Revistronic 1996
Genre: Adventure
Rating: 3/6
Licence: Commercial
System: PC

Arizona, 1866. Fenimore Fillmore, the young (actually, he looks like he's 12 years old) hero of our story, accidently stumbles across the secret of three golden skulls which unlock the way to the treasure of the Toltecs. One of these skulls is already in his possession. Two other ones have yet to be located, but at least he knows who has them.

Gardensoft 1988
Genre: Simulation
Rating: 1/6
Licence: Freeware
System: ZX Spectrum

It's the things which are fun in real life which usually translate well into great computer games. And you know what's really fun? Lawnmowing. Don't you just love going back and forth, tweaking your route till perfection, while at the same time, you have plenty of time to think about all kinds of things? At last, Advanced Lawnmower Simulation gives you the opportunity to do all this in front of your computer!

Factor 5 / Hudson Soft 1992
Genre: Action
Rating: 3/6
Licence: Commercial
System: Amiga

Conversions of console games to computers often go wrong. Translations of Japanese games just as often. With B.C. Kid, it went surprisingly smooth. It first appeared on the PC Engine and had (for 'western' tongues) a really strange name. The English version became 'Bonk'. Bonk? To make a long story short, the Amiga version got a better title when it was ported by the German company Factor 5 a few years later.

Microsphere 1985
Genre: Adventure, Action
Rating: 5/6
Licence: Commercial
System: ZX Spectrum

Last year, schoolboy Eric managed to steal his report card from the headmaster's safe. He has taken his time to forge a positive one. Now it's time to get it back into the safe.

A lot has happened on the school grounds over the holidays. It has been split in two sections: a boys school and a girls school (with a fence between them). The boys' building (the only part which could be seen in the prequel Skool Daze) has been expanded, too. There are now more classrooms, more offices, a new assembly hall and (perhaps the most useful innovation) a bathroom. The school has also bought a new safe to replace the old one. This one doesn't have a combination of numbers, but a simple lock. But where has the key been hidden?

Barschsoft 1997
Genre: Puzzle, Action
Rating: 2/6
Licence: Freeware
System: PC

All games made by 'Barschsoft'...

Salad Days

The first entry in this here reproduced log can be backtraced to 1997. Like so often, die psychosis of the testee is caused by events in his childhood. In this case, it's the strong nostalgic memories about the dominating products of long dead producers of leisure electronics.

Sierra 1995
Genre: Strategy
Rating: 5/6
Licence: Commercial
System: PC

Battle Bugs is one of the games that do not need a story. You just complete mission after mission. Nevertheless it has a naive charme because of its theme (insect battles). The military background is ironically weakened by that. Most times they are about "conquering" most of the food that is lying around. That is done by moving a "unit" near the thing that you want to conquer. Then a flag appears on it, slowly rising. If you have more bugs there the flag will rise faster. When it has reached its top you own the object. Unfortunately the enemy tries to achieve the same so that heavy battles take place. As long as both sides have insects around the food nobody owns it. Conquered targets can of course be taken over the other army if it dominates the control zone. Almost any unit has its own special ability, strengths and weaknesses. A grasshopper for example is lethal for enemys but it also is killed fast. Bees can (of course) fly and also drop bombs, dynamite or cheese (!) on the enemy. This last thing is used to stun units. All flying animals have to fear ants with missiles. These specific characteristics should be considered when planning the battle. An example: A huge mass of enemies that would easily crush you hands down comes nearer. You send your "pill bug" in their direction. The enemy army concentrates on it, so that all are on the same place and beat it up. Now your bee starts and drop its bombs on this concentrated mass. The pill bug is immune to bombs but the enemies die in the explosions. Level completed!

Revolution Software / Virgin 1994
Genre: Adventure
Rating: 5/6
Licence: Freeware
System: Amiga

If at first you don't succeed.... Lure of the Temptress wasn't a very good game, but it did receive quite positive reviews - let's just say there are and were games which are even more overrated. After that, Revolution Software took their time to develop a successor - and they succeeded in a brilliant way!

Philip Winterberg 2001
Genre: Puzzle
Rating: 3/6
Licence: Freeware
System: PC

Blödtris - or Dumbtris as it's called if you install it in english version (the game can be installed in english or german) - is a game that can be sorted into the Tetris-category. Well... at least the name of it claims that sort of kinship. Now it's a bit difficult to write a proper review about it I have to admit. First of all - this game is not really... well... serious. The goal of it is the same as you have in Tetris - you have to build whole lines, they vanish, you get points and after a certain amount of points you go up one level, which means things go faster and so on and so forth.

Anssi Raisanen 2001
Genre: Adventure
Rating: 3/6
Licence: Freeware
System: Interpreter

It's every player's nightmare: An aspiring IF author (to make matters worse, one who is related to you) asks you to beta test his game. This can be fun, but if the game is really, really bad and if you can't really tell that to the person in question, things get ugly. Bugged is about you playing your cousin's first attempt at writing a game, and not only is it a completely linear set of boring rooms, located in a castle of a bog-standard fantasy kingdom, but pretty much everything imaginable went wrong technically - the game is bugged to the extreme. Most of the puzzle solutions don't work as expected and imagined by the author. So you have to find ways around those bugs. I.e. you exploit other bugs in order to progress.

Infocom 1987
Genre: Adventure
Rating: 5/6
Licence: Commercial
System: PC

Infocom's text adventures are known to be the best. Their game engine with its great parser was used for a large variety of masterpieces. Bureaucracy is one of those. What it makes superior to most of its "colleagues" is the hilarious plot. It was written by Steve Meretzky (Leather Goddesses of Phobos, Stationfall) and the well known author Douglas Adams. The two had collaborated before to convert Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to Galaxy into a game.