CHRISTMAS COUNTDOWN - DAY 9

   

With every Christmas in my youth, I would be almost certain that either me or one of my siblings would get a Disney VHS or SNES cart under the tree. I cannot separate the festive season from many Disney classics, they're so intwined. Around this time last year, I gave you three educational Disney games so let's do it again. Yet another Yuletime Disney Triple.

We have three edutainment titles to suit your fancy; Disney's Adventures in Typing with Timon & Pumbaa (1998 Disney Interactive), Disney's Lilo & Stitch: Hawaiian Adventure (2002 Disney Interactive) and the MacDonald's promotional tie-in called Disney's Treasure Planet: Training Academy (2002 Disney Interactive). They vary wildly in quality (though I suspect you can all figure out which one's the worst) but I'm sure there's something in each that'll please kids and Disneyphiles alike. Head on after the jump to find out more.

MONTHLY 5 - November 2022

This year has flown by. You blink, and it's the end of November! I've mostly been engrossed in God of War: Ragnarok since it came out, but the rest of my free time has been dedicated to The Collection Chamber. There are 5 great games featured this month so check out the obscure movie licenced FMV adventure (with too many arcade bits) Eraser Turnabout (1996 Imagination Pilots & Warner Bros.), the many versions of the underrated action platformer Fur Fighters (2000 Bizarre Creations Ltd), the Norse-themed role-playing sequel Heimdall 2: Into the Hall of Worlds (1994 Core Design), a classic point-and-click adventure starring everone's favourite sleuth The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Serrated Scalpel (1992 Mythos Software & Electronic Arts) and Bill Plympton's Take Your Best Shot (1995 7th Level Inc) a desktop toy based on his award-winning 1991 short Push Comes to Shove.

There are a couple of revisions too. Kiss: Psycho Circus - The Nightmare Child now uses a Windows 10 patch instead of dxWnd granting it better compatibility. I've also added a scan of the manual too. The Neverhood has also been revised updating ScummVM and fixing some save-game and screenshot annoyances. If you've not played either before, give them a go. They're pretty good.

To try the others, head on past the jump and dive in.

THE CHRISTMAS CATCHUP - DAY 10

   

Christmas and Disney are interwined in my eyes. When I was younger, one present under the tree was guaranteed to be a Disney VHS. The two are so synonymous, I tend to go revisit movies from the Disney Rennaissance around this time each year. So, on Day 10 of my Collection Chamber Christmas Catch-up, I thought I'd do something I haven't done in a while; a Disney Triple.

Collated here are three edutainment titles; Disney's The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea - Activity Centre (2001 Disney Interactive), Disney's The Lion King II: Simba's Pride - Game Break (1998 Disney Interactive) and Disney's Beauty and the Beast: Activity Centre - also known as Magical Ballroom (2000 Disney Interactive). Each have that Disney standard of digital animation, but vary drastically in how long it'll keep the little Disneyphiles away from the Christmas pudding.

EVERY ANIMANIACS GAME RANKED - Ranking Video

Surely everone loves the Animaniacs? I've been on a bit of a nostalgic kick revisiting the series of late, and the games to boot. Head to my YouTube channel to watch my ranking video of all of them - including those featuring Pinky and The Brain. Once you've done that, you can visit the links below to read my full thoughts on them. They are now all playable right here too, including Pinky & The Brain: World Conquest (1998 SouthPeak Interactive) which is new to the site and the promotional game River Adventure (1997 WB Kids) which I've added to the Animaniacs Collection. Find the links after the jump...

