Super AiG Screenshots of the Decade: 2011-2020

This week's Super Adventures is going to be the last this year I'm afraid. In fact there'll be no more games until the end of January.

But seeing as this is the end of Super Adventures's 10th year, I figured I should expand the scope of my annual screenshot showcase to cover the entire first decade of the site! Every picture and GIF that's ever been posted here is eligible for entry, even this sketch of a cute bunny I drew for my Toonstruck post six years ago:

But it's bad enough that I inflicted my art on people the first time, so I'm mostly going to stick to the game screenshots.

I'm fortunate that I already did all those Screenshot of the Year articles and chose my favourite screens from each year, as it dramatically reduces the amount of images I have to look through here. But screw that! This is a special occasion, so I'm going to look through all 40,000 or so images in my archive and pick the ones that stand out to me in the blur of intense scrolling. With any luck I might find something to write about them as well.

I should mention that clicking on a highlighted game title will open up the original article, so you can visit the screenshot's home and find it hanging out with its friends. And if you come across a game released in the last 20 years then clicking the image itself will probably give you a bigger version to glare at. Not that big though I'm afraid.

Star Trek: Borg (PC)

Developer:

Simon & Schuster

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Release Date:

1996

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Systems:

Win, Mac

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm giving you a choice!

You can either keep reading this perfectly normal regular article on Star Trek: Borg, or you can jump over my other website, Sci-Fi Adventures, and get an enhanced review with additional Star Trek trivia and observations! Stay here if you don't give a damn about the series and just want to read about a video game, go over there if you want too many words.

> CLICK HERE FOR THE EXTENDED SCI-FI ADVENTURES STAR TREK: BORG REVIEW <

I really wouldn't recommend reading both articles. Well, unless you're into sitting through lots of the same content all over again, in which case I might have found the right game for you!

Star Trek: Borg apparently came out in late 1996, just a few weeks before the movie Star Trek: First Contact. That film's all about the Borg so they had their synergy figured out there. That means that in grand scheme of Star Trek games, Borg comes after 25th Anniversary and A Final Unity, but before Starfleet Academy and Elite Force. It was released right at the start of the Trek game explosion that lasted until 2001, where every year would have three or more games, some of them not entirely terrible! In fact this wasn't even the only Trek game by Simon & Schuster that year, as they also released Star Trek: Klingon, which appears to be more of the same kind of thing.

The game will apparently run on modern systems if you download this ancient installer from the Internet Archive: Borgptch, but I don't really know how well it gets along with Windows 10 because I decided to run it in Windows 95 using the PCem PC emulator instead.

I usually only play for an hour or two, but this isn't the longest of games so I'm going to be playing all of it this time. So there's going to be HUGE SPOILERS for this game and maybe a few smaller spoilers for Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes like The Best of Both Worlds.

Constantine (PS2)

Developer:

Bits

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Release Date:

2005

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Systems:

PS2, Xbox, Windows

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This week on Super Adventures, it's the final game of Keanu Reeves week: Constantine, based on the 2005 movie of the same name, based on the comic Hellblazer.

I always forget how to pronounce the name 'Constantine', and it doesn't help that it's always changing. The star of the comics, a blonde anti-hero warlock Scouser from Liverpool, England, would pronounce his name to rhyme with 'wine', but the dark-haired American Keanu Reeves version has a name that rhymes with 'keen', and so does this game. (The TV series DC's Legends of Tomorrow splits the difference, making him blonde Liverpudlian who pronounces his name the American way).

Funnily enough, the game's developer, Bits Studios, was English, so a British studio made a game based on an American reimagining of a British character. Bits worked on a lot of licenced games actually, like Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Terminator 2, Last Action Hero, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Alien³, and Die Hard: Vendetta. Unfortunately Constantine was their last, as they only got to make one more game before their assets were sold off and that was Payout Poker & Casino on the PSP.

Anyway, I'm only going to be playing the PlayStation 2 version of the game, but I've given the Xbox and PC versions a quick glance and they seem to be more or less the same thing. It really was just a glance though, so I could be way wrong there. The game's also going to have similarities to the movie, so be warned about SPOILERS.

Bram Stoker's Dracula (Amiga)

Developer:

Psygnosis

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Release Date:

1994

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Systems:

Amiga + eight other systems

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Today on Super Adventures, Keanu Reeves week continues with Bram Stoker's Dracula on the Amiga! I said I was only going to play three Keanu Reeves games, and this would be the second of them, but things get a little complicated with this one.

Bram Stoker's Dracula was a multiplatform title released to tie in with the 1992 Gary Oldman movie, but not all platforms got the same game. In fact it seems like there's actually five different games here, split across nine different systems. It came out on Amiga, SNES, Mega Drive/Genesis, Game Gear, Master System, NES, Game Boy, Sega CD and DOS PCs, so poor C64 owners were left out this time.

Nine systems in one article is a bit much, so I'm going to focus on the Amiga game mostly and try not to get too carried away with writing about the other versions, but I have to at least take a look at them. Yeah okay, I didn't show off all the different Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure games yesterday, I only played the home computer versions, but in my defence I was busy finishing the entire game three times over.

I'll also try not to spoil too much about the movie, but I get the feeling that's not going to be an issue here.

Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (C64)

Developer:

Off the Wall

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Release Date:

1989

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Systems:

C64, Amiga, DOS

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Today on Super Adventures, to celebrate Cyberpunk 2077 eventually coming out at some point hopefully, I'm kicking off Keanu Reeves week! I'll be playing three games this week, each of which is based on a movie starring Keanu Reeves, starting with the computer version of Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. Which works out pretty well I reckon, seeing as the third Bill & Ted film just came out.

I've already played a Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure game, on the Lynx, but I'm pretty sure this one's something completely different. Maybe even something better! This version came out on three systems, Amiga, MS-DOS and Commodore 64, and I'll be playing all three of them, because I'm hardcore like that. But I'm mostly focusing on the C64 game, because the poor system doesn't get much love here and it'll be a change.

There may be SPOILERS below for the first Bill & Ted movie... but I doubt it somehow.

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?