Consoles and Home Computers 0-20 / 947

Buzz Aldrin's Race Into Space (BARIS) is a strategy simulation of the Cold War space race by the studio Strategic Visions, published by Interplay in 1993. The player takes charge of either the American NASA or the Soviet space program with the goal of being the first to land a human on the Moon - allocating the budget for rocket development, recruiting... 2

Caesar II is the sequel to Impressions Games' Roman-province city-builder, released in 1995 for PC DOS and Windows (1996 for Macintosh) by publisher Sierra On-Line. As a governor the player civilizes provinces on three levels - a province map with mines and roads, a city with aqueducts, baths and temples, and a new tactical combat module for battles... 5

Battle Chess is a computer game version of chess in which the chess pieces come to life and battle one another when capturing. The game itself was inspired by the 3D chess sequences from Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope and Futureworld. There are 35 animations, including movement, prelude to battle, and the combinations of battle itself (the latter... 7

Arkanoid: Revenge of Doh (also known as Arkanoid 2) is the direct sequel to Taito's arcade hit, released in June 1987. To the proven brick-breaking with the Vaus paddle it adds warp gates with a choice of route - a single playthrough covers 34 of the total 64 rounds - regenerating silver bricks, moving blocks, new power-ups and boss fights including... 12

Arkanoid: Doh It Again is a sequel to Taito's classic brick-breaker, released in 1997 for the SNES - by Taito itself in Japan and under the Nintendo label in the West. It offers 99 levels with boss fights every eleven rounds, multiple endings, a custom level editor and two-player play in cooperative or competitive mode, with SNES Mouse support. The... 12

Tournament Arkanoid is the American follow-up to the arcade hit Arkanoid, produced in 1987 by Taito America under license from distributor Romstar. It offers 32 entirely new stages - some harder than anything in the original - while the Vaus paddle mechanics, power-up capsules and story framing remain unchanged. It was released exclusively to North... 5

Asmodeus: Tajemný kraj Ruthaniolu is the final game of the Czech studio NoSense, released in 1997, blending a first-person action RPG with adventure. The player takes the role of Mot, who must gather three magical stones - the Eterons - for his master in order to summon the ancient demon Asmodeus. He explores the land of Ruthaniolu, enemy-filled dungeons... 9

Bram Stoker's Dracula is a 1993 movie tie-in based on Coppola's 1992 film (itself adapted from Bram Stoker's novel). It is less a single game than a family of markedly different ports: on consoles and handhelds (NES, SNES, Sega Genesis, Master System, Game Gear, Game Boy) it is an action platformer, on the Amiga and Sega CD a beat 'em up, and on MS-DOS... 14

The Four Crystals of Trazere (released in Europe as Legend) is a 1992 isometric fantasy RPG by the British group TAG (Anthony Taglione and Pete James), the creators of Bloodwych. The player leads a party of four heroes across the world of Trazere, overrun by hordes of mutants, facing a re-awakening ancient evil with the help of an elaborate spell-crafting... 3

Alien Legacy is an excellent space strategy game with a good dose of adventure and action elements thrown in. In the tradition of Starflight, explore and build new colonies on distant planets while researching alien technologies. The cliche plot at the start soon evolves into an interesting mix of alien espionage, mysteries, and intergalactic conflicts.... 10

Mutation of J.B. (Mutácia Johnyho Burgera) is a classic hand-drawn point-and-click adventure and the first Slovak game released on CD-ROM with complete Slovak voice acting (Riki Computer Games, 1996). Its characters were voiced by well-known actors and comedians such as Jozef Pročko and Ladislav Kočan, and the game is full of humour. The hero is a... 8

Reach for the Skies is a World War II combat flight simulator set during the Battle of Britain. In the game, you have the option to participate in the battle either as the Royal Air Force or the German Luftwaffe. In addition to piloting an aircraft, you can also take charge of planning which aircraft to deploy where on any given day, while trying to... 59

Dungeon Master is considered to be the first 3D realtime action computer role-playing game. Dungeon Master introduced some novel control methods including the spell casting system, which involved learning sequences of runes which represented the form and function of a spell's effect. Many reviewers considered Dungeon Master as the best example of its... 134

Yendorian Tales: The Tyrants of Thaine is the third and final entry in the fantasy RPG trilogy from the Texas-based family-run shareware studio SmithWare / SW Games, released in 1999 through the Australian publisher Spectrum Pacific Publishing. The game continues in the 1st-person grid-based dungeon crawler style established by the second instalment,... 30

Yendorian Tales: Book I – Chapter 2 (Yendor 2) is the second instalment in the fantasy RPG trilogy from the Texas-based family-run shareware studio SmithWare / SW Games, released in 1996 through the Australian publisher Spectrum Pacific Publishing. The game makes a significant shift from the original – moving from a top-down Ultima-clone perspective... 16

Yendorian Tales Book I is an overhead view fantasy role-playing game. The player can create and control a party of up to six characters belonging to a variety of classes. Interaction with the NPCs is performed by typing in conversation themes, similarly to Ultima games. Combat takes place on separate screens; the player-controlled party and the opponents... 52

Fragile Allegiance is a 4X real-time strategy set in deep space, released in 1996 by Gremlin Interactive for MS-DOS and Windows 95. The game is essentially a modernised remake of the Amiga title K240 (1994, Celestial Software) – the same mechanics ported into a PC environment with improved graphics, isometric viewpoints, and a far more sophisticated... 61

Legend of Faerghail is a party-based RPG developed by the Hannover-based German studio Electronic Design and published in 1990 by reLINE Software (and internationally through Rainbow Arts and Electronic Zoo). It shipped for the Amiga, Atari ST, and PC DOS. Mechanically the game leans heavily on Interplay's The Bard's Tale – first-person grid-based... 112

Arcade Volleyball is a simple single-screen action game for one or two players, in which the players themselves are represented by figures with large, ball-like heads. The original version of the game was created by Rhett Anderson, and the complete source code for the Commodore 64 was first published in COMPUTE!'s Gazette magazine in June 1988. The... 63

Ramonovo kouzlo (Ramon's Spell) is a Czech point-and-click adventure game released in 1995 by Vochozka Trading for PC DOS. Development was led by Michal Janáček, later co-founder of the Pterodon studio. The game belongs to the first wave of Czech adventures kicked off by Tajemství Oslího ostrova, and stands out technologically by replacing hand-drawn... 33