 |
| Katharsis | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Developer(s) | Metropolis Software House |
| Publisher(s) |
|
| Platform(s) | MS-DOS |
| Release | March 17, 1997 (shareware) [1] |
| Genre(s) | Scrolling shooter |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
Katharsis (also known as Blaster!) is a horizontally scrolling shooter from Polish developer Metropolis Software House and published by CD Projekt in 1997.
In the year 2616, a ship leaves Earth and 18 months later the planet loses contact with the vessel. In 4720 AD, Earth is attacked by a foreign ship and the player is one of the few survivors. Their mission is to protect a bomb that will be used to destroy the enemy base.
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Led by Polish developer Adrian Chmielarz, the team aimed to combine classical mechanisms for scrolling shooters with the increase in capabilities of IBM PC compatibles of the late twentieth century. [2] The Polish premiere of the game took place on March 1, 1997; the game received online and television press and a competition was created. [3] It had a US premiere on June 6, 1997. [4]
Meristation called the graphics and sound "novel". [5] The AV Vault thought the game put more attention into its graphics than its controls. [6] MerixStudio felt the game was surprisingly deep, complex and mysterious, and a notable example of Polish developers entering the side-scrolling market. [7]
Commander Keen is a series of side-scrolling platform video games developed primarily by id Software. The series consists of six main episodes, a "lost" episode, and a final game; all but the final game were released for MS-DOS in 1990 and 1991, while the 2001 Commander Keen was released for the Game Boy Color. The series follows the eponymous Commander Keen, the secret identity of the eight-year-old genius Billy Blaze, as he defends the Earth and the galaxy from alien threats with his homemade spaceship, rayguns, and pogo stick. The first three episodes were developed by Ideas from the Deep, the precursor to id, and published by Apogee Software as the shareware title Commander Keen in Invasion of the Vorticons; the "lost" episode 3.5 Commander Keen in Keen Dreams was developed by id and published as a retail title by Softdisk; episodes four and five were released by Apogee as the shareware Commander Keen in Goodbye, Galaxy; and the simultaneously developed episode six was published in retail by FormGen as Commander Keen in Aliens Ate My Babysitter. Ten years later, an homage and sequel to the series was developed by David A. Palmer Productions and published by Activision as Commander Keen. Another game was announced in 2019 as under development by ZeniMax Online Studios, but was not released.
Descent is a first-person shooter (FPS) game developed by Parallax Software and released by Interplay Productions in 1995 for MS-DOS, and later for Macintosh, PlayStation, and RISC OS. It popularized a subgenre of FPS games employing six degrees of freedom and was the first FPS to feature entirely true-3D graphics. The player is cast as a mercenary hired to eliminate the threat of a mysterious extraterrestrial computer virus infecting off-world mining robots. In a series of mines throughout the Solar System, the protagonist pilots a spaceship and must locate and destroy the mine's power reactor and escape before being caught in the mine's self-destruction, defeating opposing robots along the way. Players can play online and compete in either deathmatches or cooperate to take on the robots.
Recca is a 1992 scrolling shooter video game developed by KID and published by Naxat Soft for the Family Computer. Controlling the titular space fighter craft, the player is sent to counterattack an invading alien armada while avoiding collision with their projectiles and other obstacles. The ship has a powerful bomb at its disposal that can be used as shield and clear the screen of enemies and bullets when fully charged.
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Gunhed, known as Blazing Lazers in North America, is a vertically scrolling shooter game by Hudson Soft and Compile, based on the Japanese film Gunhed. The title was released in 1989, for the PC Engine in Japan and re-skinned for the TurboGrafx-16 in North America, with Gunhed unofficially imported for the PC Engine in Europe. In the game, a fictional galaxy is under attack by an enemy space armada called the Dark Squadron, and this galaxy's only chance for survival is the Gunhed Advanced Star Fighter, who must destroy the Dark Squadron and its Super Weapons. The gameplay features fast vertical scrolling and a wide array of weapons for the player to use.
Egypt Kids is an educational video game, released in 2001 for Microsoft Windows. It was developed by EMG and published by Cryo Interactive under the Cryo Kids brand. The game was made in association with Réunion des Musées Nationaux. The Russian version was localised by Nival Interactive. The game is available in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, and Polish.
Necronomicon: The Dawning of Darkness, also known as Necronomicon: The Gateway to Beyond, is a 2000 video game developed by Wanadoo Edition and released for Windows and the PlayStation video game console.
Duke Nukem is a media franchise named for its main character, Duke Nukem. Created by the company Apogee Software Ltd. as a series of video games for personal computers, the series expanded to games released for various consoles by third-party developers. The first two games in the main series were 2D platformers, while the later games have been a mix of first-person and third-person shooters.
Electro Man, originally distributed in Poland under the title Electro Body, is an MS-DOS platform game developed by the Polish company X LanD Computer Games. It was originally released in Poland by xLand in 1992, and later published by Epic MegaGames in the United States in 1993; apart from the changed title, the Electro Man release contains some changes, such as upgraded graphics. Though initially offered under a shareware license, the game was released as freeware by the developer on June 25, 2006, under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 license. The player controls a cyborg named "Jacek", who must get through all the areas of a space base while destroying enemies.
Gift is a platform game developed by French studio Eko Software that parodies elements of popular adventure games. It was created by Cryo Interactive's creative director Philippe Ulrich and by author, cartoonist and illustrator Régis Loisel. The game is set over ten levels in a full 3-D world.
Dreams to Reality is a 1997 third-person action-adventure game developed and published by Cryo Interactive. It was ported to the PlayStation under the title Dreams.
ProtoGalaxy is a cross-genre video game for Microsoft Windows that was released on October 6, 2010. In the game's back-story, a species of powerful, unknown extraterrestrials enters the Milky Way with the intention of enslaving its inhabitants. The player characters must defend Earth from this alien threat and restore human civilization. ProtoGalaxy is a 2.5D game; the 2D playing field employs 3D graphics. ProtoGalaxy incorporates elements of a variety of gaming genres, such as adventure, arcade, shooter, puzzle, and role-playing genres.
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Commander Keen in Invasion of the Vorticons is a three-part episodic side-scrolling platform video game developed by Ideas from the Deep and published by Apogee Software in 1990 for MS-DOS. It is the first set of episodes of the Commander Keen series. The game follows the titular Commander Keen, an eight-year-old child genius, as he retrieves the stolen parts of his spaceship from the cities of Mars, prevents a recently arrived alien mothership from destroying landmarks on Earth, and hunts down the leader of the aliens, the Grand Intellect, on the alien home planet. The three episodes feature Keen running, jumping, and shooting through various levels while opposed by aliens, robots, and other hazards.
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