Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny may have come out at the end of last month, but I didn't see it until the beginning of this one. I like it fine enough. It was generally level in quality making me prefer it to the mess that was Kingdom of the Crystal Skull but I must say that Spielberg's misfire is the more memorable movie. The highs are much higher there but its the depths of its lows that make me like this new one a little more. I'll hand over my full thoughts at the end-of-year movie rundown, but until then I've collated a bunch of Indiana Jones games no-one seems to remember anymore. It took me a hell of a long while to do, so I'll have to give Indiana Jones: The Action Games (1982-1994 Various) my pick of the month, even if most of its content is more fascinating than fantastic. It include the original Atari 2600 game based on the original movie, the Temple of Doom arcade game and its many ports, almost all platform iterations of The Last Crusade and the action side of The Fate of Atlantis. Including ports, variations and a number of other oddities, that's nearly 40 games!
My real pick would probably be Magic & Mayhem (1998 Virgin Interactive Ent & Mythos Games Ltd), a fantasy-set strategy game from the folks behind the original X-COM trilogy. Ark of Time (1997 International Computer Entertainment Ltd) is a decent point-and-click adventure that sees a journalist stumbles upon an Atlantean conspiracy. CyberBykes: Shadow Racer VR (1995 Artificial Software, LLC) is an early attempt at consumer VR, but more interesting than that is Charlie Brooker's (of Black Mirror fame) bizarre PC Zone review. To cap off the month, I've returned to the world of the Sims with SimTown: The Town You Build Yourself (1995 Maxis Inc). It's a more kid friendly version of SimCity that must've been installed on school PCs the world over.
I only have two updates this month, and both are revisions of games from last month. A lot of people have been having issues with Clue: Murder at Boddy Mansion. I suspect their systems are missing one of the Microsoft Visual C++ packages (link in the FAQ) which I recommend every retro PC gamer install. Version 2 of the game's installer now launches using the offical .exe instead of one modified with the NoCD patch. It will also use Image Drive Portable to automatically manage virtual CD mounting. I've also put a limit on the framerate for The Reap which makes the game much more playable.
That's it for this month! Until next time...
Click on the images below to head on over to the game page.
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1997 International Computer Entertainment Ltd
DOS
Adventure-Point & Click-Fantasy-Atlantis!
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1995 Artificial Software, LLC
DOS
Racing-Car Combat-Motobikes-Futuristic
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1982-1994 Various
Various (Compilation)
Action-Adventure-Platform-Interactive Fiction-Fantasy
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1998 Virgin Interactive Ent & Mythos Games Ltd
Windows
Strategy-Fantasy-Fairies!-Wizards!-Zombies!
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1995 Maxis Inc
Windows 3.1
Strategy-Management-Sim Series
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40 games! You could have posted that alone and given yourself a rest!
ReplyDeleteThanks as always for the work you put in month after month.
It was a big project, but I kinda enjoy making them.
DeleteRevenge of Ancients is where it's at
DeleteThank you so much for the Indy collection alone!
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome!
DeleteA request: Darby the Dragon, and the Princess and the Crab, both by Capitol Multimedia. Please?
DeleteAnother great monthly haul. Always had a soft spot for Arc of Time, a good solid adventure with a lovely score from what I remember. Magic and Mayhem is an old favourite as well. Pumped for the Indy collection, I'm sure it'll be much much more enjoyable than Fleabag meets grandad Indiana :). Many thanks again for all your hard work.
ReplyDeleteIt's a pretty good game. I'm bit late with the review but I hope to have it up tomorrow.
DeleteAn excellent and insighful review on Ark of Time by the way Biffman.
DeleteAh, nice; some classic Indy games to help wash the foul taste of the Dial of Destiny from my mouth. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteIMO Dial of Destiny was alright, but when it comes to Indy, alright doesn't cut it.
DeleteI only found out about this project last month, and have to say I have been so delighted browsing your museum here and looking at all the stuff you have here that I haven't played in more than 2 decades. A lot of this stuff I had the demo of, but couldn't get the full version and I have a real fondess for my hours spent playing those demos before I had a games collection so large and almighty that there's no way I could ever, ever finish them all. I had a wonderful time downloading your package of Get Medieval and hacking & slashing my way through a few levels. Still exactly how I remember it. Today I'm downloading the 3D Ultra Nascar Pinball game, another demo I spent plenty of time on as a kid. So thanks so much for doing this. My girlfriend was also delighted when I sent her a link to Dark Earth running on a Windows 10 PC. She's been wanting to replay that game for years. You're doing great work.
ReplyDeleteAnd thanks for your lovely comments about some Wadjet Eye games I found while browsing around your site. I was the artist on a few of those and it's always lovely to see folks enjoying them. :)
Indeed. Biffman is awesome. I respect and love his devotion to resurrecting unfairly long forgotten classic games.
