Retro Gaming Australia

Zork II: The Wizard of Frobozz was the 1981 follow up to the highly successful text adventure Zork. The series was the crown jewel of Infocom’s output, and continued for several games after the company was purchased by Activision. Just don’t mention the short-lived freemium MMO.

Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance was the second of three original Castlevania games developed for the Game Boy Advance, and arguably the most divisive. Many fans label the game’s soundtrack as the worst in the franchise’s history. Others feel the game is too easy. Despite these complaints, it is still considered one of the better games on the Game Boy Advance.

Before they became the even-year Call of Duty developer, even before they became an Activision port house, Treyarch developed original IP. Their first was Die by the Sword, a medieval hack and slash game which combined both 3D action/adventure and arena battle gameplay. Players could cut their opponents limbs off and use them against them. The game used a revolutionary-but-clumsy control system called VSIM, which gave players full control over their sword swings.

SimCity 2000 is one of the most popular PC games of all time, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that it saw a number of console ports. The Saturn version, which this ad is for, was the first of the ports. It saw an upgrade to the game’s visuals, and supports the Saturn mouse.

BurgerTime is one of Data East’s most recognisable classics. As you’d expect, it received a myriad of ports to consoles and computers in the early 80s, but this early 90s Game Boy port received a few upgrades like more varied stage layouts, new enemies and even a story.

Donkey Kong Land 2 is the Game Boy adaptation of Donkey Kong Country 2. Whereas the original Donkey Kong Land was an original game inspired by DKC, the second game is more or less a cut down port. It’s still pretty good, but you’re really just better off playing the SNES original.

The Dreamcast launched with one of Sega’s biggest ever media blitzes…in America. You could almost be forgiven for not knowing what a Dreamcast is if you lived in any of the Ozisoft territories, where the system was a complete bust thanks to one of the most disastrous launches in gaming history.

People are not kidding when they say that Pac-Man is on every system under the sun. The Game Boy version isn’t the best – the scrolling screen makes proceedings a little more annoying than they should be, but it could be a lot worse.

Fighting Force is a good example of a middling game with a clever advertising campaign. The Nintendo 64 port was released almost two years after the original PlayStation release. The game was actually originally intended to be Streets of Rage 4, until Sega and Core Design ran into issues regarding porting the game to other platforms, which resulted in the completed Saturn version of the game never being released.

Amazing Island is one of many attempts by Sega to emulate the success of Animal Crossing and/or Pokemon. The project was developed by Yuzo Koshiro’s studio Ancient and Sega subsidiary Hitmaker. Koshiro also provided the game’s soundtrack. Players create their own monsters and use them to compete in events across the island.