GROSSOLOGY

by Austin Brewer

All throughout the 80s and 90s, edutainment games were at their prime on PC and Mac. Series like Reader Rabbit, Jumpstart, and Carmen Sandiego truly shined out of the slew of kids’ titles. Most were quite tame in their content, to obviously be appropriate for children. Although, there was one title released in 1997, under the name of Grossology.

9: THE LAST RESORT

What do you get when Robert de Niro, Aerosmith, Superman, Jim Belushi and Cher collaborate with the twisted art of Mark Rydan to make a point-n-click adventure? The answer is one of gaming history's most notorious financial bombs. Nevertheless 9: The Last Resort (1996, Tribeca Interactive) is still a fascinating surreal head-trip of a game.

KRONOLOG: THE NAZI PARADOX (AKA RED HELL)

You don't need a president to tell you Nazis are bad, but the big 'what if...?' has haunted many an author, historian or citizen of Planet Earth. What would our world be like had Nazi Germany won the war? Kronolog: The Nazi Paradox, a graphic adventure released in 1993 by Castleworks Gameware, attempts to do just that.

FORSAKEN

Acclaim's answer to the short-lived - and often missed - 6DoF (Six Degrees of Freedom) style of shooter is often denigrated as simply a clone of Descent. The truth is that Forsaken had - and still has - a lot going for it beyond the similarities in gameplay. So strap in, get your sick bags ready and let's get dizzy.

BATTLE BEAST

Until fairly recently, fighting games for computers have had a pretty bad reputation. For some reason, the arcade thrills of a fighter battling it out on the streets or a virtual arena didn't translate so well. That's not to say desktops went without a number of system exclusives in the genre. Battle Beast, a 1995 game for Windows from 7th Level, was one of them. Does it change the tide for melees on a monitor? Or will it continue on the trajectory of terrible tussles?