Supreme Ruler: Cold War – the title doesn't tell a lot; though if I now mention that you can wage the 3rd World War with nuclear weapons and that one of the goals is conquering and smashing all communist countries of the world, it should get quite interesting, shouldn't it? ![\";)\"](\"/forum/images/smilies/wink.gif\")
A public service announcement that as every year, the annual Interactive Fiction Competition will take place in October. There is still time to install or update your interpreters. Be ready, because when it starts, you will not have enough time to play all those games until the voting deadline! In the meantime, just to get acquired to the taste again, here is a game which ran last year: Barcarolle in Yellow.
Mr Creosote
Anyone who associates platform games with fast action might think of Sonic the Hedgehog. However, the conversion for the C64 lost much of its speed when it was ported from an advanced console to the home computer. If you take another step back, you might end up with The Heart of Salamanderland on the Amstrad CPC and be amazed at how far back the roots of this genre can reach.
LostInSpace
40 years ago, the first wave of established novelists lending their names to computer games occurred. Michael Crichton was an exception insofar that his involvement was not just a licencing deal. Before even being approached by the eventual publisher, he started designing Amazon by himself, programmed scenes and logic himself and hired a programmer to translate his BASIC code into a more efficient language.
Mr Creosote
If that email interface doesn't scream 90s, I don't know what will! And wait until you see their website. Straight out of Frontpage Express. Uh… that was a horrible "WYSIWYG" website editor from Microsoft in case you don't remember. Jagged Alliance 2, the game in which this virtual mail application and those virtual websites appear, has aged a bit better, thankfully.
Mr Creosote
Wonder Boy in Monster World is an often overlooked part of the eponymous series with a very unique graphics style. This visual impression was the main reason for trying out a Wonderboy-game in the first place. You can easily realize the Japanese origin all over the place, but without – in my case, fortunately – being fobbed off with the usual manga-imagery.
LostInSpace
Don't we all love these moments in classic text adventures? The obligatory maze, intended to make the game longer! What's worse, you have to traverse this one without any memory. Because Mindshadow has you stranded on a remote island and with amnesia. Oh boy, retrospective trope alert!
Mr Creosote
To the chair with him! Next case. To the chair! Next. The chair! Who said that being a judge cannot be fun? And what's fun must have a computer game made out of it. Crime and Punishment – if that doesn't spell fun, I don't know what would.
Mr Creosote
Another one of these extremely obscure games from the past which very few remember and even fewer have any nostalgia for. Safe to assume that this one will remain at the bottom of the pageview statistics. Though that is one of the nicest things about doing this for no commercial interest at all: it doesn't matter. Those who want to have a look, enjoy Intrigue!
Mr Creosote
A title screen in full, ugly CGA glory. Thankfully, the game itself uses a different, much more pleasant screenmode. Which, in a game such as Empire: Wargame of the Century, is a necessity. It lies in the nature of strategic wargames to have their players staring at hardly changing maps for hours and hours.
Mr Creosote
Spoiler: the encounter with the Bone Demon is indeed a memorable one. It is, however, the only demon in a book called Demons of the Deep. What a fraud! Balancing it out, there are a couple of other quite spectacular encounters with non-demonic creatures to be found. Even if not particularly consistent in its theme, individual scenes will certainly stick to my mind.
Mr Creosote