Before we’re getting into nostalgia, lets talk about this golfing game. Its actually my first experience into the sport and golf genre on the pc. It was just fun going through the golf courses with a couple of friends, going in turns, trying to get as low as possible under par. Well usually it was just trying to get as low as possible with the points, because we never made it under par. Only with luck. Yes, this is another multiplayer game on the same computer, also known as Hot Seat. But at that time that term wasnt invented yet. So we just went in turns and hit our balls

In the game you can choose three different difficulties, ranging from kids until pro. Actually I never recognized any difference in difficulty between those three settings, but perhaps I could be wrong. Next you can choose the number of holes you like to play, 18, 36, 54 or 72. Well, when you’re playing with four people, you could be playing a single game for hours and hours if you play all the 72 holes. Its already playing for hours when you’re playing single player. So I usually just pick playing 18 holes. Its just enough for a quick game.

You usually try to get under par, or if that doesnt work, on par. If even that doesnt work, we’ll just keep on playing until you’re so embarrased that you stop playing all together. You have a number of wood and iron sticks to choose from, then just whack the ball into the right direction. Well you obviously have to counter balance for the wind speed, or your ball will fly off the screen, into the trees, the rough, the bunker or into the water. If you keep your ball onto the fairway, everything will be okay and you got your game under or on par. The lower your score, the better you do!

The graphics are limited to 16 colors EGA in a resolution of 320×200. I think it just looks reasonable for a 1988 game, although theres not too much detail. Maybe its just good, to keep a clear look onto the ball into the field. Its also possible to play the game in 4 color CGA and then it will use two palettes. The cyan/purple/white/black scheme for the menus, green/red/brown/blue scheme for in-game. Just like a Sierra AGI adventure. Its looking very retro, and I just love to play it that way. When the game is ‘rendering’ the golf course, you see it getting drawed. Layer for layer, and trees are getting added as the last layer. On an XT it takes a while to draw, although I found that fascinating. On DosBox, you still see it getting drawed, although its much faster than on a real old computer I think its nice to watch that. It does that with every ‘scene’ though, so every view has to be re-rendered. For some, annoying as heck, for me, kinda nostalgic. I just love it.

The sound is pretty awesome for its time. It was one of the very first PC games actually playing digital sound effects and speech over the PC Speaker. They called the technology RealSound. When you start the game and you’re in the main screen, you hear birds singing. When you start the game and you’re actually in the game, you’ll hear crickets chirping randomly and when you’re playing on a course with water surrounding it, you will hear frogs croaking at random times. It really sets the mood. When you’re playing the game and hitting the ball just right and it lands on the fairway, you’ll hear the reporter making remarks. Although the reporters vocabulary is somewhat limited, its still nice for a game that old. Try hitting the ball into the water, I love it when the ball disappears and you’ll hear a splash The sounds are making this game definately a great game. Because most the games and applications at that time were limited at making the pc speaker just beep one voice at a time, this game sets the golfing mood so much better with the digital sounds! When you’re putting your ball, and put it right into the hole, you will hear a public applause. Even though you dont see any people surrounding you. They must be your imaginary friends

This game is just about winning and stragically choosing your sticks and checking the wind speed and slamming the ball at the right speed and angle. Do it alone or do it with friends. Its more fun with friends anyhow. Its a good laugh garantueed. Just having fun with this fairly easy golfing game. It will keep you entertained, but the longer the games get, the sooner you will go bored. Its nice for a change, but not for playing hours and hours at a time.

Oh yeah baby. Hehe, such an adorable game. If you’ve read my other reviews for Slicks, or Race you’ll probably begin to understand that I happen to have a soft spot for cute little racing games

Ironman Offroad (a.k.a. Offroad) is so cool. You are these little offroad 4×4 things that race around the track. You bounce, crash, crash some more, hit walls, crash and then crash. It’s all good fun. You can have 1 v 1+ sharing the kb (see Slicks for multiplayer keyboard sharing strategies e.g. biting, pushing, yelling, stealing the keyboard and running away). Groovy baby

This game has a lot of options when it comes to playing. You can play against the computer with up to 4 players total, you can play against others on the same keyboard as mentioned above. You can do one race, or a championship.

