MARVELOUS: ANOTHER TREASURE ISLAND

Being the iconic gaming behemoth that they are, Nintendo's in-house creations have always gathered a huge fanbase. That's not what has happened with Marvelous: Another Treasure Island, the Super Famicom game that convinced Shigeru Miyamoto to give the Zelda reigns over to its designer Eiji Aonuma. That's partly due to it never travelling beyond Japan's shores but thanks to a superb fan translation, the west can now witness just how marvellous Marvelous is.

GENEWARS

When you think of the iconic games spawned from the minds of Bullfrog, chances are you'd list off a number of all-time favourites. Legendary god-games like Populous, Theme Park, Syndicate or Dungeon Keeper solidified their name in history. However, very few are likely to put forth GeneWars in that memorable list of classics, but does this black sheep deserve to be overlooked?

5 GAMES FOR FEBRUARY 2019

Keep your ball inflated so you can keep on bouncing in the isometric puzzle platformer known as Airball. Destroy a bunch of mutated insects in the first-person shooter Blam! Machinehead. Spray an army of clones with bullets in the Iron Maiden themed arcade shooter Ed Hunter. Uncover an intergalactic drug ring in the classic adventure Omnicron Conspiracy. Pile drive a bunch of muscled men in spandex in WWF: Wrestlemania. All are experiences you can now have this February thanks to the Collection Chamber.

LEGEND OF LOTUS SPRING

On this most romantic of days, why not play through a traditional Chinese love story in The Legend of Lotus Spring (1999, Xing Xing). Taking place in a beautifully re-created Garden of Perfect Brightness (Yuan Ming Yuan or the Old Summer Palace) in Beijing during the Qing Dynasty, it recounts the tragic love story between Emperor Xian Feng and his concubine HeHanQu, a woman who he lovingly renames Lotus Spring.

SHEEP, DOG 'N' WOLF (AKA SHEEP RAIDER)

What do you get if you cross Super Mario 64 and Metal Gear Solid by way of Tex Avery? Sheep, Dog 'n' Wolf (2001 Infogrames), that's what. A hugely underrated puzzle platformer that's all about the stealth starring Wile E. Coyote's cousin Ralph Wolf.

MONTY PYTHON'S MEANING OF LIFE

If anyone should ponder the meaning of life, it's the anarchic members a British comedy troupe.
The sketches in Monty Python's Meaning of Life may appear less focussed or story-driven than their previous two efforts, but it's no less funny for it. In fact, fourteen years after the movie's cinematic run in 1983, 7th Level created an adventure game out of it that's much more of a game than their previous Python adaptations.

KINGDOM O' MAGIC

The Kingdom O' Magic is under threat, and only a busty blonde and a surly reptilian with a thick Scottish accent can help. Released in 1996 by Sales Curve Interactive (SCi), this adventure-RPG hybrid is filled with a very blue and very British sense of humour.