It’s often said that the best games have a simple concept at heart, and Pang is certainly one of those games. Half platformer and half shoot ‘em up, this conversion of a Capcom arcade game has you protecting the world’s major cities from a bunch of marauding bubbles.

Originally known as Buster Bros. in the far east, this game couldn’t be more Japanese if it tried, and I mean that in a good way, not in a ‘dress it up as a schoolgirl and roger it with a tentacle’ way. The cute, anime style of presentation really suits this game and the inter-stage cut-scenes are so incredibly twee they never fail to raise a smile. Read the rest of this article »

This week I have been playing a game originally considered for the Joy of Sticks’ recent Spooktoberfest, but dismissed as I felt it stretched the premise of the feature a little too far. I was wrong, Space Crusade is bloody tense.

Space Crusade is an attempt by Gremlin Graphics to bring the board game of the same name to the 16-bit computers. For those unaware of the collaborative effort by Milton Bradley and Games Workshop, Space Crusade involves one player taking control of the aliens and up to three others directing some All-American rocket jockeys with a serious shoulder pad fetish. Read the rest of this article »

There could only be one go to game for the finale of The Joy of Sticks Spooktoberfest, and that is the game that came first in The Great Atari ST Game Survey: Dungeon Master.

Here is a game that was scary not through expert story telling or cinematic cut-scenes, but through its gameplay, pure and simple. Read the rest of this article »

Upon regaining conciousness after a car accident, alarmed by the smell of petrol, you scramble free of the wreck just in time to escape the explosion. Assuming that your younger brother has gone to seek assistance at a nearby house, you follow his footsteps. Upon entering the house, your injuries and destroyed car become the least of your worries as strange happenings bring your safety, and that of your brother, into question.

Originally released in 1986 for the Mac, the following year saw Uninvited converted to the ST. Both the Macintosh and Atari ST were beneficiaries of new user-friendly windowed interfaces, and it was only natural that games would begin to take advantage of this. Uninvited was one of the first ST games to do so, its screen populated by windows, icons and drop-down menus through which the player interacts with the game. Read the rest of this article »

When it comes to the history of graphical adventures, Maniac Mansion is a behemoth. The first Lucasarts adventure to use the SCUMM engine which would go on to power Loom, The Secret of Monkey Island, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade – in fact, all their subsequent adventures would use SCUMM until Grim Fandango made the switch to 3D.

The player joins our protagonist, Dave, and his friends Syd, Wendy, Michael, Jeff, Bernard and Razor (from which the player must choose two to accompany Dave) on a mission to rescue Dave’s sweetheart Sandi from the clutches of Dr Fred, who has been acting strangely ever since a purple meteor crashed nearby. Read the rest of this article »

Having already established that a good horror game achieves its scariness with tension and atmosphere, here is a game that has oodles of the latter. It’s Delphine’s Another World.

Another World wowed us in 1991 thanks to Eric Chahi’s revolutionary animation technique that used polygons rendered in real-time, overcoming memory constraints that usually hamper sprite-based games. This allowed for exponentially more frames of animation, resulting in incredibly smooth character movements and superb cinematic cut-scenes. Read the rest of this article »

Now this is how you make horror interactive fiction. Ooze was a setback, but a small hairy fellow suggested I give Infocom’s 1987 text adventure The Lurking Horror a try.

Dave Lebling shows a deft touch in the opening minutes of The Lurking Horror; subtle humour that pokes fun at computer technicians rubs up against tense prose that hints at the supernatural horrors to come. This juxtaposition of science and supernatural, humour and horror is a real winning formula that had me hooked within the first few commands – rare indeed for a text adventure. Read the rest of this article »

After a disappointing start to Spooktober, I needed a pick-me-up. What better than Capcom’s seminal Ghouls ‘n’ Ghosts, as brought to the ST in 1988 by Software Creations. I’m sure this game needs little introduction, but for those living under a rock impervious to gaming for the last two decades, Ghouls ‘n’ Ghosts is a side scrolling run ‘n’ gun game similar to its predecessor Ghosts ‘n’ Goblins (confusingly converted to the ST two years later, this time by Zippo Games).

It features the brave knight Arthur in a quest to rescue the souls of his people and his love from the clutched of Lucifer. To help him in his quest, Arthur is bedecked in a suit of armour which can absorb one hit from the myriad demonic hordes that populate the levels separating Artie from Lucifer. Read the rest of this article »

Those of you who are squeamish in nature point your browsers elsewhere, for this is the week of blood-curdling nightmares! To celebrate halloween, The Joy of Sticks will devote itself to Atari ST games that make the blood run cold, palms sweaty and hair stand on end. Tonight’s ghoulish game is The Ooze, a text adventure that will give you the willies from those gruesome fellows at Dragonware.

The quick and dirty research I undertook before beginning this feature informs me that the vast majority of horror titles for the Atari ST are adventure titles, a large chunk of which are text adventures (or interactive fiction to give the genre its more lofty moniker). Read the rest of this article »

…and on Thursday 17th October he played Atari ST classic Time Bandit in his ongoing attempt to ‘Vanquish The Unplayed Hordes‘.

Go there, be happy.