One thing I found quite unusable was the initial menu. There were no text rollovers or anything for the menu items. I took the spanner and hammer combination to be “setup” and I was right, I could choose which card deck to use and configure the sound. The one with the graph I took a guess at and got wrong, it is actually some sort of scoring thing. The clock icon is used to set a time limit for answering the questions. The little gloved hands in the middle is where you can change the player setup – who plays as what colour, add more players etc. Of course the bottom icon is the “Let’s start the game!” icon

So like the board game, you roll the dice and move your piece. You are asked the question from the card corresponding with your colour, but you do not type in or select the answer, you choose it in your head. Once you have decided the answer, push the “reveal” button and then you get to put in whether you got it right or not. So realistically this game is designed for you to play with your friends around a table (erm, around a computer). I think it must have been purely for those who didn’t have the board game but wanted to play, not for people home alone that want to play vs a computer. There is no computer player option, so you better make sure you have some friends to play with.

The little bird guy that comes out and asks you the question is very cool. He takes you into themed rooms and asks you your question. I enjoyed his sarcastic sense of humour too! He kept accusing me of guessing it correctly when I got it right.

Really, you have to play against humans otherwise it’s not going to work I’ve been cheating the entire time I’ve played this…

I was looking through my old games collection, wondering what game to review when this one popped up. I just had to add it to the site! This game is a total classic.

I laughed when I found out who designed it. There is a guy here at work called David Bayliss, but I’m sure he’s no relation. David Bayliss ran a one-man company called Wordworks, him being the one man in it. Wordworks has only released two freeware titles that I am aware of – Elevator and X-Fighter.

Anyhoo, seeing as I am reviewing the game, I should actually talk about the game! This game is great. By looking at the title of the name “Elevator” you can safely assume this game has an elevator in it. It sure does, in fact it’s all about elevators.

You are this cute little dude, who has to ride the elevators around the level and collect all the bags of gold. Once you have done that you can go onto the next level. Seems easy you say? It is no way near as easy as it seems. Timing is critical, those lifts get faster and it gets harder and harder. As with all old games the character isn’t nice and responsive like they are in modern games, you need to use pure skill. One slip and ‘ahhhhhhhhh’ down the elevator shaft you fall. You only get so many lives, so it pays to ration them.

The graphics aren’t all that bad, just what you would expect from an older game – yellow red and green gracing the screen. However, the colours do suit the simplicity of the game, and are not hard on the eyes. They are quite good.

This game is excellent. You really should give it a whirl, and see if you have the pure skill required. I really I do recommend it to all lovers of the old platform games, especially if you enjoyed Lode Runner and Jumpman!

Marble Madness is a very old but classic game, I do remember it in the arcades when I was a LOT younger then I am now.

It’s a basic concept really, you guide the ball as it rolls down the hills until you get to the exit. With any good puzzle game there are obstacles of course, such as bumps and holes to avoid. Sometimes it gets quite hard as the pathways get very narrow and you still have to make sure your marble doesn’t fall off the edge. There are dark marbles to avoid hitting, and piles of goo that will eat your marble up.

This may seem very straightforward, but this is a VERY addictive game. Definitely not for the impatient, as I found that it took me a long, long time to get used to the controls, and an even longer time to pass up through the levels. Having a time limit to get the marble through each level is quite a challenge.

Lovely CGA graphics magenta and cyan. If you can play Tandy then I really recommend you do, as you’ll be able to have 16 colours – it does make a hell of a difference. PC Speaker sounds, which can be irritating, but trust me, I’ve heard much worse than this game!

I would suggest playing this game with a joystick, as the controls are a bit out of whack for a keyboard.

Ah… Space Quest in the days when you could call your character whatever you liked – before you were always “Roger Wilco”. Space Quest back in the days where the emphasis was on the tricky puzzles and not the humour. Space Quest in the days of the “typical” Sierra RPG. It comes as no surprise that Space Quest is, very much, a typical Sierra RPG of the time.

For those of you who’ve seen Police Quest or Kings Quest, you’ll know what I mean. You walk a character around the platform-style level using the arrow keys (pressing the direction you’re already going in if you want to stop). If you’re not close enough to things, you can’t interact with them. That’s the graphical element of the game. The rest of the game is all conducted in text entries you make in the form of commands to your character (e.g. Pick up rock, kill dwarf, etc.).

Some people like the old-style text-RPGs and I often find them entertaining, except for those irritating moments when there’s something you’re SURE you can do, but you’ve got to find the right way to express it first. Especially when you have a blinkered writer who only puts in the entry “Look at console” rather than “Use console, use computer, use keyboard, type, etc. etc.” assuming that everyone will intimately know the working’s of the programmer’s mind. If they don’t, hey – why are they playing the game?

During Space Quest, I found myself stuck for 10 minutes at one computer screen trying to work out what I was supposed to do. “Push button, press button, use button, look at button”. I tried “press switch, turn knob, use thing” everything that I could think of to describe the action of pushing a button. My friend suggested that since the button is labelled “Open Door”, why not type “Push open door button”. He was right. Then again, he failed dismally at using any of the vital computers because he didn’t think of “look at console”.

