Command your Cobra space ship in a fantastic voyage of discovery and adventure, a supreme test of your combat, navigational and entrepreneurial skills.

Trade between countless planets, using the proceeds to equip your ship with heat-seeking missiles, beam lasers and other weapons – corporate states can be approached without risk, but unruly anarchies may be swarming with space pirates.

Black market trading can be lucrative but could result in skirmishes with local police and a price on your head!

However you make your money, by fair means or foul, you must blast onwards through space annihilating pirate ships and hostile aliens as you strive to earn your reputation as one of the Elite!

The following statement is by no means an exageration, or solely my opinion:

Elite is quite possibly the best game ever created, a masterpiece of design and gameplay.

While the game is immense (remember that word!) the concept is simple: you are a freelance space pilot… that’s it! The game has 8 galaxies to explore, each containing approximately 500 unique planets. You can be a choose to be a trader and ferry goods between worlds, or a pirate who attacks ships and takes their cargo. Or a bounty hunter, or an asteroid miner or… you get the idea Earn money, upgrade your ship, undertake missions, maybe even go after the evil Thargoids (the big bad aliens in the game). What you do is entirely up to you.

Emulation fans may want to try out the original BBC Micro version of the game, or the Archimedes version – regarded by many (myself included) as the best version. Or if you’d rather stick to the PC version then get a copy of Elite +, the remake that has updated graphics and sound.

This game truly is a classic, two thumbs and a leg up!

Hero Quest (along with Space Crusade) was Games Workshop’s attempt to gain a foothold in the mainstream board games market. After an extensive advertising campaign the games and there add-ons gained a fair bit of popularity and it was inevitable that computerised version would be released.

And here we are

Sooooooo horrible things have befallen the land. Plague, pestilence, fire, brimstone, gophers. In times like this who are you gonna call? A barbarian, a dwarf, an elf and a wizard that’s who dagnabbit! Our party must enter the terrible dungeons of Morcar and complete 15 quests, each more horrible and sticky than the last. Find treasure, kill green things and rescue people who are too retarded to rescue themselves.

Fun fun fun eh?

Each character can be controlled in turn by a different player. Each starts in a separate corner of the dungeon/board, after a random dice roll to determine the order of play its off we go and each little spod goes and does whatever thing that heroes do (rescuing maidens and headbutting orcs I should imagine).

Play goes like this – each character gets one movement and one action per turn. The amount of movement depends on the value that the player has rolled (with a dice.. go figure) and action is carried out before or after each movement. Actions are fighting, casting spells, disarming traps searching for treasure.. that type of thing. The dungeon consists of rooms and passages, with the contents of each room unknown to the player, who must search them using their actions.

Monsters – yep, the dungeon contains nasty things that want to hurt you. Goblins, Orcs, Skeletons, Chaos Warriors (my favourite) all intent on being mean to you =( Each player/monster has body points and mind points. The dwarf and barbarian are dumb but strong, while the elf and wizard are weedy but brainy. As a general rule of thumb high mind points means that you can do magic, and high body points means that you can hit things in the face… hard. The amount of points available to each player can be changed with various potions found in the dungeon… or obviously by walking face first into a trap.

At the end of each quest you get to spend all that lovely treasure that you found (you did find some right?) and buy swords, shields and spells to aid in your quest.

So yeah, you should know the score now

If this sounds like your bag (yeah baby!) then download it you fool (FOOL!).

If there is a game that gives sex a run for its money, Nethack would be it. The longest game still in development; over 16 years at the time of writing; open source too. Salon.com thinks it’s the best game ever.

It’s all ascii characters. That’s 16 years of development spent on enhancing gameplay. And what a game it is.

Nethack hails to Dungeons and Dragons along with the whole rogue-like genre, but it’s a single-player game – no multiplayer as the name suggests. But it’s not just a hack and slash game either… in fact, if you try to kill everything you see, your game will not last long at all.

