Saturday, 31 December 2022
Super AiG Screenshots of the Year: 2022
It's that time of year where people look back over what they've been up to over the last year and post about it on the internet. Even Steam's doing it now with their new Steam Replay feature. But I've been revisiting the last 12 months of screenshots at the end of the year since 2011, so you're probably not surprised to be reading yet another Super Adventures Screenshots of the Year!
I've gone through every post this year, skimmed through 700 images and picked out the shiny ones that caught my eye. There'll be nothing new here if you've been keeping up, but the screenshots are the best part of my site and this time there'll be fewer words underneath to distract from them. Though if you do want to go back and read the full write up, you can click the game's name to be teleported over there.
Wednesday, 28 December 2022
Oni (PC)
Developer: | Bungie | | | Release Date: | 2001 |
| | Systems: | PC, PS2, Mac |
This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing third person action game Oni, by Bungie, the developers of the Marathon, Halo and Destiny franchises! You can tell they're the ones who made it as their name is right there in the corner underneath the title.
Though hang on, it says 'developed by Rockstar' all over every copy I own, and there's no one from Bungie credited in the manual. So that's kind of weird.
It was ported to the PlayStation 2 by Rockstar Canada, so it makes sense that the logo would be on that version, but I'm not sure why it's on the PC game. I get that the credits were complicated by Take-Two acquiring the rights and Microsoft acquiring the company, but that doesn't mean it was retroactively developed by someone else! It might explain why it never made it to digital stores though.
Unfortunately Windows 10 didn't want to install it off the CD, so I ended up having to use Universal Extractor to get the files out of the installer and then run it with the fan-made Anniversary Edition. The thing includes a bunch of fixes and a huge list of mods to install, so it seems like the game has had a lot of support from its fans over the years. But it also stuck the words "Anniversary Edition" on my title screen, so I switched to playing the OniX rebuild instead. They both seem pretty authentic though from what I can tell.
I wish I could warn you about SPOILERS, though I don't think I'm going to make it that far to be honest. I remember the game having some serious difficulty spikes, mostly involving lasers. I also remember it looking kind of bad for its time, though that's maybe less of an issue 20 years later.
Monday, 28 November 2022
Operation GII (Demo) (Amiga) - Guest Post
The week on Super Adventures, guest reviewer mecha-neko has dug up something properly obscure for you. It's the demo for a cancelled Amiga first person shooter called Operation Gii! Uh, Operation G2 sorry.
All these Alien Breed games Ray has been playing has inspired me some! I'm going to play a sci-fi shooty survival game of my own.
"Are you ready to battle with rogue robots on a radio-active spaceship in our fab Coverdisk demo?"
You bet I am, Amiga Format!
All these Alien Breed games Ray has been playing has inspired me some! I'm going to play a sci-fi shooty survival game of my own.
Developer: | Psygnosis | | | Release Date: | August 1994 (Demo) | | | Systems: | Amiga |
"Are you ready to battle with rogue robots on a radio-active spaceship in our fab Coverdisk demo?"
You bet I am, Amiga Format!
Monday, 14 November 2022
Black (Xbox)
Developer: | Criterion | | | Release Date: | 2006 | | | Systems: | Xbox, PS2 |
This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing a first person shooter from the dark times of PC gaming, where first person shooters had migrated to consoles and didn't always get ported back (I'm still waiting on The Darkness and the TimeSplitters games to suddenly appear on Steam).
Black is exclusive to the Xbox and PlayStation 2, which means it never got a release that featured mouse controls and quicksaves. The game did make it onto Microsoft's backward compatibility list though, meaning that I can play it on the Xbox One with an increased resolution and presumably a more stable framerate! So that's what I'm going to do.
The game was developed by Criterion, who are more famous for racing games like Burnout Paradise and Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2012). They decided to use their own engine for it, RenderWare, which was practically the Unreal Engine of the PS2-era, allowing developers to make cross-platform games without knowing all the dark arcane secrets of the hardware. In fact it was used in almost 300 games before EA decided they wanted out of the engine licensing business. It turned up in some pretty big name titles as well, like Grand Theft Auto 3, Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3, Suikoden 3, Broken Sword 3 and Max Payne 2.
I'm sure I've played Black before, many years ago, but I only got about halfway through and my memories are really fuzzy. I remember that it had a forest level, a church level and a factory level, but that's about it. I feel like I was impressed by it somehow though. Hopefully there'll be something special about it that'll make it worth showing off, otherwise this is going to be a bit of a disappointment.
