MONTHLY 5 - April 2025

April was a busy month. Between the Easter holidays, personal moments and a cornucopia of birthdays, the only real celebration of note the fact that I turned another year older! As did the Collection Chamber itself the month before (it's 10-year anniversary flew by unnoticed in March). So, to mark our aging selves I put my mark on a bunch of aging games from my genre of choice; the point-and-click adventure!

My personal pick of the month is a surreal and thought-provoking dive into the afterlife with Next Life (2007 Future Games) from the Czech team behind The Black Mirror and Alter Ego. With it's ancient Aztec mythology and out-there B-movie plot, The Crystal Skull (1996 SOME Interactive & Maxis, Inc) comes in at a close second.

Free D.C! (1991 Cineplay Interactive) is an early attempt to use claymation in its art style to tell a pulpy tale of a dystopian future where the world has been taken over by robot overlords America's capital has been turned into a human zoo for their amusement. It's from a team of ex-Cinemaware developers (Defenders of the Crown) so expect great graphics for its time. Private Eye: Philip Marlowe (1996 Byron Preiss Multimedia Company, Inc) also has a unique art-style with high-contrast animations to retell the classic Raymond Chandler noir novel The Little Sister as a deceptively complex interactive movie. Lastly, there's an educational adventure for younger players called Rumpelstiltskin's Labyrinth of the Lost (1995 TerraGlyph Interactive, Inc).

Just the one update this month. Disney's Animated Storybook: Hercules has been brushed up with the addition of a scanned PDF manual and a migration from DOSBox to DOSBox-X. See the game page for more info.

And for the rest of this month's adventures, click that little "Read more »" button you can see just below this sentence. Adventure awaits...

CHRISTMAS COUNTDOWN - DAY 8

 
There's only 4 days left to go in the epic Christmas Countdown, and before we get to the end game, let's game our ends away with a mech brawler. A nasty hacker has stolen state secrets from numerous countries and is forcing each one to battle against each other in cyberspace to win them back. The tournament at hand is called Zero Divide (1995-98 ZOOM Inc).

Check out this one-on-one 3D fighter inspired by Virtua Fighter by heading over to the review page. And come back tomorrow for a trilogy of games that has become something of a tradition on Day 9 of the countdown. Yes, that's right! It's Disney Triple time! But which games from the house of mouse will be here? I've already snuck in a few clues hidden in various posts this past month so come back tomorrow to see if you're correct :). 

MONTHLY 5 - January 2023

It's 2023 and a full month has gone by. Other than collecting my musings of the movies and modern games I've encountered over the last year, it's time to get back to the old stuff. We have five interesting obscurities to kick off the year, starting with the fantasy Tomb Raider clone Asghan: The Dragon Slayer (1998 Silmarils). Next up is a recently translated PlayStation platformer featuring the first creation of Dragon Ball's Akira Toriyama called Dr. Slump (1998 Bandai). Then we have the racing sequel Monster Truck Madness 2 (1998 Microsoft Corporation & Terminal Reality) complete with dozens of fanmade tracks and trucks. Travel the high seas and shoot your way to treasure in Overboard! (1997 Psygnosis) otherwise known as Shipwreckers! in the US. Lastly, guest reviewer Austin takes on a crazy ride with the action-arcade-strategy hybrid that is Space Dude (1996 Evryware).

That's not all. A minor improvement to the site sees the list of all of the Labels in full view at the very bottom. It was something I didn't even think about until a random comment popped up, so hopefully it'll prove useful when browsing the hundreds of game reviews (we're edging towards 600!).

Talking about the games, we have a few updates. Shannara now uses DOSBox-X (but may have an issue so the last version remains - expect the fantasy adventure to appear here again next month), Nocturne now has some tweaks for better compatibility while also adding an editor and soundtrack too! Lastly, MetalTech EarthSiege fixes the crash at the end of Campaign 4, Mission 8 while also getting upgraded to DOSBox Daum as its emulator of choice. You can see their full details of their game pages or on the Game Updates page found to your right.

