Here are my fathers Day gifts for this year. I’m a happy man.
Alien Brigade – Atari 7800 (1990)
Alien Brigade is a side scrolling shooter similar to Operation Wolf. Aliens have arrived on earth and have brainwashed both soldiers and civilians in order to take over the world. Your job is to stop them! On each of the five levels you will have a different objective to complete, including saving civilians and destroying alien installations. Throughout the levels there will be numerous aliens and brainwashed people you will need to shoot, as well as attacking tanks, helicopters, and more. After shooting enemies a bonus may sometimes be left behind; if you shoot this, you can earn additional ammo, more powerful weapons, or increased health. If you don’t shoot fast enough and are hit by enemy fire your health will slowly decrease; the game ends when all of your health is gone.
Crossbow – Atari 7800 (1989)
In Crossbow, you and several friends are trying to cross many treacherous landscapes in order to retrieve stolen treasures from the castle of the Evil Master. All of the members of your party are unarmed, however you carry a crossbow. Using this, you need to shoot any obstacles or hostile enemies that may get in the way of your friends as they cross the screen. You see the landscape from a first person point of view, and one by one each member of the party will walk from the left to right on the screen. There are many different landscapes that need to be crossed, each with its own variety of dangers. There are deserts with scorpions, ice caverns, jungles with hostile monkeys, a lava spewing volcano, and even the heavily guarded castle. The game starts with two friends in your party, with additional friends joining after clearing certain parts of the game. The game ends when everyone in your party has been killed.
Desert Falcon – Atari 7800 (1987)
Desert Falcon is an arcade style shooter. Many of the Pharaoh’s great treasures are lost throughout the desert, and your goal is to steal as many as you can to earn points. The game features a scrolling, isometric point of view as you control your falcon through the various desert landscapes. The treasures you are after are guarded of course. Many desert creatures including vultures, warriors, flying fish, sphinxes and more will all attempt to stop you from succeeding in your task. Also, at the end of each level you will need to face a large, howling sphinx before you can continue on. Your falcon isn’t completely unarmed, and has the ability to fire darts which can be used to destroy the assorted enemies and the sphinx. In the sand, you will occasionally come across some hieroglyphs. Several different superpowers can be gained by landing and hopping over three of these hieroglyphs. Depending on which hieroglyphs are collected, you may become invincible, warp to the end of the level, earn free points, trick enemies into attacking a decoy instead of you, or even get an air bomb which destroys all airborne enemies.
Dino Crisis 2 – Sony Playstation (2000)
The research on the mysterious Third Energy is being continued in secret, but then an entire island with the facility conducting this research and a neighbouring town has vanished, moving back in time to the dinosaur era. A military unit is sent to the past to save the survivors and retrieve the research data. But nearly all soldiers are massacred by dinosaurs. You take control of Regina and Dylan, who managed to escape this fate. Now you must find the survivors, retrieve the data, and get back to your own time.
Dino Crisis 2 is a survival horror game in which you control the characters Dylan and Regina (switching from one to another at various points in the storyline). You will collect items and use them to solve puzzles while fighting the hordes of dinosaurs that inhabit the island. Much like Alone in the Dark, the game uses 3D models for characters, enemies and items and static 2D backgrounds for their surroundings.
Initially, each character starts with a gun and a melee weapon, but more weapons, such as flamethrowers or rocket launchers, can be bought later in the game. The dinosaurs’ attacks cause you to lose “vitality”, which can be restored using healing items. Sometimes an attack will cause you to bleed and thus slowly lose health; specific health items stop the bleeding.
For each killed dinosaur you receive “Extinction Points”. By killing a couple of dinos in quick succession, you activate a ‘combo’ and thus get more points. The points can be used in “Save Shops” throughout the game to buy weapons, ammo (and cartridge upgrades which allow you to store more ammo within the weapon), healing items and “tools” (such as armour, more powerful melee weapons, or “cards” which allow you to get bigger combos). You can also save the game at these points.
While wandering around the island, you’ll find many documents and letters to read, including “Dino Files”, which contain a flavour description of a dino species.
