Chip is a mega-nerd. And he wants to join the Bit Busters, which is a club for… nerds. The problem is the club is run by Melinda the Mental Marvel, and there is a rigorous test you must pass to be eligible to join.

To take up this much desired memberhship Chip has to collect all the computer chips in her tree house, which is a huge maze of levels over 140 levels tall! That is one HUGE treehouse! And it’s a really dodgy tricky treehouse with magic walls, strange doors, teleports, open fires, invisible walls and scary monsters. (Who leaves unattended fires in a treehouse?)

This game is great. I have never made it to the end, but I’ve given it a damn good go. The levels get more challenging quite quickly. Every level has a yellow question mark on the floor, if you stand on that then you get a hint about the level and what you should do.

Some levels you have to do in certain times, you can pause the game to think. Always use the hints you are given. And read the ingame help, because they have a really good “Strategy and Hints” section!

The good news is that if you are having a really tough time trying to figure out a level sometimes Melinda will let you through to the next one. But you really have to deserve it!

Woohoo!! I looked all day for this game, and finally found it. I went and asked my cousin, and thankfully he remembered the name. EGA Trek – a completely cool clone of a very early Star Trek game, but better than any of the Star Trek games I’ve ever tried (which is near to about 0 or 2, so that might not say much). But yes, this was and continues to be a great game, I played it for years when it came out. Admittedly when you look at it and have a go you might get put off, but once you get the hang of it and start to really get into it, you’ll find you get hooked.

Basically there are evil Mongols in the galaxy, and your job is to travel around the sectors and exterminate the lot. The Mongols pose a threat to the Union (yeah a take off of that wonderful phenomenon that we call Star Trek). Yeah it sounds rather fun and easy, but it’s not that easy. There are many complications that come with exterminating Mongols .

You are a pretty little yellow ship, and you can see yourself on the lovely blue grid. The Mongol ships are blue, green or red or a variety of colours really, the different colours sybmolise different ships that would therefore have different strengths. There are Mongol bases you can find, and it’s a good idea to kill these, as it will prevent more Mongols threatening your existence. Also in addition to Mongols, there are Vandals. They fly around in very cool looking ships, but you also want to kill them, because they are evil too

There are also really cool things in the galaxy of sectors though, like planets and friendly ships and space bases, where you can repair and restock your supplies and your fuel – you do not want to run out of fuel while saving the galaxy! (I’m getting Tradewars déj� vu). There are stars, but beware the novas and black holes. The friendly bases or ships might send out distress calls, which you can go and save them and be the hero.

I managed to save the galaxy on the first three difficulty settings, but there are five. And they get VERY hard – trust me.

You’ll need something to slow down your computer when playing this game, see our Utilities page in the menu for a variety of slow down utilities that can be used. Marrsy would recommend Turbo . But other than that, because this is a text-based interface, it runs in CGA and VGA and runs fine on old and new computers.

There is a deluxe version of this game, but I heard that it is no different to the shareware version besides some annoying screen (I don’t remember finding anything annoying so this could be the deluxe?). I give this game a 10/10 for addiction, I honestly played it for years and years until my computer got the Junkie virus and died *sniff* so its great to have it again! Download and have a play, it kicks some serious arse.

I can’t remember exactly where I got this game from, it was probably one of the many hundreds of second hand games that I got from car boot sales and bargain bins. Anyway, for a long time it was just one of those games that I owned but hadn’t gotten around to play untill one night when I was looking for something to play and decided to give it a go – and was hooked for 6 hours or so.

Final conflict is a strategic game of global nuclear war that will appeal to arcade fans more than die-hard wargamers. It comes with a few pre-programmed scenarios : east vs west, the middle east etc or you can choose to conquer the world. A basic game goes like this – use espionage to locate your enemy’s factorys, cities etc and then obliterate them with nuclear ICBMs. Then move in the troops and either obliterate what it left or occupy and use their resources for your advantage. There is also a rather simplistic diplomatic model in which you can convince nations to join your cause. It’s all rather simplistic but as long as you don’t expect anything to deep you should have some fun with it.

