Coming a close second to Zork for the position of Infocom’s moast famous title, THHGTTG (hehe) is the adaption of Douglas Adam’s story of the same name. You play Arthur Dent, and your home (and planet) has been destroyed by a Vogon constructor fleet to make way for a hyper space by-pass. Rescued by your friend (who, unknown to you, is an alien) you will travel to alien worlds and into the past and future to discover the true nature of your, and mankinds, existance.

Most of the plot elements and great characters from the book have been transposed into the game, and it is this that is the game major shortcoming. Fans of the series will find little challenge in the game at all, everyone else will find some of the puzzles to be HIGHLY obscure and difficult.

This is a hard thing to disregard but if you can you will find THHGTTG to be a interesting game, utterly faithful to the original story.

Not one of my favourites, but I recommend it anyway.

Jumpman is one of those very old classic games that paved the way for your typical platformers. It was designed after Nintendo started with all that Donkey Kong nonsense

This guy called Randy Glover made Jumpman and then went and found Epyx who were kind enough to be the publishers. (This was back in the days when you got really rich really quickly making games). It was originally made for the PC and Atari systems, then its sequel was made shortly after (Jumpan Jr, 1984) and that was available also on C64.

Jumpman is great fun! You run around collecting flowers (stfu! they are so!!) and avoiding bombs that are floating around the screen. They are these horrible evil white dots, and when they see you they make this typical high pitched noise and hurl themselves straight at you across or down the screen and you have to jump and run away. Its heaps of fun, and does require a lot of skill. When Jumpman jumps, he kind of leaps so you have to be sure to not jump too late when near the edge of a platform. You could find yourself way down on the ground, legs sprawled, seeing stars if you do

There are 30 levels in all, meaning great fun that can last for ages. It’s not an easy game, quite a challenge. Scaling ladders, jumping bombs and climbing up ropes. All very fast-paced and full of action.

This game has standard old-timer graphics. So it might hurt your eyes. Back in the old days (*sigh* here she goes again) it used to look really cool with its green platforms and orange flowers, but nowadays you’re gonna have to settle for pink (but that’s why you’re visiting this site for right? Because you love pink!).

The sound can get on your nerves, and is rather loud. He makes this noise when he moves, and when he falls on his head. Like others, I could never figure out how to turn the sound off. But as with the graphics, this is an older game, 19 years old at the date of this review – so expect great gameplay and disturbing graphics and sound

I’d definitely recommend getting a copy of this game. It’s a wonderful old game and brings back heaps of cool memories, and totally kicks butt (Donkey Kong eat yer heart out ~~ Hehe).

When I started the game, the credits started rolling. When the credits stopped you just started playing. It isn’t before you can speak to King Edward that you know what your mission is (Getting a chest, a mirror and a shield). The story in the game is quite short and it only contains on page of text, making it very short.

You start as Sir Graham, just outside the castle and when you met King Edward, he tells you that you must go on a quest, because King Edward is dying and if you manage to complete this quest you will inherit the throne and also because your kingdom is weak and poor and if you get these 3 things, your kingdom will become strong and wealthy. You have to get a magic mirror which can tell the future, a magic shield which protects the bearer from any mortal harm and a magic treasure chest that is always filled with gold coins. There isn’t much more of a story in this game. A part the makers could have spent a lot more time on.

The graphics are like the regular Sierra game graphics at that time (like in Space Quest 1, Leisure suit Larry 1 and Police Quest 1). The graphics isn’t that bad even though they dent to interfere with the game play.

The game play was okay, with some nice puzzles, but like in so many Sierra games, it can become quite annoying. You can die and if you die and haven’t saved for a long time and die, you have to go back to the old save and do all the things you just done all over. This can be very annoying. Also there are things that try and kill you if you enter the map where they are, and there the witch is by far most annoying.She got me probably a dozen times. I also noticed that if you enter another screen and there is a tree where you entered, you will get stuck in the tree and that is quite annoying.

There isn’t much sound in the game, some music when you die and when you accomplish great achievements. There isn’t much more sound or music in it.

This game could have been far worse than this but also a lot better. There wasn’t really a story and you had to figure out most times what to do on yourself and there wasn’t a real story that helped you do it. The game play was sometimes annoying, but not at all as annoying as in games like Space Quest 1, and it was a lot easier to avoid dieing. This is a great classic though and if you do want a classic then you should get it.

2.5 out of 5

Ah Sokoban, the mother of many clones. The concept of this game was so simple, yet so original and perfectly puzzling that the game stood out in the puzzle game crowd. I used to play this for hours on end, and when I got a windows clone, I would make my own levels.

The situation is you are given a room, with walls all over the place, and you have to move the boxes onto the diamonds. Of course boxes can get trapped and then you can’t move them anymore, and you have to start again. When you get all the boxes placed on the diamonds then you progress to the next level. See? The concept is simple, but is the game simple? No way! Even the first level makes you think, and by the time you get to the fourth level you can just envisage what the 50th will be like! Woe is you indeed. But you go red in the face, drink 100L of Coca-Cola and you persevere!

The graphics leave a lot to be desired, but what can you expect from an early 80’s game? You’ll still get addicted even if the colours make you feel a bit wasted .

You HAVE to play this game, it’s the original and can’t be beat. It’s the mother of all puzzle games!

Woohoo.. I remember having this game on my PC, but I didn’t play it for years because I couldn’t figure out the controls. What a lazy shite I am But when I did get the hang of it, well you just couldn’t stop me.

This game is totally wicked and plays an important part in the whole world of gaming. This game was made way back in 1984, before many games were born I’d never had a game where you were in a plane and you got to take off and fly into buildings. Then to make things even more fun, you could bring in a computer-controlled plane to try and take you out, or you take them out. Whichever happens first – undoubtedly they kicked your arse. The computer controlled plane was just too clever for me, and maybe it was a bit too hard =

Playing it on your own was ok. You just had to keep the plane in the air and make it to the end of the screen. There was only one level and when you completed it you finished the game. Funnily enough the game literally ended One good thing to note was the bottom of the screen. There was an overall map of the level, so you could see the whereabouts of planes in the level. Of course some might think of this as a spoiler.

The graphics were your typical CGA (pretty in pink). The sound was the PC speaker. This game was noisy and the sound of the plane could drive you nuts after a while. But its still much better than no sound, and was heaps of fun as you could go ‘brrrrrrrrr’ and sing along with the plane

I think this game could have done with more levels. But if you are interested in way old games, and want to see the work of the forefathers, then check out Sopwith, and also Sopwith 2 which can also be found on this site.

Note: You’re gonna need to grab Turbo or some other slow down utility from our utilities page

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

Zork 3 continues on directly from where Zork 2 left off. You find yourself in a heap at the bottom of some stairs where you recieve a vision of an old man who tells you to seek him out. See it’s back in to underground empire to find the man, and learn your fate.

Zork 3 differs from the first 2 games in that it has something of an underlining story, apart from that it is very familiar. Once again the game is parser driven/text only and once again it suffers from the same annoying flaws.

A decent enough game, and a worthy addition to the series (if you’ve played the first two then you know you are going to get this – so go for it )

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.