Choose a Class, race, gender and alignment and you’re dumped on the first floor of a randomly generated dungeon which you must descend to retrieve the elusive ‘amulet of yendor’, and escape alive. Your pet is there with you. Walk around, and the dungeon reveals doors, passages, stairwells, booby traps, gold coins, shops, villages, and monsters galore.

To call nethack complex would be an understatement. Nearly every key on the keyboard does something. Hold down Shift or Alt, and you’ve got more keys. Kick, Quaff, Wear, Open, Close, Loot, Drop, Eat, Fire, Read, Engrave, Teleport, Zap, Look, Inventory, Chat, Rub, Equip, Pray, Wish, just to name a few. Eat the corpse of a giant eye and put on a blindfold and you’ll see every monster on the level but not walls. Teach your pet to steal items from a store for you. Or pay by credit card if you’re a tourist. Kill a monster, and save it’s yummy or not so yummy corpse for later picking it up… but it might go rotten so use your tinning kit to pack it into a tin Heck, there are even kitchen sinks! And believe me, there are so many other ‘spoilers’ I could tell you…

Honestly, you’ve never played a game quite like Nethack. You’ll find yourself coming back again and again trying to defeat the dungeons. Once you figure out the commands you can use (The ? key is your friend) you’ll be hacking your way thru the dungeons of doom faster than you can say ‘cockatrice’!

If you download the windows version, you can run nethackw.exe and you’ll get a graphical tile version of the game, but use the map menu to change to something a bit more rogue-like

Not convinced? PlanetFargo takes you on a funny guided tour of Nethack.

Ragnorak is a ASCII based dungeon exploration RPG in the style of the seminal Rogue (a game from the 80′s). You (the hero, either a warrior, blacksmith, woodsmith, rogue, sage, or a conjurer) must aid the good Norse gods in their battle against the evil Norse gods (Rangnarok is the Norse version of Armageddon).

Of all the “Rogue-like” RPGs, Ragnarok is probably one of the best (Morder: Depths of Dejenol also springs to mind). The sheer bulk of items and equiptment that is available to the player is amazing, add to this the fact that the game world is different every time you start the game and you have almost endless replayability.

Groovy eh?

Yes the graphics are very primitive, but this is more than made up for in depth and gameplay.

From the Roguelike Games FAQ file:

A long time ago, on a computer system far, far, away, there was Rogue. Players wandered a dungeon, hacking and slashing at monsters, gaining treasures, becoming more powerful, and living their D&D nightmares.

Rogue was a good game; people still play it. It was even distributed with many copies of Unix. But rogue is a relatively simple and limited game compared to most of the descendants it has spawned…

Although the common features of rogue and its many descendants are “obvious” to many people, they are difficult to describe in simple terms. Generally, the games mentioned below are single-user, fantasy role-playing computer games, generally set in a dungeon, run with a simple character-graphic interface. In all of the games, the player controls a single character, who roams around getting more powerful, in order to fulfill a difficult quest. Sword-and-sorcery rule the day. Logistically, they’re all free games; executables, and generally sources, are available by FTP.

For more info visit The Roguelike Games Homepage and A Brief History of Rogue.

Rogue is a very simple ASCII based dungeon exploration game that sparked off a whole generation of imitations: Angband, Nethack, Ragnarok and ADOM to name a few. It’s charm lies in its very simple control system, graphics (B=a bat, S=a snake etc) and almost endless replayability.

There isn’t a whole lot else to say about it, just download it yourself and see.

BRIEFING
01-01-46 20

You are about to embark on your first mission. In your bank account you will the amount of 12.000 monetary units (M.U.) This money is to be spent training your crew, configuring your ship, and purchasing any necessary materials.
Of course you may wish to leave some portion of this in the bank to earn interest. This is acceptable. At this stage of the operation our primary concern is to gather information. Consequently your objectives are -

1. Seek out and explore strange new worlds
2. Boldly go where no man has gone before
3. Establish contact with any sentients
4. Capture and bring back any none sentient lifeforms
5. Record alien lifeform data.
6. Bring back alien artifacts
7. Bring back any valuable minerals (including Endurium)
8. Keep from getting brutally killed.

