Super Asteroids & Missile Command are a pair of conversions of two classic Atari arcade games – Asteroids and Missile Command – squeezed onto one cartridge and released for the Atari Lynx in 1995. These two games were apparently the very last to be released for the Atari Lynx.
Continue reading Super Asteroids & Missile Command, Atari Lynx
Unreal II: The Awakening is the sequel to Unreal and was developed by Legend Entertainment and published by Infogrames in 2003 under the Atari brand. It utilises Unreal Engine 2 and again features a single-player campaign, as well as multiplayer deathmatching.
Paul Woakes‘ classic open-world cockpit exploration game, Mercenary, was ported to the 48K ZX Spectrum by David Aubrey-Jones and published by Novagen Software in 1987.
The Galaxian conversion for the ColecoVision was first released in 1984 by Atarisoft, and it is a decent port of the classic 1979 arcade game from Namco. A secret message in the game credits James D. Eisenstein for writing the graphics and program (he also dedicates the game to his then wife/girlfriend, Jeneane).
Star Fox 64 – also known as “Lylat Wars” in PAL regions – is the sequel to the classic Star Fox on the Super Nintendo. It was developed and published by Nintendo and first released in 1997. The game was critically and commercially successful, selling over four million physical copies, making it one of the best-selling games on the Nintendo 64.
The first game in the Ultima series was initially released for the Apple II in 1981 by California Pacific Computer and was later completely re-coded and re-named as “Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness” for a re-release through Origin Systems. The 1987 MS-DOS re-code – shown here – is still available to buy as part of an Ultima 1+2+3 package on GOG.com (at the time of writing).
Although the first Ultima game was an Apple II original, the Commodore 64 version of this early RPG is arguably the best-known. Re-made and released in 1986, the C64 version of Ultima [one] features colourful graphics and absorbing gameplay that is pretty much identical to the Apple II remake.
Continue reading Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness, Commodore 64
This first game in Richard Garriott‘s Ultima series was initially released for the Apple II in 1981 by California Pacific Computer and was originally called just “Ultima“. It was later re-named as “Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness” when it was re-made and re-released by Origin Systems in 1986. This 1986 re-code features improved graphics and gameplay, with a number of significant changes made to bring the game up-to-date with market conditions in the mid 1980s, and that is the version I’m featuring here. If you want to see the original 1981 version (and an explanation of how to play the game), click here.
Continue reading Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness, Apple II
Released in 1983 by Sierra On-Line, Ultima on the Atari 8-bit is more archaic and frustrating than the original Apple II version. And it looks pretty awful too, with a real lack of colour – especially in towns where the game is in monochrome unless you play on a machine (and monitor) that supports “artifacting“. In artifacting mode the dungeon and town graphics look similar to Apple II graphics, but they don’t really take advantage of the Atari‘s superior graphics capabilities.
The original 1981 Apple II version of Richard Garriott‘s Ultima was the first version of Ultima ever released. It was published by California Pacific Computer and is a stripped-down version of the more widespread re-release version put out by Origin Systems in 1986 (which can be seen here).
The King of Grabs 