 

MONTHLY 5 - FEBRUARY 2021

 

February's games are here and we start with the last remaining game in the Animani-verse with Animaniacs: A Gigantic Adventure (1999 SouthPeak Interactive). This one's a platformer, so read read on to see if it lives up to Konami's 16-bit classics. If you want something a little more serious, then check out the incredibly obscure Death by Dark Shadows (1994 William R. Fisher III), a dark and spooky cinematic platformer that has you play as a black panther. Following on from last month's educational adventure comes EcoQuest II: The Lost Secrets of the Rainforest (1993 Sierra On-Line) which sees you befriending an Amazonian bat as opposed to dolphin royalty. Still, I'm sure there's still enough litter picking to keep an average ex-con out of trouble. If you're a racing fan, why not try the first NASCAR Racing (1994 Papyrus Design Group)? It pits up to 38 stock cars against each other in an early polygonal crash-fest. Then, in a blatant move to be topical, there's Vaxine (1990 The Assembly Line) which has you throwing multicoloured balls around in the psychedelic brain of patient zero. I'm glad real-life vaccines don't work that way, otherwise we'd be screwed.

On top of all this, there are a couple of updates to mention too. Alice: An Interactive Museum (1991-94 Synergy Interactive Corp) and the cancelled WarCraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans (Blizzard Entertainment) have received new versions. Check out their pages for more details.

Watch the video round up below before checking them out yourself by following the links after the jump.

MONTHLY 5 - December 2020

Just in time for say good riddance to 2020, here are December's selection of PC games to keep you occupied. There's the mini-game collection of Animaniacs Game Pack (1997 Funnybone Interactive), some hi-octane shooting in Delta V (1993 Bethesda Softworks), a historic puzzle solving adventure in Karma: Curse of the 12 Caves (1995 Discis Entertainment), histrionic puzzle solving in Lemmings 3D + Winterland (1995 Psygnosis Ltd) and some Christmas hijinks in Nightmare in the Toy Factory (1997 Anglia Multimedia).

 

There is one update for this month too - Curse of Enchantia from Core Design. It was one of my earlier installers so I've updated to the newest version of DOSBox and made sure it is completeable. And I had to go through that annoying cliff walk multiple times just to make sure :)

Beyond testing this classic adventure, I've been spending more time with family than I usually would - it has been Christmas after all. And if any year is going to make you appreciate them more, it's 2020. As such, I've struggled to find time for the Chamber, so please be patient if you've contacted me and are still waiting for a reply - I aim to get back to you. 

 

This also means that there are no videos for this month I'm afraid, but I do aim to ring in the first few weeks of the new year with my annual Top 10 rundown extravaganza! I'll see you all soon for that, and until then have a merry New Year and Happy Gaming!

ANIMANIACS COLLECTION

 

One of the few good things about this past year is that Animaniacs got a reboot. And because this past year was 2020 us Brits didn't get it. Nevertheless I got my totally insaney fix by revisiting the surprising decent collection of console games based on the original 90s show.

MONTHLY 5 - NOVEMBER 2020

Okay, so a massive workload this month scuppered my plans for November. Essentially, there was to be some ranting diatribes about American politics as an excuse to review some thematically political computer games. You can still see a little of that in some of November's monthly five - most notably in two strategic simulations called Shadow President (1993 D.C. True Ltd) and CyberJudas (1996 D.C. True Ltd). 

 

If you're just about done with all that, there's some light-hearted fare too. Check out 3D Ultra Radio Control Racers (1999 Sierra On-Line) for a fun jaunt in a back yard-cum-race track. Or perhaps the kid-friendly point-and-click adventuring of Once Upon a Forest (1995 Sanctuary Woods) will suffice. If you just wanna shoot stuff, Radix: Beyond the Void (1995 Epic MegaGames) has you covered.

There's one update this month - Race Mania (1995 Flair Software). I've fixed a few glitches relating to audio and gameplay speed. It makes my main gripe when I reviewed it in 2015 disappear - I can actually win a race now! My gaming cred has returned :) Read the full review and list of changes by heading over to the game page.

 

 

What a selection! Check them all out after the jump.

