AnimaTek / Maxis 1993
Genre: Strategy
Rating: 6/6
Licence: Commercial
System: PC

El-Fish is a fish breeding/creating and aquarium-building simulation that was released by the companies Maxis and AnimaTek in 1994 (Maxis is the creator of the successful Sim game series, while AnimaTek was a Russian company that invented the concept of El-Fish). The game was advanced for its time -- the photorealistic 3-D fish you can create look and move very realistically, and, through breeding, can be shaped into from 800 possible attributes into infinite numbers of unique fish. A fractal-based generator can also create unique decorative plants for your tank, and a rather intelligent random music generator can put together simple pieces of background music for your tank-display. Plus, just watching the fish you've made swimming in a tank you've designed is a very calming and rewarding experience.

Enix 1993
Genre: Action
Rating: 5/6
Licence: Commercial
System: SNES

ENIX-Always a company that was willing to make games that were...well, non-standard. Not that that's a bad thing. Certainly not in this case. EVO is one of those one-of-a-kind games that are fun to play, hard to categorize. And yes, I may be biased because biologists generally like tinkering with animals

Activision 1985
Genre: Strategy
Rating: 5/6
Licence: Commercial
System: C64

In the mid-90s, Tamagotchis - little annoying egg-shaped beeping virtual 'pets' - were really popular for some time. Later, there was the immensily successful (deserved!) PC game The Sims which gave the concept of the virtual 'goldfish tank' more complexity. But two decades before, this idea had already been put into a game! Little Computer People - the first scientifical simulation of life (not counting Alter Ego)!

U.S. Gold 1990
Genre: Puzzle, Action
Rating: 4/6
Licence: Commercial
System: PC

Sometimes them game-programmers really demand a lot of imagination - who would think of a human body and virii looking at this game? In Vaxine you are the last line of defense protecting important cells against agressive virii. Such a virus appears in 3 possible colors and can be eliminated by shooting at it with a little ball of the same color. To make this clear right now - at first you will think you got a cool fast action-game here. You will be frustrated soon because you won't survive very long. The game will just get faster and faster if you want it to and you won't be able to defend your cells since you will always miss the virii you try to shoot. You need to think of some basic strategies. Most important things are the black gates. Just drive through one and everything will freeze for one minute (remember to drive through one again before the minute runs out). Now you can search for the next virus and get into a good shooting position before you shoot at it (which will unfreeze everything). While this is enough for the first level you will need to eliminate the virus-producers (flat cells moving around on the floor) first in the higher levels. You will hear a special sound-effect each time one of them appears and that means you have to find the next black gate fast to have time to search for that little bastard.