MONTHLY 5 - August 2025

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.

MONTHLY 5 - May 2025

May is here, and much like the variety of weather conditions in ol' Blighty, I've gathered a variety of gaming curios for your enjoyment too!

Pick of the month is a classic 3D platformer that I played the heck out of when it first came out on the PlayStation 2. But this Windows version of the Namco-published I-Ninja (2003 Argonaut Games) - complete with true Widescreen support - is perhaps the best way to play. Also rather interesting is the first-person sci-fi adventure Zero Zone (1998 Cryo Interactive) which is one of Cryo's better attempts at the genre.

Next up is the first-person tactical squad-based shooter Mortal Coil: Adrenaline Intelligence (1995 Crush, Ltd). While it pre-dates Rainbow Six by three years, and is full of jank and glitches, it's actually a rather fun time once you get to grips with it's quirks (and I spent a lot of time doing so, so you don't have to).

Lastly, there's a couple of classic Amiga games and their lesser PC ports. Abandoned Places: A Time for Heroes (1992 ArtGame & Electronic Zoo) is an old-school computer RPG in the best possible sense. Le Fetiche Maya (1989-90 Silmarils & Digital Integration, Inc) - also known simply as Maya - is an ambitious action-adventure that has you searching Mayan temples for hidden treasure.

One game on the update list this month: Urban Runner. I've updated ScummVM which will hopefully help with some compatibility issues that some have mentioned, but I wasn't able to replicate. There's also some updated manuals in there too!

Until the summer rolls in in June, have fun with this eclectic batch by clicking on the links after the jump!

MONTHLY 5 - February 2025

February is over, and with that comes the latest batch of games from the Collection Chamber. Pick of the bunch is RedJack: Revenge of the Brethren (1998 CyberFlix, Inc), a piratey point-and-click adventure. We also have a unique take on Cluedo with the puzzle board game Case Closed (1999 David Sakadelis). Head to some strange lands and learn about magical beast in The Great Myths and Legends: Monsters & Mythical Creatures (1995 E.M.M.E.) before kicking them in the face with the first-person action-RPG ShadowCaster (1993 Origin Systems). To round off the quintet, we have an archaic version of Rocket League with the vehicular sports game Wild Wheels (1991 Red Rat Software & Ocean Software Ltd).

We'll soon be heading into the month of March where movies will be the theme of the year. The Oscars - my World Cup or Super Bowl - is in a couple of days so I'll be celebrating it with some movie adaptations. They're yet to be decided, but what is locked is my predictions for who will win the Golden Statuette. I'm usually quite good at this, but never really post any proof so I'm gonna do it here;

We'll see how well I did in a couple of days. As for the games, check them out after the jump...

CHRISTMAS COUNTDOWN - DAY 9

As is now something of a tradition within a tradition, Day 9 of the Collection Chamber Christmas Countdown (4C for short?) is reserved for Disney. As a kid, the VHS of latest Disney classic from the renaissance era was almost guaranteed to be under the tree. So, here's 3 Disney games to unwrap.

We 're moving away from educational titles, instead moving into first-person action, arcade pinball  and even survival horror! Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire - Trial by Fire (2001 Disney Interactive) is a decent first-person outing for the little'uns developed by the folks behind an earlier Christmas Countdown 2024 outing Ice & Fire. Disney's The Little Mermaid Pinball (2005 Disney Interactive) is a quick and fun ball-flipper firmly taking place where it's wetter. Lastly, we have a surprisingly unnerving foray into survival horror with the console version of Disney's Piglet's Big Game (2003 Disney Interactive). You may have seen some of the Silent Hill comparisons online, and believe me, it's warranted.

But if Disney ain't your thing, come back tomorrow. I promise it'll be worth a million bucks!

CHRISTMAS COUNTDOWN - DAY 6

Shoot our way through a futuristic game-show where you either win big or die while In Pursuit of Greed (1995-96 Softdisk, Inc). It's a frenetic first-person-shooter with a weird sense of humour. Just what you want for Chirstmas!