THE PAGEMASTER

I have a soft spot for traditional cell animated movies. You can see the effort of every ink and painter up there on the big screen. Even when, like The Pagemaster from 1994, the movie itself is a little mediocre there's no doubt I'll put aside its misgivings and thoroughly enjoy it. That same year, a number of videogame adaptations came out, including this little known adventure game published by Turner Interactive.

MORE DISNEY ACTIVITY CENTRES

   

No one does edutainment like Disney, so here are three more under their Activity Centre banner. Disney's Dinosaur, 102 Dalmatians and Winnie the Pooh & the Blustery Day are featured within so head on over and check them out.

TRIO OF DISNEY GOODNESS

   

The quality of Disney's edutainment titles vary quite a bit, but even the least successful of them offer something for your average Disney-phile. Here's three more games from the late 90s: Tarzan Activity Centre, A Bug's Life: Active Play and Winnie the Pooh & Tigger Too: Animated Storybook.

DISNEY MINI-GAMES

   

Disney were incredibly prolific in the 90s with their computer edutainment titles. Most followed a pre-set theme such as the Animated Storybooks, Activity Centres or Print Sudios but there were a few titles that stood on their own. Be Our Guest, Timon & Pumbaa's Jungle Games and Topsy Turvy Games compiled a collection of 5 mini-games each and tied them to a Disney animated classic (Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King and The Hunchback of Notre Dame respectively).

DISNEY'S ACTIVITY CENTRES

   

There's not really a lot of quality gaming for the very young. Most titles are little more than a trick to teach basic math to an unsuspecting 4-year-old, but Disney bucked the trend in the 90s by catering to all demographics. Older gamers got the 16-bit platformers on consoles, while the pre-schoolers got the high production values of the Animated Storybooks. The Activity Centre series - three of which you can find here - falls somewhere in the middle in both quality as well as age-range.

BRAIN DEAD 13

It's October, the month where goth and gore become acceptable to the god-fearing suburbs around the world. Pasty skinned weirdos like me need no excuse to encourage the claret at any time of the year, but in the spirit of my favourite month, we're going all spooky on yo' ass. Let's ease into Halloween with something a little tame: an animated arcade adventure from 1995 named Brain Dead 13.

THE SECRET OF KELLS

I love 2D animated movies. With the rise of computers, there are very few around nowadays which is a great shame. I can admire and respect the work put in to even the very worst of them to some degree (even the god awful Titanic cartoon get some kudos for actually existing). What is rarer still is that during the time of pixels, a hand-drawn feature is released that is so well done that it can topple all others and become one of my favorites in the medium. In 2010 Cartoon Saloon's The Secret of Kells did just that.

TEQUILA & BOOM BOOM

Before starting this site, there were few adventure games that I hadn't at least heard of before. It's a genre that's very dear to my heart so it was a great surprise to find Tequila & Boom Boom whilst browsing the web.

BOOMBOTS

The third and final game to be released by The Neverhood again changes genre. This time we have a one-on-one fighter with a futuristic robot theme, but does the level of invention carry over to this new play style?

SKULLMONKEYS

Despite only selling around 50,000 retail copies, The Neverhood did gain some popularity due to it being a pack-in title on some PCs. In 1998 a sequel named Skullmonkeys was released but was a drastic departure from the original point-and-click adventure. This was to be a PlayStation exclusive platform game.

THE NEVERHOOD

There is a reverence for clay or plasticine based stop-motion animation in the UK, what with the Wallace and Gromit short films being a staple every Christmas. I'm aware of very few mainstream entertainment from other countries to adopt this specific medium, one of them being a small game developer called The Neverhood.

THE CONGRESS

While the majority of those contained with the Collection Chamber hail from the days of yesteryear, The Congress, a 2013 movie that premiered in England during August of last to great critical acclaim, has only seen a home DVD release this past December. It is an animation/live-action hybrid by the same team that gave us the awesome animated documentary Waltz with Bashir, proving that director Ari Folman has lost none of his inventive vigour after the transition to the English language.