Tag Archives: weapons

Chaos Strikes Back, FM Towns

Chaos Strikes Back is a continuation of the classic Role-Playing Game, Dungeon Master. It’s a sequel – but not the sequel – to the first game, and was originally released as a stand-alone expansion disk on the Atari ST. On the FM Towns it was published on CD-ROM by Victor Musical Industries in 1990, and there’s a bit of faffing around to do before you can actually start the game*. Thankfully you can at least do this in English as there’s an option to play in that language.

*= Before you can play Chaos Strikes Back you must either create a new party (by entering the prison and choosing from the available portraits), and then save it to a new 720Kb floppy disk; or load a set of characters from a pre-existing FM Towns Dungeon Master save. You then need to enter the CSB portrait editor utility program and then click on ‘Make New Adventure’ to activate and save a new Chaos Strikes Back file to the disk. Only then will you be able to load and start the game…

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Dungeon Master, FM Towns

The FM Towns version of the classic Dungeon Master was ported by FTL Games (the game’s original developer) and published by Fujitsu in 1989 (two years after the original Atari ST version, and three years before the DOS version came out). This was a Japan-only release, on CD-ROM, but the game is playable in both English and Japanese, which is great.

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Operation Wolf, FM Towns

The FM Towns conversion of Taito‘s smash hit arcade shooter, Operation Wolf, is both an authentic port of the original, and also a playable and fun game that utilises mouse controls to great effect. It was first published by Ving in 1990.

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Mysterium, Game Boy

Developed by Maxis Software and published by Asmik Ace Entertainment for the original Game Boy in 1991, Mysterium is an obscure first-person dungeon-crawler in which you play an alchemist’s apprentice exploring a maze – called the Mysterium – in order to complete a test.

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Operation Wolf, ZX Spectrum

The ZX Spectrum version of Taito‘s classic arcade shooter, Operation Wolf, was developed and published by Ocean Software in 1988.

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The Simpsons, Arcade

Developed by Konami and first distributed into arcades in 1991, The Simpsons is a scrolling multiplayer beat ’em up based on the award-winning animated series of the same name. You can play as either Marge, Homer, Bart or Lisa and must rescue Maggie, who’s been kidnapped by Mr. Burns and Smithers after a diamond heist gone wrong. The game features the show’s original voice actors: Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Nancy Cartwright and Yeardley Smith, reprising their roles as the Simpsons family.

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Bay Route, Arcade

This terrible pun of a title (meant to ‘parody’ the word Beirut, the capital city of Lebanon) was developed by Sunsoft and distributed into arcades by Sega in 1989. It’s a one or simultaneous two-player Contra clone scrolling through a futuristic warzone.

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Tiger Road, Arcade

Tiger Road is a single-player hack-and-slash platform/action game, released into arcades by Capcom in 1987. It pre-dates Sega‘s Golden Axe by two years, but is very similar in terms of gameplay.

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Doom, Sega Saturn

The Sega Saturn port of Doom was developed by Rage Software and distributed by GT Interactive in 1997. Like the PlayStation version (on which this port is based) it contains both Ultimate Doom and Doom II, but is a little disappointing in terms of performance and presentation.

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Doom, Sega 32X

The Sega 32X port of id Software‘s Doom was developed and published by Sega of America in 1994. While the game doesn’t run in a full window (there’s a permanent border around the screen, probably to keep the frame rate up, which is unfortunate), it is an otherwise very good conversion, with smooth movement and decent controls.

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