Blue Byte 1996
Genre: RPG
Rating: 5/6
Language: Deutsch, English
Licence: Commercial
System: PC

Today is the great day, today the Toronto arrives at its goal, a mineral rich planet where to start a colossal mining operation finishing a multimillionaire travel. Everything looks great, until an accident during leaves the exploration crew stranded on the deserted lifeless planet, to discover that it isn't a desert, and much less lifeless.

Blue Byte 1991
Genre: Strategy
Rating: 5/6
Language: English, Deutsch
Licence: Commercial
System: Amiga

Battle Isle - the game which got two different groups of games into public focus: wargames and German games. Both had had their loyal fan-base before, but both had been small. Tactical wargames turned into a very popular genre following this game. German games stayed a niche market in spite of this game's success.

Blue Byte 1993
Genre: Action
Rating: 5/6
Language: Deutsch, English
Licence: Commercial
System: PC

After two mission disks and the differently themed History Line: 1914-1918, Blue Byte followed their more successful game to date up with a real sequel. The evil robot armies are back and the Drullians saw no other way than to kidnap a great strategist to lead their armies - you. Stories have never been a strong point in strategy games (that made it even more surprising that a 'novelization' of the story actually came with the game).

Blue Byte 1993
Genre: Strategy
Rating: 5/6
Language: Deutsch, English
Licence: Commercial
System: Amiga

British and American games usually keep their names when they're released in Germany - even if it's a translated version. That's good, makes international conversations about them easier. German companies on the other hand sometimes take really silly measures to increase their chance on the international market. Not that it has ever worked, but giving up would be silly, too. One of the effects is that German games have English names - even here. If you can't see anything strange about that, you're probably from the USA. What would you think if a game by an 'American' company would carry a title in Suaheli? To take it one step further: what would you think if a game by a German company was released in your country carrying a German title?

Blue Byte 1995
Genre: Strategy
Rating: 4/6
Language: Deutsch, English
Licence: Commercial
System: PC

Whenever something claims to be 'crazy' (meaning 'funny' or 'wacky') in the title, you should be careful. It usually means the product won't be crazy at all, but rather lame. Simple reason: They try too hard, it all gets too obvious. Die total verrückte Rallye (literal translation: the totally crazy rallye) fortunately only stumbles into this trap partly, keeping the lameness factor at a bearable minimum (if only there weren't this 'announcer' with his GDR / Berlin accent...).

Blue Byte / Ubi Soft 1989
Genre: Sport, Action
Rating: 5/6
Language: English
Licence: Commercial
System: Amiga

The strangest thing happened with my floppy disk of this game. It would stop loading in the middle of the booting process. I thought it was hopelessly broken - wrong. All I had to do was take the disk out of the drive and put it in again, and it would continue loading as normal. Of course, this happened several times every time I loaded the game, so playing became quite a piece of work. Even with several years of university behind me, I still can't figure out a logical explanation for this behaviour. An unsolved mystery of computer science.

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.

Blue Byte 1997
Genre: Strategy
Rating: 5/6
Language: Deutsch, English
Licence: Commercial
System: PC

1997? Yes, I know what you're thinking: So he is playing new games after all. That's right - there are a few good ones. The more current the year, the bigger the exception, though, making it even more noteworthy if a good game turns up in such a year. Considering its age, Incubation is like a flower growing from bowl of pus. Growing from such an unpleasant surrounding, it has to be spoiled in some way.