SOS is an intriguing survival adventure game set on a sinking ship in The North Sea, in 1921. The game features four playable characters, each with a different story, although the ultimate aim is the same for all of them: to escape from the stricken Lady Crithania, which has been hit by a gigantic wave and has capsized off the coast of England. SOS was developed by Human Entertainment and published exclusively for the Super Famicom by Field Co. Ltd. in 1993 (1994 in North America; published by Vic Tokai). In Japan the game is known as “Septentrion“.
Tag Archives: water
Tropical Angel, Arcade
Tropical Angel is an obscure 1983 arcade game, developed and distributed by Irem. In it you play a female water skier who must score points – and stay on her skis – on a series of increasingly more challenging water courses.
Tugboat, Arcade
Tugboat is a relatively early colour arcade game, created by Enter-Tech and first distributed as part of the Moppet Video range in 1982. It is a very simple game that was designed for children – housed in a miniature arcade cabinet – in which you control a tugboat moving down a river and must avoid floating logs (and collisions with the banks), and can collect floating buoys by moving left and right.
Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest, NES/Famicom
The second game in the Castlevania series, Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest, was originally released in Japan (as “Dracula II – Noroi no Fuuin“) for the Famicom Disk System in 1987, and in North America for the NES in 1988. Europe had to wait until 1990 for a release of the game.
Turbo Sub, Atari Lynx
This 1991 release from Atari Corporation is a conversion of relatively obscure arcade game from 1985, and it is a decent game on the Atari Lynx, with excellent graphics and absorbing gameplay. It was developed for the Lynx by NuFX.
Turbo Sub is a fast-moving first person shooter in which you pilot a futuristic attack submarine and must fight off an alien force attacking the Earth.
Commando, Atari 8-Bit
***CANNED GAME***
The Atari 8-Bit version of Commando was developed by Sculptured Software for Data East in 1989, but unfortunately the game was never released. Thankfully a prototype still exists and is available online, which is good because this is one of the best 8-bit ports of Commando around.
Chimera, Commodore 64
Set on an uninhabited spaceship, Chimera is an isometric adventure/puzzle game where you control a robot* that must destroy the ship before it crashes into Earth. The game was written by Shahid Ahmad and published by Firebird in 1985. The music is by Rob Hubbard.
*= The player character looks like a robot, but does in fact require food and water to survive, so there’s a bit of a contradiction going on in the story, as far as who or what the player actually is.
Commando, Apple II
The 1987 Apple II conversion of Capcom‘s Commando was developed by Quicksilver Software, Inc. and published by Data East in North America only, and it is a reasonable port although the play window is probably the smallest out of the all the versions of Commando I’ve played so far.
Commando, BBC Micro
Unfortunately the BBC Micro version of Elite‘s conversion of Commando is an absolute travesty, with terrible graphics and horrible gameplay and the only thing it has in common with the arcade original is the name of the game and the basic scenario.
Commando, MSX
The 1987 MSX version of Commando was a Japan-only release through ASCII Corporation, and – the truth be told – it’s a pretty awful conversion.
If you’re searching for the game you need to look for the title “Senjō no Ōkami” [“Wolf of the Battlefield“], which is the game’s Japanese title, as you’ll not find it under the name “Commando“.
The King of Grabs 