Consoles and Home Computers 40-60 / 1032

Warcraft: Orcs & Humans is the first real-time strategy game from Blizzard Entertainment, released for DOS late in 1994 and later for the Macintosh and the Japanese PC-98. Humans and the orcish Horde meet in the fantasy kingdom of Azeroth, and the war is told from both sides with 12 scenarios each. Players mine gold and chop lumber, raise a base and... 104

Command & Conquer, now distinguished by the subtitle Tiberian Dawn, is a real-time strategy game developed by Westwood Studios and published by Virgin Interactive for PC DOS in 1995. The player commands one of two sides in a war over an alien mineral called tiberium: the UN-backed Global Defense Initiative, or the secretive Brotherhood of Nod led by... 247

The first data disk for the space combat simulator Wing Commander, released by Origin Systems for PC DOS in December 1990. The Kilrathi wipe out the colony of Goddard with a new weapon able to destroy a whole planet, and the carrier Tiger's Claw follows their fleet deep into enemy space. The 16 new missions run linearly, without the branching of the... 59

Wizardry 2: The Knight of Diamonds is the second scenario in the Wizardry series, published by Sir-tech Software in 1982. Andrew C. Greenberg and Robert Woodhead built it as a direct continuation of the first game: the original Apple II release had no character creation, so the party came over from a Proving Grounds disk, ideally at level 13 or above.... 140

Ancient Fighters is a grid-based dungeon crawler released in February 1994 by the Bratislava company Extra Vision for the ZX Spectrum, with a SAM Coupe version following shortly after. From a first-person view the player works through the catacombs beneath Rome in the reign of emperor Diocletian, switching between 3 warriors who each have their own... 201

Populous II: Trials of the Olympian Gods, the sequel to Bullfrog's god game, came out in November 1991 for the Amiga and was gradually ported to other computers and consoles. It was written from scratch and moved out of a vague medieval world into Greek myth: the player is a demigod, son of Zeus by a mortal woman, who has to fight his way through the... 99

The Fellowship of the Ring is an illustrated text adventure based on the first volume of The Lord of the Rings, built in 1985 by the Australian studio Beam Software for the publisher Melbourne House. In Europe it was sold as Lord of the Rings: Game One, and it is the follow-up to the same studio's earlier The Hobbit. The player leads Frodo and his... 182

The Hobbit is an illustrated text adventure based on the novel by J. R. R. Tolkien, written in 1982 by Veronika Megler and Philip Mitchell at the Australian studio Beam Software and published by Melbourne House. The player takes the role of Bilbo Baggins, travelling with Gandalf and Thorin across Middle-earth towards the Lonely Mountain, where the... 84

A compilation of both ICOM Simulations detective adventures starring private eye Ace Harding, who first wakes up with no memory in a Chicago bar one floor below a corpse and then in Las Vegas with a mob boss breathing down his neck. ICOM published it itself for Windows 3.x in 1992, with recoloured graphics and windows that behave like any other Windows... 68

A detective adventure that ICOM Simulations made in 1988 as the sequel to Deja Vu and the last of the 4 MacVenture games. Private eye Ace Harding comes to in the bathtub of a cheap Las Vegas hotel, and mobster Tony Malone gives him 7 days to return money he supposedly stole. The whole game is played with the mouse in a system of overlapping windows,... 99

Deja Vu: A Nightmare Comes True!! is a 1985 detective adventure, the first game by ICOM Simulations and the first title in the MacVenture series, published for the Macintosh by Mindscape. Private eye Ace Harding comes to in the bathroom of a Chicago bar in 1941 with no memory, a revolver missing 3 bullets and a corpse one floor up. Instead of typing... 215

Jagged Alliance: Deadly Games is a 1996 turn-based tactical game and a standalone follow-up to the first part, developed and published by Sir-Tech Software. It runs on the same engine, but instead of liberating a single island it offers a chain of self-contained missions handed out by an anonymous employer and capped by a number of turns. Mercenaries... 34

Nuclear Strike is a 1997 action game from Electronic Arts and the fifth and final part of the Strike series. The player again flies a Super Apache gunship, works through objective lists on large maps, keeps an eye on fuel, ammunition and armour and ferries rescued people to landing zones. New are the other machines the player can switch into mid-mission,... 243

Urban Strike is an isometric helicopter action game published by Electronic Arts in 1994 as the third part of the Strike series for the SEGA Mega Drive, with ports for the SNES, Game Gear and Game Boy following in 1995 and 1996. This time the Mohican gunship flies neither into the desert nor into the jungle but over Hawaii, San Francisco, New York... 48

Urban Strike is an isometric helicopter action game published by Electronic Arts in 1994 as the third part of the Strike series for the SEGA Mega Drive, with ports for the SNES, Game Gear and Game Boy following in 1995 and 1996. This time the Mohican gunship flies neither into the desert nor into the jungle but over Hawaii, San Francisco, New York... 114

Urban Strike is an isometric helicopter action game published by Electronic Arts in 1994 as the third part of the Strike series for the SEGA Mega Drive, with ports for the SNES, Game Gear and Game Boy following in 1995 and 1996. This time the Mohican gunship flies neither into the desert nor into the jungle but over Hawaii, San Francisco, New York... 52

Urban Strike is an isometric helicopter action game published by Electronic Arts in 1994 as the third part of the Strike series for the SEGA Mega Drive, with ports for the SNES, Game Gear and Game Boy following in 1995 and 1996. This time the Mohican gunship flies neither into the desert nor into the jungle but over Hawaii, San Francisco, New York... 149

Jungle Strike is a 1993 action game by Electronic Arts and the second part of the Strike series. The player is back in a gunship, this time a Comanche, flying over Washington, the South American rainforest and snowbound mountains in an isometric view. The enemies are Ibn Kilbaba, son of the general from the first game, and the drug baron Carlos Ortega,... 90

Desert Strike: Return to the Gulf is a 1992 action game and the first part of the Strike series by Electronic Arts. The player sits in an AH-64A Apache gunship and flies over a desert emirate seized by a self-styled general named Kilbaba, seen from an isometric view. Besides shooting there is fuel and ammunition to watch, supplies scattered across... 60

Dark Seed is a horror point-and-click adventure from 1992 and the first title released by the Californian studio Cyberdreams. The dark half of its world was built from the work of Swiss painter H. R. Giger, who licensed his art on one condition: the game had to run in a high resolution of 640x350 pixels and 16 colours instead of the then usual 320x200... 65