It is when enemies launch nuclear weapons against you that the game switches to arcade mode. You have to defend your cities and facilities from incoming warheads using star-wars type weaponry – if you’ve ever played the classic Atari game Missile Command then you’ll be right at home.

For the average gamer this will provide a few hours of enjoyment, die hard strategy gamers will give up out of disgust.

Fun, but nothing special

A TV station management game, quite a novel idea that is well executed. Lots of humour (some of the animations will at least make you chuckle), good AI and a decent economics model (if that’s what yings your yang).

May be one to check out.

This game wasn’t very popular, but I loved it. It made a great change from SimCity. Its very similar to most sim games, but being on the moon has a whole new angle. You have to cope with starting a colony on the moon, making sure you can accommodate the right number of workers and tourists, as well as produce all the elements to sell on the markets. It’s a real management kind of sim game.

Like most sim games you start off with a certain amount of money, and every year you are given more money from NASA. But as you progress, you grow, and produce products to sell on the market such as LLOX, electronics, materials etc. That’s how you make money, therefore its good to keep an eye on the stock market and know when to buy and when to sell (hence the management type sim game).

When you are erecting the buildings all over the Moon, you have to make sure that everything is connected to both power and heating (must get quite cold there). You can have roads etc, and the moon colony soon turns into a big massive galactic city.

Here are some quotes I found from the back cover of the game (thanks to some fanatic’s Moonbase site):

“Select and clear a site for the Lunar colony … build landing pads … erect habitat modules … set up power stations and grids … create mining and processing facilities … supply essential life-support services to the colonists. Comprehensive socio- and economic models from KDT Industries – a NASA contractor – animate and enliven you base.”

“Explore the lunar surface for new mining sites. Process the raw materials you find into oxygen, water and helium-3, then use then internally or sell them to Mars missions. Build hotels for fat cats from Earth.”

Moonbase is a really fun game; it’s a shame it doesn’t work too well on modern PC’s. It won’t work on my Pentium 3, but I sometimes get lucky with my p200. It’s a very unstable game, so be careful! It dies at the stupidest times. I’d still give it a shot however, it’s a great challenge and you would enjoy it. It’s a good game for getting the feel of those really involved sim games.

Warning: Save your cash, you WILL run out of cash.

Important DO NOT attempt to run this game in pure DOS or allow it to create a DOS shortcut, it can seriously screw up your computer.

This game was released a few years later as Lunar Command, which will run on a modern PC. I recommend downloading this version instead.

There are a few games that come to mind when I think about the word “classic”. Civilisation, Elite, Monkey Island maybe.

Sid Meir’s Pirates! is a classic game in every sense of the word.

As the name suggests, the game casts you as a 18th century pirate in the Spanish Main and, I can’t emphasize this enough, the game is MASSIVE. As much as Elite was open-ended, so is Pirates! You are completely free to choose the path that your career takes. You can mercilessly plunder the seas, attack jewel trains, invade ports, dig for buried treasure. Or if you like you can align yourself with one of the four nations in the game and wage bloody war on their enemies (who their enemies actually are changes from time to time, so be careful). Get yourself a good enough reputation and you can gain rank, privilege and maybe even the hand of a governors daughter

Navigating the game-world is done via a top down map of the area, in which you sail you ship (or fleet if you are really successful) between ports, or go looking for other ships to attack.. or even search for buried treasure if you have a map. When another ship is encountered you get a choice of actions, you can attack them and attempt to steal their ship or cargo, or you can hail them for the latest news for example. Success in ship to ship combat is dependant on the size and speed of your vessel and the number of cannons that you have, and usually ends with you boarding the enemy ship and fighting the captain in a duel.

A remastered version of Pirates! was released in 1993 which had better graphics, sound and a few new features – none of which the game really needs. Given a choice between this and Pirates! Gold i’ll choose the original every time.

