Tag Archives: potions

Chaos Strikes Back, FM Towns

Chaos Strikes Back is a continuation of the classic Role-Playing Game, Dungeon Master. It’s a sequel – but not the sequel – to the first game, and was originally released as a stand-alone expansion disk on the Atari ST. On the FM Towns it was published on CD-ROM by Victor Musical Industries in 1990, and there’s a bit of faffing around to do before you can actually start the game*. Thankfully you can at least do this in English as there’s an option to play in that language.

*= Before you can play Chaos Strikes Back you must either create a new party (by entering the prison and choosing from the available portraits), and then save it to a new 720Kb floppy disk; or load a set of characters from a pre-existing FM Towns Dungeon Master save. You then need to enter the CSB portrait editor utility program and then click on ‘Make New Adventure’ to activate and save a new Chaos Strikes Back file to the disk. Only then will you be able to load and start the game…

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Dungeon Master, FM Towns

The FM Towns version of the classic Dungeon Master was ported by FTL Games (the game’s original developer) and published by Fujitsu in 1989 (two years after the original Atari ST version, and three years before the DOS version came out). This was a Japan-only release, on CD-ROM, but the game is playable in both English and Japanese, which is great.

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Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Sega Saturn

Konami‘s brilliant PlayStation game, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, was released for the Sega Saturn in 1998, but it was only ever released in Japan (under the title “Akumajou Dracula X: Gekka no Yasoukyoku“). Thankfully, an English translation patch is available to make the game playable to those who can’t read Japanese. The patch – created by ‘Knight of Dragon’ – also features numerous bug fixes and improvements.

For those who’ve never played Symphony of the Night before: it is a direct sequel to Rondo of Blood and is rightly regarded as one of the best Castlevania games in the long-running series (if not THE best).

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Golden Axe: The Duel, Arcade

Golden Axe: The Duel is the third arcade game in the Golden Axe series (after Golden Axe and The Revenge of Death Adder) and is a two-player versus fighting game based on characters from the popular side-scrolling hack and slash games. It was first released into arcades in February 1995.

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Golden Axe III, Megadrive/Genesis

The third Golden Axe game was initially only ever released in Japan, exclusively on the Megadrive in 1993. It wasn’t until two years later, in 1995, that it received a localised English language release in North America via the online-only Sega Channel.

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Golden Axe II, Megadrive/Genesis

Golden Axe II is a sequel to the classic Sega arcade game, Golden Axe, and was released exclusively on the Megadrive/Genesis* in 1991 in Japan and 1992 in North America and Europe.

*= It was eventually released as an arcade game using ‘Mega Play’ hardware, which is essentially a Megadrive/Genesis in an arcade cabinet, but the game was initially marketed as a ‘killer app’ on Sega‘s famous home console.

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Golden Axe, Megadrive/Genesis

This conversion of the classic Sega arcade game was first released on the Megadrive/Genesis in 1989 and is a reasonably accurate port of the famous hack and slash action game.

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Golden Axe: The Revenge of Death Adder, Arcade

Golden Axe: The Revenge of Death Adder is the 1992 sequel to the classic 1989 arcade game, Golden Axe. It features four new playable characters, more detailed graphics and four-player simultaneous gameplay (although that was dependent on the cabinet – variations were available to arcade operators).

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Lunar: Walking School, Game Gear

Lunar: Walking School (aka Lunar: Sanposuru Gakuen) is a Game Gear exclusive handheld RPG first released in 1996. It is a spin-off/side story from the main Lunar series published by Game Arts. This ‘Walking School‘ edition was developed by Ehrgeiz and written by Studio Alex.

Again: thanks to the efforts of fans a number of translation patches exist to make the game playable to non-Japanese speakers/readers.

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Shadowcaster, PC

Shadowcaster is a first-person fantasy-based action game developed by Raven Software and published by Origin Systems in 1993 for MS-DOS (Electronic Arts published it in Europe). The game uses a modified version of the 3D engine used in Wolfenstein 3D, with icons and point-and-click adventure and RPG elements.

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