Monday, 31 October 2022
Alone in the Dark (MS-DOS) - Part 2
Today on Super Adventures, I'm going to try to beat the original Alone in the Dark!
This is the second and final part of my two-part article, so you'll probably want to check out PART ONE first. I wrote all about all kinds of stuff, even mentioned Resident Evil a couple of times.
One thing I didn't talk about though, and it's fairly important, is that the game came out in late 1992... so this is its 30th anniversary! It's getting a remake soon to celebrate and from what I can tell it's the kind of reimagining where they take all the stuff from the original game and put it to one side so they can make up a bunch of other stuff instead. I feel like it'll probably have better combat though.
Okay this is the last part of my Alone in the Dark playthrough and I'm playing this with the intent to finally finish it, so beyond this point the SPOILERS will be extensive. With any luck. I mean I can't make any promises here, you can count the number of true survival horror games I've completed on one hand, with all the fingers severed, but maybe this will be the first!
This is the second and final part of my two-part article, so you'll probably want to check out PART ONE first. I wrote all about all kinds of stuff, even mentioned Resident Evil a couple of times.
One thing I didn't talk about though, and it's fairly important, is that the game came out in late 1992... so this is its 30th anniversary! It's getting a remake soon to celebrate and from what I can tell it's the kind of reimagining where they take all the stuff from the original game and put it to one side so they can make up a bunch of other stuff instead. I feel like it'll probably have better combat though.
Okay this is the last part of my Alone in the Dark playthrough and I'm playing this with the intent to finally finish it, so beyond this point the SPOILERS will be extensive. With any luck. I mean I can't make any promises here, you can count the number of true survival horror games I've completed on one hand, with all the fingers severed, but maybe this will be the first!
Alone in the Dark (MS-DOS) - Part 1
Developer: | Infogrames |
| | Release Date: | 1992 (CD version 1993) |
| | Systems: |
DOS, PC-98, FM Towns, 3DO, Mac, Archimedes |
This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing the Guinness World Record holder for "First 3D survival-horror videogame": Alone in the Dark! I mean the original one, obviously. A sequel tried to steal its name in 2008, but the original proved too powerful and the PS3 release renamed it to Alone in the Dark: Inferno, so as far as I'm concerned this is the only true Alone in the Dark.
Well, except for the classic Uwe Boll movie I mean.
I know everyone that talks about Alone in the Dark also has to mention Resident Evil, but I think it's funny how the series both started off as critically-acclaimed genre pioneers and then suffered very different fates. Resident Evil has had seven million sequels and remakes, many of them pretty great, while the Alone in the Dark games have been racing to catch up to their own movie series down at the bottom of Metacritic. There's a bit of a disparity in how the two franchises are regarded these days, and it'd take a lot more than a terrible Netflix series to change that.
But I still remember how blown away I was when I saw the first Alone in the Dark previewed on the TV series Bad Influence! back when I was a tiny baby. It looked so much more advanced than anything I'd played on the Amiga, SNES or Mega Drive. I didn't know much about PC's at that point, but I was sold, I wanted one.
Then a few years later my family actually got a PC! I loaded up Alone in the Dark on it, pushed some furniture around, got killed by a monster, and turned it off to play Theme Hospital or Sam and Max or something instead. (I'm not a big fan of horror games to be honest). So I have played through first few rooms before, I'm very familiar with them, but otherwise I'm going into the game blind. I don't know what happens next or anything about the story.
Okay, I'm going to be playing the version I just bought off GOG (which I believe is just the 1993 DOS CD version), and I'm going to be writing about it in two parts. This first part is going to be a regular Super Adventures article where I stick with it for an hour and whine about how hard it is, but in the second part I am going to try to finish it. I want to see what this game actually is! So there will be moderate SPOILERS in the first part and hopefully some extreme spoilers in the second.
Wednesday, 19 October 2022
Mega lo Mania / Tyrants: Fight Through Time (Amiga)
Developer: | Sensible Software |
| | Release Date: | 1991 | | | Systems: | Amiga, Atari ST, Mega Drive, SNES, DOS, X68000, PC-98, FM Towns |
Today on Super Adventures, I'm finally taking a look at classic Amiga strategy game MEGA lo MANIA (or Mega-Lo-Mania). It's also occasionally known as Tyrants: Fight Through Time in the US. It's never just called Megalomania, though maybe it'll help someone find this page on Google if I mention the word anyway.
