Telekom / Art Department 1993
Genre: Adventure
Rating: 3/6
Language: Deutsch
Licence: Freeware
System: PC

And "Ron Sommer" said: "Let's pretend to to cool. It'll look as if we actually care for our customers and as if we were a young and modern company." And his disciples went into the wide world to spread his word. One came back with something he called a 'computer game'. And "Ron Sommer" saw it was good. Or at least he thought it was good...

Mr Creosote 2002
Genre: Adventure
Rating: 0/6
Language: English
Licence: Freeware
System: PC

The Good Old Days' second birthday special - an Adventure walking along the fine line of cheesiness and geeky fan-ideas.

The main technical difference to all my other games is that I didn't use a full-blown sophisticated language anymore. Much too much fuss. Instead, I relied on TADS (Text Adventure Developement System), a free C-like language specialized on IF. The main reason I chose TADS and not Inform or any of the other competitors is that TADS is very easy to learn. It's purely event-based. That means to program a game, all I had to do is define the objects, locations and persons and set routines how they interact with each other. The TADS engine connects it all then with the already great parser which comes with it. Of course I also added to and customized that one. But a big chunk of the work of a real game engine (which none of the older games have) didn't have to be made - I could concentrate on the contents of the game! The source code writte by me is over 2000 lines long. Then add even more for the engine and you get the picture how much work has been put into this.

ShadowBit Interactive 2004
Genre: Sport, Action
Rating: 3/6
Language: English
Licence: Freeware
System: PC

Gremlin's classic arcade game Hustle remains one of the most played classics today, although you might not know it under that name and it has mostly lost its place on desktop computers. It has moved to smaller devices like mobile phones, and it's usually called Snake.

Microsoft 1991
Genre: Puzzle
Rating: 4/6
Language: English
Licence: Freeware
System: PC

I tend to dislike card games. My father loved them, and he was much better at them than I ever will be. There is one notable exception to this rule, however: TriPeaks. It's a very simple card game. You enter your name, and a deck of cards pop up, shaped like a mountain with three peaks, with all lowest cards revealed. You get the rest of the 52 cards in the deck, all turned over, except one. Say, you get a 5. You must pick a card from the mountain that's either one higher or lower than your current card, so in this example 4 or 6. Then that card becomes your next card, and you have to pick a card one lower or higher than that one. The idea is to make series, or streaks, of cards. Why? Money. You start the game broke. First card in a streak nets you $1, the next $2, the next $3 and so on. Having to buy another card loses you $5. The object of the game is to get filthy rich. It's more difficult than it sounds, however. I rarely get over $200 no matter how long I play. My father easily got $3500 in a single game.

Asmodean 2001
Genre: Strategy, Puzzle
Rating: 2/6
Language: Deutsch
Licence: Freeware
System: PC

It's the year 2023/24. After a devastating nuclear war which wiped out almost all life the only 2 survivors, Borislav and William Jefferson leave their respective caves in the Himalaya to take a look at what's left. After some days they happen to meet on a tiny path, surrounded on both sides by gaping cliffs. Only one can go on, the other must jump into oblivion. But how decide who that will be? Well, why not with a board game called UGH.

Promotion Software / LBS 1993
Genre: Adventure
Rating: 3/6
Language: Deutsch
Licence: Freeware
System: Amiga

"Victor Loomes" is a private eye in the Chicago of the 1920s. And his sponsor is..... the LBS (a German "Bausparkasse" - if you don't know what that is, visit their homepage for a good laugh)! If you're asking where the temporal (at that time, the LBS didn't exist) and local (the LBS doesn't exist anywhere outside Germany) link is, you've already understood the whole problem of the game.

Steve Stancliff 1992
Genre: Strategy
Rating: 3/6
Language: English
Licence: Freeware
System: PC

Iceland, 2002 - the big showdown. The armies of King Elwood are invading from Greenland, Scandinavia and the United Kingdom. Dictator Ray has to admit defeat to the royal Blues Brother. Risk - the classic. Only ONE type of army - a very limited number of areas to conquer and gameplay based on the roll of the dice. It's simple - no big stats, no training and improving of units, no building, no nothing. And that's the fascination of Risk. You don't have to learn it - you can just play it and after a few rounds of this ingenious board game you're in it.

Arbeitskreis Spielkultur 1999
Genre: Puzzle, Strategy
Rating: 4/6
Language: Deutsch, English, Nederlands
Licence: Freeware
System: PC

If a game comes along with a producer like "Arbeitskreis Spielkultur" (sounds like some typically German dry official office), you should be careful. If the plot revolves around Norse mythology, the expectation of some completely non-understandable crap made by roleplaying geeks.

Mr Creosote 1999
Genre: Puzzle
Rating: 0/6
Language: Deutsch
Licence: Freeware
System: PC