Nintendo 1989
Genre: Action
Rating: 4/6
Language: English
Licence: Commercial
System: Game Boy

Besides Tetris, Super Mario Land likely belonged to the basic repertoire of most Game Boy players. The main character is the trade mark of the Nintendo corporation, distinctively the "plumber" Mario, who is on a quest for the kidnapped princess Daisy in order to free her. Obviously, the designers rather concentrated on tradition than on innovation when they constructed this background story.

Capcom 1994
Genre: Action
Rating: 4/6
Language: English
Licence: Commercial
System: SNES

Definitely a true classic - it's the one and only fighting game. I decided to review this part of the series because somehow it brought the 2D-fighting game to perfection. Some years after the quite amateurish slot-machine game 'Streetfighter' the second part appeared for every existing computer system, even for the then already aged C64. After a short time the 'Turbo'-version came out and also the 'SuperStreetfighter II'-version, which I?m going to review here.

Tokyo Shoseki / Nintendo 1991
Genre: Sport
Rating: 4/6
Language: English
Licence: Commercial
System: SNES

One thing before: I am, presumably like 99, 997% of humanity, not a tennis fan. Actually I detest tennis. Now the reader asks: "Why the hell does this guy write a review of a tennis game?" I am an employee at a public service und therefore working in several offices from time to time. There you have - you can easily imagine - a lot of time to fritter away. What are you doing then? That's right! Gaming! But what? Everyone who has ever spent eight hours playing Minesweeper or Solitaire knows that there are more refreshing games. Other games like Counterstrike that enforce themselves in huge network (2000 computers) are unsuitable either, if you don't want to surprise your boss with sudden "Yeah!!! Head shot!!!" interjections...

Capcom 1989
Genre: RPG, Adventure
Rating: 4/6
Language: Japanese, English (unofficial)
Licence: Commercial
System: NES

Mamiya Ichirou created a series of frescos that attracted many people to her abandoned and lost in the middle of the forest house. A place that obviously is damned and owned by her victim searching ghost.

Gremlin Graphics 1985
Genre: Action
Rating: 4/6
Language: English
Licence: Commercial
System: Plus/4

Back in the Eighties, Sword Of Destiny was one of the first computer games I played. After putting the cassette into the slightly damaged drive, you had to push down the play button and the cap all the time to avoid a crash during the process of loading. The longer the screen glimmered like a rainbow gone mad, the more the excitement grew. Finally it began: Down into the catacombs!

Avalon Hill 1985
Genre: RPG
Rating: 4/6
Language: English
Licence: Commercial
System: PC

"Ah yes, my young fellows, I still remember when I first climbed down the stairs into this vile dungeon. All I had was the sword of my father and no clue how to use it. And then they came! Zombies, Skeletons, Orcs! I fought them all - barely made it out alive with the few coins I was able to find in the corners of the tunnels. Bandaging my wounds I made it to this very tavern and spent the night. But when the morning sun rose I knew I had to go back in there. I could not leave that dungeon unconquered. And so I travelled deeper. My skills got better, I got faster - soon I was starting to fight of demons and dragons - and the deeper I ventured into the caverns the deadlier they got!

Tiger Media 1992
Genre: Adventure
Rating: 4/6
Language: English
Licence: Commercial
System: PC

The Case of the Cautious Condor was one of the first CD-ROM only games and it was released as early as 1989 for the (then) groundbreaking japanese home computer FM-Towns which came with a CD drive by default - long before this got into mainstream on the PC four years later with killer applications like Rebel Assault.

Melbourne House 1982
Genre: Adventure
Rating: 4/6
Language: English
Licence: Commercial
System: ZX Spectrum

If you think text adventures, you probably think Infocom and PC. However, even with all the freeware text adventures as a result of a huge fan base, the Spectrum is still the primary platform for text adventures. With over 1,400 commercial (or semi-commercial) text adventures for Spectrum alone and countless more that ware made thanks to the simple programming language, the Spectrum was a heaven for all adventure fans. In hindsight, it's not surprising. In the early 80s, PCs were still very expensive, Apple II had too good graphics to bother with text games and the rest of the crowd were consoles, only few of which had a keyboard. Spectrum was perfect: with a 3.5MHz processor it was pretty weak for high-res graphic games, yet because it was also a programming platform, it had a highly functional keyboard, perfect for text adventures.

Sierra 1992
Genre: Puzzle
Rating: 4/6
Language: English
Licence: Commercial
System: PC

Now that you became Dr. Brain's assistant you've got your first job assigned to you: going to Dr. Brain's private island for recovering a battery necessary in an important new creation.

Imagitec / Gametek 1993
Genre: Strategy, Puzzle
Rating: 4/6
Language: English, Deutsch
Licence: Commercial
System: Amiga

This review is part of The Review Roundup - Round 1: Games Related to the End of the World

Norse mythology has its very specific version of how the world is going to end. The world will fall into a deadly winter, and all kinds of natural catastrophes will occur. Monsters will rise from the depth in which they hid. The monsters will ally with the giants, facing the gods and heroes. In this final battle between good and evil, everybody will perish - including the chief god Odin.