This one's by eccentric British developer Sensible Software, creator of games like Wizkid, Cannon Fodder, Sensible Soccer and Sensible Train-Spotting, so I'm expecting to see tiny men running around the screen at some point. I should probably know already if they're in it as I've played the game before, but that was ages ago, I didn't play it for long and my strongest memory of it is being amazed that I actually worked out how to do something. It's one of those games where the first challenge is the interface.
Here's some random trivia for you: when Virgin Games published the game they decided to release a tie-in single called "Mega-Lo-Mania (Goin' All the Way)" to promote it. I don't think the song has any relation to the game or anything that happens in it, but it does have the same cover at least!
Okay I'm going to play this for an hour or so to see what it's like. Which means I'll either make it through a bunch of levels or just get really frustrated on the first one, depending on whether I'm able to figure any of it out. I actually started making some progress in Populous when I wrote about that, so there's always hope.
Monday, 3 October 2022
Small Saga (Demo) (PC) - Part 3 - Guest Post
Previously on the demo of Small Saga, our hero Verm and his new friend Siobhan had a disagreement with a cat and rescued a pigeon from a wheelie bin. Now airborne, the pair continue their journey to the rodent capital Murida.
Small Saga (Demo) (PC) - Part 2 - Guest Post
Previously on the demo of Small Saga, tragedy struck when mouse brothers Lance and Verm undertook a daring mission to steal from the gods. Who dares wield the Titan Reaper now?
Small Saga (Demo) (PC) - Part 1 - Guest Post
This week on Super Adventures, guest poster mecha-neko has decided to mix things up by writing about a game so new that it's not even out yet. It's indie RPG (rodent-playing game) Small Saga!
It seems like it's been nothing but drab sci-fi games forever around here. My previous post was dystopian misery in Crusader: No Remorse, and my next post is going to be a gloomy survival horror derelict spaceship thing. What I need is some wonderful, colourful, adorable game to lift everyone's spirits!
It's time to play the brand new demo of Small Saga! Well, it's brand new to me. The Kickstarter ended three years ago, but this latest standalone demo was released this year. I was told there was a cat in it, and that's all I need to know.
It seems like it's been nothing but drab sci-fi games forever around here. My previous post was dystopian misery in Crusader: No Remorse, and my next post is going to be a gloomy survival horror derelict spaceship thing. What I need is some wonderful, colourful, adorable game to lift everyone's spirits!
Developer: | Jeremy Noghani | | | Release Date: | March 2022 (Demo) | | | Systems: | Windows |
It's time to play the brand new demo of Small Saga! Well, it's brand new to me. The Kickstarter ended three years ago, but this latest standalone demo was released this year. I was told there was a cat in it, and that's all I need to know.
Tuesday, 20 September 2022
Alien Syndrome (Arcade)
Developer: | Sega | | | Release Date: | 1987 | | | Systems: | Arcade first, then almost everything else |
This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing Alien Syndrome! Because I've already played Alien Breed and Alien Storm this year, so I figured I might as well.
I did play this a little bit earlier this year when I was getting a screenshot for my Alien Breed article, but until then all I knew about the game is that it was a side scrolling beat 'em up where you zap aliens... or maybe an overhead view run and gun set on a space ship. The problem I had is that I always got it mixed up with Alien Storm, because they're both arcade games by Sega with gross-looking aliens in them.
The game runs on the Sega System 16B arcade board, which is kind of like the Genesis/Mega Drive's dad. That makes it a bit weird that it never actually got a Mega Drive port, especially as other games made for the board like Altered Beast and Golden Axe did. It didn't make it to the TurboGrafx-16 or SNES either and I'm not sure what happened there, as it was ported to basically everything else at the time. Seriously, this Sega game got a NES port.
But whatever system it's on, it's still an arcade game... which means it'll be really simple and extremely difficult. I'll probably play it for 10 minutes, get hopelessly stuck, and then struggle to think of anything to say about it. I should get some good screenshots out of it though.
Friday, 19 August 2022
Mega Motion (Amiga)
Developer: | Extend | | | Release Date: | 1994 | | | Systems: | Amiga, DOS |
This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing... uh... I think it says Mega Motion?