Oh, did I mention the nitro? NITRO!! You hit the nitro button; out comes some smoke and brooooom, you get a nitro boost. Of course nitro is not free, so as you travel around the tracks, you can get money, and special stuff.

It’s got great graphics and sound for its time. Little cute cars etc. It’s a lot like Micro Machines with its little trucks.

s

Note from Marrsy : She’s right, this game kicks arse. Download it!

Broooom.. sweet Did you ever have any of the Micro Machines toys? You know the ones, the tiny little cars, trucks, boats or planes that were only about 2cm long? I had a tiny little purple truck. Okaay, now you’re probably wondering just what kind of butch chick I am, but I also had a Barbie doll so :p~~

This game is great. When I was taking the screenshots I took heaps, because I just kept playing it. And boy did I kick ass

The first level you are in a little jetboat, and you are racing in the bathtub or sink, amongst the bubbles. Then you progress to racecars amongst the waffles, milk spillage and spoons of the breakfast table. You also get to race little trucks and other types of cars, all in funny settings around the house

When you pick who you want to play, there are many characters to chose from. You also pick which race you would like to race in, or cycle through the tracks. There is a scale up the side (see screenshot) which starts of with 5 dots for you, and 5 dots for your opponent. To win a race you have to get to the other side of the screen from the opponent 5 times, every time you do that, then one of their dots becomes one of yours. Of course if they have 9 and you have one, you have to win 9 times to win the race overall. It’s a lot of fun, and can make races last a long time if you have met your match.

This game looks excellent. The graphics are very good. I played as a girl with pigtails and when I won she would fling her head around like a little kid and stuff – great animations. The racing and stuff also looks great, the scenes etc. I didn’t play with sounds though, so I can’t comment there.

Definitely worth a try, play vs. the computer or against someone else multiplayer. They so need to make an online version of this game, so I can kick gords arse

Don’t let looks fool you. This game is great! I have spent a good many years playing this game, and it’s been on ALL of my PC’s.

You can be one of four little cars in standard colours. Go blue!!! Your task is to race around the enormous number of levels, and win. Some levels are easy and have no checkpoints and no horrible things, yet some have do have them. You will have levels with checkpoints. You have to drive your car through the checkpoints (that can be in the darndest places!), and you have to go through the checkpoints in order. There are also directional arrows, that will give you a boost if you are going in the same direction, but also make it a little bit hard if you are going in the opposite. You will also see tornado’s, the tornado’s are evil and spin you around and spit you out, giving your other racers ground on you. There are other obstacles too, but you will have to wait and see

The multiplayer aspect is similar to Slicks ‘n’ Slide. You have one keyboard and up to four players (mayhem!), and you use your skill or brute force on those around you to win.

As you race around the track little white spanners appear. You want the spanners! You crazily try and control your car towards them, ramming all the other cars, pushing the other players off the keyboard. YES! You get to the spanner first, you can therefore get better parts for your car, or rather, add points to the certain areas you have. You crash into the side and you bounce off the walls, you crash too hard however and you will end up bursting into flame. Helicopter, enter stage left! It zooms past you on the screen replacing your car with a nice new one. Of course at first this helicopter is damn slow, and the other racers gain on you, but as you collect spanners, you can increase that part of your setup, then before you know it that helicopter is zooming through the screen at breakneck speeds! (It’s a real laugh to see them zooming in real fast when you have all four of you ramming walls non-stop). You can also with the help of these magical spanners make your car faster and easier to handle! Yay, as these cars can be a bit much sometimes.

Did I mention that whilst there are more levels than you can count with the game, there is also a level editor? Yes, that’s right, you can make your own kickass levels, with as many obstacles as you want. It’s a great level editor to use as well, really easy. Just another sweet as function in a sweet as game!

