Palace Software‘s Cauldron II: The Pumpkin Strikes Back is the sequel to the cult hit, Cauldron, released in 1985. Cauldron II was first released for the Commodore 64 in 1986 and this is a conversion of that game. It features gameplay that is quite different to the original Cauldron, although it is essentially still a platform game at its core.
Continue reading Cauldron II: The Pumpkin Strikes Back, ZX Spectrum
Palace Software‘s 1985 release, Cauldron, is a conversion of the Commodore 64 original, where you play as a witch who is on a quest to become the “Witch Queen” by defeating her opponent, “The Pumpking”.
Jazz Jackrabbit 2: The Christmas Chronicles is an enhanced version of Holiday Hare ’98 and was developed by Epic [Mega]Games and published by Project Two Interactive in 2000. It apparently only saw a limited release initially, due to the publisher going out of business, but it has since been re-released on GOG.com as part of the Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Collection.
Continue reading Jazz Jackrabbit 2: The Christmas Chronicles, PC
The Game Boy Advance version of Super Ghouls ‘N Ghosts is a handheld adaptation of the classic Super Nintendo game from 1991, and it is a brilliant one too. It first came out in 2002 through Capcom.
Shantae: Risky’s Revenge originally came out on the Nintendo DSi in 2010, and the “Director’s Cut” – shown here – is a remake for the PC that was first released on Steam in 2014. It was developed and published by WayForward Technologies.
Continue reading Shantae: Risky’s Revenge – Director’s Cut, PC
Developed by Ocean Software and first published in 1992, Super Hunchback is a sequel to the Hunchback games that were successful in the mid 1980s (which were all based on the arcade game, Hunchback, by Century Electronics).
Ristar on the Game Gear is a reduced-size version of the classic Megadrive/Genesis platform game by Sega. It was first released for Sega‘s handheld console in 1995.
The Game Boy Advance version of Planet of the Apes is somewhat different, visually, to the Game Boy Color version, although it is basically the same game underneath. Graphically, the GBA version goes for a “digitised”, more realistic look, which I don’t think is as appealing as the pure 2D drawn look of the GBC version. It makes the game look more like an early ’90s Amiga game, which I think dates it significantly.
Planet of the Apes for the Game Boy Color was developed by Torus Games/Visiware and was first published by Ubisoft in 2001. It is based on the 1968 film of the same name, which in turn was based on the 1963 book by Pierre Boulle. Actually, to be more accurate, the game follows the plot of the 1970 sequel, Beneath the Planet of the Apes, more closely than it does the first film, where Brent (played by James Franciscus) crash-lands on a post-apocalyptic Earth on a rescue mission to find Taylor (Charlton Heston), and eventually finds himself held prisoner in an underground city run by telepathic humans.
Ristar is a cute and colourful scrolling 2D platform game developed and published by Sega in 1995. It first came out for the Megadrive/Genesis and was later ported to the Game Gear, but it was only ever initially released on Sega console hardware.
The King of Grabs 