STAR WARS MONOPOLY

It's Christmas time. To me that means board games - or more specifically losing at them. How can the luckless losers like me win? Cheat, that's how. Or if you have a moral compass you can always play the digital versions like Star Wars Monopoly.

THE DAEDALUS ENCOUNTER

The Daedalus Encounter was always a game that interested me. I saw it sitting on the shelves of my local PC World looking very much like a movie complete with the ever-enticing circle of red that is the BBFC 15-certificate. Being a snot-nosed 12-year-old and too young for such an 'extreme' game, I instead went for Bullfrog's fantastic Magic Carpet. I've since picked up this sci-fi adventure only to find how good a decision I'd actually made.

LIGHTHOUSE: THE DARK BEING

Babies are strange creatures; a mini human being completely dependent on their fully-formed kin to live. Put them in a video game and developers will either support or subvert that claim. Lighthouse: The Dark Being, a Sierra adventure from 1996, takes the former approach and teaches you everything about how not to be a parent.

SANDWARRIORS

In a far off desert planet, a war rages. The House of Horus fights the evil empire of Set for supremacy. The landscape is dotted with Egyptian-style pyramids and architecture yet technology is drastically advanced compared to our own. Sandships fly across the landscape locked in dogfights. Is the Stargate movie? Nope. It's a little known action flight sim called Sandwarriors.

ROONSEHV MYST: NETERRA

Ah, Myst. What memories. Before its plot became so overly convoluted that understanding it was a puzzle in itself, it was the pinnacle of PC gaming. The logic puzzles were difficult, but not unsolvable. The world was rich and detailed without forcing exposition on the player. It was a masterpiece. Earlier this year, a free independent game based in the universe entitled RoonSehv not only broke grounds on what a fan-made could be, but it also reminded me why I loved this franchise to begin with.

INCA I & II

The Inca series is a weird one to categorise. I first came to know them as adventure games - at least that's what Home of the Underdogs described them as - but there's just as much action. Perhaps even more so. It is set firmly in an ancient Inca setting, yet a large portion takes place in space with all of the futuristic sci-fi trappings. So which kind of game is it?

S.C.A.R.A.B.

The Egyptian setting has been out of vogue in the video game landscape for some time now (I don't consider those cheap puzzle and casino titles that clutter the app stores to be games). Twenty years ago, this was a different matter. Alongside the likes of Powerslave, Pharaoh and Sandwarriors, Electronic Arts' 1997 game S.C.A.R.A.B. lies smack bang in the middle of this mini craze.