We have little information to offer on what you might find. We suggest, however, that you avoid the area of space around the coordinates 135:84, since that is where we lost contact with two of our earlier ships.
Scout reports indicate a high density of minerals in the mountanous regions of the innermost planet of our system.
Further, we have found information that leads us to believe that there may be some ruins of the old empire at coordinates 17N x 162E on the second planet of the neighbouring K-Class system.
We have also recived some indication of alien activity in the system 175:94.

Good luck, and a safe return.

**END OF MESSAGES**

This is the third review i’ve tried to do of this game – I’ve discovered that every time I try to write about a game I like (really, really like in this case) I get a strange sort of mental-block. So forgive me if this review doesn’t do justice to the game.

Starflight is an almost perfect mix of space adventure, strategy and RPG. So much so that it still has a HUGE following to this day – almost 13 years after it’s release (see the links at the bottom of the screen and you’ll se what I mean.)

In this game you play the crew (yes the WHOLE crew) of a starship on voyage of discovery – in fact the game is a big rip off of the whole “Boldly go where no man has gone before” thing from Star Trek, except that in this game much of your exploring involves finding the funds needed to upgrade your ship and train your crew. These are acquired by landing on a planets surface and collecting as many precious metals/materials as you can find, then selling them on at the starbase trade depot. Later you get caught up in an incredibly interesting storyline (more interesting than mining planets anyway), but I don’t want to mention too much about that. One of the joys of this game is discovering things for yourself, and i want you to get as much out of it as I have.

The other thing in this games favour is the wide variety of Alien races you will meet – some friendly, some wanting to blast your ship into a million different sparkly bits. When you encounter aliens you will be taken to the ships communication screen. What happens next is dependent on how well trained your comms officer is. A highly trained officer will be able to translate alien speech into perfect English – if you have a poorly trained officer then you could be left with nothing more than a series of grunts and clicks. Depending on how well you do when communicating with aliens you may receive useful information or better, or you could end up having to fight for your life.

This is as close to a perfect game as I have ever found, and if you like your games deep and long lasting then I HIGHLY recommend you download it.

Extra Info:

You may have problems running this game on a newer computer system because the game relies so heavily on clock speeds. I have tried to compile as much info. on getting the Starflight games working (the document will be available above just as soon as I upload it), but if that doesn’t help you then try the Interstel Comm Centre (link at the bottom of the screen) a great Starflight forum.

You must save the game when quiting starflight (press esc) or the game will corrupt itself.

The “quit without saving” in Starflight 1 does not work and will corrupt your game files

Enjoy

A new section of the galaxy to explore, new aliens to meet, and the chance to kick a few blobby Spemin butts – if you like Starflight 1 your gonna love this game (if you didn’t like Starflight 1 then I demand you get off my site now.)

So is Starflight 1 better than Starflight 2? The answer is Yes and No

Yes in that its a bigger game that has better graphics and sound. And of course that it gives the people who like the first game another Starflight fix. Also the plot is just as imaginative as the first game, maybe even more so.

No in that the game doesn’t seem to have the same “magic” as the first one did. Maybe it’s just the fact that the game isn’t a new experience any more, at least to me (the first time I played Starflight 1 it just blew me away.)

That aside tho, there is still plenty of new things to discover, including many new and varied alien races – the terminally depressed Dweenie being my favourite – I just find them hilarious for some reason. Also the idea to change the Spemin from cowardly little “whipping-blobs” into a massively powerfull race is a masterstroke, as are the “time travel” parts of the game – but I dont want to give away too much, like I said before the beauty of Starflight is discovering things for yourself.

Important Info:

Type in the code 34789 to bypass the copy protection.