Mega Motion is a budget-priced puzzle game that was originally released on the Amiga in 1994, late in the machine's run, and then two years later on PC, right at end of MS-DOS's run. It was developed by Extend, and it's apparently the only game they ever made.
I have played this one before, but it was years ago when I was a tiny baby and I haven't kept hold of many memories of it. I do still have a vague recollection of what you're supposed to do in the game, but what I mostly remember is that I was eating a pack of strawberry laces at the time. In fact it feels weird to play it without them.
Okay, my first observation is that they've used an extremely 80s snare drum sample in the theme music. The gated reverb is strong with this one.
Wednesday, 3 August 2022
Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger (MS-DOS)
Developer: | Origin | | | Release Date: | 1994 | | | Systems: | DOS, Windows, Mac, 3DO, PlayStation |
This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger! Not to be confused with 80s hard rock anthem Eye of the Tiger.
With a title like that you might assume that it's the third game in Chris Roberts' Wing Commander series, but developer Origin had been been busy in the three years since Wing Commander II, producing three spin-offs. There was Wing Commander Academy, which was basically a mission generator for WC2, Wing Commander: Privateer, a space trading/combat sim along the lines of Elite, and Wing Commander: Armada, a strategy game with dogfighting. Oh plus there was 1993's Strike Commander, which doesn't have anything to do with Wing Commander except the name, dogfighting, and it being produced by Chris Roberts at Origin.
I've heard a few numbers for how much Wing Commander III cost, like $5 million and $10 million, but $4 million seems the most plausible to me. Either way it was apparently the highest budget video game ever when it came out, which is funny considering that it's a space combat sim. It really shows how much things have changed since 1994. Oh hang on, I've just done the research and it turns out that the highest budget video game of all time is currently Chris Roberts' space combat sim Star Citizen, which has raised $400 million.
The reason this game cost so much is because the series had progressed from floppy disks to four CDs packed with live-action full-motion video, with real Hollywood actors. The game was meant to be taken seriously and required some serious hardware to run, like a Pentium-based multimedia PC with a good SVGA video card and a double-speed CD drive, or a 3DO console. A couple of years later it got a release on the shiny new PlayStation as well, but no Sega CD or Amiga CD32 ports for this one. It almost got ported to the Jaguar, Saturn and M2 as well, but those versions were later cancelled... and not because the game wasn't selling well. In fact this was a massive success despite the fact that so few people had machines capable of running it well, and they were soon making a sequel with an even bigger budget.
SPOILER WARNING: I'll be playing the first few missions and I won't be spoiling anything past that, but these are story heavy space sims and you might end up reading something here you don't want to know about the first two games.
Friday, 15 July 2022
Crusader: No Remorse (MS-DOS) - Guest Post
This week on Super Adventures, guest reviewer mecha-neko is writing words about Crusader: No Remorse, the first of the two Crusader games! Or is Crusader: No Regret the first one and this the sequel? How do you even tell?
While Ray's playing Wing Commander, here's another legendary DOS Origin Systems game that I haven't played yet!
Developer: | Origin Systems | | | Release Date: | 1995 | | | Systems: | MS-DOS, PlayStation |
While Ray's playing Wing Commander, here's another legendary DOS Origin Systems game that I haven't played yet!
Are you ready for some isometric tactical espionage action?
Tuesday, 28 June 2022
Alien Storm (Arcade)
Developer: | Sega | | | Release Date: | 1990 | | | Systems: |
Arcade, Mega Drive, Master System, Atari ST, Amiga, C64, CPC, ZX
Spectrum |
This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing one of Sega's classic arcade titles: Alien Storm! Man, I don't like it when title screens peer back at me like this. The creature that eye belongs to seem to have problems of their own though, seeing as they're floating around space in a chunk of debris. Somehow I get the feeling they deserved it.
I remember seeing magazine ads for Alien Storm and thinking "Damn that looks crazy." Or maybe they were Alien Syndrome ads; I always get the two games mixed up. In my defence they're both Sega arcade games with gross looking aliens that ran on a System 16 board (or close enough) and were ported to everything. Anyway, I didn't really get around to playing either of them in the end, so I'm curious to see if this is going to be anything like the image I've got in my head.
One thing I'm pretty certain of is that this isn't going to be a long game. I usually try to show off the first hour or so of gameplay in these articles, but I have a feeling I'll run out of game before then so don't be surprised if I spoil the ending. Also don't be surprised if I can't actually reach the ending due to being terrible at it.
