5 GAMES FOR JUNE

June's selection of games takes you on a trip around the world and beyond. First up is the space-themed pinball game 3D Ultra Pinball: Space Colony followed by a global racing tour in Magnetic Field's Network Q threequel International Rally Championship. Then, get into all sorts of hijinks while in Japan in Big Red Adventure's comedic predecessor Nippon Safes, Inc before travelling to a moon colony in order to protect its independence in the FPS sequel Rebel Moon Rising. Lastly, explore the trap-filled dungeons in the Tower of Souls, a rather unique dungeon crawling RPG.

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5 GAMES FOR MAY 2019

For the month of May, gun down some terrorists in the PC-only light-gun shooter A.D. Cop. Take turns to solve the murder in Foul Play: Mystery at Awkward Manor based on Clue/Cluedo. Drive fast down dirt tracks and country roads in Network Q RAC Rally Championship. Destroy everything that moves in the little-known sci-fi first-person-shooter Rebel Moon. Finally, take your wrestling skills around the EU in WWF European Rampage Tour. Read on for more...

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5 GAMES FOR FEBRUARY 2019

Keep your ball inflated so you can keep on bouncing in the isometric puzzle platformer known as Airball. Destroy a bunch of mutated insects in the first-person shooter Blam! Machinehead. Spray an army of clones with bullets in the Iron Maiden themed arcade shooter Ed Hunter. Uncover an intergalactic drug ring in the classic adventure Omnicron Conspiracy. Pile drive a bunch of muscled men in spandex in WWF: Wrestlemania. All are experiences you can now have this February thanks to the Collection Chamber.

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DIE HARD COLLECTION

It's been thirty years since Die Hard - in my opinion the best action movie of all time - hit theatres. Since then there has been a number of game adaptations too with a good number of them bucking the movie licence curse by actually being good. Here are a number of the earliest attempts, some of which are criminally underrated.

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MOTORHEAD

Out of all the intellectual properties to turn into a side-scrolling beat-em-up, a British hard rock band is not the first thing to come to mind. Motörhead (1992, Virgin Interactive) was that very band to get their fists punching on the Amiga, and Lemmy's hellraising antics in the lead role proves to be a surprisingly good choice.

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SPECIAL FORCES

While most strategy titles ask for Mensa levels of thinking and concentration, I tend to get the most enjoyment out of the simpler games in the genre like Cannon Fodder. Special Forces (1992, Sleepless Knights) looks like it could have been one of these simpler titles, but to actually play it is anything but.

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PSYCHO

It is now officially Halloween season, it's time to indulge in the horrors video games can bestow upon us. One of cinema's greatest scare-fests is Alfred Hitcock's 1960 thriller Psycho. The film remains evergreen, but what of the 1988 computer game adaptation by Starsoft Development Laboratories?

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THEATRE OF DEATH

Theatre of Death may sound like a macabre game going by the title alone, but this Psygnosis published game from the early 90s is as lighthearted in tone as it's light in gameplay.

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DIZZY: 30TH ANNIVERSARY COLLECTION

Let's celebrate Easter this year by talking about the world's second most famous egg: Dizzy. Not only was he the unofficial mascot of the Commodore 64, he's also the poster child for bedroom coders everywhere. So that begs the question: after a plethora of sequels and spinoffs why did Dizzy disappear?

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BOMBUZAL COLLECTION

Bombuzal, also known as Kablooey or Charlie Blast's Territory was a great little puzzler. The bomb-busting blue blob seems to have been forgotten since it's 1988 debut, but if there's one puzzler that tugs the nostalgic heart-strings for me, this is it.

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LOTUS ESPRIT TURBO CHALLENGE TRILOGY

In the age before polygons were able to give us fully realised environments, I wasn't too keen on the racing genre. Back then, I felt the limitations of 2D weren't able to adequately recreate the sensation of driving a car, at least not in games that positioned the camera behind the vehicle instead of a top-down viewpoint. The one exception (at least in my collection) was Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge.

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THE GODFATHER: THE ACTION GAME

Today is Oscar day. I'll be staying up 'til 6 AM to see if La La Land or Moonlight gets the golden statuette (edit: turns out it was a bit of both!) but 44 years ago arguably the 'Best Film of All Time' won; The Godfather. But we're not here to talk about that. We're here to shoot some gangsters in the 1991 video game adaptation by US Gold.

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HEART OF CHINA

Dynamix may be best known for their simulation games with the likes EarthSiege, Tribes and Red Baron, but when they entered the Sierra family in 1990 they began to dabble in the adventure genre. The result is a trio of excellent adventures with a heavy focus on storytelling. The most underrated of the three was the globe-hopping yarn from 1991 named Heart of China.

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