North & South

Release Date: 1989 Platform(s): Commodore Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64, DOS, MSX, NES Developer: Infogrames Genre: Action / Strategy The American Civil War was surely not the most pleasant of wars. Wedged uncomfortably close to the nasty delights of industrialization, it was a muddle of shelling and gunpowder, in which people got their faces burned off, or were accidentally...

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Breath of Fire II

Release Date: 1994 Platform: SNES Developer: Capcom Genre: Role-Playing Breath of Fire II is an RPG great on a console crammed full of them. Released on the SNES, it joins the likes of Secret of Mana, the Final Fantasy series, Chrono Trigger, and the original Breath of Fire at the very top of its chosen genre. It takes place 500 years after the end of the original game to...

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Wave Race 64

Release Date: 1996 Platform: N64 Developer: Nintendo Genre: Racing Let's be honest, nobody ever fell in love with Wave Race 64. Despite hailing from the same stable as Super Mario and company, this Jet Ski racing game with its four identical riders just doesn't have the personality for that. The visuals don't help either. Superficially, Wave Race 64 is even a bit-- whisper...

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Totally Radical Video Game Ads

In today's flashy, business-minded world, the people in charge of game advertising are creatively stuck-in-a-rut; they have to worry about unimportant things like 'making a game look good' and 'being in good taste'.  But in the 'all or nothing' days of the 80s and 90s, designers and advertising execs were true artists. They were responsible for game ads that were so...

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GoldenEye 007

Release Date: 1997 Platform(s): Nintendo 64 Developer: Rare Genre: Shoot 'Em Up You could argue that the title of Best James Bond Game ironically sits with a series that has nothing to do with James Bond, the Metal Gear series. Less debatable, though, is the holder of the title of Most Important Console First-Person Shooter. Before GoldenEye 007, and adaptation that played...

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EverQuest

Release Date: 1999 Platform(s): PC Developer: Sony Online Entertainment Genre: MMORPG In the 1990s, role-playing games already had a solid and devoted fan base, with opportunities to imagine great fantasy worlds while acting out the life and times of any class, race, or even sex of choice. By late in the century, multi-user games of increasingly cutting-edge...

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