You may have problems running this game on a newer computer system because the game relies so heavily on clock speeds. I have tried to compile as much info. on getting the Starflight games working (document is available above), but if that doesn’t help you then try the Interstel Comm Centre (link at the bottom of the screen) a great Starflight forum.

The words do not exist that describe just how obscenely good this game is!

System shock is a 2D/3D adventure game (think Ultima Underworld or Normality) but set in a realistic Sci-Fi environment. The initial plot is standard cyberpunk bollocks – you are a hacker who was caught gaining illegal access to the system of a major corporation (major corporations are bad dontcha know, haven’t you ever played Syndicate?) The corps. CEO gives you a choice, be cyberneticaly enhanced and work for him, or its off to prison for you.

Not having testicles for brains, you choose the former.

After a few odd-jobs you are sent to Citadel, a gigantic corporate space station managed by an artificial intelligence called SHODAN (duh duh duuuuh!) Upon awakening from cryogenic suspension you find the station in chaos. The crew is dead.. or worse (yes WORSE!) and your only clues to what is going on are fragments of the crews personal logs and emails.

Visually the game is very nice, with rich VGA (or if you’re lucky, SVGA) graphics and atmospheric 3D environments (tho the enemies and moving objects in the game are 2D sprites ala DOOM). The heads up display works well (though it will confuse the hell out of you for the first five minutes) and can be customised so that you can choose what is displayed on screen.

It’s the plot and atmosphere that really stands out in SS though. Right from the beginning you are pushed through the game by various events – log fragments, emails, messages from SHODAN (its?)self. There is a tremendous feeling of decay all around you. Computer screens show nothing but snow, control panels spark, debris covers the floors and every so often you will come across the obligatory message written in blood (wooooOOOOO!!!)

Um.. what else (thinks) well, there a few very nice features in the game. One being that you can afford to die once in a while. Once you find and activate the healing booths that are on each level you will be automatically brought back to life should something nasty get the better of you, groovy huh?

OOOOH YES.. Cyberspace! Have you ever seen that movie Lawnmower Man? yeah me too, it fricken sucked didn’t it? But anyway, y’know the 3d environments used to represent cyberspace in the movie? well.. SS has those too.. they just aren’t as pretty. Find an access point and ‘jack in’ and you will be transported to a strange world filled with tunnels and geometric shapes. You can figure the rest out yourself because that’s half the fun

I can’t really think of much else to comment on. Combat is standard fare, either shoot things, blow them up or twat them over the head, the game has um.. puzzles.. and er.. zombies and.. and .. JUST PLAY IT!

I promise you that this is one game that you can’t afford to miss.

I remember playing this many years ago on my Atari ST (great computer ). Dungeon master is a real time, first person RPG, really easy to get into to very difficult to master. Whe it comes to writing a review for DM I’m hesitant to say the least, because i’m not quite sure that I can do the game justice (i’ve read about 6 reviews by other people for inspiration, so you may see some smiliarities to them popping up).

But here goes

The Story:

“As the story unfolds, your master, the Grey Lord, was seeking the Power Gem. Through dark experiments he finally gained what he saught, or so he believed. What he wasn’t prepared for was the incredible power of the Magicks involved; he rends himself in two and tears the world apart. The Grey Lord now exists as two distinct entities. One of these forces, Lord Chaos, has taken it upon himself to bring the world under his iron grip, while the opposing life force Lord Librasulus has come to you to help restore order.

Various attempts have been made to bring down Lord Chaos; all have failed. The doomed heroes who attempted this task were have been within the “Hall of Champions.” In a last ditch effort your master has awakened your life force to rescue four heroes and lead them against the Darkness. It is up to you to enter the Hall, revive four champions and lead them into the depths of the dungeon, to find the Firestaff, the one object with the power to defeat Chaos and restore order”

As I said before DM is very easy to get into. At the beginning of the game you must choose your party of adventurers by clicking on portraits in the Hall of Champions, once you have a combination that you are happy with it’s off on your quest. While in the dungeon it is important to remember the basics – food and water are essential, carrying too much equiptment will make you fatigued and unable to function effectively, basic stuff reallt

As your quest progresses you gain experience points for each monster you defeat (it’s a dungeon, of course there are monsters). Once you have enough experience points you gain a level in an of four classes – ninja, fighter, priest and wizard. The great thing is that each character is not limited to one class only, so one of your party can be a level 1 wizard and a level 4 fighter.

