Tag Archives: strategy

Star Fox 2, Super Nintendo

The sequel to the classic Super Nintendo 3D shooter, Star Fox, Star Fox 2 is infamous because it was actually cancelled before it was completed, way back in 1995, but was finally finished and released in 2017 on the SNES Classic Edition retro console.

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Gemfire, Super Nintendo

Gemfire is a turn-based medieval strategy game developed and published by Koei. It was first released for the NES/Famicom in 1991 and given an updated Super Nintendo release in 1992.

The NES and Super Nintendo versions are essentially the same game, but the SNES version has updated graphics and sound.

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Gemfire, NES/Famicom

Gemfire is a fantasy, turn-based, conquest/strategy war game developed and published by Koei for the NES/Famicom and first released in 1991. It is known as Royal Blood in its native Japan and was called Gemfire for its North American English language release.

The game is similar to the classic Defender of the Crown, in that the aim is to dominate a map of territories that are occupied by opponent’s castles and armies.

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SimCity, Amstrad CPC

The Amstrad version of SimCity is arguably better than the Commodore 64 original. It was converted to the Amstrad by Probe Software and published by Infogrames in 1989.

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Military Madness, PC Engine

Military Madness is the Western title for the Japanese tactical war game, Nectaris, and it was first released for the PC Engine in 1989 by Hudson Soft. A North American TurboGrafx-16 release followed in 1990.

Nectaris, or Military Madness, or whatever you want to call it, is an early turn-based strategy game that involves moving units around a map and engaging in combat. When units clash it then cuts away to a confrontation scene to show how the opposing forces fared against each other. These action cut scenes would later greatly influence similar games such as those in the popular Advance Wars series.

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Football Manager, ZX Spectrum

It might look like an outdated pile of crap by today’s standards but Addictive Software‘s 1982 game, Football Manager, was a massive hit on the ZX Spectrum at the time.

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SimCity, Commodore 64

This classic city-building game was originally devised by creator Will Wright while he was working on the classic C64 shooter, Raid On Bungeling Bay. Wright found that he enjoyed making the overhead cities for the game – using his self-made editor – more than he enjoyed playing the game itself, so he set to work creating a game that would allow players to do the same.

SimCity was originally developed for the Commodore 64 and was initially released for that system in August of 1989, but was quickly ported to pretty much every video gaming system known to man at the time. It also spawned a long-running series, and provided a strong base from which developer/publisher Maxis would grow – specialising in “sim“-type games that would become its main market for decades to come.

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Royal Stone, Game Gear

Royal Stone is a tactical, turn-based fantasy RPG with combat and magic that was released for the Game Gear – in Japan only – by Sega in 1995. Thankfully, an English fan translation does exist, so that we – non-Japanese-speakers – can now understand the storyline and enjoy the game in full.

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Populous, Archimedes

The Archimedes has a flawless version of PopulousBullfrog‘s seminal God sim – that was programmed by Richard Walker and published by Krisalis Software in 1992.

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Colonization, Amiga

Also known as Sid Meier’s Colonization, this turn-based strategy game is based on the European colonisation of the New World, starting in 1492 and lasting until 1850. It’s essentially an updated and more-developed version of Sid Meier‘s previous game, Civilization. Which is no bad thing since Civilization is a superb, classic strategy game.

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