Unique Games: Afterlife, Part 4

Another four years have passed since the previous UG Afterlife post on the FRGCB, so it felt like a good time to scan through all the usual dedicated platform-centric website forums, game developing competition websites and itch.io to get a wide enough range of all things released since the beginning of 2020. As with the previous Afterlife entries, I shall have to restrict each platform's offerings to four or five, when possible, because otherwise I'd be writing this still well after New Year's Day; and the platforms with clearly less unique and/or exclusive games released for them shall have to be featured more quickly at the end of the entry. With this, I wish you all a happy remainder of this Christmas season; prosperity for the year 2025, and hopefully lots of more new games for old platforms for as long as possible.

FRGR #16: Coloris (Avesoft, 1990)

Developed by Signum Victoriae
Designed by Pertti Lehtinen and Keijo Heljanko
Intro programmed by Keijo Heljanko
Game programmed by Pertti Lehtinen
Graphics by Harri Granholm, Mika Meriläinen and Jyrki Kummola
Music and sound effects by Tor Bernhard Gausen and Jean-Pierre Jandrain
Published for Commodore Amiga by Avesoft in 1990.

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INTRODUCTION & GAME STATUS

It's that time of year again, where we celebrate the Finnish Independence by reviewing a classic Finnish game from the olden days. This year's chosen title is Coloris from Avesoft, easily one of the best known Finnish games ever released for Commodore Amiga. It was one of the first Amiga games that I ever played, only to find out afterwards, that it was a Finnish game, which somehow didn't occur to me while seeing Signum Victoriae's obviously Finnish logo. I suppose I must have not been too bright at that age. Anyway, Coloris was the first notable Amiga game from Finland, only to have its international release cancelled by the publisher Avesoft due to fear of copyright infringement. Whether it was the right choice or not, I shall leave it for you to decide, because I'm not 100% certain.

Popeye (Nintendo, 1982)

Developed by Nintendo R&D1
Designed by Genyo Takeda and Shigeru Miyamoto
Programmed by Ikegami Tsushinki (unconfirmed)
Originally published by Nintendo as a Japanese arcade game in 1982, followed by European and American releases by Atari, Inc. in 1982.

Magnavox Odyssey2 / Philips Videopac version was developed and published by Parker Brothers in 1982.

Atari 2600 version was written by Joe Gaucher, and published by Parker Brothers in 1983.

Atari 400/800 version was written by David W. Johnson, and published by Parker Brothers in 1983.

CBS Colecovision and Mattel Intellivision versions were written and published by Parker Brothers in 1983.

Nintendo Famicom version was developed and published by Nintendo in 1983, but wasn't published for the North American and European NES systems until 1986.

Apple II version was developed and published by Software Computer in 1984.

Atari 5200, Commodore 64 and TI-99/4A versions were developed and published by Parker Brothers in 1984.

Timex TX2068 version was written by Amazon Systems and published by Parker Brothers in North America in 1984; the UK counterpart for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum version was unreleased, but has the prototype been salvaged.

An unlicenced clone called Popie was written in 1984 for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum by Simon Freeman, with graphics by Simon Freeman and Dave Hayhoe, but was unreleased until 2015.

Unofficial Tandy TRS-80 Color Computer version was written by Chris Latham, and published as "Sailor Man" by Tom Mix Software in 1984.

Unofficial Commodore 16 & Plus/4 clone named Popeye written by Roby YU in 1988.

Unofficial Commodore Amiga conversion developed by Bignonia:
Programming and graphics by Ard Joosse
Music by Christian Blaha
Published as "The Real Popeye" by Bignonia in 1993.

Unofficial conversion for the 32k expanded Commodore VIC-20 was written by Beamrider in 2015.

Unofficial re-authored version "Popeye ZX" for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum was written by Gabriele Amore, with music by Alessandro Grussu, and released as public domain in 2016.

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INTRODUCTION & GAME STATUS

For the first arcade comparison since Kung-Fu Master from April this year, we now have an even earlier arcade classic by Nintendo, based on one of the best known King Features Syndicate comic strip characters - Popeye the Sailor. This happened while Nintendo were still co-operating on worldwide distribution with Atari, which likely opened up more possibilities with regards to other home conversions. This is, by far, my favourite era in the collective lives of Nintendo and Atari, which resulted in a considerable number of arcade classics also known on many home systems, and I shall be attempting to revisit this era more in the coming year. However, this comparison shall be an anomaly, since we're dealing with no less than 19 different versions of Popeye, which is something I would normally avoid getting into, but knowing there is not all that much content in the game, I decided to go for this one anyway.

