Ocean 1989
Genre: Sport, Action
Rating: 4/6
Licence: Commercial
System: Amiga

Yay, it's summer! Dig out your bathing shorts / suit, jump in the car and head for the beach. And hope you are one of these good-looking sport-types to avoid being laughed about. Or alternatively, hope there are even fatter people than you to keep the attention away from the result of your beer sessions. Hiring some people with visible mutations could also help...

Image Works 1989
Genre: Action
Rating: 3/6
Licence: Commercial
System: Amiga

Blasteroids, along with Phobia and Spidertronic, was one of the first three original games I owned. Ironically enough, I owned it before I even got an Amiga. Oh well - looking at a box cover can be fun, too.

Tynesoft 1989
Genre: Action, Sport
Rating: 3/6
Licence: Commercial
System: Amiga

Summer Games, California Games - you all know these games which consist of somehow sports-related mini games. Then there was was Circus Games - we're already getting a little more obscure here - and later, the same company released Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. And once again, the title says it all, so let's quickly go through the events of this game.

Ocean 1989
Genre: Sport, Action
Rating: 3/6
Licence: Commercial
System: Amiga

Chase H.Q., which first got into the arcades in 1988, is a racing game with a twist. Instead of just using the basic 'driving faster than the opponents', it adds another goal: catching another vehicle. The simple background story tells us something about a 'futuristic' police department called 'Chase H.Q.'. The player sits around in his sports car all day until he gets a call from Nancy from the headquarters, telling him about an escaped criminal who has to be caught again.

CDS 1989
Genre: Strategy
Rating: 3/6
Licence: Commercial
System: Amiga

Chess might be the most known strategy games in existence. Who knows? One thing is for sure though: it is one of the simplest. At least the rules are simple. It's easy to learn how to play. Reminds my of the time back when I was working in the kindergarten where I taught this game to a bunch of interested children between 4 and 6. That was the time in my life when I played chess most frequently. Almost every day someone challenged me. Yeah, that was fun! At last some real competitors

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.

Elite 1989
Genre: Action
Rating: 3/6
Licence: Commercial
System: Amiga

Steve Bak had already ported both Commando and Ikari Warriors to the Amiga for Elite, and apparantely building on that experience, he followed that up with his original creation Dogs of War. The use of 'original' in the previous sentence being limited to the meaning of 'not being a conversion', because Dogs follows Commando's footprints very closely, but it has become a minor classic on its own right.

Rainbow Arts 1989
Genre: Adventure
Rating: 3/6
Licence: Commercial
System: Amiga

The early days of the Cold War. The USSR is blocking all land transports to the western sectors of Berlin. The USA have initiated an air bridge to supply the city. But Berlin is like a tiny island in what is going to be the GDR - when it comes to war, it'll be overrun by the Red Army immediately!

Sierra 1989
Genre: Adventure
Rating: 1/6
Licence: Commercial
System: Amiga

Jerrod Wilson, a journalist living in 1848 Brooklyn, apparantely never got over 'losing' his brother Jake who was forced to leave town ten years ago. Now the protagonist receives a letter from this lost relative. Jake has found gold in California and he urges Jerrod to join him there. And it would be much of a game if Jerrod didn't go along with this...

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.