Wednesday, 8 June 2022
Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi (MS-DOS)
Developer: | Origin | | | Release Date: | 1991 | | | Systems: | DOS, Windows, FM Towns |
This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing PC space sim Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi, which is somehow only the second one of these games I've played. I covered the original Wing Commander back in 2014, but my site's been utterly Wing Commanderless since then.
The Wing Commander series was Chris Roberts' first space saga, coming before the Starlancer games and Star Citizen. In fact it came before the X-Wing series, FreeSpace, Star Fox... even Sonic the Hedgehog (though that last one's not actually a space sim as far as I'm aware). This particular Wing Commander game was old enough to almost get ported to the SNES and Mega Drive/Genesis... but it wasn't. In fact it's the only one of the mainline games to never get a console or handheld port. It did get a release on the FM Towns computer at least, which was well suited to the game considering that it's basically a 386 PC.
I have played the game before, a long time ago, but I don't remember playing very far, probably because it kicked my ass. And this would've been back when I was actually getting some space sim practice! It'd be fair to say I'm a little rusty right now, but I'll give it a fair shot and see if I can at least earn the right to fly the second type of spacefighter.
SPOILER WARNING: I'll only be playing the first few missions and I won't spoil anything that comes after them.
Friday, 20 May 2022
Katana ZERO (PC)
Developer: | Askiisoft | | | Release Date: | 2019 | | | Systems: | Win, MacOS, Switch, XBOne |
This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing Katana ZERO, a game I know next to nothing about. It might star Zero the Kamikaze Squirrel for all I know, or maybe it's 100% sugar free. I just saw it there on Game Pass and figured I'd give it a look.
Wikipedia claims that it's a 2D action platformer, which sounds good. Though it also says it's made in GameMaker Studio 2 and that doesn't seem so great... at least that's what I thought before I did the research and learned that Hotline Miami, Undertale and Deltarune were all developed in GameMaker. So I guess I should fix my broken assumptions and raise my expectations.
I definitely didn't expect this neon title screen to feature a gentle melancholy bluesy piano track. The game's described as being neo-noir and right now I can believe it. It might also have a bit of a story to it but I'll try not to spoil too much of it for you as I play through the first hour or so.
Saturday, 30 April 2022
Alien Breed (Amiga)
Developer: | Team17 | | | Release Date: | 1991 | | | Systems: |
Amiga, CD32, MS-DOS, Android, PS3, PSVita |
This week on Super Adventures, I'm finally taking a look at classic Amiga run and gun survival horror Gauntlet 'em up Alien Breed! I've put it off for ten years, because it's bastard hard and I suck at it, but it had to happen eventually.
It was made by developer/publisher Team17, currently better known for the dozens of Worms sequels they've made, and for keeping Epic's game store stocked with free games. Alien Breed was their second game (after Full Contact) and their first to be a full-price release. Though it did get a budget re-release, named Alien Breed Special Edition 92. Or maybe Alien Breed '92: Special Edition. It's something like that. Either way it's an interesting choice of title, considering that the movie Aliens: Special Edition was released just a little earlier...
Alien Breed 92 isn't really a special edition however, more like a remix. In fact it's basically a stand-alone expansion pack, with twice the levels of the original and tweaks made in response to feedback, and I expect that if anyone were to ask if you'd played Alien Breed, it's the special edition they'd actually be thinking of. Or maybe they'd be thinking of that Alien Breed: Evolution game from ten years back, I dunno.
I'm going to check out both the Amiga games, original and special edition, to see how different they actually are, and I'll be giving them about an hour each. Though by 'an hour' I really mean '20 minutes', because time works differently when you're being hounded by a relentless murderous swarm of unfriendly extra-terrestrials.
Friday, 15 April 2022
Superliminal (PC)
Developer: | Pillow Castle | | | Release Date: | 2019 | | | Systems: | Win, MacOS, PS4, XBOne, Switch |
This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing SUPERLIVINAL.
I played a demo of this ages ago and made a mental note back then that I should write about the full game sometime, because it's interesting and worthy of attention. Well, that's what I thought at the time anyway, maybe I'll hate it now. Maybe the demo was the only good bit and it's all downhill afterwards. It happens sometimes!
A few years before that demo there was a tech demo, and that had the name Museum of Simulation Technology, but I think the title they went with in the end suits it better. Plus it's got the word 'super' in there, and that's always a plus in my book.