When it comes to atmosphere and addictiveness it’s hard to think of anything that comes close to this game. Highly recommended.

Populous is an almost perfect mix of looks, charm and gameplay. It can be credited with starting a whole new genre (the ‘god’ game) and is indeed a true classic.

To put it another way, it fricken rocks!!!

In Populous you play a god, in fact you play a Good God. And of course if there’s a good God, it stands to reason that there’s gonna be a bad God kicking about the place somewhere. Anyway, you have followers, he has followers and you have to make sure that your guys come out on top. First of all you need a way to communicate your wishes to them, and throwing lightning bolts isn’t very concise so you need to appoint someone to speak for you, a high priest will fit the bill nicely. Right, now that you can talk to your followers you are gonna want them to do some of that “go forth and multiply” stuff.. but alas, the land is not flat enough to build upon.

But you’re a God, you can soon take care of that

So your people are settling across their newly flattened world, worshipping you and increasing your godly powers through ‘mana’ (more worshippers = more mana = more power). On the other side of the world Mr Bad God and his followers are doing the same thing, and sooner or later your two sides are going to meet and there’s gonna be trouble. So it’s upto you to get rid of him before he gets rid of you. Fortunately being a God means that you have some very nice weapons at your disposal: earthquakes, floods, volcanoes, you get the idea. You play the game across 500 worlds/levels starting at “genesis” and working through until you and your people have annihilated all opposition.

I haven’t really scratched the surface of the game yet, I havent talked about how you can transform your priest into a huge psycopathic knight who slaughters your enemies, or about the custom game mode. So I guess it’s up to you to download it and find out for yourself.

I promise you that you wont be disappointed. Populous is a wonderful game, good for a quick ten minute bash and long all night sessions.

Just do it

A little history lesson before we get started. How many of you know who the Gollop brothers are?

….

Ooook um… hands up who here has played any of the first three X-Com games…

Cool, everyone who didn’t put their hand up should sod off and play X-Com (UFO: Enemy Unknown for you yanks) then come back so you know what i’m talking about. The rest of you can sit comfortably and listen because you are about to be educated.

Y’see, many many MANY years ago (nearly 20 in fact) a lad by the name of Julian Gollop created a simple strategy game for the ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC by the name of Rebelstar Raiders. It was a fun little turn based game which spawned a whole new genre – the arcade strategy game.

Then a few years later came the more sophisticated update entitled simply Rebelstar. This was a squad level turn based strategy game that involved breaking into a highly defended base and destroying it’s central computer (which was named ISAAC if you are at all interested). Play took place across several levels each with different objectives and obstacles and it was all pretty new and stunning for the time. After that came Rebelstar 2 (which we will talk about in just a minute) then Laser Squad. Laser Squad, released on 16-bit systems as well as 8-bit, used the same formula as Rebelstar but with many improvements such as joystick control and a greater variety of weapons (which could be equipped before each mission).

In 1991 Julian gollop (along with his brother Nick) showed a prototype of Laser Squad 2 to a representative of Microprose. The idea was to keep the same basic formula as the previous game but to update it with isometric graphics (similar to games like Populous). Microprose liked what they saw but wanted something “bigger” and this time set on Earth so that people could relate to it more. The brothers Gollop went away and came up with the idea of adding a grand strategic element to the game. With this X-Com was born, a game where you managed an international organisation that defended the Earth against UFO incursions. It had the same basic turn based combat model as Rebelstar but with updated graphics (and an isometric viewpoint), research and development and a financial model. The game was released in 1994 and remains a cult classic to this day (personaly it is one of my all time favourite games).

After X-Com came the sequel : Terror from the Deep. All the elements from the original remained in place, all that changed was that the setting was transposed from Air and Ground combat to undersea. It was this unoriginality which meant that, although it was by no means a bad game, it never gained the same status as the original.