But don't let that stop you from dreaming about bigger things to waste your money on. Save that for tomorrow...

CHRISTMAS COUNTDOWN - DAY 4

 
Bring you woolly mittens with you for today's game in the Collection Chamber Christmas Countdown for we'll we dealing with both Ice & Fire (1995 Zombie, LLC). This debut first-person-shooter from Zombie Studios (ZPC: Zero Population Count, Spec Ops and a brief stint with Disney) sees you melt or freeze evil aliens infesting a space ship. Exciting stuff.

Snow may return tomorrow, but I promise we're off to warmer climes.

CHRISTMAS COUNTDOWN - DAY 2

Day 2 of the Christmas Countdown brings with it some groovy spy action with The Operative: No One Lives Forever (2000 Monolith Productions, Inc & Twentieth Century Fox). Join sexy spy Cate Archer as she travels the world risking her life on undercover missions for the secretive government organisation called UNITY. Mix James Bond, Austin Powers with classic first-person-shooting and you have an absolute classic you can now play again!

As for tomorrow? I foresee misspelt sausages.

Click on the link after the jump for more...

MONTHLY 5 - October 2024

Rise from the grave and party with the undead thanks to a whole bunch of horrifically spooky games brought back from the great beyond. 

Your mortal soul may not be in danger, but a bunch of video game characters are in my two highest recommendations of the month. Gast: The Greatest Little Ghost (2002 Mindscape & Idol FX AB) is a macabre adventure for all ages that has the titular ghost collect souls from those who have taken over an amusement park. The highly underrated survival horror Gregory Horror Show (2003 Capcom) has you do the same to the effed-up residents of a spooky hotel. Based on an equally weird and under-seen animated show of the same name, I'd say it pips Gast to the top spot by a wide margin. 

Beyond these soul stealers we have Dracula's Secret (1996 Corel Corporation), an entertaining adventure game for kids and Isle of the Dead (1993 Rainmaker Software, Inc) an under-loved if slightly wonky first-person-shooter with classic adventure elements that makes it utterly unique for its time. Finally, you can find out your own future in the fortune-telling application called Rosemary West's House of Fortunes (1993 Villa Crespo, Inc). No serial killers included, promise.

On another note, a lot more time has been spent away from the site than normal thanks to some real life events taking up much of my time. I've decided to not do a Monthly-5 for November, instead putting my focus on completing missing reviews, updating some of the older packages that most need it and preparing for December's Christmas Countdown. No idea how much I'm able to get done, but I'll update you all at the end of the month to let you know.

Until then, keep gaming!

MONTHLY 5 - FEBRUARY 2024

So, it seems life got in the way of January's monthly five, so I've made sure I wouldn't miss out on the short month of February. It's a Leap Year so there's an extra day after all!

Coming at ya with some underrated games including Z.P.C. Zero Population Count (1996 Zombie LLC) which marks my pick of the month. It's an uber-violent first-person shooter with a cool comic-book style and a dystopian sci-fi storyline. Continuing on from this theme is ARA NGC 6397 (1998 I. Hoffmann + associates Inc & Artech Digital Entertainment), a good-looking pre-rendered actioner with some adventure elements that remind me a lot of the on-ground segments of Star Wars: Rebel Assault II. If you want a straight-up adventure try Gord@k (1997 I. Hoffmann + associates Inc)- pronounced Gordak - which has you hack into a virtual reality security system that just so happens to look a lot like Myst. Us Brits will surely get a kick out of Only Fools and Horses: Comedy Pack (1999 BBC Worldwide Ltd), a multimedia CD-ROM that contains a GTA clone as a mini-game; Grand Theft Peckham if you will. Lastly, the guy behind Tetris provides the handsomely produced puzzle game that is Pandora's Box (1999 Microsoft Corporation). It's probably the best digital jigsaw game out there.

