Abandonware DOS retro gaming spotlight

Fighting with Body Blows by Team17

Back when I was the proud owner of an Amiga 500, if you wanted to play good fighting games (and you didn't own a console) you had to seek out the nearest arcades and spend coin after coin trying to learn every move of games like Mortal Kombat ore Street Fighter 2....

Retro game spotlight: The Lost Vikings

I'm not a fan of platformers. I love RPGs, I enjoyed many point & click adventures, I like most strategy games, but I never got excited while playing a platform game. Lost Viking is different. I LOVED the concept of controlling three different vikings in order to solve riddles and ...

Cadaver and Cadaver: The Payoff

Cadaver (and the expansion Cadaver: The Payoff) is a blend of adventure and platform game developed by Bitmap Brothers. The gameplay reminds me of the glorious Head over Heels with a few differences: a fantasy setting, an inventory and the fact that you can die... and I died a lot ...

1998 in PC gaming: Dune 2000, Axis and Allies, Railroad Tycoon 2

20 years ago PC gaming was thriving. Half-Life re-defined the game design of FPSs. Baldur's Gate and Fallout 2 gave hope to gamers who were waiting for the next generation of RPGs. Adventure gamers enjoyed Grim Fandango immensely. Real-time strategy fans spent countless hours playing StarCraft. And let's not forget&...

Relaxing with Alpha Waves

Alpha Waves was the ultimate relaxing experience for PC. As a platform game, Alpha Waves it's an ok game; not bad, not very good, but if you consider the whole relaxing experience, it's worth a try. Alpha Waves stands the test of time, after all these years it's still fairly ...

Delivering papers as a digital paperboy

Paperboy was an unusual 1985 arcade hit developed by Atari, later published by Mindscape for DOS in 1988 and for other platforms as well. Paperboy gameplay is peculiar: you control a paperboy on a bicycle and you have to deliver newspapers to a number of houses while avoiding dogs, cars and other ...

Zool: the ninja from the Nth dimension

Zool was to Amiga what Sonic was for Sega consoles: a cool protagonist (a ninja of the Nth dimension!) for a high adrenaline action platformer. Zool was designed by George Allen and published by Gremlin in 1992 and it was an instant success. It was ported for many platforms, DOS included, ...

What was your favourite classic arcade game?

Everyone knows what "classic arcade" means. And everyone should know what the most popular and loved classic arcade games are (or, should I say "were"?). Pac-Man, Donkey Kong and Space Invaders are perhaps the most iconic classics in the early history of video gaming. If you're a true retro-gamer you ...

Rampage: monsters VS buildings

As a kid, I remember spending hours at the bar down the road playing at Rampage as Lizzie. Destroying buildings and eating tasty humans was one of my favourite past-times. It's surprising that the coin-op conversion of Rampage for DOS ended up as a nice game. Granted it's not the ...

What was your favourite fighting game?

Fighting games (or VS fighting), is a genre that appeals quite a wide range of gamers.Fighting games involves hand-to-hand fighting against a single opponent for the whole duration of a match. A distinctive trait of fighting games are special attacks, i.e. combinations of graphically striking moves which enhance ...

The worst games based on movies

Movies have always been a source of inspiration for video games. Almost every successful movie has its video game (and sometimes even unsucessful ones). The results in the gaming world weren't always so good. I remember lots and lots of mediocre games that tried to patch together different moments of ...

Commander Keen: side-scrolling platformers

In the 90's PCs weren't exactly popular as a gaming system for platform games. The whole Commander Keen series was an exception. Created by a trio of talented designers (John Carmack, John Romero and Tom Hall), Commander Keen games - side scrolling platformers - contributed to put PCs under the ...

Death Sword (AKA Barbarian): the art of fighting slowly

Death Sword (also known as Barbarian in Europe), is a fighting game developed by Palace Software, set in a fantasy world full of huge sword-wielding barbarians. Compared to modern brawlers, Death Sword gameplay may seem slow, but at the time it was considered adequate. Instead of rushing into multiple chain ...

A niche genre: Metroidvania

Metroidvania is a made up word born from the merge of two game series titles: Metroid and Castlevania. Both games share gameplay and design elements that defines the genre. Metroidvania games are platform games featuring a game world that is freely explorable. Certain areas can be accessed only with player ...

From the arcades: coin-operated conversions

There was a time when coin-operated games were constantly being converted for home systems. Now coin-ops are really difficult to find and everyone prefer playing from home, online or offline, without the hassle of driving/walking to an arcade and lose coin after coin into those hellish money-eating machines. I ...