In late 1997 the third game in the series, X-Com Apocalypse was released. The game improved on almost every aspect of the game, this time being set in a gigantic city under threat from inter-dimensional aliens. What truly set it apart from the first two games was that it gave you the chance to play in real time (the turn based system was still there of course). Along with this the game included advanced artificial inteligence, a realistic diplomacy and financial model (this played a big part in the game) as well as a living, breathing city to play in.

The games that followed were something of a let-down, probably due to the fact that the Gollop Brothers had little say in the direction that they took. X-Com interceptor was a disapointing mix of space combat and strategy, Email X-Com was as the name suggests a play by email strategy game. X-Com enforcer was a dire thrid-person shootemup and the less said about it the better. There WAS hope in the form of X-Com Alliance which was a first person squad based strategy game and an unamed remake of the first X-Com using modern technology. Unfortunately as yet neither have seen the light of day.

The only recent addition to the series has been Laser Squad : Nemesis, Thankfully developed by Codos (ie, the Gollops and Steven Moorhouse, who worked on Apocalypse) it is a massive single/multiplayer game with three distinct races and huge emphasis on strategy. It is allready getting rave reviews so thankfully it looks liek there is still a little life in the series .

So to recap :

Rebelstar Raiders > Rebelstar > Rebelstar 2 > Laser Squad > X-com Series

There now, don’t we feel educated?

I’m now going to totally throw you off track by going back nearly 15 years and talking about Rebelstar 2 – don’t yer just love it?

Rebelstar 2 held much more appeal for me than the first game, probably because the idea of fighting wave upon wave of gieger-esque aliens appeals to me more than destroying tin-can robots. The game centers around the increasing threat of an alien race on a distant planet, and your squad of space marines have been sent to deal with them. The game is simplicity itself right from the start, equip each of your agents with a weapon (anything from a lightsaber to huge photon guns) and use your remaining TUs (point which dictate what each unit can do each turn) to either move across the map or attack your enemies. The aliens themselves are diverse and interesting – from hulking warriors to tentacled water dwellers, the map are well designed and quite large considering when the game ws released (I particularly like cutting through those alien vines on the first level ).

For those who have played later Gollop games it will all be very familiar and no doubt highly enjoyable. I have also included the 2 player version of the game, meaning if you want you and a friend can take eachother on – you can even do it by email if you save the snapshot after eachothers turn and send it back and forth.

Simply a superb game that was way ahead of its time. Bags of gameplay and enjoyment to be had from it (pulling off a driect hit from one side of the map to the other with the photon just feels great =)) and the game is very replayable.

I highly recommend this one, two thumbs up n stuff!

I’m have “issues” with this game, yes it was the first real time strategy game, and it is undeniably fun to play, but IMHO too many liberties have been taken with Frank Herbert’s universe. I can’t decide whether this game is based on the movie or the book (I have read the book and seen the movie and I would go with the latter) but it seems that the game is more of an adaptation than it is based on the Dune universe. I think this was done to enhance gameplay – for instance the Ordos don’t appear in the movie or the book (it has been a while so maybe I’m wrong) although I did read while doing research for the game that they do appear briefly at some point, possibly in one of the later books. There are a couple of other little things that I could bitch about but I think you get the general idea (yes i’m anal, no I don’t care).

Sooooo on to the review

For those of you who have never read the book or seen the movie: This is the story of a planet named Dune. A pretty inhospitable place which is only important because it is the only source in the universe for the spice Melange. Spice is the most valuable substance in the universe; it can prolong life and makes space travel possible, so whoever controls spice – controls the universe.

In the game you take control of one of three groups or “houses”, the Peaceful Atreides, the savage Harkonnen, or stealthy Ordos. You must battle the other houses across the face of Dune, all the while harvesting spice which can in-turn be converted into credits. So the more spice you harvest, the more units and buildings you can buy. However, there is one other obstacle to your efforts, the “sandworms”. These are huge creatures native to Dune that like nothing more than to emerge from the sand and grab a unit or two. The only protection against the worms is solid rock, so no buildings can be built, and no unit can be sure of being safe on the deserts sands.