Anyway, I have a vague memory of how the game starts, but I'm sure I'm eventually going to reach some gameplay weirdness I don't expect. I mean I hope so, as it'll be a shame if it just repeats the puzzles in the demo over and over. Oh, I should probably warn you that I'll be giving a few of the puzzle solutions away. Only a few though, I won't be going through the whole game.
Thursday, 31 March 2022
Awesome (Amiga)
Developer: | Reflections | | | Release Date: | 1990 | | | Systems: | Amiga, Atari ST, FM Towns |
This week on Super Adventures, I'm looking at classic 90s shoot 'em up Awesome, which was suggested by the folks on my Discord. They realised I'd gotten caught in a bit of a rut last year, playing so many great games, and felt I should bring Super Adventures back to its roots. Its roots of me trying to figure out what the hell I'm doing in some obscure old Amiga game.
You can tell that the game came out before the internet was a thing as Awesome is not a Google friendly title. It says on the box that it has an awesome t-shirt included, but search for 'awesome t-shirt' on image search and you'll be scrolling for a long while before you find it. That's a bit of a difference from Reflections' earlier game Shadow of the Beast, which has a very Googlable name.
Alright I'm going to play this for an hour or so and I hope you like GIFs because I'm in the mood for some moving pixels.
Tuesday, 15 March 2022
Super Adventures in the itch.io Bundle for Ukraine
We interrupt your regularly scheduled Super Adventures with a look at just a few of the billion games included in a new charity bundle hosted by itch.io. Here, have a link to the bundle so you know what I'm talking about:
The description on the site claims that there's almost 600 video games here and it seems that about half of them have never appeared in any previous itch.io charity bundles. I had a scroll through to see if there were any names I recognised and I saw things like SkateBIRD, Baba is You, Backbone, GNOG, Wandersong, A Short Hike, CrossCode, Celeste, Superhot, Minit, Glittermitten Grove, Super Hexagon, Sundered: Eldritch Edition, 2064: Read Only Memories, and GoNNER. Here, you can check for yourself with this handy website that someone smart made: randombundlegame.com.
Fortunately guest poster mecha-neko has volunteered to do half of the writing here, so the article will be covering more games than I actually have time to check out! I mean seriously, the bundle ends in just a couple of days and I need to get this published while there's still time for anyone to buy it.
The description on the site claims that there's almost 600 video games here and it seems that about half of them have never appeared in any previous itch.io charity bundles. I had a scroll through to see if there were any names I recognised and I saw things like SkateBIRD, Baba is You, Backbone, GNOG, Wandersong, A Short Hike, CrossCode, Celeste, Superhot, Minit, Glittermitten Grove, Super Hexagon, Sundered: Eldritch Edition, 2064: Read Only Memories, and GoNNER. Here, you can check for yourself with this handy website that someone smart made: randombundlegame.com.
Fortunately guest poster mecha-neko has volunteered to do half of the writing here, so the article will be covering more games than I actually have time to check out! I mean seriously, the bundle ends in just a couple of days and I need to get this published while there's still time for anyone to buy it.
Tuesday, 1 March 2022
Donut County (PC)

Developer: | Ben Esposito | | | Release Date: | 2018 | | | Systems: | Win, MacOS, iOS, PS4, XBOne, Switch, Android |
This week on Super Adventures, I'm writing about indie puzzle game Donut County, from 2018. Because who doesn't love doughnuts? Donuts. Whatever.
The game was inspired by a tweet from Peter Molydeux (the twitter parody, not the notorious Bullfrog/Lionhead/22cans game designer and NFT fan), who suggested the idea "You play the role of a hole, you must move around an environment making certain elements fall into correct targets at the right time." He didn't mention anything about raccoons or doughnuts though, so that's all from the mind of creator Ben Esposito.
Oh no, I've looked at the title screen a little too long and now I need to go get a cup of tea and something to dunk in it. Then I'm going to play the first few levels and see what kind of game it is.
Friday, 11 February 2022
Exodus: 3010 - The First Chapter (Amiga) - Guest Post
This week on Super Adventures, guest reviewer mecha-neko has returned to pass judgement upon an old Amiga game from the early 90s that's presumably set 988 years in the future. Unless the title's lying to us.
To celebrate its thirtieth anniversary, I present space survival management/flight sim Exodus: '3010: The First Chapter'!
