Tag Archives: shops

The Violinist of Hameln, Super Nintendo

The Violinist of Hameln is a side-scrolling platform game developed by Daft and published in 1995 by Enix and is based on the Japanese manga series of the same name. The game was a Japan-only release, but a fan-made translation patch is available to play the game in English.

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Colt Canyon, PC

Colt Canyon is a single-player Wild West-based pixel art ‘twin stick’-style shooter developed by German company Retrific and published by Headup in 2020. You play a cowboy who must save his kidnapped partner from ruthless bandits. In fact: you can play as a variety of different characters – if you unlock them first.

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Cadash, Arcade

If you’re looking for a weird, obscure fantasy action game to play you could do a lot worse than Taito‘s 1990 arcade game Cadash, which mixes platform gaming with RPG-style elements in a way that is rarely seen in this kind of coin-operated title.

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Flimbo’s Quest, Commodore 64

Flimbo’s Quest is a scrolling platform shooter that basically recycles the gameplay from the classic C64 game, Hawkeye. Designer/programmer Laurens van der Donk was a member of demo scene coders Boys Without Brains (who created Hawkeye), which explains the connection. From what I can tell, though, van der Donk was not involved in creating Hawkeye, so I’m not entirely sure how or why Flimbo’s Quest came to be.

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Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, Game Boy Advance

Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones is a tactical Role-Playing Game, developed by Intelligent Systems and first published by Nintendo for the Game Boy Advance in 2004. It is the eighth entry in the Fire Emblem series and the second to be released outside of Japan.

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Energy Breaker, Super Nintendo

Energy Breaker is an isometric, tactical, turn-based RPG, developed by Neverland and published exclusively for the Super Nintendo by Taito in 1996. It was only ever released in Japan but does have an English fan translation patch available for it, which makes it playable to Western audiences.

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Super Fantasy Zone, Megadrive/Genesis

Super Fantasy Zone is a conversion of the 1986 Sega arcade game, Fantasy Zone, re-programmed by Sunsoft and published by Sega in 1992. The game was initially only released in Japan and Europe, but North America did finally receive an official release of the game via Virtual Console in 2008. The game is also included on the Sega Genesis Mini.

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Eye of the Beholder, Game Boy Advance

The Game Boy Advance version of the classic RPG, Eye of the Beholder, was developed by Pronto Games and first published by Infogrames in 2002. While it does follow the basics of the original, is it considerably different in many respects. It’s also a relatively poor conversion overall.

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Ultima Special

Richard Garriott‘s famous Role-Playing Game series began officially in 1981 with “Ultima” for the Apple II. It was a pioneering mixture of single-player adventuring, combat and levelling, with humble beginnings, starting out on early 8-bit systems and working its way up to modern PCs in the 1990s. The Ultima series was always evolving; always innovating, and constantly proving to be a considerable influence on story-based, single-player RPGs, and the fantasy adventure game market in general.

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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.

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