So, Summer is officially at an end, but fear not! As the last sun of August sets, five long-forgotten gems awaken from the Collection Chamber.
Finished reading the digital pages of the Fantastic Four from last month? Well continue your Marvel kick with Silver Surfer: Interactive CD-ROM Comic Book (1996 Pixel Technologies & Marvel Entertainment Group, Inc). There's also the adventurous likes of the Mysterious Island: A Race Against Time and Hot Lava (1996 Virgin Sound and Vision) designed for young audiences, but has enough production value to please grown ups too.
For something a bit (and by bit, I mean a lot) different, try AI Wars: The Awakening (2000 Nexus Information Systems & Marketing inc.), a truly unique FPS that has run amuck a virtual representation of the Net, hacking everything you see with the aim to achieve immortality. Contains some of the trippiest visuals of the Y2K era.
But my faves are pure adventure games through and through. Hell: A Cyberpunk Thriller (1994 Take 2 Interactive Software) hasn't got the best of reputations, but I had some fun playing through this interactive movie disguised as a point-and-clicker. Pick of the month, however, is a curio solely created by two brothers; Crack the Conspiracy (1998-2001 The Pixel Shop, Inc) rides off of the 90s alien craze that began with The X-Files and makes for one entertainingly obscure adventure.
Old-game updates give us massive upgrades to Kid Klown's Crazy Collection got a complete overhaul adding a bunch of alternative releases and spiritual sequels, while Discworld and Discworld II: Missing, Presumed... ? upgraded their ScummVM package. Don't cringe too heavily on my written musings. They're some of the earliest reviews on the site when I tasked myself with writing one a day (!!!). No idea how I managed that, but head over to their review pages or the Game Updates section for more information on what's new.
Click on the images below to head on over to the game page.
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2000 Nexus Information Systems & Marketing inc.
Windows
Action-FPS-Science Fiction-Cyberpunk
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1998-2001 The Pixel Shop, Inc
Windows '95
Adventure-Point and Click-Science Fiction-Aliens!
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1994 Take 2 Interactive Software
DOS
Adventure-Point and Click-Science Fiction-Cyberpunk
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1996 Virgin Sound and Vision
Windows 3.1
Adventure-Point and Click-Animation
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1996 Pixel Technologies & Marvel Entertainment Group, Inc
Windows 3.1
Edutainment-Comic Book-Marvel
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Hi, so really happy to see another drop. Especially Hell and Mystery Island, those look up my alley. By any chance though do you have a solution for a glitch that I've been encountering in Ring II? I'm at the part where I need to climb the side of a cabinet, but I can't get Siegried to climb it. I remember MandaloreGaming managed to solve it, and I tried to replicate what he did but I'm can't quite find the specifications. Hope this isn't any trouble, I just hope this is something that might be an error on my part.
ReplyDeleteThis was part of the original programming, so I can't help you there. All I can say is that there's a very specific knack to it - you have to be in the exact right position - that is repeatable once you find it. I know one of the corners is easier that the others. IIRC it's the one closest to the camera.
DeleteThanks Biff, the AI game is a great choice.
ReplyDeleteHell of a good month! Thank you for preserving some absolute classics. It's about time someone did. My amazing childhood lives again. Now the trifecta is complete with Hell, Ripper and Black Dahlia! Blessings unto you good sir. Tis a glorious day.
ReplyDeleteI have a question, have you ever taken a crack at any of the Legacy Interactive games, such as the Emergency Room franchise, the Law and Order or CSI series, or the EMT or Police/Lawyer FMV games they developed? Those were highly educational, cinematic, and lots of fun and very unique. Emergency Room 2 even has Joey Lauren Adams from Chasing Amy fame, and unfortunately Code Blue and Code Red feature Stephen Collins, but they're still all really well done in my opinion for such a small studio.
Have a great day Biff, you're a hero.
Great choices again this month. I have no idea why Cracking the Conspiracy wasn't on the Request List, but it absolutely should have been. Well done for rectifying that omission. As for Hell, I'm guessing that probably wasn't requested because it's already available in Zomb's Lair, to which this site provides a link on the right. However, I see you used DOSBox-X, a more advanced emulator, so that may have been one reason to do it.
ReplyDelete