That's it for this additional day. Join me at the end of March for a quintet of movie-themed games. Adios!

CHRISTMAS COUNTDOWN - DAY 3

Day 3 and we have a doozy! Created by a bunch of talented modders around the world before being picked up, funded and expanded at the behest of Sierra On-Line, Gunman Chronicles (2000 Rewolf Entertainment & Sierra On-Line) is perhaps one of the best total conversions of Half-Life there ever was. A classic FPS with cowboys AND dinosaurs! What more could you want?

MONTHLY 5 - AUGUST 2023

Summer's over, but more forgotten games are abound! I've been quite busy over the past month, so I doubt all of the reviews will be complete by the time I first post this, but the packages and art are up so that's something! Expect them in the coming weeks.

First on the docket to see us into Autumn is Celtica (1998 I Hoffmann + associates Inc & Artech Studios), a blatant Myst clone loosely based on Celtic mythology with a touch of mysticism and astrology thrown in. Then there's the video game adaptation of Luc Besson's The Fifth Element (1998 Gaumont Multimedia) in slightly wonky action-adventure form. Despite bad first impressions, it somehow grew on me to become my pick on the month. Psygnosis returns with a solid first-person-shooter called Lifeforce Tenka (1997 Psygnosis) known as Codename Tenka in some regions. Quarky and Quaysoo's Turbo Science (1992-3 Sierra On-Line) is a super fun edutainment entry to Sierra's Discovery series (like EcoQuest and Dr Brain before it). Lastly, it's time to simulate some golf in SimGolf: Compete on Courses You Create (1996 Maxis, Inc). Unlike the game with Sid Meier's name as a prefix, this one is more of a straight-up Golf sim (boo) with a robust course create option (yay).

Only one doozy of an update for this month, as well as a small patch. The Terminator Collection, which collates all of the classic first-person-shooters from Bethesda and hasn't been updated since I first uploaded it in 2015, has been given a complete overhaul. Basic DOSBox has been replaced with a newer version of DOSBox-X, every game now has a manual, input has been tweaked and modernised (particularly for Future Shock and SkyNET) and the custom menus have been re-built from scratch! And that's just the beginning of it! Took a while to do too, which is perhaps another reason why some of these current reviews are late. Anyway, check out the game page or the Updates page for more info on what's changed and read the ChamberNotes.txt within the install folder for a full technical rundown.
I've also added a small patch for Nocturne which includes a DDrawCompat .ini file that will limit the framerate so the flappiness of the wind physics isn't so flappy. Saw RagnaRox's excellent video on the subject and after being totally surprised by the shout-out, I thought I'd better include it. Just unzip to the install folder and you're done!

Click on!

MONTHLY 5 - April 2023

If you saw one film in cinemas this past month, chances are it was Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. I saw it with most of my D&D group and had an awesome time - perhaps the most fun I've had in a theatre post-pandemic. So, I thought I'd dig out some old D&D games of yesterear and give them a whirl. Of the three chosen for this month's monthly five, classic computer RPG Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor (2001 UbiSoft Entertainment) is my fantasy pick of the month, but with its mix of wargame strategy and first-person role-playing, Birthright: The Gorgon's Alliance (1996 Sierra On-Line) is also pretty good. Less so is Iron & Blood: Warriors of Ravenloft (1996-1997 TSR & Acclaim Entertainment). This one-on-one fighter featuring well-known D&D characters, classes and races is pretty pants and I tried both the DOS and PlayStation versions in a vain attempt to find something good. For kusoge gamers only.

Beyond the giant lizards and underground chambers, I've kept the variety up with a much-requested mech action game called G-NOME (1997 7th Level Inc). For adventure-gamers there's the obscure Amiga point-and-clicker called Sixth Sense Investigations (1998 CineTECH); a respectable indie game that's heavily inspired by LucasArts' Day of the Tentacle. It's pretty good too if you can forgive its terrible Leicester-accented voice acting.

