by Ultimate Play The Game in 1985.

Continue reading Blackwyche, Commodore 64

Metroid: Zero Mission, Game Boy Advance

There are two Metroid games on the Game Boy Advance. One is an original game, called Metroid Fusion, and there’s also this one: Metroid: Zero Mission, which is a remake of the original Metroid.

It was first released in 2004 and features modernised graphics and gameplay, but the same core gameplay as the 1986 original.

Continue reading Metroid: Zero Mission, Game Boy Advance

Elite, Archimedes

The Acorn Archimedes conversion of Bell and Braben‘s classic Elite was written by Warren Burch and Clive Gringras and published by Hybrid Technology in 1991.

It is considered by many to be the definitive version of Elite available, although that is both a matter of taste, and also a matter of actually getting the game to run in a RISC OS environment.

Continue reading Elite, Archimedes

Elite, NES

Developed by Imagineer, the Nintendo Entertainment System version of Elite is pretty good – considering that the NES isn’t particularly suited to generating wireframe 3D graphics. Yes, the wireframe 3D is slow (like in all the 8-bit versions of Elite), but not to the point where it makes the game unplayable.

Continue reading Elite, NES

Elite, Atari ST

Developed by Mr. Micro and published by Firebird in 1988 the Atari ST version of Elite is pretty much identical to the Amiga version – in terms of graphics and gameplay.

Continue reading Elite, Atari ST