FRANK HERBERT'S DUNE

There was a time when Dune could've been a behemoth of a franchise. Alejandro Jodorowsky's early treatment from the 70s became a legend in its own right and even inspired the likes of Star Wars and Alien. After David Lynch's underwhelming adaptation, the SyFy channel brought it to the small screen in the early 2000s with a small budget to match. So far, it's the best there is (that is until Denis Villeneuve gives us his inevitably awesome take) but I cannot forgive it for siring Frank Herbert's Dune, Cryo's broken attempt at a video game on PC and PlayStation 2.

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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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CHRONICLES OF THE SWORD

King Arthur. Merlin. The Knights of the Round Table - there's nothing quite like the most epic of British fables. Many have taken their stab at adapting the tale be it books, movies or games and in 1996, Psygnosis published Synthetic Dimensions' long-gestating adventure game called Chronicles of the Sword. Taking place after the grail has been found, with Arthur firmly on the throne, he's beginning to find ruling over Britania in the magical Dark Ages quite troublesome.

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STUPID INVADERS

Comedy is something of a rarity in today's gaming market. Sure you may muster a titter or two at the quips made in Doom or the tantrum of a losing sibling in Mario Kart but none of them gets there through actual, full-on comedy. That's where classic adventures shine. And one that does is Xilam's 2000 point-and-clicker Stupid Invaders.

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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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COSMOLOGY OF KYOTO

Can games be art? Anyone who has followed this site will know that I consider the answer to be a resounding and obvious 'yes'. Yet, prominent critics of other mediums still ponder this question. Famed film expert Roger Ebert was one of these naysayers but there was one game that did impress him - Cosmology of Kyoto.

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5 GAMES FOR APRIL 2019

Capping off a month of Star Trekking, here's a quintet of mini-reviews set in the universe. First up is Star Trek: First Contact, an interactive fiction featuring the original crew. Next is Star Trek: Pinball, where you can fight for the high score in three unique tables. You can find out everything you need to know about the Enterprise, including an interactive guided tour in Star Trek: The Next Generation - Interactive Technical Manual. There's a more visual take on interactive fiction in Star Trek: The Next Generation - The Transinium Challenge. To cap it all of, you can follow the plot of the fifth movie in the multi-genred Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.


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STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - A FINAL UNITY

In my continuing mission to explore strange new worlds, I thought I'd seek out new life and new civilizations in Star Trek: The Next Generation - A Final Unity. Let's boldly go where no one (or quite a few judging by the sales numbers) has gone before, and take a look at Spectrum Holobyte's classic 1995 adventure that is perhaps my favourite Star Trek game of them all.

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STAR TREK: GENERATIONS

Three years after Captain Kirk passed the torch over to Jean Luc Picard in the seventh Star Trek motion picture, MicroProse finally gave us the movie tie in. Released in 1997, Star Trek: Generations adds a heavy dose of adventuring to the first-person-shooter but is it any better for it?

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STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE 9 - HARBINGER

Out of all of the Star Trek spin-offs, Deep Space 9 is arguably one of the best though it is somewhat underrepresented in video-game form. In 1995, the Federation space station located on the far side of the Milky Way came to PCs in a hybrid adventure game by Stormfront Studios called Harbinger.

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THE THING

John Carpenter's The Thing is a milestone in sci-fi cinema so it's surprising that it took 20 years until we saw a videogame based on it. Released in 2002, Computer Artworks underrated gem proved that it was worth the wait. So much so that John Carpenter himself officially endorsed it as the canonical sequel.

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MARVELOUS: ANOTHER TREASURE ISLAND

Being the iconic gaming behemoth that they are, Nintendo's in-house creations have always gathered a huge fanbase. That's not what has happened with Marvelous: Another Treasure Island, the Super Famicom game that convinced Shigeru Miyamoto to give the Zelda reigns over to its designer Eiji Aonuma. That's partly due to it never travelling beyond Japan's shores but thanks to a superb fan translation, the west can now witness just how marvellous Marvelous is.

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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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LEGEND OF LOTUS SPRING

On this most romantic of days, why not play through a traditional Chinese love story in The Legend of Lotus Spring (1999, Xing Xing). Taking place in a beautifully re-created Garden of Perfect Brightness (Yuan Ming Yuan or the Old Summer Palace) in Beijing during the Qing Dynasty, it recounts the tragic love story between Emperor Xian Feng and his concubine HeHanQu, a woman who he lovingly renames Lotus Spring.

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MONTY PYTHON'S MEANING OF LIFE

If anyone should ponder the meaning of life, it's the anarchic members a British comedy troupe.
The sketches in Monty Python's Meaning of Life may appear less focussed or story-driven than their previous two efforts, but it's no less funny for it. In fact, fourteen years after the movie's cinematic run in 1983, 7th Level created an adventure game out of it that's much more of a game than their previous Python adaptations.

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KINGDOM O' MAGIC

The Kingdom O' Magic is under threat, and only a busty blonde and a surly reptilian with a thick Scottish accent can help. Released in 1996 by Sales Curve Interactive (SCi), this adventure-RPG hybrid is filled with a very blue and very British sense of humour.

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QUEEN: THE EYE

With Bohemian Rhapsody winning all kinds of awards, the awesome musical stylings of Queen are again on everyone's minds - if they ever left. But on the outskirts of their rock anthems and operatic concept albums sits a band with a keen interest in science-fiction. We all know Flash Gordon, and some may have seen the Orwellian We Will Rock You on the stage, but most fascinating is Queen: The eYe (yes, that's how it's spelt), a little-known action-adventure published by Electronic Arts in limited numbers back in 1998.

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ALICE: AN INTERACTIVE MUSEUM

Before the influx of multi-media CDs flooded the market, even before Myst or The 7th Guest popularised it, a Japanese computer artist named Haruhiko Shono created a hallucinatory game loosely based on an equally hallucinatory children's book. Originally released in 1991 in Japan and 1994 elsewhere, Alice: An Interactive Museum stands as being one of the most trippy experiences ever put on CD.

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THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN COLLECTION

It's been quite an eventful year for everyone's friendly neighbourhood arachnid. First was a tearful (temporary) farewell to Tom Holland's Peter Parker in the excellent Avenger's: Infinity War. Then came the highly addictive Spider-Man game on the PlayStation 4 - one of the best games of the year. But before the biggest cinematic surprise of Spidey's cinematic outing (Into the Spider-verse) the world grieved at the deaths of his co-creators - the ever-personable Stan Lee and Steve Ditko earlier in the year. In honour of all that has come to pass, let's have an almost complete look at Spider-Man's amazing gaming past.

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RIPPER

In the realm of FMV computer games, has there ever been a more star-studded cast that of Ripper? Released in 1996 by Take-Two Interactive, it stars Christopher Walken, Karen Allen, Burgess Meredeth and several other recognisable faces among the rabble of Hollywood working stiffs. But can this retelling of Jack the Ripper transposed to the cyberpunk future of 2040 match the movie-quality output of its US setting?

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