Alien Poker

It’s hard to find additional information on Alien Poker on the internet. The whole thing only tells me about a pinball game also called Alien Poker. Strange, because the game I’m playing looks a lot like poker with aliens, not pinball. Oh well. Alien Poker is a 1993 game by JD Software. It’s a decent five-card draw poker game. With aliens. According to the story, you’re one of the few people who know there’s a bar on the dark side of the moon where aliens often gather to play poker. Let’s take a look!

And if your head explodes with dark forebodings too...

Alice in Wonderland

Alice in Wonderland is a text adventure by Robin Johnson from 1989. I tried to find more info on this Robin Johnson, and failed. It’s not the actress, at least I assume as much. Strangely enough, there’s an IF author with the same name, but it’s not him either. Oh well. I can understand the author not wanting to get known too well. So, the game. You play Alice on her discovery in Wonderland. You know, as in the book. Except, instead of having strange conversations with cats, rabbits and hatters you just die a lot. Hooray for deaths in text adventures.

How can anyone think this picture is a good idea?

Adventure

Hello people! Sorry for dropping out on you. University has started again and it’s eating a lot of my time. I’m not promising to get up to schedule just yet, but perhaps clearing a few games will get me in the mood again. Let’s go.

Adventure (AKA Colossal Cave Adventure) is the famous first interactive fiction game ever written. Due to the game being open sourced from the start (although it predates the current understanding of the term “open source”), there are many versions of it to be found. The version I have is the rather uncommon 551 points version, classified by Rick Adams as Adventure 6. Different versions come with somewhat different puzzles and because I really, really suck at solving puzzles (and because there seems to be no walkthrough available for this version anywhere) I will review Graham Nelson’s Z-code port of the well-known Woods’ 350 points version. I choose this version because it comes with Twisty on the Android platform – nothing more fun than playing IF on your cell phone when on the train.

At End Of Road
You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick building. Around you is a forest. A small stream flows out of the building and down a gully.

ALF World of Words

Oh Lord. Get me out of here. Oh God oh God oh God.

An educational game.

And sadly not an adult/educational game. (I’m so subtle with showing off what I like, am I not?)

Oh well. Have to do this I guess, there will be worse things along the way. Take a deep breath for…

ALF World of Words! Released in 1988 in an attempt to make an alien teach kids some English. Sure, makes perfect sense.

Ha. Ha. Ha.

ALF: The First Game

ALF is a 1988 game about, well, ALF, the Alien Life Form TV series star. In this game, you have to guide ALF around the rather mazelike neighborhood, collecting various goodies and avoiding baddies. Pacman-with-a-license, basically.

Air Force Commander

Air Force Commander is a 1992 real-time strategy game by Impressions set in the Middle-East. It’s not a full-out war simulation though. As the title kind of gives away, you only control the Air Force.

Al-Qadim: The Genie’s Curse

Guest review by E_net4. I suppose he also wanted a share of the fame and untold riches this blog gives to its writers and about which Crazy couldn’t keep his mouth shut. Now I’ll probably be flooded with guest reviews. But hey, enjoy. Just so you know, I also play all those guest reviewed games just for the experience. Gotta play ‘em all!

A side note: I’m just another internet commoner, I assume. I have played many oldies in the past and I looked forward to hearing more from Let’s Play Oldies. I haven’t played this game in the old times, but it was rather enjoyable to give it a try. Anyways, here’s my Live Space: http://net4games.spaces.live.com

Al-Qadim: The Genie’s Curse is an action RPG developed by Cyberlore Studios and published by Strategic Simulations, Inc in 1994. It seems to be based on an Advanced Dungeons and Dragons campaign setting. Anyways, the story is focused on a young corsair in the world of Al-Qadim (think of the thousand and one nights kind of place).

The main menu is quite promising.

Airlift Rescue

Airlift Rescue is a 1995 freeware remake of Choplifter, coded by David Fleming.

That’s almost all there is to say about it, really. If you don’t know Choplifter, it’s very easy. 64 people are being held hostage by someone non-USA. You have to rescue them with your helicopter. You shoot tanks, planes and, err, alienthings trying to kill you, you pick up the hostages and you drop them at the embassy. No score is being awarded for shooting enemies, only for rescuing the hostages.

Air Bucks

Trying to get a “Read more” thing on here to keep the front page a bit more readable. Notify me of problems.

Air Bucks is a 1992 air company management simulator, developed by Impressions and distributed by Sierra. Impressions is probably known best for the Caesar series of, well, ancient city management simulation. You know, the ones with all the fire. But we’re not here for Caesar – that’s for a later post.

Just in case you also had a fluid dynamics exam recently: remember planes that take off leave behind a starting vortex and flying planes shed trailing vortices both because of Helmholtz's theorems. More info on Wikipedia.

Airborne Rangers

Guest review by Crazy from the comic No Happy Endings. He actually made that blog just now so I could link to it but check it out as it’s good. Thanks for helping me out with the review while I’m preparing for a fluid dynamics exam I will never pass anyway! And this Amarth-person you might see referred in the text is just me. Pseudonyms, nicknames, confusion is lovely.

(To all those reading: Yes, i know i should be capitalizing my “i”-s but when i was first learning to write i was kind of unsure if i should be capitalizing it. Seemed like such an egotistical thing to do. Capitalize any moment you refer to yourself. And anyway, it’s stuck and it’s there and you can go suck on a caramel if you don’t like it. Seriously. It’ll mellow you out.)

2009-08-26 21:42:16  <Amarth> Don’t you want to play a fun DOS game instead and guest review it on LPO?

Why, that’s a splendid idea! Of course, since i’m an irredeemably boring person, i decided to define “fun” as “the next one alphabetically”. And since i apparently don’t know the alphabet, I played “Airborne Ranger” instead.