Playing the game will be easy to those who own Command and Conquer or WarCraft as the controls are almost identical – press the M key to move, the A key to attack etc. Unfortunately you can’t give orders to more than one unit at once like you can in later games of this type, but this isn’t such a big deal, if anything it makes you concentrate less on rush attacks and more on tactics. The AI is good considering that this was the first real-time strategy game, and the enemy does surprise you at times – especially on the later missions when the game gets really hard. I should also mention the in-game help section in the form of you advisor or “Mentat”, whenever you need information on any part of the game just click the Mentat button and ask away.

This is one of the few games of its type that I have played all-the-way thru (the others being StarCraft and total Annihilation.) If you’ve never played the game before I ask you not to be put off by the fact that it’s old, I can think of 5 other real time strategy games that, although they where released later, come no where near the standard of Dune 2.

Just try to ignore all the “new” things that have been added by Westwood

Ahh Dune.

“A beginning is a very delicate time. Know then that it is the year 10191. The known universe is ruled by the Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV, my father.

In this time, the most precious substance in the universe is the spice melange. The spice extends life, the spice expands consciousness, the spice is vital to space travel. The Spacing Guild and its navigators, who the spice has mutated over four thousand years, use the orange spice gas which gives them the ability to fold space. That is travel to any part of the universe without moving.
Oh yes, I forgot to tell you, the spice exists on only one planet in the entire universe : a desolate, dry planet with vast deserts. Hidden away within the rocks of these deserts are a people known as Fremen who have long held a prophecy, that a man would come, a messiah, who would lead them to true freedom.
The planet is Arrakis, also known as… DUNE.”

Although it was eclipsed by it’s better known sequel, this is without a doubt my favourite of the two games. Dune is a strategy/adventure hybrid that casts you as Paul Atreides of the house Atreides (suprisingly), charged by the Emperor of the known Universe to manage the extraction of the spice melange, the most precious substance known to humankind.

The game can be divided into two parts. The first person adventure part which deals with the plot is by far the most enjoyable, and fans of the movie or the book will enjoy it immensely (the plot itself is a mix of elements from both). The strategy part deals with spice extraction (the emperor expects you to meet a quota, or he will send in his sardakur shock troops) and combat – and it compliments the advanture elements well.

Graphicaly the game is stunning (for the time anyway) and it has the same great sense of atmosphere that was found in the movie. The desert scenes particularly are a work of art – especialy those dealing with Paul’s ‘visions’ ( but musn’t say too much about that, don’t wanna give them game away )

All in all a thoroughly enjoyable game that will appeal to fans and non fans of the Dune series (and if you havent read at least the first book then go get copy now you fool!)

Defender of the Crown was an excellent single player strategy game for it’s time. Originally the Amiga in 1986 it came out for DOS in 1987. It’s a simplistic strategy game, but the game play is amazing.

The game is set in England, the Saxons and the Normans are fighting for the land as the King is now dead. The main map is a birds-eye view of England, divided up into its historical regions. Lucky you, you also get to battle for Mother England. In this sense it’s a lot like Risk meets a very, very primitive Heroes of Might & Magic, as when you capture a region you get a castle and with that you can purchase additions to your army defending your castles and the army you use to conquer the other regions.

You don’t get to see much action, as when you encounter another army it takes an early RPG approach and you get to see the outcome but not the fight. When you take on a castle you get to see the brilliant graphics! The scene moves into the castle and takes on that early HOMM feel. You take down the wall, and then select which people to attack.

You get to rescue ladies, and hook up with Robin Hood. That came out wrong, because you actually meet Robin Hood and hook up with the ladies…

The VGA version is much, much better than the CGA. I know that’s a given, but I found I couldn’t play long with the CGA version; my eyes went to total crap on me. If you can get a VGA version then send it over! Otherwise, in both CGA & VGA the graphics were great for 1987, the landscapes, characters, maps etc. Absolutely astounding! The Amiga was much better, admittedly, but compared to other games from this time, this game was at the top of its class. I can’t even begin to imagine how much work went into the artwork on them old machines to get landscapes and scenes like you’ll find in Defender of the Crown.