Happy new year, everyone! Can you believe it's been over ten years since I started playing games as mecha-neko for Super Adventures in Gaming?
Today I'm going to revisit a game from my childhood. It's also one of the first games I wrote about as mecha-neko, but it's not one that's appeared on this site as a Super Adventure.
Developer: | Temet | | | Release Date: | January 1992 | | | Systems: | Amiga 500 |
To celebrate its thirtieth anniversary, I present space survival management/flight sim Exodus: '3010: The First Chapter'!
Sunday, 30 January 2022
Flight of the Amazon Queen (MS-DOS)
Hey, Super Adventures is back again! I'm ready to give you two more months of game articles, before disappearing off to write for Sci-Fi Adventures instead for a while. Actually, no, I'm bored of that system now. Plus telling people to come back in two months is kind of a terrible idea now that I think about it.
Okay, starting today I'm switching to a new plan: a new Super Adventures every two weeks, all year round. So one week I'll play a game, the next week I'll write about an sci-fi episode, the week after that I'll be back to playing a game, and so on. I'll be doing the same amount of work, you'll be getting the same number of articles, I'm just shuffling the order they get published in.
This week on Ray Hardgrit's Super Adventures, I'm playing FLIGHT OF THE AMAZON Queen.
I don't know why it's capitalised like that, but I have a suspicion that the gradient is inspired by the Indiana Jones logo. The title itself is probably inspired by the 50s adventure movie The African Queen, starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn. The African Queen is actually the name of a boat in the movie, so it wouldn't have been doing much flying. I assume. I haven't actually seen it.
Flight of the Amazon Queen was the second and final game by Australian developer Interactive Binary Illusions, who'd previously worked on Halloween Harry (aka Alien Carnage). This is a point and click adventure and that's a run and gun platformer with a jetpack, so they've done a bit of a genre shift here.
It's another one of those freeware adventures available for free on GOG, like Lure of the Temptress, Beneath a Steel Sky and Teenagent, except with one major difference: I haven't written about it yet. I really did mean to though. In fact I pretty much announced that it was coming soon... back in March 2017. The thing you've got to understand about my plans, is that they were all made by an idiot. Speaking of things being announced, it was revealed earlier this month that a sequel is in development called Return of the Amazon Queen. I only just found out about this, so my timing here is pure luck.
Alright I'm going to try the game for a bit, just long enough to see what it's like and show off some pictures without really spoiling anything. I'll be playing the original PC version running through ScummVM (the free version released on GOG), not the updated 25th Anniversary edition sold on Steam.
Okay, starting today I'm switching to a new plan: a new Super Adventures every two weeks, all year round. So one week I'll play a game, the next week I'll write about an sci-fi episode, the week after that I'll be back to playing a game, and so on. I'll be doing the same amount of work, you'll be getting the same number of articles, I'm just shuffling the order they get published in.
Developer: | Interactive Binary Illusions | | | Release Date: | 1995 | | | Systems: | MS-DOS, Amiga |
This week on Ray Hardgrit's Super Adventures, I'm playing FLIGHT OF THE AMAZON Queen.
I don't know why it's capitalised like that, but I have a suspicion that the gradient is inspired by the Indiana Jones logo. The title itself is probably inspired by the 50s adventure movie The African Queen, starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn. The African Queen is actually the name of a boat in the movie, so it wouldn't have been doing much flying. I assume. I haven't actually seen it.
Flight of the Amazon Queen was the second and final game by Australian developer Interactive Binary Illusions, who'd previously worked on Halloween Harry (aka Alien Carnage). This is a point and click adventure and that's a run and gun platformer with a jetpack, so they've done a bit of a genre shift here.
It's another one of those freeware adventures available for free on GOG, like Lure of the Temptress, Beneath a Steel Sky and Teenagent, except with one major difference: I haven't written about it yet. I really did mean to though. In fact I pretty much announced that it was coming soon... back in March 2017. The thing you've got to understand about my plans, is that they were all made by an idiot. Speaking of things being announced, it was revealed earlier this month that a sequel is in development called Return of the Amazon Queen. I only just found out about this, so my timing here is pure luck.
Alright I'm going to try the game for a bit, just long enough to see what it's like and show off some pictures without really spoiling anything. I'll be playing the original PC version running through ScummVM (the free version released on GOG), not the updated 25th Anniversary edition sold on Steam.
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