Core Design 1994
Genre: Action
Rating: 5/6
Licence: Commercial
System: Amiga

Banshee is a very late arrival in the genre of shooters. In 1994, the gaming industry started moving everything towards 'three-dimensional' games, and classic concepts like this one slowly died out. Thankfully, this genre (at least the subgenre of 'vertical shooters') got one final hit with this game.

Blue Byte 1991
Genre: Strategy
Rating: 5/6
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.

Revolution Software / Virgin 1994
Genre: Adventure
Rating: 5/6
Licence: Freeware
System: Amiga

If at first you don't succeed.... Lure of the Temptress wasn't a very good game, but it did receive quite positive reviews - let's just say there are and were games which are even more overrated. After that, Revolution Software took their time to develop a successor - and they succeeded in a brilliant way!

Millenium 1994
Genre: Sport, Action
Rating: 5/6
Licence: Commercial
System: Amiga

In contrary to the potential expectations considering the name, Brutal Sports Football does not have very much in common with soccer or football (or even sports). Some elements have been adopted, though. Two teams try to put a ball into the enemy's goal while guarding their own.

Bitmap Brothers 1993
Genre: Action
Rating: 5/6
Licence: Commercial
System: Amiga

Like in most games the story of "Chaos Engine" is not really original: A "Baron" invents a machine in his experiments that "although primitive" becomes more and more powerful and finally changes all creatures in its surroundings to evil monsters.

Icom Simulations 1989
Genre: Adventure
Rating: 5/6
Licence: Commercial
System: Amiga

This time, the player indeed gets a deja vu: This sequel is so similar to its predecessor that it's hard not to get some flashbacks. You're even going to visit some of the old locations and meet some of the old people again! That doesn't mean it's a useless game only to make profit off its 'good name', but without anything new. It is just a sequel in a very strict sense: it picks up right after the first part.

Icom Simulations 1986
Genre: Adventure
Rating: 5/6
Licence: Commercial
System: Amiga

Interactive Fiction made more accessable: add graphics, add a mouse-driven user interface and use the capabilities of a modern 'windowed' operating system. But in spite of that all: don't forget about your target audience!

neo Software 1994
Genre: Strategy, Puzzle
Rating: 5/6
Licence: Freeware
System: Amiga

Lured by the promise of quick money, Matt Stuvysunt arrives in London in early 1953. A meeting with his not very sympathetic, but nevertheless fascinating aquaintace Briggs provides him with a used car, some startup money and at least a faint idea where to start: a small kiosk somewhere out of town. Low gain, but also close to zero risk. Briggs himself is obviously up to something a lot bigger.

Blue Byte 1993
Genre: Strategy
Rating: 5/6
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 / Ubi Soft 1989
Genre: Sport, Action
Rating: 5/6
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.