The equiptment you find in the dungeon also has different benefits depending on class or skill. So a certain sword be cause more damage in the hands of a high level ninja than anyone else. It really makes the game more interesting.

One thing that really stands out about the game is the magic (sorry, magick) system. Each spell is composed of upto four symbols or runes – a power symbol which determines how powerful the spell is and how much mana it will use up, an elemental symbol, and an action symbol. It means that you get to experiment with differnt combinations of runes and that you can attempt to cast any spell at any time, all that will happen if it is too powerful is that the words “need more practice” will flash up on the screen. It’s a great system it adds a whole new level to the game.

I want to wrap this up so i’ll just quickly mention the games intuitive interface, interesting monsters, huge range of weaponry and equiptment. It’s a great game folks and if you have even the slightest interest in dungeon RPGs then you must give Dungeon Master a try.

I have been playing this game for ages now. It got bought back to my attention when the lovely Andrew said ‘I remember this real old game called Wizard Warz, it was really cool’. So I went to my collection, grabbed a copy and he didn’t see me for a few days! What can I say, it’s a great old game! I have been quite involved in the RPG’s of late, and this has to be one of my favorites at the moment.

When you start off in Wizard Warz, you first specify your options for your wizard. You can even chose which sex you want to be! Use the ‘tab’ key to flick through the spellbook and chose four spells. Hit ‘E’ and the game begins.

The screen is split up into three sections. On the left at the top is your spellbook, the left middle is a dazzling picture of you, and the left bottom is your health indicators etc. When you come up against an opponent the exact same information appears for them, but on the right. In the middle however is a circle containing the map. This is quite similar to the mapping for old games like Civilization, you have land and water, and trees etc. This is where you wander around looking for people to battle.

When you do find someone to battle, the middle circle then changes and contains the arena in which the battle takes place. The arena isn’t exactly small, so there is plenty of room to run around in. The whole idea behind the game is two opponents that fight using spells. You have to be strategic in what spells you use, and when you select your spells to start with it’s good to have a strong combination. The good news is you can cash in points for health if you’re running low, this is great, as I didn’t seem to be that great at this game.

PC speakers always make for great sound, this game being no exception, and the graphics aren’t all that bad at all. This game was lucky to not be in classic cyan, magenta and white.

Definitely have a go at this game, its good fun, and a gem in the 80’s RPG collection.

Zeliard was originally published in Japan in 1987; Sierra released it in the United State in 1990.

It was intended to be a solo-player RPG, but most of the time it’s a platform adventure game. It has some great RPG parts, like when you go into the Weapon and Armour Shop and purchase new weapons or repair your old ones etc. In the other parts of the game you’re pretty much scrolling sideways and enjoying a really nice looking platform game. In my opinion, it’s a good balance of both, and thoroughly enjoyable.

This is a really nice game to look at, the colours are good (EGA) and the layout is simple and unique. When you get to the parts of the game with scenery, the scenery is drawn really well. Even the scenery in CGA is rather nice! They sure knew how to make the best with what they had.

Sound: PC speaker!!

The weapons, spells, simplistic character building, a good storyline and such cute graphics make for a really fun game. Plus, who doesn’t want to save a princess?

Bonus, you can use a joystick if you want – yay.

Right, before we get cracking I want to ask you a quick question.

Have you, or have you not ever played the classic role-playing romp by the name of Dungeon Master?
If you answered no then sod off now because you are making my job harder than it has to be. I don’t want to have to explain what that classic game was (I cannot BELIEVE you never played it) because it deserves a page.. nay a site all to itself.

