Westwood Studios, Inc. was an American video game developer, based in Las Vegas, Nevada. It was founded by Brett Sperry and Louis Castle in 1985 as Brelous Software, but got changed after 2 months into Westwood Associates and was renamed to Westwood Studios when Virgin Games bought the company in 1992. The company was bought by Electronic Arts alongside Virgin Interactive's North American operations in 1998. In January 2003, it was announced that Westwood, alongside Westwood Pacific, would be merged into EA Los Angeles. The main studio location closed in March of that year.
Andreas Jochen Hippel is a musician from Kirchheimbolanden in southwest Germany. He played one of the most prominent roles in computer music during the 16-bit microcomputer era, composing hundreds of tunes for games and demos. He was also an experienced Amiga programmer and ported many of Thalion Software's Atari ST titles. He no longer composes music for a living and in 2006 he was working in logistics.
Eye of the Beholder is a role-playing video game for personal computers and video game consoles developed by Westwood Associates. It was published by Strategic Simulations, Inc. in 1991, for the MS-DOS operating system and later ported to the Amiga, the Sega CD and the SNES. The Sega CD version features a soundtrack composed by Yuzo Koshiro and Motohiro Kawashima. A port to the Atari Lynx handheld was developed by NuFX in 1993, but was not released. In 2002, an adaptation of the same name was developed by Pronto Games for the Game Boy Advance.
Catacomb 3-D is a first-person shooter video game, the third in the Catacomb series, the first of which to feature 3D computer graphics. It was developed by id Software and originally published by Softdisk under the Gamer's Edge label, released in November 1991. The player takes control of the high wizard Petton Everhail, descending into the catacombs of the Towne Cemetery to defeat the evil lich Nemesis and rescue his friend Grelminar.
Dungeon Master is a role-playing video game featuring a pseudo-3D first-person perspective. It was developed and published by FTL Games for the Atari ST in 1987, almost identical Amiga and PC (DOS) ports following in 1988 and 1992.
Ultima VI: The False Prophet, released by Origin Systems in 1990, is the sixth part in the role-playing video game series of Ultima. It is the third and final game in the "Age of Enlightenment" trilogy. Ultima VI sees the player return to Britannia, at war with a race of gargoyles from another land, struggling to stop a prophecy from ending their race. The player must help defend Britannia against these gargoyles, and ultimately discover the secrets about both lands and its peoples.
Ultima IX: Ascension is the ninth and final part of the main series of the role-playing video game series Ultima. Developed by Origin Systems and published by Electronic Arts, Ultima IX was released in 1999 for Microsoft Windows after years in development hell. Following the Avatar's escape from Pagan, he is transported back to Britannia for one final battle with the Guardian, who is increasingly ruining the physical and moral fabric of that land by the use of eight columns. The Avatar must fight his way to the runes of virtue found in each of the columns, and cleanse them in the shrines of Virtue, then face off against the Guardian himself.
Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny is a role-playing video game developed by Attic Entertainment Software. It was the first game based on the German pen & paper RPG system The Dark Eye by Schmidt Spiele. The original German version of the game was released in 1992. Due to its success it was translated to English and released by Sir-Tech in 1993.
Jungle Strike is a video game developed and published by Electronic Arts in 1993 for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive. The game was later released on several other consoles such as the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), and an upgraded version was made for DOS computers. The Amiga conversion was the responsibility of Ocean Software while the SNES and PC DOS versions were that of Gremlin Interactive, and the portable console versions were of Black Pearl Software. It is the direct sequel to Desert Strike and is the second installment in the Strike series. The game is a helicopter-based shoot 'em up, mixing action and strategy. The plot concerns two villains intent on destroying Washington, D.C. The player must use the helicopter and occasionally other vehicles to thwart their plans.
Obitus is an action-adventure game developed and released by Psygnosis in early 1991 for Amiga, Atari ST and DOS. It was also ported to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System by Bullet-Proof Software. The game features both first-person dungeon crawling and side-scrolling gameplay with action-oriented combat and an emphasis on item acquisition. It is similar to games like Eye of the Beholder on Super Nintendo but without the RPG mechanics.
Treasures of the Savage Frontier (1992) is a Gold Box Dungeons & Dragons role-playing video game. It was developed by Beyond Software and published by SSI for the Amiga and DOS.
Eye of the Beholder II: The Legend of Darkmoon is a 1991 role-playing video game and the sequel to the first Eye of the Beholder. It used a modified version of the first game's engine, added outdoor areas and greatly increased the amount of interaction the player had with their environment, along with substantially more role-playing aspects to the game. A sequel, Eye of the Beholder III: Assault on Myth Drannor, was released in 1993.
Ambermoon is a role-playing game developed and published by Thalion Software, released in 1993 for the Amiga. It was the second part of an unfinished trilogy.
In video games, first-person is any graphical perspective rendered from the viewpoint of the player character, or from the inside of a device or vehicle controlled by the player character. It is one of two perspectives used in the vast majority of video games, with the other being third-person, the graphical perspective from outside of any character ; some games such as interactive fiction do not belong to either format.
Lionheart is a platform game for the Amiga developed and self-published by German video game developer Thalion Software in 1993. Using a fantasy motif, the game takes place in the land of the Cat People, a race of feline humanoids, who are threatened by the evil Norka. The player assumes control of Valdyn, an outlaw swordsman who is also known as "Lionheart". Players have to fight their way through 14 levels filled with monsters and environmental hazards. Most of the gameplay is melee combat and precision platforming.
Legends of Valour is a role-playing video game developed by Synthetic Dimensions and released by U.S. Gold and Strategic Simulations in 1992 for the Amiga, Atari ST and MS-DOS, with the additional FM Towns and PC-98 versions in 1993-1994 in Japan only. As the game was planned to be a first part of the series, its full title is Legends of Valour: Volume I – The Dawning. The proposed unreleased sequel to Legends of Valour was to take place in the world outside Mitteldorf, the enclosed city where the entirety of Legends of Valour takes place.
A first-person shooter (FPS) is a video game centered on gun fighting and other weapon-based combat seen from a first-person perspective, with the player experiencing the action directly through the eyes of the main character. This genre shares multiple common traits with other shooter games, and in turn falls under the action games category. Since the genre's inception, advanced 3D and pseudo-3D graphics have proven fundamental to allow a reasonable level of immersion in the game world, and this type of game helped pushing technology progressively further, challenging hardware developers worldwide to introduce numerous innovations in the field of graphics processing units. Multiplayer gaming has been an integral part of the experience, and became even more prominent with the diffusion of internet connectivity in recent years.
Jurassic Park is a 1993 action video game developed and published by Ocean Software, for DOS and Amiga computers. The game is based on director Steven Spielberg's 1993 film, Jurassic Park, and also includes elements from author Michael Crichton's 1990 novel of the same name, which the film is based upon.
Dragonflight is a 1990 role-playing video game developed and published by Thalion Software for the Amiga, Atari ST, and MS-DOS. The game started development in January 1987 by two German programmers Udo Fischer and Erik Simon.
Trex Warrior: 22nd Century Gladiator is a 1991 action video game developed and published by Thalion Software for the Amiga and Atari ST. Previously unreleased in the United Kingdom, the game was released in 1993 on The One magazine cover disk as public-domain software.