FRGCB's Let's Play series continues with a new episode!

It's time to do another Let's Play video for a change, and today's game is Actman on the MSX, a relatively obscure single-screen platformer that I managed to acquire as a cartridge into my collection some time ago.

I was planning on creating another three or four Let's Play episodes back-to-back after finishing off this season of My Nostalgia Trip Games, but due to some health issues, I haven't been able to record all the necessary material for the final episode of MNTG. So, this one Let's Play was recorded about a month ago, and now acts as a substitute for the postponed MNTG episode. Perhaps more Let's Plays will be made next month, but we'll see how long my illness remains. Meanwhile, a comparison with a third-party video accompaniment is being prepared to be released later this month.

Push-Over (Ocean, 1992)

Developed by Red Rat Software.
Concept by Chris Partington.
Design by Harry Nadler, Helen Elcock, Avril Rigby, Don Rigby and Chris Waterworth.
Licenced from Smiths Crisps Ltd.
Box art by John Haslam.

ATARI ST version:
Programming by Dave Elcock, Helen Elcock and Keith Watterson. Graphics by Bryan King, Barry S. Armstrong, John Palmer and William Harbison. Music and sound effects by Keith Tinman, Dean Evans and Jonathan Dunn.

COMMODORE AMIGA and IBM-PC versions:
Programming by Dave Elcock, Helen Elcock and Keith Watterson. Graphics by Bryan King and Barry S. Armstrong. Music and sound effects by Keith Tinman, Dean Evans and Jonathan Dunn.

SUPER NINTENDO version by Red Rat Software; further details unknown.

All versions released by Ocean Software in 1992.

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INTRODUCTION & GAME STATUS

After 11 years of blogging almost entirely about games from the 1980's, it has been brought to my attention that games from the 90's should be included as well, so I'm now trying to gradually ease my way into that area. Mind you, games from the 90's were not nearly as different across different platforms as what the 80's had, so the focus will still be largely on the 80's stuff. For now, though, the first comparison from the 90's since the comparison of The Simpsons: Bart vs. Space Mutants from 2021, is another Ocean game - the newest classic era game on the blog so far.

Match Day (Ocean Software, 1984)

Designed and written by Jon Ritman and Chris Clarke for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, with sounds by Guy Stevens. Published by Ocean Software in 1984.

Acorn BBC Micro version by Chris Roberts, and published by Ocean Software in 1985.

Amstrad CPC/PCW version by Sentient Software Ltd, and published by Ocean Software in 1985.

Commodore 64 version by Mercury Microwave:
Programming and graphics by Derek Ham and Paul Thomas Ralphs, with music by Martin Galway.
Published by Ocean Software in 1986 in "They Sold A Million II" compilation; no standalone release is known to exist.

Sinclair ZX Spectrum 128k updated version released as "International Match Day" was written by Jon Ritman and Chris Clarke, with loading screen by Frederick David Thorpe. Published by Ocean Software in 1986.

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INTRODUCTION & GAME STATUS

Ocean October 2024 starts off with a game that all the retrogamers out there will already know, which version will lose the most spectacularly. I'm not completely sure, though, whether Match Day is really a game we need to put too much energy into comparing, though, because ever since football games went over to the 16-bits, trying to decide on which one is better over any other has been as futile as trying to decide whether pineapple belongs on a pizza or not. But here at FRGCB, the comparison shall be made nonetheless.

Nemesis the Warlock (Martech, 1987)

Designed and written by Creative Reality.
Game concept by David Dew, Jason Austin and Michael J. Archer.

Amstrad CPC version:
Programming by Neil Dodwell and Jason Austin
Graphics by David Dew
Sounds by Rob Hubbard

Commodore 64 version:
Programming by Michael J. Archer
Graphics by David Dew
Sounds by Rob Hubbard

Sinclair ZX Spectrum version:
Programming by Jason Austin and Michael Archer
Graphics by David Dew
Sounds by Rob Hubbard

All versions published by Martech in 1987.

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INTRODUCTION & GAME STATUS

As a reasonably quick one to fill the gap between August and the upcoming Ocean October, I decided to take a look at a game, that I knew from previous experience, would not be too complex to write about. My first memory of Martech's Nemesis the Warlock was reading about it from a Finnish games yearbook in the late 1980's, where the reviewer mentioned the game's ultra-violent approach, which instantly piqued my interest, being a horror fan from an early age. It wasn't a particularly praising review, but the concept of games being ultra-violent was a new idea to me then, and I did wonder, how would this style be approached in a computer game. So, having only ever played the C64 version, I wanted to finally see, how the two other versions compared to it.