The Speris Legacy (Amiga CD32) - Part 4 - Guest Post

Previously on the Amiga CD32 Zelda-'em-up The Speris Legacy, I permanently ruined my only save file, and so I decided this time to investigate The Speris Legacy and write some Cool Stuff instead.

The Speris Legacy (Amiga CD32) - Part 3 - Guest Post

Previously on the Amiga CD32 Zelda-'em-up The Speris Legacy, our hero Cho tried to inspect a sinister looking plant and instantly died. What could happen next?

The Speris Legacy (Amiga CD32) - Part 2 - Guest Post

Previously on the Amiga CD32 Zelda-'em-up The Speris Legacy, our hero Cho left Sharma City in search of revenge. What will he find in the farming town of Gilliards Rhine?

The Speris Legacy (Amiga CD32) - Part 1 - Guest Post

This week on Super Adventures, recurring guest poster mecha-neko is back already with a detailed four-part report on what appears to be 'Zelda, but on the Amiga'. It might be good, you never know.

By 1995, the Amiga was done. The CD32 was a year in its grave. All the magazines save for the very nerdiest were shrivelling up into nothing as the games quickly vanished. Darth Vader, Sam and Max and a certain green-clad space marine made sure that there was no place in the computer world for slow moving, ugly games that couldn't talk back to you. Europe was falling in love with the Japanese consoles, every British kid was getting a Mega Drive II for Christmas to replace their Master System II, and Sonic the Hedgehog was appearing in two cartoons at once.

Only the brave, the mad and the heavily invested remained to try to magic up some glory from the abandoned hardware and win the hearts of the Amiga's vast and loyal European install base.

Developer:

Binary Emotions

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Release Date:

February 1996

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Systems:

Amiga 1200, CD32

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Say hello to light-hearted fantasy epic The Speris Legacy, featuring this rather nifty digitised painting of one hopeful adventurer who could easily be Neal McDonough in a blonde mullet.

Amiga Computing magazine described The Speris Legacy as 'pure genius', with its coverdisk demo asking 'The best game of the year?' in bold red letters. Amiga Power dedicated an entire cover to it with a brand new lovely illustration.

The Amiga could still have its hero!

The Speris Legacy (Amiga CD32) - Guest PostPart 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4

Nox (PC)

Developer:

Westwood Pacific

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Release Date:

2000

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Systems:

Windows, OS X

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm writing about Nox. Not the Android Emulator, I'm talking about the classic Diablo 'em up video game by Westwood. Not the Westwood that made Command and Conquer and Blade Runner, I'm talking about the other one, Westwood Pacific. They're the ones who made the 'Christopher Lloyd in Toontown' adventure game Toonstruck, back when they were known as 'Burst Studios'.

Nox has already made an appearance on Super Adventures, as guest reviewer Ocean guest reviewed it for me. But that was way back in April 2011, when the site was just three months old, so I figured it was about time that I had a look at the game myself. Plus I'm going to justify the existence of this second article right away by giving you some trivia that you won't find in Ocean's post: the word 'nox' is Latin for night or darkness. Here's another fact: the game was released five months before Diablo II, which is maybe a bit closer than you want, but much preferable to releasing five months after it.

Okay I'm going to give the game a couple of hours and see how it plays. Oh, I should mention that I'm running the GOG.com version, and I've installed the 'Nox GUI' SDL patch to increase the chances of it working properly for me on Windows 10.

Dungeon Siege (PC)

Developer:

Gas Powered Games

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Release Date:

2002

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Systems:

Windows, Mac

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This week on Super Adventures I went and did that thing I wasn't supposed to do and played another RPG! I've got nothing against the genre, they just take so much time and so many words.

Dungeon Siege has gotten a bit of a reputation for being a game that basically plays itself, but I've got fond memories of it. Well, I've got a vague memory of being fond of it at least. I've beaten the game, but the only thing I can recall after 14 years is that the steampunk goblins were cool. So I plan to keep going in the game at least long enough to run into those guys.

You know I still get surprised when I'm reminded this got an movie adaptation, though I can very much believe it was nega-director Uwe Boll who made it happen. 'In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale' came out five years after the game, in actual cinemas, with folks like Jason Statham, Ron Perlman, Ray Liotta and Burt Reynolds collecting paychecks for their participation. Boll really was on a mission to ruin the chances of us ever getting a decent video game movie back then, releasing three of them in 2007 alone ('Dungeon Siege', 'Postal' and 'BloodRayne 2'). He's slowed down a bit since then, but that hasn't saved us from 'In the Name of the King 3: The Last Mission'.

(Click any image to see the original sized screenshot. The game can apparently support more modern resolutions, but I’ll be playing at 800x600 because I want to give you a fighting chance to read the on screen text.)

FireStriker (SNES)

Developer:

Axes Art Amuse

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Release Date:

1994 (NA)

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Systems:

Super Nintendo

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This week on Super Adventures I'm playing SNES game Holy Striker, better known as 'Fire Striker' in the US and 'absolutely nothing' in Europe as they didn't bother to release it here. No great mystery why Nintendo of America decided to tweak the title when they brought it over, seeing how keen they weren't on religious references in their games.

That's pretty much the only thing I know about the game, but I've just loaded up its Wikipedia page and apparently it's a "piece of high carbon or alloyed steel from which sparks are struck by the sharp edge of chert or similar rock". Uh... what the hell's chert? Also, is there really no page for the game Fire Striker? Have I finally found something Wikipedia's never heard of?

