Reviews

Question: what do you get when you cross a charity telethon, a sentimental cartoon mutt, and an early-’90s DOS platformer engine that animates at the frame-rate of a caffeinated flip-book? Self-answer: Sleepwalker, the 1993 IBM-compatible conversion of CTA Developments’ Amiga sleeper (pun mandatory) published by Ocean Software in aid of Comic Relief. It’s the sort of […]

Fire up DOSBox, lower your expectations for glamour, and prepare for the only ‘90s computer game that could make a middle-schooler scream “hail insurance!” louder than “headshot.” SimFarm isn’t merely a quirky cousin to SimCity; it’s a pocket-sized agronomy degree disguised as a pixel playground, a title where a gorgeous barley harvest can be followed—without warning—by a tornado

Some licensed games barge in like a rampaging T-rex; others skitter around your ankles like hungry Compsognathus. Ocean Software’s Jurassic Park for MS-DOS somehow does both, depending on whether you’re wrestling the 3-D raptor corridors or trudging across jungle screens stuffed with pixel ferns. Is it bizarre or classical? (Yes. It’s a shape-shifter.) Underrated or overrated? (Depends

Every medium-sized generation gets its rite-of-passage fantasy kid. The ’80s crowned Atreyu on a luck-dragon, the 2000s produced Harry under a staircase, and wedged neatly between them lurks a ginger teenager in a robe two sizes too big whose most devastating spell is weaponised sarcasm. That, fellow retro spelunkers, is Simon, reluctant hero of Adventure

Cue the ski-lift music and buckle that neon windbreaker, because we’re going back to the days when “multimedia” meant a Sound Blaster 16 that squealed like a happy modem. Winter Olympics: Lillehammer ’94 is, paradoxically, both the Platonic ideal of an IOC-licensed cash-in and a lovable mutt that keeps chasing its own tail down the bobsled run. Underrated? Some