You fool!

If you answered yes then read on

Bloodwych is a dungeony, mazey, party-based RPG in the style of Dungeon Master (aren’t you glad that you know what i’m talking about?). It has a more dumbed-down feel to it than dungeon master did, the puzzles are either entirely based on combat or are painfully simple. Also the magic system has been dumbed-down and now relies on colour codes (remember the runes from dungeon master?) – the whole game has an arcadey feel and just isn’t as rewarding as Dungeon Master.

The one welcome addition is a split screen two player mode, where each player takes control of a party of four characters. However, this does mean that the already poor quality of the graphics is greatly reduced when they squashed down to a smaller screen.

Hehe maybe i’m not the best person to review this game after all (if you can do a better job, then by all means send a review in) but nothing will ever live up to Dungeon Master in my eyes.

That is all folks

Aethra’s Chronicles was supposed to be the first game of a three part sequel. Unfortunately, the 2nd and 3rd parts were never released.

As any shareware, the graphics of the game are under standards, which is not a big factor when you consider the playability and the depth that this game offers.

The Aethra’s Chronicles is the only game ever made based on the Role-Master system, a pencil&paper game similar to AD&D but based on percentage instead of dice. Note that the publisher of the Role-Master system have closed their doors, which provides to Aethra’s Chronicles a double taste of nostalgia.

The plot of the game is quite cliche (a newborn prince has been kidnapped and you must find by who and why) and some bogs are quite annoying (like quests completion when you haven’t completed it) but the originality of the game system help to forgive such things quite easily.

You make two main characters (a hero and his friend) and two henchmen at the beginning of the game. Henchmen are part of your party but they are very less powerful than your hero and his friend.

Be warned : the combats are hard, be prepared to die often before learning the basic tactics to survive in fights. It can be frustrating for the casual RPGer.

The game offers over a hundred different creatures to fight, from wild animals to Red Dragons. Like in almost all RPGs, as your characters progress in the quest, you will face stronger monsters. Combats are though from the beginning to the end : a good tactic and a good strategy according to the strengths and weakness of your party and of the monsters you are facing is required.

This game cannot be recommanded for the casual RPGer for many reasons but can be enjoyed by the hardcore RPGers who are looking for something different. Aethra’s Chronicles is the best shareware RPG ever made IMO. The work of Michael Lawrence is simply incredible and the Role-Master system is very well implemented. Its a game that deserve to be more known by RPGers.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created Sherlock Holmes. Undeniably the most famous detective ever (fictional of course)! His pipe and hat are the first thing that comes to mind when I think of him. I loved the books along with many other mystery novels. There is something about that era in history where mystery fits in perfectly. The quiet dim dark misty London streets are the perfect setting for a crime, and a supercool detective to solve them.

This game was great for its time. It bought together 30 cases for a super-sleuth such as yourself to solve, with the cases being fun and offering a variety of challenges. You make your way around the city stopping in at various locations, questioning people and finding clues. I guess it’s a bit like Cluedo, you have to figure out suspects, motives and weapons etc.

The locations in London are pretty cool, and fit the theme nicely. There are the shipyards, museum, pawnbrokers and pub to name a few. When you enter the buildings, you go into a bigger room where you can do your detective work.

Then when you think you are ready to solve the crime you venture back to 221B Baker Street and take a test. But, there is much more to the game then merely wandering around solving crime. You have to get your Scotland Yard badge before you can take the test at 221B Baker Street. If you fail the test, then shame on you! You probably did not take enough time and interrogate enough people

You can encrypt clues to make the game harder, but I guess that once you have played it about 10x through encryption just won’t do you much good. But it does make the game a lot harder.

Overall, I enjoyed the game. I got a bit bored as the characters and the board never really changed, but it was still a lot of fun While nowadays they could probably make a really cool version of this game, this was a classic and I would play it again. * Gives a thumbs up *