PC speaker – hehe, need I say more? You’ll love it!

If you can get a copy of this for your GBA then go for it, the GBA version is awesome fun! And if you did like this, take a look at the Heroes of Might & Magic games, as they are very similar but much more advanced and pretty to look at.

Civilization: Ahh civ, so I was going through my old cd-collection today and I find civilization, on cd, I pondered for a second, wondering how I managed to get this, and why civ would be on a cd. Well it turns out it had the game in English, French and German, plus manuals to match (Although I couldn’t actually put the manual here because its like 23mb O_O) but I digress

For those of you that don’t know, civilization is a turn-based strategy game, created by Sid Meier’s and published by Micro Prose. And although I would be the first to admit I am not exactly good at this game, it is still enjoyable to play once in a while . You are the leader of a new civilization, on a new world, your job, to 0wn everyone else. You can accomplish this task in one of two ways, by destroying all the other civilizations or by winning the space race (which is accomplished by researching into technology and then building a space-ship before anyone else). Its not just as simple as that though, there can be up to 7 other civilizations on this planet and they all want the same thing you do, and will do anything they can to accomplish it.

You can choose from 14 different civilizations to begin with ranging from civilizations such as the Romans (Caesar), to the Indians (Mahatma Gandhi). Each civilization not only looks different, but also has diffident starting technologies. Technologies are what gets you going in this world you need to beef up your technologies by investing resource’s into researching them (such as researching the wheel), and then investing resource’s into developing them (such as making a horse drawn cart now you have the research for the wheel). Many technologies will require you to research into many different things, (see technologies flow chart).

You can acquire additional resources by expanding your civilization, for example by sending settlers to create new towns. You can also expand your civilization by converting the land surrounding your towns into irrigated land. And create roads to and from your towns to speed up the units that travel along it. What really makes or breaks you in this game is your foreign policies, will you go for love, or war? You can create ambassadors to meet with other civilizations and forge alliances, give gifts or even ask to go to war with another civilizations, but as a warning, they will also do this to you .

One neat feature of this game is your palace, when you please your citizens, they will reward you by upgrading your palace, you can create quite a house O_O .

All in all, this is a game that everyone should try once, even if you aren’t a fan of strategy games .

Time for another one of my history lessons (groan and i’ll ruddy kill you!)

The Games Workshop (now famous for producing the Warhammer wargaming system among other things) was founded in the early eighties by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone with the intention of producing pen and paper role-playing games along the lines of Dungeons and Dragons (they are repsonsible for the Fighting Fantasy roleplaying books apparently – no, i’ve never heard of them either). With the increasing popularity of home computer systems and the appearance of the ZX Spectrum they saw a new and potentialy profitable market for their games and started comverting them to this new platform. They approached a British programmer by the name of Julian Gollop (who was allready responsible for the classic Rebelstar Raiders) who then created a game based on the spellcasting elements of Dungeons and Dragons entitled ‘Chaos’ (this game you nonce, the one for download above!)

Eventualy both Livingstone and Jackson decided that there wasn’t enough money to be made in computes and returned to paper and board games. It is ironic then that once they had sold off the Games Workshop Jackson went to work for Lionhead and Ian Livingstone became head of Eidos (the creaters of Tomb Raider).

Chaos is, IMHO, one of the most perfect examples of pure gameplay in existence and without of doubt one of the best game of all time. The concept is simple, 2-8 wizards battle it out in an area using various magic spells – the last one alive wins. The types of spells available vary. Some summon creatures that you then control and send to attack your enemies (some creatures can also be mounted, such as the unicorn and pegasus), some give you magical weaponry or abilities (such as increased movement). Others are purely offensive such as magic bolts and lightning. while others are defensive which allow you to summon castles and citadels to take refuge in. Others are stranger still, for instance you can summon a goey blob that spreads at random across the arena, swallowing everything in its path, or you can create magical forests that you can take shelter in and that will give you extra spells over time. It’s all very diverse and interesting and the fact that there can be upto 8 players all with a different set of spells just makes it better (spells are assigned at random at the beginning of the game).