DeleteThanks! I'm always excited when a new Wadjet Eye game is announced. I'm not sure which games you worked on, but every one of them looks stunning. I even hunt down concept art whenever I can find them with Primordia being a particular favourite.
DeleteSo kind! I've worked on a bunch, but was notably the main artist on Blackwell Epiphany, Technobabylon, Shardlight & Unavowed. And currently working on Old Skies. Thanks for the support!! (and especially for the old games, still having a blast with these old titles)
DeleteHow coincidental! I was literally saying the other day that the same background artist must have worked on a few of the Wadjet Eye games, due to their distinctive art style. Nice work, man!
DeleteGood eye for spotting that, and thank you very much!
Delete@Ben304 Just chiming in to say that having finished Unavowed recently, I was blown away. And Technobabylon was a personal favourite at the time, all having beautiful art. Now I'm deciding where to go next, to finally get into the Blackwell series, or, start Thimbleweed Park...but there's just something about the Wadjet games and their art that really hit the spot for me, easily my favourite adventure game studio along with Cloak and Dagger whose brilliant 'The Excavation of Hob's Barrow', Wadjet published. Keep up the great work! Excited for the new game.
DeleteThank you very much for the support!
DeleteBiffman 101 - another month - new games come :D
ReplyDeleteIndy - wooow - I was in cinema on Dial of Destiny with my wife and its a good movie. Have a soul.
Very nice GUI with screenshoots :)
Magic and Mayhem - I play with this when I was young
SimTown - thank You - I remember in 1990 I played SimCity in CGA on Hercules Graphics and monochrome monitor. Its Maxis debute
Ark of Time - thank You. Good to see adventures.
CyberBykes: Shadow Racer - VR headset ? Ho ho - I missed something in 1995 :)
Thank YOU for all.
Greg
You're welcome! I don't think Dial of Destiny deserves all the hate it's been getting. I feel like whether you like it not depends on how well you can go along with the final act. Everything before that was fine enough, even great at times but I felt like it teetered right on the edge of believability. It didn't cross it in my opinion, but it was close.
DeleteAnd with the VR in 1995, you missed nothing. I had a go on a display unit at a Beatties in the 90s, and it was unplayable. It was a FPS game called Dactyl Nightmare and I just fell off ledges for 5 minutes. Cost £2 for the privilege too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBkP2to1P_c
Mortyr and its sequel are a good shout. Both were decent FPS's.
DeleteDactyl Nightmare 1991. Nice movie. thx :)
DeleteGreg
May I request that you may put a focus on Windows 95 and Windows 98 games? I can generally emulate DOS, Amiga and so on, but the technicality of running Windows 95 and Windows 98 games are beyond my scope.
ReplyDeleteThree words: klingon honor guard
DeleteGenerally, I look to games that interest me regardless of the platform. It is curated with only that in mind. Klingon Honor Guard is also already on this site :)
DeleteNice. I think a good addition in the style of KHG may be Mortyr - especially since it is so difficult to run it on modern systems (e.g., it won't install, it will run too fast ...)
DeleteMortyr and its sequel are a good shout. Both were decent FPS's.
DeleteBy the by, I own a copy of 'You Don't Know Jack' (UK edition). I would be happy to rip the CD-ROM and upload it for you, should you care to host the game. I've searched high and low for the UK edition online with little success (I can only find the USA editions),. Therefore, I reckon that it would be an exclusive for your site, Biffman. If you would care to take me up on my offer, then you may can contact me via eddavies82@gmail.com
ReplyDeleteEither way, thank you for the brilliant archival services which you provide.
Sim Towm, wow! That's a great blast from the past!
ReplyDeletesorry for off-top,but why the legend of zelda bs collection page doesn't open?
ReplyDeletehttps://collectionchamber.blogspot.com/2015/03/legend-of-zelda-bs.html
Try those links again now
Deletework,thx man
DeleteJust wondered, has anyone tried to install any games from Collection Chamber onto the Steam Deck, just curious if they booted up okay especially ones that use PCem cause I wasn't sure if that worked okay on the Deck
ReplyDeleteHello, can you put My First Math Adventure 1: Counting And Sorting and My First Math Adventure 2: Adding And Subtracting on your site? My First Math Adventure: Counting And Sorting and Adding And Subtracting is a great game I tried to download it from other websites a few months ago, but couldn't get it to work. Love your site, doing God's work! :-) Thanks
ReplyDeleteNot long now. I wonder what goodies the great man has in store for September ?
ReplyDeleteWhatever it is, it's gonna be good ;)
DeleteA couple of the written reviews are gonna late though.