Oh duh, I was just spelling it wrong; it's FireStriker without the space. You know what, forget the wiki page, I'd rather come into it blind anyway.

Hang on a second, there's three choices on the title screen and not one of them says 'OPTIONS'! Super Nintendo games are supposed to give me an options screen so I can put my lives count up and stuff. Instead there's a mysterious 'MULTI MODE' option sitting in its place, which is apparently different enough to '2 PLAYERS' to get to appear alongside it. I'll have to remember to try that out later.

Neutopia (TurboGrafx-16)

"Neutopia" is the twentieth episode of the sixth season of the animated sitcom Futurama, and the premiere of Season 6-B. It is the twentieth episode of the sixth season in production order, and the 108th episode in broadcast order.

Actually ignore that, because the Neutopia I'm looking at here is a TurboGrafx game from Hudson Soft. I figured that my site could do with a few more of these around, especially after that run of modern 3D PC shooters I just played. The game's been described as 'a bit of a Zelda clone', so if this ends up being about stylish gunplay and gritty realism again then you can't blame me this time.

Speaking of Zelda clones, the way the logo has been skewered on a sword sure seems familiar. Though Nintendo didn't really start piercing its Zelda logos until Link to the Past two years later, so I'll let them off with that.

Evoland (PC) - Part 2

Click to jump back to part one.

Evoland (PC) - Part 1

Today on Super Adventures I'm taking a look at indie RPG Evoland!

I've been curious about this one for a while, as the premise is pretty much genius. To quote the official site:

"Evoland is a game and a story. The story of action adventure gaming as seen in the Zelda or Final Fantasy series, starting with the early age of action RPGs, when a few pixels were enough to make us dream for hours. New players will discover a bit of video game history and a very fun gameplay, and veterans will also enjoy a host of references to legendary titles scattered along the game."

It's an action RPG about the history of action RPGs, though judging by that bright pixelly title screen and the '1986-2013' copyright, I'm guessing it's going to be leaning towards the Japanese console RPG side of the genre.

The Evoland I'm playing is actually based on a browser game of the same name created for the 24th Ludum Dare contest in just 30 hours. That might not sound so encouraging, but Evoland Classic managed to beat 1400 other games in the end to take first place, so I'm taking it as a good sign. I mean I'm not getting my hopes too high, I had to give the game administrator privileges before it'd even recognise my controller, but c'mon this could be cool.

Lufia / Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals (SNES)

Ignore what the title screen says; today's game is actually Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals for the Super Nintendo. They dropped the number for the European version as the first game wasn't released over here and they didn't want consumers to have the unnecessary distraction. To be fair, the game's a prequel so it probably stands on its own just fine.

People have been asking me to take a look at this one forever; so of course I ignored them all and played the original Lufia instead. But today I'm finally playing the one that everyone's been recommending to me. This is the good Lufia (apparently).

Rogue Legacy (PC)

Today I feel compelled by fate to take a quick look at genealogical Rogue-lite Rogue Legacy (not to be confused with PlayStation 2 JRPG Rogue Galaxy, which is something presumably very different.)

All I know about this game is that it's supposed to be ridiculously difficult and that someone thought it was worth gifting a copy to me just so they could watch me suffer, so I imagine this is mostly going to be screenshots of me getting my ass kicked on the first level and crying.

Though you won't actually see the crying part show up in the screenshots.

Final Fantasy IV (SNES)

I'm kind of disappointed this logo doesn't have a animated shine going across it. I guess I've been spoiled by games like Link to the Past and Silver. Also for anyone following the site chronologically, you might have noticed that this is the 5th shiny metal logo in a row. Pure fluke, I promise you.

Alright today I'm taking a look at Final Fantasy IV, (aka. Final Fantasy II) on the Super Nintendo. This was actually the first game in the Final Fantasy series to get a near simultaneous US release, coming out less than sixth months after the Japanese version. They achieved this miracle by just missing out the last two NES games entirely and skipping ahead, renumbering this to FFII and hoping no one noticed. It could've been Final Fantasy I in Europe following that method, but alas us poor Europeans were skipped over entirely once again. Still, I'm just happy the game actually got an English release somewhere this time, as it'll save me from translating it from Japanese as I go, one message box at a time.

My associate Ocean already wrote up his thoughts on this game in a guest post last year, but I've been playing through the series in order and I didn't want to miss this out, so please ignore his hard work and insights, and consider this the one true FFIV article on the site.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (N64)

Super Adventures at Christmas 2012 - Game 2:

It took me forever to decide what shot to use from this title screen sequence.

Okay it's taken me a decade or so to get around to it, but today I'm finally going to have a look at Ocarina of Time, the fifth game in the main Legend of Zelda series. Actually to be honest I did play this back in the day, though not for long. It didn't exactly win me over then, but I think it's about time I gave it a second chance.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (SNES)

I remember playing this one before a few years back, though nothing much about what I actually did in it. But it was requested so I'm playing it again. It seemed like a good time for it anyway, seeing as it's the game's 20th anniversary today... in Europe.

This was originally called 'Triforce of the Gods' in Japan, but it was changed for the English release because Nintendo of America were getting rid of references to religion at the time. Also it was an excuse to stick Link's name in the title again. Zelda always gets all the fame, and she's barely even in the games.

Soleil / Crusader of Centy (Genesis/Mega Drive)

ATTENTION: THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN RECLASSIFIED AS BEING 'A BIT CRAP'.
You can find my second look at the game here instead: Soleil (Genesis/Mega Drive) - Replay.

This looks potentially interesting. They've helpfully written the title in text in case you can't decipher the logo.