For the others, go check them out by clicking after the jump...

MONTHLY 5 - August 2022

Summer is coming to a close, but what better way to distract from the boredom of the office job/school work/financial crisis than a nostalgic trip to the 90s with a quintet of lesser known gems of the era. My good pal Austin is back with a review of SpaceKids (1995 MicroProse) , a strange supposedly educational title that plays like a wordless multi-path adventure. One adventure game I've always been meaning to play is Escape from Delirium (1995 Virtual X-Perience), a shareware title who wears its LucasArts inspiration on its sleeves. For a more Myst-like adventure, try Titanic: A Mysterious Undersea Adventure (1998 Dosch Design GmbH) which has more to do with an Atlantis-like sunken city than a sunken passenger ship. If you want a little more action, the mech shooter Iron Assault (1995 Graffiti) may be more up your alley or, if you want to drive fast through the British countryside, give Mobil 1 Rally Championship (1999 Actualize Ltd & Magnetic Scrolls Ltd) a go.

That's not all! I've updated a couple of packages too! Azrael's Tear now uses a different fork of DOSBox to help even out its speed (though like the original game, it is still prone to the odd slowdown). I've also updated both the DOS and PlayStation version of Silverload. Among the plethora of changes, the DOS original now includes a scan of the manual while the PlayStation remake now supports mouse control. Head on over to their game pages to download and find out more.

And while your at it, check out August's games by clicking on the links after the jump...

MONTHLY 5 - July 2022

After nearly 2 years of missing it, my luck finally ran out and I caught Covid this month. On the hottest day ever recorded no less. I think a trip to London Film & Comic Con did it to me and you know what? It was worth it. The promised gaming section was a bit of a disappointment (the highlight being a Lady Dimitrescu cosplayer) but everything else was pretty damn cool. Met a few talented artists, got a Gremlins comic signed by Zach Galligan and spent way too much money on memorabilia.

Despite all of this going on, and my usual real-world distractions, I still managed to get some content up for this site (though making time for the YouTube side of things is unfortunately still an issue). For the month of July we have Backpacker: The Lost Florence Gold Mine (1997 Animagination) a long forgotten point-and-click adventure, Get Medieval (1998 Microïds & Monolith Productions Inc) a humurous Gauntlet clone, Jewels II: The Ultimate Challenge (1998 Hoffmann + Associates Inc) a highly atmospheric puzzle adventure, One Must Fall 2097 (1994 Epic MegaGames) which is still one of the best PC-exclusive fighters and Sanity: Aiken's Artifact (2000 Monolith Productions Inc) an interesting action RPG with unique mechanics. Check them out by clicking the links after the jump.

I've also updated Blazing Dragons to run on ScummVM. You can now play this PlayStation adventure game with a mouse making for a much better user experience.

MONTHLY 5 - June 2020

Treat yourself to a plethora of retro gaming goodness this June on the Collection Chamber. Play some wacky minigolf in 3D Ultra MiniGolf (1997 Sierra On-Line), uncover a corrupt police force in the Amiga RPG Captive II: Liberation (1993 Mindscape) then solve some devious puzzles in The Island of Dr. Brain (1992 Sierra On-Line). There are more brain teasers to be found in Marble Drop (1997 Maxis) but if you want some action, try out the criminally underrated FPS Wrath of Earth (1995 Assix Software).

THE TERMINATOR COLLECTION

Alongside the games that were directly based on the movies, Bethesda Softworks released a quintet of shooters that far surpassed the iffy quality of anything Ocean did with the franchise. Not content with resting on their laurels, they attempted to do new things which would later become staples of the genre even today...

ROBOCOP VS THE TERMINATOR

In the hope that Terminator Genisys will prove my doubts wrong and be an action movie worthy of the franchise (something that's not been achieved since Judgement Day), I've collected a plethora of games from the franchise. It's closely linked to that other robot movie - RoboCop - so I've added his games too. There are over 50 games here so let's have a look at them...