Looking for 3D gravity shooter, ca. 1999

Question

I've been wanting to play a game whose demo I enjoyed very much back around 1999.
It is:

• A third-person-shooter where you control a hovering aircraft/ship of some sort.
• You start in the atmosphere of a planet with a limited fuel supply and must avoid being shot down by enemies or turrets and also avoiding any wall or ground contact while taking out narrow underground bases. It reminded me a little of Descent.
• When fuel ran out, you crashed and lost - so the fuel also was a time limit.
• The ship could turn freely, although acceleration/movement was solely via thrusters. You keep your momentum and direction, being affected only by gravity. In order to fire, you need to turn the ship in the direction of the target. Kinda like MOAGG but in 3D.
• As mentioned, it was released around 1999 (+1/-2 years I guess)
• It had fantastic 3D graphics (for the time) with fog, lighting effects, explosions etc. - so I guess some OpenGL or Direct3D was involved. It ran on Win98 and presumably Win95.
• IIRC the controls were mouse-only with the option to also bind keyboard keys.

Does the description ring a bell? :)

Edit: Alan B pointed me to Virus 2000 which is very similar. The game I'm looking for is like V2000 but you always see the ship from behind (so that the screen "turns" instead of the ship) and are able to enter underground buildings and tunnels.

Answer

With emphasis on thrusting vs inertia, preserving fuel, and avoiding collisions, your description sounds like a 3D version of Lunar Lander; and indeed there was such a game released on 1999 for Windows, called Lander, by Psygnosis. The other parts in your description also seem to fit, as far as I can tell.

Here's a link to the MobyGames screenshot page, and you can check out this gameplay video:

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Childrens game consisting of many small games

Question

I remember a game from when I was a little kid, but don't recall the title, so I thought I would try my luch and see if any of you can help me. Here is what I can remember of it:

Time period

I believe the game came bundled with a Windows 95 PC, so it's from around that time period.

Game selection screen

The game started here. On this, a large UFO flew onto screen, and shot down 5-6 shots, each one becoming a minigame you could play.

The minigames

• Marble sandbox. There was a wooden surface, which you could manipulate with drills and such to make a marble track. You could then put marbles on it and play with them.
• Photo manipulation game. You were given a photo and a manipulated version of the same photo, and then had to chain the correct filters to match the manipulated one.
• Football half-time show. You could place cheerleaders and football players onto the field, and then program them to perform a half-time show. Each type of person could be given different orders.
• Place the aliens correctly-puzzle. Sort of like a zebra puzzle, you were given some aliens and house with rooms, which formed a grid. You then had to place the aliens in the correct rooms, such that the requirements they gave you held true.
• Squid trading game. There was a map of the world, with places you trade certain things. (For instance, a baseball to a coin, or an apple to two oranges) You then had certain starting resources, and had to reach some ending resources. You did the trading through a squid who phoned the different places to perform the trade.

There's probably one or two minigames missing, but that's what I can remember of it.

Additional information

The computer was an Amitech, and it was purchased in Denmark. I do not recall if the game was in English or in Danish.

Answer

I managed to figure out the name of the game; it's called Tankespil 3 (translated: Thinking Game 3). It's in Danish and was sold by Nordic Softsales.

Sadly it doesn't appear to be sold anymore.

In case anyone is curious, I found it through an old Amitech computer manual, which I happened to stumble upon. Thanks go to agent86 for giving me the idea to search for that.

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Identify this medical shooter

Question

I'm trying to remember a game I played on windows 95/98, some kind of first person shooter with a medical theme. The game was 2D, with sprites being scaled to give a sense of depth. You where piloting a miniaturized ship in the human body, trying to eliminate all viruses in the screen. The game was in first person, but with only lateral movement available, your ship could go up/down and left/right to shoot the enemies.

You had too shoot all enemies on the screen before too much reached the background and damaged the patient or reached you and destroy your ship. There were lots of different enemies, from fast, bat like bacteria to hamburger-cholesterol and joker like viruses. Each screen background was a body part, like the eye, the stomach or the heart.

The game was divided into missions, each being a different patient. A mission was one or more screen, and was introduced with a briefing about the illness and where the mission took place, and a debriefing showing how well we did. The briefing was some kind a slide-show, with your superior describing the procedure. You would also sometimes have a small quiz about the place where you would operate, asking informations like the number of bones in the leg... All the informations were present in a in-game encyclopedia.

Sometime, when you ended a mission, you would gain a rank, going trough a cinematic where you would see yourself getting your new insignia. You could also gain medals for special achievements, like ending a mission without having the patient damaged.

Answer

The game is Bodyworks Voyager – Mission in Anatomy, released in 1994.

Image from Moby Games.

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How do I run “Frogger 2 - Swampy's Revenge” on newer Computers

Question

Someone gave me this game as a birthday present. Unfortunataly the installation does not even start under Windows 7, Compability Mode does not help with that. It is a Windows 95 game. How can I get it up and running again.

Answer

The installation for Frogger 2 is likely a 16-bit application, which are not supported on 64-bit versions of Windows.

Unfortunately, this only leaves you two options: Find if someone has written a 32-bit or 64-bit installer (this has happened for Grim Fandango and a few other games) or use a Virtual Machine.

Having said that, Virtual Box's Direct3D support was limited to DirectX 8 and 9. Unfortunately, this means that older titles do not work on it.

VMWare Player appears to support DX7 and earlier, but it has a somewhat intrusive signup process even though it's a free app, which involves them annoyingly sending you an email newsletter.

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Can't remember name of old flight simulator game…

Question

I'm trying to remember the name of an old flight simulator game I used to play as a kid (not too long ago, around the release of Windows 95 or 98). My memory is a little crappy, so please try to bear with me (the time frame should help, though - 1995/6 to 1998).

I remember playing the game as 3D, though it was front-facing into the computer with perspective, and as the pilot, I had to try and avoid hitting blocks that were coming at me on a grid. Does this sound like anything familiar? I was around 3-5 then, so I'm sorry I can't remember much.

If the color scheme helps, the background was reddish, and the blocks coming at me were blue. I remember that I kept getting to some screen with a bunch of flags on it (I assume a multinational disclaimer of some kind), but of course, I couldn't read, so I can't tell you anything beyond that.

I've been looking for this game for ages, and for whatever reason, the internet hasn't yet compiled a list of all released flight simulators, so I have nowhere to look this up. If anyone remembers anything like this, let me know... thanks!

Answer

Perhaps it was Cylindrix? One of its "maps" has blue blocks and red background. You can download and play it for free to check if it's the same.

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Cylindrix is not a flight simulator. The thing is, when you write

I had to try and avoid hitting blocks that were coming at me on a grid

It doesn't sound at all like a flight simulator. In the flight simulators I know th eonly obstacle is the ground (and sometimes buildings), and there's certainly no "grid". I think the reason you are having a hard time finding it is because you search for a flight simulator.

If anything, it sounds more like a fly-in-tunnel game, something like this flash game (only with added obstacles). Is that closer to what you remember? Unfortunately I don't remember any games like that from ~1995, only games in which you could not fly - such as the wonderful SkyRoads (also free).

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