Screenshots from the Atari ST version

Woah! It’s time for another Games That Time Forgot, and this time it’s a favourite from way back in my childhood. It’s dungeon crawler / top-down action platform thingy Puffy’s Saga, developed by Claude Sablatou and Butterfly software and published by none other than Ubisoft, way back in 1988.

The game’s story involves innocent bystanders Puffy and Puffyn being kidnapped, and transformed from their normal human form into shameless Pac-Man clones by an evil wizard, and then thrown into a dungeon for some unknown reason (you know what evil wizards are like). Our heroes want to escape, and to do that, they need to collect dots while fending off various monsters, working out how to get around the dungeon’s various traps, and dealing with the developers’ batshit insane ideas about level design. Read the rest of this entry »

Anyone whose first PC came with a copy of Windows 3.1 should probably be familiar with SkiFree. The game was written in C all the way back in 1991 by Chris Pirih, a Microsoft employee, in his spare time. It was promptly snapped up by a program manager for the Windows Entertainment Pack, a collection of simple games for Windows 3.1 which included SkiFree, the excellent Chip’s Challenge, and a lot of card games, some of which have survived in Windows to this day.

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In honour of the Dreamcast’s ninth birthday last week we are going to take a look at a game that time didn’t really forget, but a game that has quite wrongly been left to live out its days in that great game shop in the sky, Sega’s excellent Chu Chu Rocket.

Created and developed by Sega’s legendary Sonic Team, Chu Chu Rocket is probably most famous for being the first online game widely available for games console users, that and for being given away free to promote the Dreamcast’s online service.  Despite its price tag Chu Chu Rocket stills stands as one of the top titles the Dreamcast had to offer, its blend of simplicity and a perfectly judged difficulty curve added to the crazy multiplayer experience made it a game not to miss.

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In 1984 Egon Spengler, Peter Venkman, Ray Stantz and Winston Zeddemore (a.k.a. The Ghostbusters) burst on to the big screen and took the world by storm.  6 years later the franchise was still going strong and Sega developed and released a game based on Ghostbusters for its 16-bit Megadrive (or Genesis for the yanks) system.  The game is modeled on the 1987 Activision game released for the Atari 2600 and the Apple II, with a major graphical overhaul and improved sound.

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Way back in the deepest, darkest depths of 1992, Sensible Software (those of Sensible Soccer fame) released Mega-lo-Mania for the Amiga, Atari ST, Megadrive, SNES and PC.  In a nutshell, Mega-lo-Mania is a RTS-God game, casting you as one of four gods battling for supremacy of the world, which is achieved by destroying them over 10 epoch’s (era’s in time) ranging from 9500BC all the way to 2001AD.  Each epoch has it’s own visual style and set of offensive and defensive weapons, and is cleared when you have claimed all 3 islands on the level.  This was easily one of the most accessible and addictive god games released for home video game consoles in the early 90’s, especially when compared to Powermonger!

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Released in 1993 on the Amiga, and then later on the Sega Megadrive/Genesis, ‘Wiz ‘n’ Liz: The Frantic Wabbit Wescue’ is a frantic platform based game that sees you dashing around saving rabbits against a time limit.  Made by Raising Hell Software (now known as Bizarre Creations), and published by Psygnosis (those of Lemmings fame), it largely slipped under the radar of most people, which is a shame as it is excellent fun and seriously addictive…  And even includes a cameo by those lovable green haired, blue jumpered Lemmings! Read the rest of this entry »

Back in the deep, dark depths of 1994, Microprose released Colonization for the PC, the spiritual sequel to Sid Meier’s classic Civilization.  Much like it’s more famous cousin, Colonization is a turn based strategy based on the European colonisation of the New World (America), and see’s the English, Spanish, French and Dutch battle and negotiate their way to dominance with the native tribes and the monarchies back in Europe between the years of 1492 and 1850.  The ultimate goal is declare independence from the state and repel the expeditionary forces sent to destroy you when you do this.

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In honour of this weekends 24 Heures du Mans this weeks Game that Time Forgot is the classic C64 racing game, Pole Position. Released by Atari in 1983 on the C64, 1982 in the arcades and almost every other format under the sun at the time, it was one of the first racing games released for home systems, and widely regarded as popularising the genre. It is a real old school arcade racing affair here, you race to complete laps before the timer runs down and the game ends, every completed lap extends your timer until you complete the required amount of laps to finish the race.

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Way back in 1994 EA dropped Skitchin’ on an unsuspecting Megadrive market. For those that don’t know, skitching is the art of being pulled along by a car when wearing rollerblades or on a skateboard. The game was very much like the Road Rash games in both looks and gameplay, the difference being your on rollerblades and not a motorbike. The game largely slipped under the radar of most gamers at the time, as the concept was not the greatest, but the gameplay was as good as anything Road Rash had to offer.

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This weeks dive into the retro vault take us back to 1994 and SimCity’s shunned little brother, SimTower: The Vertical Empire. The idea of the game is to create a completely self sustaining tower spread over 109 floors, using condos, hotels, offices, shops, restaurants and more. The game itself was not actually made by Maxis like all the other Sim games, but rather it was made by a company called OPeNBooK Co., Ltd in Japan under the name The Tower, Maxis then bought the rights and relabeled it SimTower for a western audience.

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