Eldritch Games 1989
Genre: Adventure
Rating: 5/6
Language: English
Licence: Commercial
System: Amiga

Alone in the Dark, Shadow of the Comet, Prisoner of Ice - games based on or inspired by works by H.P. Lovecraft. None of these can claim to be the best or first game of this theme though, because there is another one which is both older and still beats them all easily: The Hound of Shadow!

Electronic Arts 1991
Genre: Adventure, RPG
Rating: 5/6
Language: English
Licence: Commercial
System: PC

Inside the dungeon below the ruins of an ancient city your old master, Mordamir the immortal, is imprisoned and seeking help. Traps and denizens of the underground will be on your way. Only your skills and spells will be on your side as you venture to the deepest cave.

Cinemaware 1986
Genre: Adventure, Action
Rating: 2/6
Language: English
Licence: Commercial
System: Amiga

The early and mid-90s - the wake of the CD-Rom as a games medium. Because the games themselves didn't need this space yet, tons of 'interactive movies' filled the shelves of the stores. Those were rarely more than a collection of movie clips and the players' only activity was to make a few (often pretty futile) decisions between the scenes. Many see 7th Guest as the beginning of this development.

Smoking Car Productions 1997
Genre: Adventure
Rating: 5/6
Language: English, Deutsch
Licence: Commercial
System: PC

Robert Cath is a American doctor in his late 20s who has been kicked out of the medical establishment for his leanings towards mysticism and interest in ancient and esoteric forms of medicine. He spent the last few years of his life in Paris. Recently however, some of his research brought him to Ireland where he got caught between the fronts of the fight between the IRA and the British army. Suddenly, he's wanted by the police all over Europe - for murdering a policeman. Just then, an invitation to accompany him in the Orient Express to Constantinople from his old friend Tyler Whitney arrives. Cath decides this is the best way out, so he boards the train in Paris... or rather some kilometres later. He opens the door to his friend's compartment and finds him lying on the floor in a pool of his own blood - murdered. Cath has to find the murderer - and avoid being arrested for this crime as well as the other charges himself.

Electronic Arts 1992
Genre: Adventure
Rating: 4/6
Language: English, Deutsch, Francais
Licence: Commercial
System: PC

A young actress has been brutally murdered right behind the theatre. It looks like Jack the Ripper has found his first victim outside Whitechapel: the poor woman's throat has been cut and there are more wounds which could only have been inflicted with a scalpel all over the body. Inspector Lestrade from Scotland Yard is leading the investigation - and he asks the world's first, most famous and only consulting detective for help: Sherlock Holmes.

Infocom 1987
Genre: Adventure
Rating: 5/6
Language: English
Licence: Commercial
System: PC

It all started out as a completely normal day at G.U.E. Tech: Only one evening left to finish your assignment, and there's a snowstorm blazing outside. For the lack of an alternative, you defy the forces of nature and fight your way to the computer lab where you plan to finish the document you've already started writing. As usual, there's a lone hacker tapping away in a dark corner of the room. You open your document, but it's not quite what you expected - certainly not the draft of your paper. Even worse, no matter how hard you try, you can't even figure out what it is. Strange visions engulf you, and that's only the beginning of the horrifying adventure which will lead you into previously unknown caverns deep below the campus...

Magnetic Scrolls 1986
Genre: Adventure
Rating: 4/6
Language: English
Licence: Commercial
System: Amiga

Europe's answer to Infocom wasn't in fact all that similar to its american counterpart. Apart from the obvious facts of being founded a lot later and surviving longer, Magnetic Scrolls developed their games for a completely different market. While Infocom was still stuck with the inferior 'typewriters' ruling the US market (to this day), Magnetic Scrolls wrote their games for 'home computers' - with the European market in mind, where these machines were immensely popular. The Pawn, their first game, was developed for the Sinclair QL, a then brand new computer which turned out to be a very bad flop. The game was ported to the other new 16 bit machines: the Atari ST and the Amiga. These versions first showed how fresh Magnetic Scrolls' approach to the genre was: they featured a set of graphics showing the settings in stunning quality! The later ports to the ever-popular 8 bit platforms (C64, Sinclair Spectrum) had to live without these graphics again.

Lucasfilm Games 1991
Genre: Adventure
Rating: 6/6
Language: English, Deutsch, Francais
Licence: Commercial
System: Amiga

My name is Guybrush Threepwood. I want to be a pirate. What, you don't know what I'm talking about? Where have you been since 1990? The only excuse I will accept is this: searching treasure on a cut-off island with vegetarian cannibals, a hermit waiting to be rescued even though he has already built a boat and a giant monkey head!

Legend Entertainment 1991
Genre: Adventure
Rating: 6/6
Language: English
Licence: Commercial
System: PC

Time certainly flies by... when I first started this site in the last millenium, Legend's Adventure games were pretty common on sites like this one. Not as common as the ones by Sierra, of course, but they could easily be found. These days (2006), you'll probably find a few of the later point & click style ones (Death Gate, Shannara,...) and if you're very persistent, you might stumble across the odd site which mentions the Spellcasting games. I blame this lack on the lack of actual collectors among the webmasters. If the only source you have for games to put on your own site are other websites, it's an automatic downward spiral concerning diversity.

Core Design / Eidos 1996
Genre: Adventure, Puzzle
Rating: 5/6
Language: English, Français, Deutsch
Licence: Commercial
System: PC

It may be one of the less clever ideas I've had, but I'm gonna try and write up Tomb Raider. The truly beautiful people among us (and I don't mean here at TGOD) often suffer from a defeatist, or fatalist streak in their contemporaries, in the sense that they are rarely approached in a casual manner, due to the assumption that the beauty in question must have lots of beautiful friends already, therefore rendering the unsolicited attentions of the common plebe superfluous. Add a touch of fear of being rebuffed or ridiculed, and presto: Dr Oetker's Instant Loneliness Sour Whip.