The graphics are, umm, no comment . Admittedly they are not the best for the year this game was made, but the game itself more then makes up for it. I mean its small and fun!

This game is another in my top 10 kickass games of all time. Give it a shot, it’s a great laugh for multiplayer, and will provide endless fun.

Yeah! This is an awesome game. Slicks ‘n’ Slide is the game that got me into abandonware. Quoted from a Wired.com article where I was asked why I got into abandonware: “She was searching for a copy of Slicks ‘n’ Slide a racing game she used to play with her cousins”. Oh yes, this game rocks hard, and I love it.

You can’t beat the whole cute little racing game genre of games. I am totally fond of games like this, Race and also the superkewl Lego Racers games.

Slicks ‘n’ Slides offers a variety of vehicles you can race from motorbikes to tanks, and flying saucers to cars. There are heaps of them, and they are all lots of fun. Personally I preferred the motorbikes . You zoom around the track, of course you can configure how many laps you want to do, whether you want a one-off race and specify the track, or go through all the tracks in a championship fashion. The tracks are all very cool, some with jumps, puddles, sand and oil spills etc. There are over 20 tracks for you to have a hoon on. You can leave behind little skid marks if you want that option! It’s just so cute and there are so many options.

It takes a definite knack to mastering the ability to turn the corners without losing control. The computer players are pretty good, and when you play your friends, well, they are gonna pretty good too. It’s quite easy to pick up this game. So you get the hang of turning the corners skidding out and planting foot (or should we say key). Of course the flying saucer is not the best for turning the corners, as it floats . Another good corner turning strategy is to bump off other racers on the track. But when you have a crossing over track, the fact you can hit other racers can end up with massive collisions and everyone gets slowed down. The collision option can be turned off (see, another ‘option’! What such a great game!).

The multiplayer part of this game is what made it for me. Sure enough I played it a billion times on my own, but to have up to four people all crammed on one keyboard battling it out was just a riot! I was on the keys by the Q key, one cousin down by the <> keys and another on the number pad. Hehe, what a recipe for a bitch fight. Man, the dirty tricks we would play to win. Only so many chairs can fit in front of the PC, so we had to all fit on two chairs, and it would result in the middle cousin winning, and he proceeded to push you and your sister down onto the ground etc! Lots of teeth and elbows

The graphics are excellent! The cute little colourful racers, the great little tracks. You even had crowds in spectator stands to cheer you on. The little puddles as you zoomed through them! The graphics were cartoon stylish and totally excellent.

The sound was cool too, little sound effects you would expect from a racing car game. The little engines go ‘broooom broom’ etc

I love this game; it’s in my top 10 of all time great games. It just so kicks arse; you really have to play it.

Note: The downloadable version is v1.3.

Hehe oh yes, Turbocar. A very basic game, but fun nonetheless.

Your standard racing game, in spanky 80’s colours. The aim is to reach the end as fast and as safely as you can. You are given a time limit, and have to reach the next level before it expires, or you lose a life.

This game gets quite hard quite fast. I found that I could never get very far without crashing into an oncoming car. You gradually get to memorise where and when the cars come, and then you get further into the game. But I still have to say it’s very hard. You start of with a few trucks to overtake, then sometimes another car will come, and you have to pull in to avoid a head-on collision. The cars that are oncoming get more frequent and a lot faster, as well as the number of trucks and other cars you have to overtake. The time limit makes things a little harder, so you can’t take it’s slow and safe, you have to hoon to get to the next level. I think a signpost passing by shows a level.

The controls are simple for this game; you accelerate pressing shift, and steer left and right with the left and right arrows. Suprisingly enough the up and down arrows let you change up and down a gear, that’s quite cool for an older game to let you do gear changes. Of course, you might notice that there are no brakes? Don’t you worry, to run this baby you need to hold down the shift full-time, and when you let go of it, it slows down very fast.