Speaking of spells, I should mention something of allignments. Spells can be either Lawful, Neutral or Chaotic and it is your wizards current allignment that affects the chance of casting a spell successfully. For instance if your wizard is entirely lawful you will have about a 10% chance of summoning a Red Dragon (which is highly chaotic). All wizards start the game with with no alignment (ie neutral) and it is by casting either lawful or chaotic spells that the balance gets tipped one way or another (some spells are specifically designed to change your alligment too, such as ‘LAW 2′). I should also point out that with one exception each spell will disapear from your spellbook after it is used so you must make give thought as to when is the best time to use certain spells.

I mentioned before that some spells summon creatures into the arena that you then control and I should discuss this in more depth as it it a major part of the game. When you first opt to summon a certain creature you are given the choice of casting a real or illusionary one. Illusions have a 100% chance of being summoned but they can be destroyed by a simple “Disbelieve” spell (of which each wizard has an infinite amount. A good rule of thumb is that if someone summons a Golden Dragon in the first turn of play then it’s probably not real .

Different creatures also have different attributes which must be taken into account. Vampires and Zombies are undead, which means that they can only be attacked by other undead creatures, by wizards with magical weapons or with offensive spells. Some creatures can be mounted by wizards and some have the ability to fly – so even if you decide to cast a magic wall around yourself you are still not 100% safe, a giant eagle or a griffon can just fly over the top of it. Some creatures have the ability to attack at range (the dragon can breath fire for example) and in special cases a creature can have more than one of these special attributes (here’s a hint – successfuly casting a ‘Rasie Dead” spell on the body of a manticore will give you a creature than can fly, can be ridden, can attack at range and that can only be killed with magic or by other undead creatures – a nasty combination).

Visually the game is hardly impressive, but it doesn’t have to be because the gameplay is so perfect. I have seen one attempt at recreating the game in 3D and as far as I am concerned it would spoil the game somewhat (Chaos’ true sequel, Magic and Mayham took a simple and perfect concept and gave it isometric graphics, overcomplicated gameplay and.. ugh.. a story. Trust me, this is a much better game )

Chaos is an utterly absorbing and highly addictive game that I have ben playing regularly for the past 10 years of my life (yes, it’s THAT good). It is perfectly balanced, well thought and as I said before pretty much perfect in my opinion.

Please just download it. If there is one game that I recommend above all others then it is this one.

Just do it!

A remake of my favourite game of all time and one that does the unthinkable – it IMPROVES on perfection.

I’m not gonna talk in any great detail about Chaos, if you have no idea what the game is then I suggest that you read the review on this site and then come back to this page.

Anyway, I first discovered this little beauty in an Atari ST public domain (shareware and freeare) archive about 6 or 7 years ago. As soon as I saw the anme I kew that I just had to have it, I popped my check in the post and sent off the order and within a week had the disk in front of me.

Let me tell you something, this game consistantly cracks me up BADLY. The author has taken sound samples from Monty Python, Red Dwarf, BlackAdder, Evil Deal and many more sources and incorporated them into the game. God knows how many copyrights he has infringed upon but who the hell cares because this thing is damn funny!

=D

Anyway, that aside I should mention some of the other tweaks in this remake. The graphics have been tweaked from single to multi-colour sprites for example. It doesn’t do anything for the game but I suppose that it’s nice to look at The biggest change is that when setting up a game you can now give comoputer players different difficulty levels (in the original you set one level for all AI players). So if you liek you can play against 3 easy opponents and 4 hard as hell ones. It’s a nice touch that while not making a huge difference to gameplay gives you that extra option should you want to use it.

