Classic Windows GamesComputer Games

The Secret of Monkey Island

The guiding force behind The Secret of Monkey Island was Ron Gilbert, who based the game’s ambience and feel upon his experience at the Disneyland attraction Pirates of the Caribbean, as well as on the novel On Stranger Tides, by Tim Powers, which was the inspiration for many of the game’s characters. He went to the point of writing a series of short stories based on his ideas for Monkey Island, which he used to help convey the spirit of game to his creative partners, Tim Schaffer and Ron Grossman.

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Blog

GunLord Relaunch

Coming soon for the Sega Dreamcast is the classic platform shooter GunLord. GunLord is a Eurostyle Platformer with emphasis on exploring huge worlds and blasting off enemies. This game features 8 stages of exciting 2D game play with over 45 unique enemy types. Blast yourself through giant landscapes, explore caverns and reveal all secrets!!

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Editorials

Still Providing Raw Thrills: Eugene Jarvis has impacted over 30 years of gaming

“You start out with all these dreams and hopes,” he said. “Then reality sets in. You can’t do this because the technology isn’t there or you can’t do that because the budget or time isn’t there. Then something doesn’t work how you wanted it to. It feels like being on one of those old wagon trains going across the desert and one of your horses dies. Then you sometimes have your best moments, too, when you stumble across something cool and unexpected to add to the game.”

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Blog

Super Mario Bros 2: Ending

It’s all about the journey in games, but a good ending is always wanted. Personally one of my favorite classic endings is from SMB 2. Now I know a lot of people did not like the change in SMB 2 and many more hated that the whole thing was a dream. Me, I thought it was cool and a refreshing change in the Mario storyline.

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Blog

Saboteur 95: The 8-bit Retro Remake

Saboteur was really big during the 8-bit gaming era, and, at least to my mind, it reached almost mythical proportions. It was, you see, a game I first played only a few years ago, but one I kept reading about for over a decade. Surprisingly, it now seems as if the Greek gaming press was -for once- right. Saboteur, still a great game and a very balanced platform, adventure, beat-’em-up hybrid that can be as addictive as any contemporary time-sink, must have been quite a shock of grandeur for ZX Spectrumgamers.

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Game Reviews

Joe & Mac

The game also has some secret places you can go into like save spots or secret levels but you will need to find a key and most of the time you will only find one key which will lead you to pick which door you want to unlock in the map, you can either pick a save spot or a secret level which probably has extra lives or food in it. It’s all up to you! In the end, I recommend this game for everyone who has a friend and wants to play a decent cavemen game. You can finish this game within the hour so don’t get your hopes up for a long game.

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Arcade Games

Arkanoid

Arkanoid may have been released a full decade after Breakout but the simplicity of both games means neither really requires a huge amount of computing power. Indeed, while the graphics here are tidy and colourful there’s nothing really noteworthy about them and there’s no music at all, just a few sound effects, but none of that really matters with a game like this, which is still regarded as the pinnacle of its genre. There’s good reason for its reputation too. It was always amazingly playable and that remains the case today.

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Classic Windows GamesComputer Games

Zork

Who could forget Zork’s opening: “You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.” The text-based parser would respond to your directions, such as “Open mailbox” or even just “open”. Actually, the parser was quite advanced for the genre, as it was able to handle conjunctions and prepositions, such as “open the mailbox and read the leaflet,” and had a wide array of verbs and nouns that it recognized. Of course, if you tried a command that it didn’t know, the parser would just respond with, “I don’t understand that” or a pre-programmed witty response if you tried something the programmers anticipated you would, like typing in “jump” and getting “Wheeee!!!” as a response. For fun, type in any of the following: zork, win, repent, yell, and see what the parser says back.

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Game Boy

Lady Sia

There’s actually a very long and detailed story that unfolds throughout play, but I don’t want to give anything away. What I will say is this is a realitivly short game, with just a handful of main levels, and a few smaller levels within. Sia is armed with just a sword and an “energy blast”, and each level’s mission has her recovering a stolen family item; from a better sword to magic rings. These items will help her defeat the 4 bosses and the main one at the end.
The 32-bit, cartoony animation is neat, and the fluidity of her movements are top-notch for the little system. Little touches like using her sword to grab a ledge to pull herself up were nice additions. Sweet background music and sound-effects, as well.

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