Anteform is a tiny, futuristic RPG, written for the PICO-8 development platform, and was first released in 2019. It uses the same game engine as Minima and was written by the same guy, Feneric (aka Eric W. Brown). It’ll run on Windows, Mac, Linux and Raspberry Pi.
Tag Archives: sailing
Minima, PC
Written for the PICO-8 development platform and first released in 2018, Minima is a miniature version of the early Ultima games and runs on Windows, Mac, Linux and Raspberry Pi. It’s a tiny RPG with exploration, a scrolling overworld, first-person dungeon crawling, turn-based combat and movement, and NPCs to talk to.
Pirates! Gold, Amiga CD32
The Amiga CD32 version of Pirates! Gold is a remake of the original Pirates! and was published in 1994 by MicroProse. It is considered by some to be the best version of the game available, but I disagree with that.
Pirates!, Commodore 64
First released for the Commodore 64 by Microprose in 1987, Pirates! is a single-player, open world strategy/action game in which you play an adventurer, sailing the high seas, fighting, plundering, trading, and trying to survive the rigours of life as a seafaring captain during a brutal period of history.
Sinbad and the Throne of the Falcon, PC
The MS-DOS version of Cinemaware‘s Sinbad and the Throne of the Falcon was released in 1989 and it is not a bad game although the fighting sections – it has to be said – are a bit pathetic.
Super Adventure Island II, Super Nintendo
Super Adventure Island II is the sequel to Super Adventure Island and was developed by Make Software, Inc. and first published by Hudson Soft in 1994. It is somewhat different to the first game, though, and has RPG elements, as well as also being more open-ended in how you play it.
Sinbad and the Throne of the Falcon, Atari ST
The 1988 Atari ST conversion of Cinemaware‘s Sinbad and the Throne of the Falcon has considerably better graphics than the Amiga original, even though the ST can’t quite display as many colours on-screen as the Amiga can.
Continue reading Sinbad and the Throne of the Falcon, Atari ST
Sinbad and the Throne of the Falcon, Amiga
I don’t know why, but the Amiga version of Cinemaware‘s classic Sinbad and the Throne of the Falcon looks absolutely terrible. The graphics are appalling and the presentation overall is very rough around the edges. Compare it to the Commodore 64 version and it’s easy to see the disparity.
Ultima: Exodus, NES/Famicom
There is an NES/Famicom version of Ultima III: Exodus – called just “Ultima: Exodus” – that was developed by Newtopia Planning and first published by Pony Canyon in 1988. It has some major differences to the original, but essentially it’s the same game. The graphics are cuter but do suffer from some hideous tearing when a number of sprites are on the same horizontal line, which is a common technical fault on the NES.
Ultima III: Exodus, Atari ST
The 1986 Atari ST version of Ultima III: Exodus is pretty much identical to the Amiga version. In fact: it was ported by the same guy who made the Amiga version – “Banjo” Bob Hardy – so shares the same codebase. Since they’re almost identical I’d assume that the ST version was the primary target and the Amiga version was the port (since doing it the other way around would probably lead to features being dropped from the ST version as the machine had fewer custom chips). Ultima III was published by Origin Systems and is arguably the joint best version of the game available.