Other than those few changes the game is very faithful to the original and is just as fun and absorbing. This version is my first choice when I want to play Chaos and if you are a fan of the first game then it is well worth downloading and trying it.

Great fun

Battle Chess meets Tekken This is not your typical chess game. For starters you don’t have the chess pieces, and taking over someone is not as easy as moving onto their square with your piece and lifting them off the board. Oh no siree!

This is the ultimate chess game. When you see someone’s nice little guy standing there on a white square, you go in for the kill. But lo and behold, up loads the 1 on 1 combat screen – now we see who wins

There are other factors to this game that have to be considered when playing. Such as if you are a white player and you go to fight, then fighting on a white square is better. As this is your colour and you have an advantage because of that. Just like chess the different pieces have different strengths and weaknesses. Its not as simple as ‘Haha, you suck, you put your big important one in the way of my tiny little pawn, now I 0wn j00!’ as there is the battle scene, and your tiny little piece would have no show. So, its up to you to chose the right player to take over another one.

This game has a great human vs. human side. So you can take on your best friend who is 100x smarter than you at anything strategic, and just kick the living crap out of them! They were always too busy playing normal chess to bother with any of the beat-em up games, so that’s where it pays to bum around on PCs all the time. It’s not too hard to beat the PC either.

The graphics are a bit crappy and only in CGA. And the PC speaker has never been much fun. But it’s an old game and you get what you expect, and this was ok for a 1984 game.

An addictive game, and a lot of fun. Brings together using your brain, and using your fighting skills. If you like this you should have a look at Archon Ultra which was the newer version and can be found on this site.

17th century trading game. Similar to the Tycoon games. Plan routes, trade stuff, look after your cash and sail the high seas!

An ignorant person would claim that Tides of Darkness was the first game in the Warcraft series. They would be wrong !!! But, of course, it doesn’t stop hundreds of websites refering, to the above as Warcraft, as though it was the original. Just look in any search engine (I used MSN, Google and Altavista) and type Warcraft, or even Warcraft 1. You’ll be amased by the number of websites that talk about Warcraft 2, and yet seem to miss out the classic game I’m taking a close look at in this review Over the years I’ve become increasingly irritated by the situation described above, and as a purchaser of the original warcraft I can honestly say that most people overlook this game when they think of the great games. Who could deny Warcraft the honour of being one of the patriarchs of modern games ? Especially when it won 9 awards for the game (see bottom of the following webpage for details: http://www.blizzard.com/inblizz/awards.shtml), and all at a time when a half hour plus install wait wasn’t the norm !!The game is really fun, but I guess I would say that, considering that I’m a real time stratagy fanatic. You start the game as a low ranked servant of either the Orcish hordes or the Human kingdom of Azeroth. You can increase your rank, and the number of units you can command, by achieving the goals of the stage you are on. The ultimate goal is to rid Azeroth of the oposite race, whose tactics get better as you progress through the stages.

The graphics are excellent, especially considering the game was released in 1994. The trees and terrain are believable and realistic. Sometimes, though, the animation of the units in the game turns into blury blobs of flesh. This happens a lot when the peons or peasants are choping trees. But, I still love playing the game.

The sound effects and music are characteristically millitaristic, and add to the war admosphere and realism of the game. They are also very high quality. I think that this game (along with others) helped steer modern sounds effect and music in the right direction. Warcraft’s sounds were an important development in turning the irritating bleeps and screeches of the early games, to the music we hear in modern games. Sounds, like the ones heard in this game, don’t make you want to reach for the mute button. They are a bit repetitive, but I don’t think that the game becomes irritating or monotonious because of it.

Overall Warcraft 1: Orcs vs Humans is a classic game. It’s only flaws are ones that it’s decendants (Tides of Darkness and Reign of Chaos) have only just corrected. It’s a real shame that there aren’t that many warcraft 1, cause it really is a great game.