Tag Archives: swords

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, GameCube

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess was developed and published by Nintendo for the GameCube and Wii in 2006 and is an unusual, beautifully-produced game with stunning visuals and evocative gameplay. It was the final first-party release from Nintendo for the GameCube.

Twilight Princess features involving, varied, and ever-evolving gameplay, with a more mature-looking Link in the title role (possibly in response to criticism of its predecessor, 2002’s The Wind Waker, due to its cartoony, cel-shaded graphics). The story involves Link trying to stop Hyrule from being engulfed by a corrupt parallel dimension called The Twilight Realm.

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Orc Attack, Atari 8-bit

The classic Orc Attack was originally developed by Dean Lock for the Atari 8-bit family of home computers and published by Thorn EMI in 1983.

You play a guy defending a castle rampart from attacking orcs that are trying to climb up using ladders. The orcs plant the base of the ladder on the ground then bring in sections to raise it up, taking just three connected sections to reach the top. You must run and grab rocks, placed at either side of the battlement, to throw down at the attackers. If the attackers reach the top of the rampart the stones temporarily turn into swords, which you must grab to hack down the invaders that are threatening your castle. When a round is complete you can throw burning oil onto them to torch the remainder.

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The Kristal, Amiga

The Kristal is an obscure British adventure game based on an un-produced theatre play written in 1976 (called “The Kristal of Konos“), developed by Fissionchip Software and published by Addictive Games in Europe and Cinemaware in North America. The fact that Cinemaware picked up The Kristal for distribution in the US and Canada is a surprise in itself, as that kind of thing didn’t happen very often back in 1989 when this game was first released.

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Dark Chambers, Atari 7800

Dark Chambers is a one or two-player maze/action game that was directly influenced by Dandy, in that it was originally written by John Howard Palevich – the creator Dandy – to further expand (or in this case: simplify) the concept of a multiplayer fantasy action game.

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Escape From Singe’s Castle, Commodore 64

In my review of Software ProjectsCommodore 64 interpretation of Dragon’s Lair I ended by saying that this game – Escape From Singe’s Castle – was a “much better” sequel to that game. Which is only partially true. It’s pretty much the same kind of thing as Dragon’s Lair, only with slightly better minigames and slightly better graphics. So “much better” is probably pushing it…

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Dragon’s Lair, Commodore 64

This 8-bit interpretation of the much-loved laserdisc arcade game was developed and published by Software Projects in 1986 and it is an exercise in frustration from start to finish.

Dragon’s Lair is actually a conversion of a Coleco Adam game that was published at the tail end of 1984. Software Projects acquired the license to convert it to home systems in the UK and made two games out of it.

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Amid Evil, PC

Amid Evil is a first-person, single-player fantasy shooter/action game developed by Indefatigable and published by New Blood Interactive in 2019. The game started life as an unfinished Doom mod in 1997 and later grew into Amid Evil when co-creators and childhood friends Leon Zawada and Simon Rance formed their own company, with Amid Evil being their first project.

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The Dragon Quest series

The Dragon Quest series is a pioneering series of Role-Playing Games that was initially developed by Chunsoft and published by Enix in Japan. This series was responsible for setting the standard for Japanese Role-Playing Games for decades to come.

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Dragon Warrior VII, PlayStation

Released in Japan in 2000 as Dragon Quest VII: Fragments of the Forgotten Past, this PlayStation exclusive JRPG was re-titled as Dragon Warrior VII for its North American English language release in 2001. It was developed by Heartbeat and was the last Dragon Quest game to be published by Enix, before merging with Squaresoft in 2003 to form Square Enix.

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Dragon Warrior IV, NES

Dragon Warrior IV is the localised American version of Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen. It’s an RPG, developed by Chunsoft and initially published by Enix in 1990 in Japan (and 1992 in North America).

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