The 1997 sequel to the classic Tomb Raider, Tomb Raider II, was once again developed by Core Design and published by Eidos Interactive.
The sequel builds upon the good parts of the first game and delivers even more Lara Croft hi-jinks and agility. An enhanced version of Core‘s Tomb Raider engine was used to power the game world.
The classic first adventure in the Tomb Raider series was developed by Core Design and published by Eidos Interactive – initially for the Sega Saturn – in 1996. Then PC MS-DOS and PlayStation versions followed soon after.
The game was a smash hit on the PlayStation and sold well on the PC too, making it something of a breakthrough title for Core Design, whose stature was greatly elevated with the success of the Tomb Raider series.
Dragon’s Lair: The Legend is a 1991 platform game for the Nintendo Game Boy, developed by Motivetime and published by Elite Systems in Europe and Sony Imagesoft in North America.
Bizarrely, the game is a remake of the classic 1985 ZX Spectrum game Roller Coaster, but with Dragon’s Lair-style graphics and sound effects. Which is not a bad thing because Roller Coaster is a great game.
The third and final game in the James Pond trilogy was written by Chris Sorrell and published by Millennium Interactive in 1993.
James Pond 3: Operation Starfish was originally developed for the Megadrive/Genesis and was later converted to AGA-based Amigas (the A1200, A4000 and CD32), but was not available on Amigas below that specification.
John Phillips‘ Commodore 64 classic, Nebulus, is very good on the Amstrad, although it is quite slow and doesn’t have the intermission challenges of its parent. It doesn’t ruin the game, though. In fact: it may be easier to play than the original due to it being slower.
King’s Field IV was developed and published by FromSoftware in Japan in 2001 for the PlayStation 2. It was later released as King’s Field: The Ancient City in North America in 2002, and in Europe (as simply King’s Field IV) in 2003. It is another first-person RPG and is the fourth and final game in the King’s Field series.
King’s Field III is the second sequel in FromSoftware‘s classic first-person RPG series and was first released in Japan in 1996. It was published in North America by ASCII Entertainment under the title of “King’s Field II” (because the original King’s Field was only released in Japan).
For my money, King’s Field III is the best of the three PlayStation King’s Field games, with larger, more interesting environments, and a bigger scope than the previous two games. The graphics are still borderline laughable, and the controls are still cumbersome, but the gameplay has evolved reasonably well in the space of a couple of years.
FromSoftware‘s King’s Field II was initially released in Japan in 1995 and it is another first-person RPG with open world exploration, dodgy graphics and challenging combat. It was later published under the title “King’s Field” by ASCII Entertainment in North America and Sony in Europe in 1996, which does cause some confusion as the western titling ignores the actual first game in the series. For clarity: the official English language “King’s Field” is actually King’s Field II – the sequel.
With Elden Ring currently wowing gamers I thought I’d take a look at the series that began FromSoftware‘s journey into the action RPG genre, and that would be King’s Field – released in Japan only in 1994 for the Sony PlayStation – and, to be honest, it couldn’t be any further removed from Elden Ring in terms of presentation…
I’ve played a lot of RPGs in my time, and I would go so far as to say that it’s my favourite genre of video game, but King’s Field came as a bit of a shock to me. Yes, King’s Field was an early 3D RPG on the PlayStation, releasing the same year as the PS1 was launched, but it post-dates Ultima Underworld by two years and is archaic in comparison.
Indiana Jones’ Greatest Adventures is a run-and-gun platform/action game developed by Factor 5 (the German team who made Super Turrican, among others), with the supervision of LucasArts, and published by JVC in 1994.
The game features sequences based on the first three Indiana Jones films; the first being Raiders of the Lost Ark obviously; the second being Temple of Doom (my favourite), and the third being The Last Crusade.
Continue reading Indiana Jones’ Greatest Adventures, Super Nintendo
The King of Grabs 