For this month's updates, we begin with Obsidian which now takes advantage of its induction to ScummVM's list of supported games. The Amazing Spider-Man Collection has also been updated and tweeked which fixes errors, adds manuals and updates emulators. See the Game Updates section or head on over to their review pages for full update info.

That's it for this month! I'll see you at the end of May for more classic gaming goodness. Until then, head on after the jump to read my thoughts on April's ragtag group of aging code.

CHRISTMAS COUNTDOWN - DAY 2

On this second day of the Christmas frivolity, I give you a game I touched upon a few years ago. It's a game that bears none of the cheer or pleasantries of the season, but some dank despair of a dystopian future. Otherwise known as Boxing Day. Pył (1998-1999 Optimus Nexus), or Dust as it's translated into English, is a tough first-person-shooter from the land of poles known as Poland. Read on after the jump to check my thoughts on it and give it a go for yourself.

MONTHLY 5 - October 2022

The frights are frequent in the fearful five for Halloween. I tried to focus on Stephen King adaptations but there are remarkably few of them out there. The Running Man is game based on a movie that's barely based on a book by his pseudonym (not to mention its not a horror story) and The Lawnmower Man is pants all round. I also didn't fancy a text adventure, even if it was based on The Mist. The only two that are left are a Capstone-published adventure game called The Dark Half (1992 Orion Pictures Corporation & IntraCorp Inc) and a desktop time-waster called Stephen King's F12 (1999 Blue Byte Software). Read on to see how well they fare.

To fill in the gaps, there's the obscure and underrated Amiga FPS called Fears (1995 Manyk Ltd & Attic Entertainment Software) which is more like Doom than the other Amiga Doom-clone called Gloom. I've also jumped for joy when an English translation patch arrived for Mizzurna Falls (1998 Human Entertainment) the Japanese-only Twin Peaks-inspired open-world action-adventure on Sony's PlayStation. Finally, I got to exploring the ancient Egyptian curses of The Mummy: Tomb of the Pharaoh (1996 Amazing Media & Interplay), a first-person adventure game from the people behing Frankenstein: Through the Eyes of thr Monster.

That's not all! I've also added a small patch for the Enemy Infestation package. Unzip the small configuration files in the game's install directory to prevent conflict with the game's keyboard shortcuts and the DOSBox hotkeys.

Head on after the jump to find out more... if you dare!

MONTHLY 5 - September 2022

It's a Viking invasion!!!

I've gone nutty for all things Nordic thanks to a memorable but all-too-brief trip to Norway earlier this month. And I couldn't let it slide without playing some games featuring the history and mythology of that spectacular country. The Norse god Thor is on a quest to defeat the evil goddess Hel in the difficult Amiga platformer Fire and Brimstone (1990 Vectordean Ltd & Firebird). In other news, a nameless hero is on his own quest to steal that god's magical mallet in the action-heavy shareware RPG Thor's Hammer Trilogy (1995 Escape Programming). I'm sure the same gaggle of gods will crop up in another RPG; Heimdall (1992 Core Design) playable on almost all systems it released on. On a less mythical note, Vikings: Adventure out of Time (1998 Index+) educades about the real lives of berserkers from the North in an entertaining fashion. Alternatively, Vikings: The Strategy of Ultimate Conquest (1996 1996 Random Games, Inc) attempts the same but as a strategy game complete with a healthy dose of Michael Dorn.

You may have noticed a little sidebar on the right-hand side detailing the most recently updated games. I thought it would be a good thing to keep a track of it here. Two games have been updated since last time. For those having trouble running Disney's The Lion King 2: Simba's Pride - GameBreak and The Museum of Anything Goes, these new packages may help with that. Make sure to read the included ChamberNotes text file included with each install for more information.

If you ever get a chance to visit Bergen, I can't recommend it enough. If you don't, travel on past the jump to discover it in gaming form.