35 years ago, Microprose was using this cool piece of art to market its new Railroad Tycoon game. I remember being somewhat nonplussed about it, giving it a quick go one evening, and then minutes later realizing it was the next morning. A superb game that I loved to bits.
40 years ago, Atari was planning CP/M and PC emulators for its ST range, which was pretty smart. However, announcing new ST's with more memory and new graphics chips made existing machines feel like they'd soon become redundant, which was not so smart.
Either way, I was playing Mega Drive and SNES games, so C64 cart games with a minor loading speed benefit seemed like a waste of money to me.
Yeah. This feels like what people with no alternatives are watching. It’s just default TV shows watched by people who can’t afford to subscribe to streaming services. Probably poor and old people. Certainly not “average.”
I personally cannot wait for Dickens in words of one syllable.
Love the classic 70s style art for this 1986 Questprobe ad. It was the 3rd and final game in this line of Marvel text adventures that became renown for their horribly obscure puzzles that often boiled down to typing trial-and-error prompts into your computer. Not much fun TBH.
Here's an oddity. A 1991 Ocean ad peddling C64 cart games. They made these for the steaming pile o' cack failure that was the C64GS console. Double the price of the cassette version for "instant loading and improved graphics?" Nah. I'll wait for the inevitable discount please.
35 years ago, Sega and Nintendo's 16-bit consoles were muscling into Europe, leaving little room for prior import darling, the PC Engine. That said, the bijou machine still had a few surprises up its sleeve - one being the terrific Final Match Tennis. A fab multiplayer classic!
35 years ago, Mega Drive Afterburner flew into the office and shocked and awed us. It was a blistering conversion of the superscaler coin-op classic that helped further establish Sega's 16-bit system as THE home arcade machine to have. Excellent audiovisuals and gameplay!
Mine coped well with the San Francisco “summers” which are cold and foggy, but yeah, Welsh damp is on a whole different level as I know only too well. Either way, I absolutely loved my Tuono to bits. Super stylish and incredible performance.
40 years ago, charity compilation Off the Hook was being... um... compiled, major software incompatibility issues between the Speccy 48k and 128 were being discovered, and Commodore was negotiating with financial institutions to dig itself out of its huge financial hole.
The Tuono 660 is probably worth a look if you're not on a strict budget.
Had a lot of fun on this podcast talking about one of my all-time favorite games that I also just happened to be a bit tasty at playing.
World book day, innit, so here's mine.
"This book chronicles a lot of the games we grew up with, right through to some modern classics. It is beautifully presented and written with the knowledge and passion you'd expect from the author." Lee C.
www.bitmapbooks.com/collections/...
35 years ago, the Amiga and ST were enjoying their heyday. Games like Renegade's GODS (a new company established by the Bitmap Bros) showcased the audiovisual capabilities of these systems. Definitely an interesting time, with both 16-bit computers and consoles going toe-to-toe.
35 years ago, CVG checked out this 1st-generation entertainment VR system - the Virtuality 1000 SD. The assumption was that it was destined for arcades, but it was far too expensive and impractical for that. And weirdly enough, VR remains kind of expensive and impractical today!
I dunno. 182 pages seems a tall order even for a weird kid…
ia801901.us.archive.org/view_archive...
What? Did you not read the paperback book sized manual? 😂
Here's that Midwinter II: Flames of Freedom review. A quite remarkable and sophisticated game for its era, mixing FPS, vehicle combat, and diplomacy/strategy. A classic 16-bit release.
Yeah. That's a big problem with people who didn't live through the evolution of gaming. It's difficult for them to truly understand just how impactful and huge some of the leaps forward gaming made from generation to generation. Especially so in this day and age of small incremental upgrades.
35 years ago, CVG's cover game Midwinter III scored 96% on ST. Other top reviews: Amiga SWIV (93%), PCE Jackie Chan (88%), C64 Last Ninja 3 (94%), SMS Pacmania (86%), MD Gynoug (91%), SNES Pilotwings (94%), and PC Red Baron (96%). An astonishing breadth of games and platforms!
FYI it’s Operation Epstein Distraction.
35 years ago, I wrote this Pilotwings review. I thought it deserved a higher rating than this, while Matt felt the game's high level of difficulty made it somewhat frustrating - so we met in the middle at 90%. Either way, this was THE game to show off your SNES to your mates!
Right. The 500 didn’t come out til mid 87 and took a while to get going, but soon surpassed the ST as the consumer’s choice (and rightly so). The Amiga just had so much more going for it.
No. The 1000 was available first in minuscule numbers in the latter stages of the year with a very wobbly OS and a crazy price tag of today’s equivalent of like four grand plus (hence parental resistance). The far cheaper 500 came out the following year.
40 years ago, Commodore's Amiga launch was touted but was still many months away, Activision bought text adventure specialists Infocom, BT bought Odin and did nothing with them, and good old British go-slow nanny state modem approval BS was causing problems for manufacturers.
40 years ago, Imagine was Ocean's arcade conversion label - and it was making full use of the large-scale deal they'd signed with Konami. This ad showcases no fewer than five ports of classic era coin-ops. Hyper Sports and Ping Pong were both especially good.
40 years ago, Quicksilva was advertising Max Headroom, a game based on the prescient TV show starring Matt Frewer as both a reporter and the eponymous Max, a computer recreation of his personality stuck inside a machine. Game wasn't great. TV show was seriously cool, however.
40 years ago I was playing Accolade's Hardball, a remarkable C64 title that not only set the standard for sports sims going forward but also established the template for modern baseball games. Their television-style presentation and detailed strategic gameplay started here.
40 years ago, Ocean was advertising Street Hawk, the hugely delayed game-of-the-failed-TV-series. It had already been marketed for well over a year at this point, but it finally arrived on Speccy and Amstrad. It was pretty damn bad, but at least we were spared the C64 version.
