Politically speaking, July has been quite the wild month. France narrowly missed out on a sharp veer to the far right before the many Olympics snafus took over headlines, and the too-close-for-comfort Biden v Trump race took a swing to the Democrats as Biden stepped down in favour of his Vice President Kamala Harris. Better yet, 14 years of Tory rule has finally ended in the UK with Labour winning in a landslide (or more accurately the Tories lost rather than Labour won; the unfairly vilified Jeremy Corbin earned more votes in each of his previous elections). Time will tell on how our new P.M. fares, but surely it can't be worse than the Conservative chaos we've endured.
To commemorate such turmoil, I thought I'd go back to the mid-90s and see how other countries viewed our world leaders. South Korea to be precise, and I did so by playing a satirical one-on-one fighter that came out of their gaming industry called Hello, Mr. President! (1994 Open Planning Co., Ltd). I promise I won't talk about elections too much in the review, though no promises about Bill Clinton's wrestling undies.
Brighter times may be ahead right here on Earth, but until then let's leave it behind for some space-faring excitement starting with the on-rails shooter called Zeitgeist: Laser Fighter (1995-1996 Taito Corp), also called Jupiter Strike when it later hit the PlayStation (also included). With gameplay that has more than a hint of StarFox in its DNA, it's quite the hidden gem in my humble opinion.
Beyond that, I've been hankering more of my favourite genre; the point-and-click adventure. The oft-requested Ring: The Legend of the Nibelungen (1998 Cryo Interactive, Arxel Tribe & Carrière Multimédia) is a poorly designed yet artistically impressive take on Wagner's infamous opera. Except in space. And that's where we'll be going in The Mystery of Greveholm 2: Journey to Planutus (1999 Young Genius), a the sequel to last month's surprise pick of the month though with the drastic change in gameplay it won't hold that title this time round. That would go to yet another space adventure; Earthrise (1990 Matt Gruson). It's a neatly-designed independent take Sierra's early graphic adventure game design complete with the familiar cursor-based character controls and a slightly wobbly text parser.
Enjoy!
