Retro game of the day

[PhakeDC]

Post your own favourite retro titles, one game per post. A few screenshots and a quick review will do.







Even though there were about a million platformers released for 8/16 bit consoles, you'd be hard pressed to find anything as quirky and ever-fresh as Konami's Rocket Knight Adventures; boasting a mix of a unique animation style that wouldn't look out of place in a French cartoon, and downright strange tunes and bosses, RKA is one of the finest platformers ever made by Konami. Its sequel, Sparkster, loses some of the charm but retains the same fun playability.

Konami nowadays releases annual updates to its Winning Eleven franchise plus the occasional MGS and portable titles—plus snazzy follow-ups to Contra if we're lucky.

[Access]

Rez is pretty retro on that old Dreamcast i've heard about.

[Anomonous Guy]

Wibble World Giddy (1993)



I enjoyed this game, it was included in one of the last Amiga collections that I ever bought. I thought it was a great parody of the Dizzy games. It was released into the public domain, and I bought it from some guy selling Amiga products at a leisure centre when they had a computer day.

There were quite a few in the 'Giddy' series, and they were really pretty good fun platform/adventure games.

[Atebash]

Monkey Island series









The screenshots making you replay them all? Really need a review?

[Anomonous Guy]

That game needs no review!

Bloody hell, I really wanna play them all... But no I have no time to play them all AGAIN hehe...

[Atebash]

Ah crap, now I want to replay them! BRB!

[MheAd]

Oh....Monkey Island 1.
Banjaluka 1993. It's a bloody war. Every night I go to sleep I wonder whether my throat will be cut, but still...in a sick kind of way, I was "happy". It's May, the weather is perfect...and I go through Banjaluka main alley...to the friend of mine to play this great game.

Damn you Atebash for mentioning it!

[Atebash]

Monkey Island, helping you live through the war!
Great game indeed

[MheAd]

Monkey Island, helping you live through the war!
Great game indeed

I would rather call it escape from reality for a moment and not only Monkey Island did it for me - even Waxworks and Elvira series!

[Atebash]

Elvira! Such a spooky atmosphere... Gotta love it!

My C64 review:
There was a time when nobody imagined that such a complex game as Elvira: Mistress of the Dark would ever appear on C64. But times had changed and some real great and large games were finally being made for the good old 'puter. Elvira comes on 3 disks and is one of the biggest C64 games of all time.
As in usual RPGs you start with no experience and low stats and skills. Your goal is to free Elvira from the spooky castle. To achieve your goal you will have to fight many, many creatures ranging from "simple" knights to quite deadly zombies and other huge monsters. The game is full of various puzzles but with use of literally dozens of spells, potions and other useful things you will eventually prevail and win the game. Don't be fooled, the game is hard and will require a lot of time and nerves to be completed.
There are many locations in the game. The atmosphere is quite spooky and is enhanced by horrific music and sounds. The game is viewed from the first person perspective. The graphics are astonishing, especially during the combat sequences!
This is one of the best games ever made for C64. You simply must have it!






Gotta love that screen

[MheAd]

You gotta make a correction there on screen shots, mate (MobyGames - thing)
As for Elvira, yeah, it was quite impressive to actually be able to exist on C64, and even the graphics kind of remind me of PC EGA-version of the game. However, I can imagine how pain in the ass was to play on C64, diskdrive reading all the time.

My experiences from Elvira-games came of course from best version/platform of that time - Amiga!

[Anomonous Guy]

Hey Atebash, you think you should try getting the site online so u can start adding games again? You seem to be enjoying this

[Atebash]

Ah crappy screenshots!

Anom: Yeah, I enjoy it

[Tux]

Atebash is too addicted to WoWcrack
'check his sig (and avatar)

[Herzeg Dva]

Herzog Zwei is a Mega Drive/Genesis game by Technosoft, published in 1989 (released in the United States in early 1990). It is one of the first real-time strategy games, predating the genre-popularizing Dune II. Many also consider it one of the best two-player Genesis games, combining arcade-style play of Technosoft's own Thunder Force series with a simple, easy-to-grasp level of strategy. It is the sequel to Herzog, which was only available on the Japanese MSX personal computer.

Herzog Zwei (pronounced ['hɛətsok tsvai]) is German for Duke Two or, in a more colloquial translation, The Second Baron, reflecting its two-player nature. It can be played alone, and the weak AI of the computer opponent is offset by having many more units than the player, but this style of play is the only way to play the game in full-screen mode; multiplayer is only possible via a split-screen setup where players can each see what the other is doing.

The mechanics of Herzog Zwei make it a game with a slower feel than most modern RTS games, making for more thoughtful play. It was not a huge success, due to its lack of marketing, relatively early release on the Genesis platform, and its non-arcade genre on what was considered an arcade game console. Scores for the game were generally very low from professional reviewers, but long after its release, it has achieved a cult status and has often found itself on several "best of..." lists of video games in its precedence in the real-time strategy genre, as well as the finer points of the gameplay being discovered.

A sequel was planned for Sega's 32X platform, but with the subsequent failure of that console, so, too, died the plans for a third Herzog title. With Technosoft closing its doors in 2001 and the status of the intellectual property being unknown, the future of the series is likely sealed.

I always read about this classic but never got around to buying it.. I wonder whether a remake was ever done.