It’s a great game to play, and a lot of fun. Was very hard to find, so I’m glad we’ve got it. It was one of those games I had on my computer when I was younger, and I totally enjoyed it

I love this game, I LOVE this game..

I LOVE THIS GAME!!!

(proceeds to excitedly run around in circles).

I played it for the first time in years recently, just to take a few screenshots before i added it to the site.

Then two hours vanished as I raced around the track repeatedly at speeds in excess of 120mph, occsionaly crashing, occasionaly spinning off the track but loving every minute of it.

In case you havent guessed, Vroom is a racing game. It has bright colourful graphics and endeavours to be more fun than a true simulation of F1 racing. The physics model is a bit strange; it’s possible to take corners almost perfectlt at 100mph with a minimum effort – but all this does is add to the fun and thrill of high speed racing.

I just love the game, I loved it on the Atari ST and I love it on the PC.

The most fun you can have without an elastic band and a batman costume.

HIGHLY Recomended.

Winigolf is basically a minigolf course for your computer. It has easy to follow instructions to start a game and can be configured, so you can play any number of holes (up to a maximum of 35) in a random, sequential or counter sequential way. This game is extremely addictive, and has suprisingly excellent graphics, while only taking up appoximately one and a half megabytes. It has excellent info at the bottom of the screen, as well as a score card that you can check at any time. The info records your score against par, and the number of shots you have left to get par on the hole you are on, among other things.

Unfortunately, there is only one skill level, but the holes get gradually harder as you progress through the course that you have chosen. Another of the games features is its ability to have multiple players in the golf tournament (up to a maximum of 8). This is an excellent feature, apart from the fact that the person furthest from the hole should get the first hit, but doesn’t. Well, that’s the rules I play when playing golf, or minigolf off the computer. But hey, I’m not complaining. The multiple player feature really adds to the fun of the game.

The graphics in Winigolf are simple, yet effective. The game doesn’t try and overload the user with pointless animations and replays like other golf games. Instead it offers a near perfect green course with brown edges on a grass background. It could possibly have included a player, and maybe even a club, but I think that the person would have ended up as one of those orange blobs that I don’t like myself. The ball is extremely realistic, and is your only indicator of where you are on the course.

Where the graphics are excellent, the music is on the other end of the scale. It is repetitive and gets really annoying, although I suppose you could replace the midi with something of your own if you wanted to. The only good thing I’ll say about the music is that its of a very good quality. The sound effects go some way to make up the disapointment of the music, but there are only a few of them. They play mostly when you play a shot, and when you get the ball in the hole.

Originality ? Well there are a lot of golf games out there, but not for mini golf courses. I’d score it quite highly on originality of the idea of a mini golf game. Also I think the animation that goes in the background it really good……if in fact you actually get bored of the game. I guess the only thing that isn’t original is the green course, but I don’t think that degrades the game.

The games very playable, once you figure out how to start a tournament. It’s extremely simple, and perhaps it’s simplicity is it’s short fall, you decide !!

So overall, the game is a very aditictive excellent game with only a few pitfalls (mainly with the music side of the game). It’s defenetly a keeper in my games folder, why wouldn’t you download this game.

Graphics = 80 %
Sounds = 30 %
Playablity = 50 %
Originality = 70 %
Addiction = 90 %

California Games 2 builds on the popularity of the first game with more events to compete in and better graphics and sound. Personaly I can’t say that I owned CG1 so my first experience with the games was playing this one.

The events themselves are diverse: skateboarding, downhill snowboarding, boogie boarding, jetski racing and hangliding. Some are better than others, for instance I became thoroughly addicted to the skateboarding, but could never really get into the jetski event – I guess it’s all a matter of taste.

I can’t really offer an opinion as to whether this game is better than the original (bunny and i will go have a good argue about it later – she has only ever played CG1 ) but I heartily recommend the game.

