Pretty good rule of thumb: if you see Sid Meier’s name attached to a game, you’re probably gonna be in for a good time. Whether it’s a piracy simulator or designing golf courses or creating an empire from scratch and later sending it to colonize outer space, ol’ Sid knows how to make what should […]
Emergency Room is the kind of game that could only come from mid-90s multimedia novelty meeting George Clooney/ER mania. It’s the kind of serious simulation you’d be hard-pressed to see made today (I know, because I’ve looked). You won’t need to study, and I suppose you technically won’t need to learn anything, but the game will demand your […]
We recently covered a classic in the strategy genre, SSI’s Panzer General, and lauded it for its remarkable tactical flexibility and open-ended campaign mode. We also seem to be on a bit of a World War II kick lately, so today, let’s take a look at another commander in the field, as Koei also released […]
2015 marks the 70th anniversary of both the end of World War II and the beginning of a neverending flood of books, films, television shows, and yes, video games, about the largest conflict in the history of man. Though most media tells the story of the war from both sides, video games about the Deuce […]
Friends and family of Dark Seed may wish to look away now. I had never played the game before this review, but had heard it was an unsettling piece of Clive Barker-ian psychological horror. Actually playing it, it feels like someone’s attempt at making their own low-rate version of the Cthulhu mythos. Put simply, this is […]
I don’t know how, but I missed the Tex Murphy games completely. I was a kid who loved adventure games and detective stories, yet I don’t remember even being aware of the series until I was older. At some point, I also learned that creator Chris Jones plays Tex in the games’ signature FMV sequences. […]
The early to mid 90s represented the adventure game’s last hurrah, and found it paired up with the very genre that would kill it – the first person shooter. While games like the 7th Guest and Myst took early steps in melding pure adventures and the perspective, it would be games like Under a Killing […]
Dungeon crawling was the dominant first-person genre in the 80s, for understandable reasons. It was simple visually, and an easy environment for a designer to control. Random generators in the style of Rogue could create an endless variety of catacombs to explore with little effort. And thematically, it was popular – players could get excited […]
It’s the early 90s, and William Shatner is tired of being forever associated with Captain Kirk. He’s focused now on being something of a Hollywood renaissance man – writer, director, actor, horse trainer, and now, video game producer. A contemporary interview in the game’s official strategy guide revealed Shatner had a lot of grand plans […]
1997 saw the release of Deer Hunter, and prior to this, virtual hunting wasn’t a thing. Deer Hunter itself seems mostly designed as a game to get on the shelves of Wal-Mart. See, in the U.S. in the 90s, Wal-Mart was the largest (still is?) chain department store. They were the ones that could afford […]