Lucas Arts 1995
Genre: Adventure
Rating: 4.5/6
Language: English, Deutsch, Français, Italiano, Castellano
Licence: Commercial
System: PC

To get this off my chest right from the start: I'm neither a teenager, nor in any sort of midlife crisis. Not the best prerequisites to enjoy a game about middle-aged, burly (and apparantely a little simple) men whose life consists of driving around on comical, impractical vehicles. At the risk of being beaten to pulp to bald guys with beer bellies: bikers are not cool!

Jobline 2000
Genre: Puzzle
Rating: 4/6
Language: Norsk, Svenska
Licence: Freeware
System: PC

Okay... first off, this game is in swedish... or norwegian - you can switch between these languages... and it's completely irrelevant. This game is a Coloris/Columns clone - and a very good one! Concept is simple - get 3 gems in a row, vertical, horizontal, diagonal - and they vanish. The original was usually referred to as a "Tetrislike game" although that kind of reduces the concept to less than it is. Coloris (or Columns ...or gemline) requires a different set of tactics and strategy. You cannot make long term plans as you can (try to) do in Tetris, you have to build and let vanish fast - you CAN prepare a larger collapse, but the game doesn't let you this room, you'll run out of space faster than in Tetris. Some might argue it's not as challenging as Tetris - maybe it's not, but it requires a different kind of thinking, not necessarily easier or harder...

Coktel Vision 1992
Genre: Puzzle, Adventure
Rating: 4/6
Language: English, Deutsch, Francais, Castellano, Italiano
Licence: Commercial
System: Amiga

Take the Adventure genre. Strip all story from it. Add different characters with different abilities. Limit the free movement of these characters to one screen at a time. What you get is Gobliiins.

Coktel Vision 1994
Genre: Puzzle, Adventure
Rating: 4/6
Language: English, Francais
Licence: Commercial
System: Amiga

The third installment of Coktel's successful series. Officially, also the last one. Depending on personal definition, Woodruff and The Schnibble of Azimuth could as well be called Goblns 4 (sic!). That however, is another story.

Capcom 1993
Genre: Puzzle
Rating: 4/6
Language: English
Licence: Commercial
System: SNES

It's about time to offer our younger visitors something with educational value. I'll do it with 'Goof Troop' and I also admit that I played it although I?m not 8 any more (didn't you guess that?). How embarassing, but I'll try hard to justify it with this test.

SSI 1995
Genre: Simulation, Strategy
Rating: 4/6
Language: English
Licence: Commercial
System: PC

Great Naval Battles IV: Burning Steel is the last part of the quite interesting GNB series by SSI. It covers naval warfare in World War II with a focus on artillery battles rather than aerial attacks (similar to Task Force 1942 by Microprose).

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

A German strategy game with decent graphics and intuitive controls? What a novel idea! Ok, there are exceptions - think of Battle Isle and The Settlers. Hannibal can't quite reach that high level, but it comes close enough...

Ozark Softscape 1985
Genre: Strategy, Adventure
Rating: 4.3/6
Language: English, Deutsch
Licence: Commercial
System: C64

[dregenrocks] The player has to explore the continent of africa in search for a valuable tomb containing the so called "Heart Of Africa". You start in Cairo or another main african city at the coast and buy some basic equipment like a canoe, weapons, tools, food and gifts. With this stuff you start to explore the inner land, by canoeing down rivers or just by walking through the deserts, jungles and wide steppes of the continent. On the way you discover famous landmarks to earn some money and meet villagers, to earn some valueable informations about hidden crates and treasures (i.e. gold, silber, ivory). For this you have to give other treasures or a lot of gifts instead to the village-chiefs, who tell you about those secrets. You will also trade for food and may need to get back to one of the harbour-towns to refresh (save game), get money and new equpment. This will become a "treasure-trade-circle" until some chief may tell you about the "Heart Of Africa", your goal to get riches of your ancestor...

Gremlin 1991
Genre: RPG
Rating: 4/6
Language: English, Deutsch, Francais, Castellano, Italiano
Licence: Commercial
System: Amiga

Ah, Hero Quest... We all spent countless hours playing the board game! I still remember the christmas in Hotel Dorint in Hameln when my brother got it. We spent half of our time there playing it. Of course we were genious enough to use the blank map to create our own quest with a permanent and water resistant pen. And the rest of the time we played.... ummmmm...... hockey in the corridor! But back to Hero Quest.

Blue Byte 1992
Genre: Strategy
Rating: 4/6
Language: Deutsch, English
Licence: Commercial
System: PC

This was most likely supposed to be the start of a series of historical games based on the Battle Isle engine. At least the subheading "1914-1918" points to that. Because there were no sequels, History Line as a bridge between Battle Isle 1 and 2 was forgotten quickly. Wrongly as I think. After all it is still an independent (good) game because of its peculiarities.