Great fun

Hehe, this game is so much fun! My BMX buddies used to always come around and play the BMX one when it was too rainy for us to go out We got really really good at it, and also at the hacky (footbag) game as well.

California games can be compared to the Olympics, a collection of events you compete in (on a not so grand scale of course!). You can compete in sports events such as skateboarding, footbag (hacky), surfing, roller-skating, frisbee and BMX.

I have to say that my favorite event of the game was BMX. But I think you already knew that. I could do forward and back flips, plus all kinds of neat tricks, and actually make it to the end of the track. It was so much fun, dodging logs and rocks and things that looked like dead people but probably weren’t. Second was the surfing, now that was fun, I was getting pretty good at that too, the panel of judges giving me great scores! Footbag was another one that was great! I liked trying to hit the seagull that was flying around above me with the footbag Roller-skating was fun, the guys whistling at you as you skated past, and then you fall on your ass because you keep tripping over stuff. It was a great game! Wow, I see that I only like things I’m good at well don’t try telling me that you are any different.

The things I was bad at, or didn’t like were the skateboarding and frisbee. I was completely lame at both. In the skateboarding, I always ended up going up one side, then up the other then not as far up the first, even lower on the next side, slowly ebbing down into a standstill, then falling on my arse. You get the idea I just couldn’t make that damn thing move! The frisbee, well I always jumped in the opposite direction and all through my years of playing this game, I only caught the damn frisbee once!

The sound and graphics were great, especially for a 1988 game. Just your average PC speaker sounds, but when you hit the seagull * giggle *. The game was great to look at, you weren’t hindered in your events by crappy graphics, like some games have.

I thoroughly recommend this game! Hours and hours of fun are in store for you if you give it a shot, its so much fun!

Bukodan is a Fighting Game from 1989 that i would say is one of the overall funnest fighting games i have ever played. It has Sublime features that really prove that the original concepts of 80′s videogames lead to much funner games than the current Shoot Em Up’s.

In Bukoden you play the role of a martial arts student. The point of the game is to win the Martial arts tournament called Bukodan (Funny that =D). In this tournament, Completly Different Martial arts can be used by different combatents against each other. However, what makes bukodan really interesting is that u can use 4 different martial arts. The martial arts avaliable are Karate (Unarmed), Kendo (Long sword-like sticks), Nunchaku (Nunchuks – 2 small sticks linked together by a chain) and Bo (Staff combat). There are 4 different dojos, one for each form of martial art, where u can practice moves without an opponent to work out moves, or against a AI simulant, which at Shodan level is sometimes hard to beat. There is also a Sparring Mat, where you can fight against the computer with him using a different art from you, our your friend by sharing a keyboard. The Bukodan is very challenging. You are only allowed to use each martial art 4 times in the tournament, so you must be good at all 4 styles to stand a chance. They do not all use Styles you can use either..

Graphics are good for 1989, with large,clear sprites and fluid animation (if you dont button bash). Controlling and fighting with the charecture u are is easy, with button bashing avaliable but it will always lose to skillful blocking and attacking the enemies unguarded area. Sound, well, there was no sound for me, due to me having sound card incompatibility troubles.

The game does have flaws that would definatly make it better – Allowing You to pick another charecture for multi so u dont get confused would be my major grip, and a more even fighting system (i found karate to be too weak againt the others) would improve gameplay, but overall a very good example of the great games of old.

The sequel of sorts to the higly popular (in the UK at least) Jimmy White’s Whirlwind Snooker, AMP uses the exact same engine as the first game, the only obvious difference being the switch from snooker to pool. You are given a choice of either UK 8-ball (REAL pool biatch), US 8-ball or US 9-ball and the option to play either matches or tournaments against friends or AI players (of which there are over 20).

The graphics are nice and clear, the interface is simple and well thought out and the physics model is spot on. It’s hard to criticise AMP because it is a damn good simulation of the real thing.

Oh, and for a little surprise leave the mouse pointer static for a few moments and keep your eye on the balls – it always cracks me up