U.S. Gold 1990
Genre: Puzzle, Action
Rating: 4/6
Licence: Commercial
System: PC

Sometimes them game-programmers really demand a lot of imagination - who would think of a human body and virii looking at this game? In Vaxine you are the last line of defense protecting important cells against agressive virii. Such a virus appears in 3 possible colors and can be eliminated by shooting at it with a little ball of the same color. To make this clear right now - at first you will think you got a cool fast action-game here. You will be frustrated soon because you won't survive very long. The game will just get faster and faster if you want it to and you won't be able to defend your cells since you will always miss the virii you try to shoot. You need to think of some basic strategies. Most important things are the black gates. Just drive through one and everything will freeze for one minute (remember to drive through one again before the minute runs out). Now you can search for the next virus and get into a good shooting position before you shoot at it (which will unfreeze everything). While this is enough for the first level you will need to eliminate the virus-producers (flat cells moving around on the floor) first in the higher levels. You will hear a special sound-effect each time one of them appears and that means you have to find the next black gate fast to have time to search for that little bastard.

Event Horizon / SSI 1993
Genre: RPG, Adventure
Rating: 5/6
Licence: Commercial
System: PC

This review is part of The Review Roundup - Round 2: Games Related to the Undead

A sudden cloud of bats splashing in your airplane forces you to land in a lost, dark and small valley. A place ruled by a vampire, and where, ignoring it, you have started to fulfil a prophecy of freedom.

Spectrum HoloByte 1989
Genre: Sport, Action
Rating: 4/6
Licence: Commercial
System: PC

Vette is a racing game that speaks for itself, you can drive a Corvette against other people. You get to drive in San Francisco and it only has 4 courses to race. The key is to get to the finish line anyway you can. You begin by selecting a Corvette Model like the stock, ZR1, and has the modified ones like the Callaway Twin turbo and the Corvette Sledge Hammer. You can also press space to do a dyno test to see how fast the car can go. While racing, you can get pulled over by a cop and you could come up with excuses why you were driving fast (like "my accelerator got stuck" or "rushing to the hospital to see my wife" or even "i gotta go to the bathroom so bad" then you get the ticket anyway.

Promotion Software / LBS 1993
Genre: Adventure
Rating: 3/6
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.

??? 1983
Genre: Strategy, Puzzle
Rating: 3/6
Licence: Commercial
System: PC

Vier gewinnt - you probably know this one as "Connect Four" or "Four in a Row". It's a simple game in which you and your opponent drop discs into a 7x6 grid. The first one to connect four tiles vertically, horizontally or diagonally wins. It's an easy concept, but allows for much variation.

Graftgold 1995
Genre: Action
Rating: 4/6
Licence: Commercial
System: Amiga

Virocop was one of the games which really got a lot of attention before it was released - at least from the readers of one specific German Amiga magazine: Amiga Games. This magazine published a "developer's diary" over several months, then it suddenly stopped - but the finished game didn't appear. No explanation, no comment. A lot later, they mentioned they had dropped this article because they couldn't squeeze these pages in anymore. Never sounded too believable to me. More likely that there just wasn't enough happening anymore. Still, it was quite interesting to read every month how the idea developed, how changes to the concept were made (it changed from "Tanky" to "D.A.V.E" over time), how the graphics changed from hand-drawn sketches to actual screenshots.

Firebird 1988
Genre: Action, Simulation
Rating: 2/6
Licence: Commercial
System: Atari ST

Why can't humanity meet a non-aggressive alien race just once for a change? This particular one even employs tactics of biological warfare, infecting the countryside with a virus which leaves only a dead and barren landscape. So the player jumps into his spaceship to destroy all the death-inducing invaders.

Lankhor 1994
Genre: Sport, Action
Rating: 2/6
Licence: Commercial
System: PC

That's the way it happens sometimes: you're told by another gamer how great (or in this case at least good) a game is and how you should really try it. You do and get bored after a few minutes. You wonder if you just haven't found the good part so far, so you continue playing. But nothing happens! It just stays boring. Because that is what the game really is: boring.