1996 – Obsolete Gamer

Zork: Grand Inquisitor

Zork: Grand Inquisitor received good reviews (PC Gamer Magazine gave it an Editor’s Choice award and scored it at 88% in its May, 1988 issue, while GameSpot scored it as a 8.0 “Great”). The biggest fault that reviewers agreed upon was that it seemed too short, and a longer visit in this archetypical gamer universe was wished for. Now that’s a complaint any developer would like to hear! It was released for both Windowsand Macintosh platforms, and played the same on either one. Also, a DVD version was released in 1998, which also included the full version of Zork: Nemesis as an added bonus.

Game Reviews

Matt McKee

Tomb Raider

Soon after I purchased my PSOne, my cousin stopped by my apartment. I didn’t realize he was a big video game guy until I talked to him that day. He didn’t live too far from me and we talked about getting together. My brother was already over and I told him we were playing the Playstation. He told me he had one as well, and was going to bring over some games. I don’t remember any of the others he brought, because I don’t think we ever got past Tomb Raider.
“It’s an Indiana Jones chick who jumps around and shoots stuff.”

Game Reviews

Luis Zena

Crash Bandicoot

Crash Bandicoot was sought out to be the mascot of Sony just like Mario was the mascot of Nintendo. It worked for a while, until the games went down hill. The best part is that you don’t have to hear about the crappy Crash games, I’ll talk about the good ones here yay! Crash Bandicoot is what a platformer can be if done correctly. This game involves Crash who is trying to defeat this scientist yada yada yada doesn’t matter, it’s the gameplay that counts most of the time, then again some games need to give you a reason to keep playing them, err RPGs anyone?

Arcade Games

Simon Lethbridge

Metal Black

You might be thinking that Metal Black sounds, and looks for that matter, like any other generic horizontal scroller, and to some degree you’d be right. However, it does have a slightly unusual weapon system. At the start of the game the Black Fly is equipped with a fairly weak, forward-firing beam cannon which was adapted from the same beam weapons the aliens use. By collecting the abundant Newalone molecules floating around (the little red / orange / blue things in all the shots) it’s possible to gradually power the beam up. You can then continue to use the cannon as normal (and, helpfully, you can even shoot some enemy bullets at higher levels), or you can unleash all its power in one Super Beam Attack.

Classic Windows Games Computer Games

Dan Epp

Duke Nukem 3D

Duke Nukem sold over 300,000 copies in its first week of release. It went on to spawn several re-releases, like the Atomic Edition, East Meets West, and 3rd party level compilations and other mods, like Duke!Zone and Nuclear Winter. In the end the sales of Duke Nukem 3D were in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and made Duke Nukem easily one of the most recognizable franchises and characters in the gaming world.

Arcade Games

J.A. Laraque

19xx: The War against Destiny

As you progress through the levels you take out a ton of enemies of all types. There are planes, tanks, ships, ground weapons and some enemies that take much more than one shot to take out. You will come across power-ups in the game that give you different weapons like lasers, missiles and spread blasters. There are also bombs in the game which clear out most enemies when detonated.