Consoles and Home Computers 20-40 / 987

The Terminator for NES is an action game based on the 1984 film, released in December 1992 by Mindscape under a sublicence from Bethesda. Despite the shared name it has nothing in common with the Sega console versions or the PC game; it was written by the Canadian studio Radical Entertainment and has a structure of its own. The player is Kyle Reese... 23

The Elder Scrolls: Arena is a first-person RPG by the American company Bethesda Softworks, released on 25 March 1994 for PC DOS on floppies and on CD-ROM. The player travels across the whole continent of Tamriel to reassemble the 8 pieces of the Staff of Chaos and unseat the usurper Jagar Tharn. The world holds more than 400 towns and villages, a procedurally... 37

They Stole a Million is a strategy game about planning robberies, made in 1986 by the British studio Tigress Marketing and published under the 39 Steps label of Ariolasoft. The player is the boss: you hire a crew of specialists in locks, explosives and getaway driving, buy the plans of the chosen building, and then write out the whole job on a map... 24

The Clue! is a burglary simulator made in 1994 by the Austrian studio neo Software of Hirtenberg; in German speaking countries it shipped under its original name Der Clou!, and a fully Czech edition followed in 1996 as Zlodej. The player takes the part of Matt Stuvysunt, a small-time criminal of Polish descent who arrives in London in 1953 with no... 10

Whizz is a 1994 isometric platformer by the British studio Flair Software. The hero is a rabbit in a magician's coat fleeing an evil rat in a hot-air balloon, who has to cross four worlds before the clock runs out. Instead of straightforward left-to-right jumping, the player works through maze-like levels using coloured keys that open wooden, brick,... 24

Whizz is a 1994 isometric platformer by the British studio Flair Software. The hero is a rabbit in a magician's coat fleeing an evil rat in a hot-air balloon, who has to cross four worlds before the clock runs out. Instead of straightforward left-to-right jumping, the player works through maze-like levels using coloured keys that open wooden, brick,... 4

Oscar is a 1993 platformer by the British company Flair Software, created by reworking their game Trolls after the troll doll licence expired. The hero is Flair's own character Oscar, and the whole game takes place on movie sets: science fiction, western, horror, cartoons, dinosaurs, detective and a TV game show. Each world requires collecting enough... 21

Oscar is a 1993 platformer by the British company Flair Software, created by reworking their game Trolls after the troll doll licence expired. The hero is Flair's own character Oscar, and the whole game takes place on movie sets: science fiction, western, horror, cartoons, dinosaurs, detective and a TV game show. Each world requires collecting enough... 17

Elvira: The Arcade Game is a 1991 side-scrolling platformer by the British company Flair Software, which used the Elvira licence in a completely different way from Horrorsoft's horror RPGs. The player controls Elvira herself across two large worlds, an underworld of fire and a frozen land, in order to unlock the third one, the castle in Transylvania.... 29

Starquake is a 1985 action platformer written single-handedly by Stephen J. Crow and published by the British label Bubble Bus Software for the ZX Spectrum. The player controls BLOB, an artificial being sent into the unstable interior of a planet to gather nine core elements before it detonates. The world spans 512 screens linked by teleport booths,... 33

Starquake is a 1985 action platformer written single-handedly by Stephen J. Crow and published by the British label Bubble Bus Software for the ZX Spectrum. The player controls BLOB, an artificial being sent into the unstable interior of a planet to gather nine core elements before it detonates. The world spans 512 screens linked by teleport booths,... 3

Movie is a 1986 isometric arcade adventure by Duško Dimitrijević, released under the Imagine Software label. Private detective Jack Marlow has to lift an incriminating tape from the headquarters of mob boss Bugs Malloy, helped by a woman named Tanya whose identical twin Vanya is working for the mob. Beyond the isometric action the game offers conversations... 14

Phantom Club is an isometric arcade adventure from Ocean Software, programmed by the Serbian coder Duško Dimitrijević, author of the earlier hit Movie. The player takes the part of Plutus, the lowest-ranked member of a brotherhood of superheroes taken over by the villain Zarg, and has to work his way up to the highest rank of Ipsissimus by completing... 17

Duke Nukem 3D is a 1996 first-person shooter by 3D Realms that moved its muscle-bound hero from two 2D platformers into first person. It runs on Ken Silverman's Build engine, which allowed looking up and down, jumping, swimming and flying with a jetpack, and it became known above all for how much of its environment the player can actually use. The... 132

Body Harvest is a 1998 open-world 3D action game by DMA Design, released exclusively for the Nintendo 64. Genetically engineered soldier Adam Drake travels through five time periods between 1916 and 2016 to stop an alien race that harvests humans every twenty-five years. Behind the wheel of dozens of vehicles or on foot, he destroys shield generators... 40

Tajemství Oslího Ostrova (Donkey Island) is a 1994 point-and-click adventure created by two teenage students from Brno under the Pterodon Software name and distributed by Vochozka Trading. It is a Czech parody of LucasArts' famous pirate series The Secret of Monkey Island — the hero Gajbraš Trípvůd (a take on Guybrush Threepwood) is shipwrecked on... 57

Bureau 13 is a 1995 point-and-click adventure with RPG elements, published by GameTek and developed by Take-Two Interactive. It is based on the Bureau 13: Stalking the Night Fantastic tabletop role-playing game by Richard Tucholka. The player leads two agents of an ultra-secret organisation that hunts paranormal threats; the chosen characters - priest,... 79

B.A.T.2: The Koshan Conspiracy is the sequel to the cyberpunk adventure-RPG by the French studio Computer's Dream, released by Ubi Soft in 1992 for the Amiga and PC, with an Atari ST version a year later. The action moves to the metropolis of ROMA II on the planet Shedishan, where the player, as B.A.T. agent Jehan Menais, investigates the murder of... 37

B.A.T.: The Bureau of Astral Troubleshooters is a cyberpunk mix of adventure and RPG, developed by the French studio Computer's Dream and released by Ubi Soft between 1989 and 1991 for the Atari ST, Amiga, PC, Commodore 64 and Amstrad CPC. The player becomes a secret agent of the B.A.T. organisation in the 22nd century, with just ten days to track... 46

Azrael's Tear is a first-person adventure with RPG and action elements, developed by Intelligent Games and released by Mindscape in 1996 for MS-DOS. The player takes on the role of a "raptor" - a futuristic raider of ancient sites - who breaks into the freshly uncovered underground complex of Aeternis in northern Scotland, where the Knights Templar... 51