Conquest was one of the first card games I made after I had discovered Magic: The Gathering. Many more would follow. This one featured a castle-building mechanic, where cards either had creatures to attack the other person’s castle or buildings to improve your own. Castles were built on a shared grid map, and creatures moved on this map as well. Unfortunately, the exact rules were lost and the game was not self-explanatory enough to figure out how it worked. Still a promising board game idea, though ;).
Cheap high-quality card stock was made for this game by gluing together 3 pages of normal printing paper.Some additional rules for the different buildings, as well as kickass WordArt.
Despite being considerably better in terms of gameplay than the original Sonic The Hethehog (it was so good it even skipped a number in the title), this game failed to correct the typo that crept into the title of the original. It was also made for 21-bit systems, which was an onorthodox move by developer Maan Studio, as there were and are no 21-bit systems on the market. It did feature a really badass boss called “De Kraakgas” (roughly translated as “The Crackfume”) though.
However, the final nail in the coffin for this title was that Maan Studio fired their lead artist Julian, resulting in more Sonic abominations than the human mind is really capable of dealing with:
No fourth edition was made. As a consequence of this game, drawing very very bad versions of Sonic is now a federal offense in most parts of the world.
Much like the Anno series, the Super Kip franchise was known for its unconventional numbering of titles. After Super Kip Wan (which translates from Dutch/Japanese as “Super Chicken One”) came the brilliant but flawed Super Kip Sega II: 9242 bit. After that, the author decided 9242 bits really was too much for people to handle, and turned it down a notch to the more comfortable 28 bits.
This game hit a sweet spot between Super Kip Wan, which was too hard, and the 9242 bit edition, which had too many bits for anyone to handle. It met huge critical acclaim amongst Super Kip fans, and was awarded with the “Best Game of the Century” award (“Beste Spel deze Eeuw”) in 1993 (see title screen). You read that right, in 1993 everyone was so fucking sure this was the best game of the century that they didn’t even wait and just handed out the award right then and there. Madness!
To give you an idea what the craze what about, here’s some screenshots from the game:
4 difficulty levels! Powerups! A big boss! A kill boss! Dracula chicken! This game has it all.6 different worlds!Angry bearded ghost.Abstract chicken art.
Maan Studio later tried to make a successor to this game, but this game turned out to be… unsuccessable.
Sega Sonic The Hetgehog was a co-operation between yours truly and his best friend Julian. You can tell from the fact that this game actually contains well-drawn pictures.
The K-Boy, once hailed as the vastly superior successor to the Game Boy, crashed and burned on the stock market after the developer of the highly succesful launch title Monster Quest 1 failed to produce a sequel. Despite petitions from fans worldwide, Maan Studio remains silent and refuses to comment on what happened in the 90’s, when all eyes were on them to deliver the next record-breaking smash hit for the K-Boy platform.
The second entry in the Prins franchise. Features more sword-enemies and skeletons. Calls itself both number 2 and 3 in the series on the same page because it was THAT awesome. Spoils all the bosses by putting them on the first page, in order.
Also, the title is not a typo. This game is really about The Shadow of the Deadh. The Deadh are that race of angry skeletons. Really.
Maybe I went through a Japanese phase that I have forgotten about, but more likely I just misspelled “One” in the title screen here (see image above).
Let me tell you guys, if you ever feel like picking up a game from the Super Kip Sega franchise, I recommend skipping this one. The level design is awful, the difficulty curve is horrible and you are completely unfit even as a Super Chicken (Super Kip) to beat these odds:
One of the lesser entries in the legendary Castle Quest paper adventure series. Didn’t even feature a colored front-page. After the success of Castle Quest 5, Maan Studio clearly decided to rest on its laurels and release the next episode way too early. They wouldn’t make the same mistake again with Castle Quest 7.
Despite being one of the least accomplished ones, it was still one of the bulkiest, thanks to the fact that it featured an elaborate King’s Quest 5-inspired desert sequence featuring tens of variations of the following:
A cactus.Another Cactus, but there’s something going on to the right of it.An empty page. Yes, there were about 15 of those.
If you like that kinda stuff (I’m looking at you, King’s Quest 5), I can heartily recommend this entry. Otherwise, I would move right on to it’s superior successor, Castle Quest 7.
Ahh, Prins! One of the first games I made, after being completely blown away as a child by the utterly brilliant first Prince of Persia game. To this day, I still try to relive the magic I felt playing that game for the first time, and I’ve also tried to recreate the magic in games of my own. This was my first attempt: a paper version of Prince of Persia, in which you jumped, dodged and fought with your finger, while I (the game master) played the enemies and traps with my fingers.
Check out these maze-like levels that really gave Prince a run for its money:
Each enemy (swords) had its own playstyle and lives. Also, I really liked timed gates and buttons.One of the first levels. Easy peasy!
There were plenty of boss battles as well. This is the level leading up to the final boss:
Note a gameplay feature not present in the original Prince: wall hooks. Also note how later Prince games DID feature plenty of those. Way ahead of my time.The final boss of Prins. Note that I drew in an reference image of a normal human and a normal skeleton to really give you a sense of how FUCKING HUGE this badass was. To make him even more badass, I also told you his favourite food: ROCKS. What a beast.
The first Zee Quest (“Sea Quest”) game that was not lost in the sands of time. Introduces the dreadful Iquhash, the scourge of the sea and the drop-in replacement for the stingray at the end of Eco Quest, on which this game was based.
Where did this horrible creature come from? Was it a mutant fish caused by human pollution? Was it an alien who rode a comet to the bottom of the ocean? Zee Quest 1 could have told us, but I sure can’t. It’ll probably be a mystery forever.
You know what’s not a mystery? The sequel to Zee Quest 2 called Zee Quest 3.