Space Quest, I am convinced, was play-tested only by the people who wrote the game. They tested whether it was physically possible to go from start to finish – not whether it was actually possible for someone who’d never seen the game before to complete it. Sierra also love to make their puzzles complicated, which really doesn’t help. Nowhere is there a handy syntax list of available commands, or any indication of what you’re actually supposed to be doing. You just keep on trying until you go insane, get forced to resort to a walkthrough or burst a blood vessel after dying yet again after doing the slightest thing wrong.

Did I mention the start of the game? You’re on a ship invaded by aliens (who walk around randomly and kill you on-sight, your only warning being that you hear footsteps, which doesn’t tell you from which direction) which is about to blow up (you have about 10 minutes to escape)…but you don’t know it’s about to blow up – and the only way you can get out is to wait in a room for at least half a minute for a wounded scientist to appear. You don’t know he’s coming, so what would possess you to wait in a room doing nothing for half a minute if the ship is counting down to explode?

Sadly, Space Quest did actually have all the ingredients for a really great game. Sure, the interface was bad (and they didn’t get that sorted out until Space Quest 5) and it was exceptionally complicated and difficult, but the ideas were there…and once Sierra realised that the humour was what made the game great, not the difficulty of the puzzles, they were onto a winner.

Graphics: 5/10: Typical Sierra RPG graphics of the time. Blocky, expressionless, slow-moving sprites. Difficult sometimes to tell what objects are in a room.
Sound: 3/10: Even though digital sound was around in other games, Space Quest uses the internal sound card. There’s nothing special at all about the sounds, but because it has the Space Quest theme, it gets a 3.
Gameplay: 0/10: Honestly, give me the monkey who wrote the interface and I’ll introduce him to a queue of people who want to shoot him for making the game almost unplayable.
Originality: 9/10: A very original idea, which later went on to the comic mastery which was Roger Wilco – rivalling Monkey Island.
Long-Term Interest: 1/10: After you’ve completed it, you’ll never want to go back. Most likely, unless you’re really determined, you’ll never get past the second (or even the first) section of the game.
Overall: 3/10: Typically difficult Sierra RPG which really ruins a great idea.

Note: This game was originally made in 1986, the VGA version was released in 1990.

You wanna know what makes Star Wars so popular? It’s that every god-danged person on this PLANET wants a light sabre. Don’t deny it because you know it’s true!

This game has no lightsabres (Jedi knight does though, so go buy that), instead it’s scope is limited to the assualt on the Death Star which took place at the end of A New Hope. Firstly you must take on a wave of Tie Fighters (how many ships depends on the difficulty level you have it on) and then fly down the Death Star trench to take out the exhaust port and win the day for the rebellion.

Repeat this over and over and over again.

Visually the game is nothing flash by todays standards (did you expect anything else?) consisting of 16 colour vector graphics. The game is fun to play for a while but gets boring quite fast. the main reason that I added it here is that I have fond memories of playing this game in the arcades, sitting in the cockpit blasting tie fighters and hearing the immortal “use the force luke!” (you wont hear this in the PC version so don’t get your hopes up).

Fun as hell the first few times you play it – providing you get it running at the correct speed. After that, somewhat dull.

But hell, i’m allowed to be nostalgic

Trinity is truly an epic story, starkly serious and mature throughout and, it must be said, beautiful and moving in places.

You play an American tourist in London when World War 3 erupts. Through a series of events you find yourself stepping through a magical portal into a world where the real and unreal combined. You will be transported through time and space to such locations as the New Mexico desert (the plot as a whole is about nuclear weapons).

The game wont appeal to everyone, some wont understand the story and its more metaphorical parts, some will be daunted by the difficulty of the puzzles in the game, but for everyone else Trinity will be a very rewarding experience.

An adult game in the sense that it has a more mature and complicated plot than most games, but one that is worth investing your time in if you are up to it.

Well, the aim of the game couldn’t be simpler, just shoot every ship in sight!

Personally, I found the first couple of levels the hardest as I had to actually sit there and shoot all the planes, even though they insisted on flying as slow as they could, and you don’t got all that fast either. So, as you can tell, it starts off relatively easy.

The enemies that you have to shoot do change, they get a lot smarter and also vary their movement patterns as you move up through the levels. Enemies also have the ability to shoot back at you, and this gets more frequent as you increase levels. I never have gotten to the last level so I cannot say how many levels there actually are, but as you progress up through the levels it gets very hard indeed.

Lovely colours to keep you happy for hours. True, there are only four colours, but ask yourself, do you really need more? I thought that considering this game was made in 1986, the graphics are rather good.

I recommend this game as one to keep you busy for quite a while, or as a game to just load up when you have a bit of time to spare. It’s a gem of a game, download it and see for yourself.