Articles by Peter Malek

In late 1996, arcade-goers were treated to AM1’s The House of the Dead — a light gun game with a horror theme. The enigmatic Dr. Curien, hell-bent on discovering the…

Druid: Pursuer of Darkness is a mid-1998 Koei port of a British 1995 MS-DOS Ultima-like game. In the land of Navan, four master Druids keep peace in the land, but…

Online dating on the Saturn[question_mark] Sort of! In 1998, SIMS and Dreamcube released the second Message Navi “game” in Japan. The disc is essentially a catalogue of more than 1,000…

Quintet’s Japan-only 1998 genre-blender Code R is part racing game, part dating sim because, let’s face it, it is the ’90s! Featuring various modes including battle mode, time attack, and…

It began on the wings of an armored blue dragon… the Panzer Dragoon series is perhaps the premier Saturn franchise, helping launch the system in the West with the first…

Taito’s 1996 release Tokyo Shadow is a cool mix of FMV and graphic adventure. You are Hide, and along with your girlfriend Kyoko, you are investigating a supernatural lightning strike…

Exciting Slot Shooting is a curious game, fusing top-down shooting with… a slot machine component! Looking like a Technicolor reverse Space Invaders, different colored monsters are released in waves from…

Published by SEGA and released in late 1995, X Japan Virtual Shock 001 can best be described as an FMV walking simulator where the player takes on the role of…

Something mysterious has fallen from space and crashed into the Pacific, near the underwater military research facility the Big Table. As a member of the Emergency Rescue Service, you take…

A 1995 side-scrolling beat-em-up courtesy of Technosoft, Nekketsu Oyako (roughly, Hot Blooded Family) is a colorful one- to two-player affair. Family matriarch and scientist Saeko has been captured — take…