I acquired a space-themed game, a 1993 space-themed CD-ROM title called Space Adventure:

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Oh, and I also acquired a somewhat more recent and mainstream space-themed game– StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty.

It’s pretty difficult to work through any of my 900+ DOS/Windows games (including the 200+ games not currently present in the database) when I’m just having too much fun playing SC2. It leaves me feeling like a bit of a sellout. It’s just so mainstream. I know all about the controversy surrounding the game — can’t play, even single-player campaign, without being connected to the internet; no LAN play — but I haven’t been able to bring myself to care. I’m really enjoying a game for the first time in quite awhile. If I ever finish the primary campaign, I might be motivated to plunder my archives for other real time strategy games I have acquired (perhaps revisiting some of the titles I have already briefly examined for this blog or recently acquired. But given the ponderous rate at which I’m playing through the Wings of Liberty campaign (really taking my time and getting all the achievements on each mission), the new SC2 expansions might be out by the time I get through the main 24 missions.

Well, back to it.

I recently acquired a sizable collection of computer games from someone who clearly is or was very enthusiastic about war-themed video games. War games are popular among the type of people who would normally contribute to an entity such as MobyGames. As such, all of these acquisitions are already in the database (though I do have a lot of scanning ahead of me since scans of many of the CD-ROMs I acquired didn’t make it into the database).

I’ll start with some World War II-themed titles:

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• Hidden & Dangerous
• Close Combat: A Bridge Too Far
• 101: The Airborne Invasion of Normandy
• Avalon Hill’s Squad Leader
• WWII: Iwo Jima
• WWII: GI

Flight games, notably Jane’s Combat Simulations:

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• Jane’s F-15
• Jane’s Longbow (Gold)
• Jane’s WWII Fighters
• Talonsoft’s 12 O’Clock High

Uncategorized war games:

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• Delta Force
• M1 Tank Platoon II

And a few stragglers that don’t really fit into the (modern, 20th century) genre of war game:

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• Desperados: Wanted Dead or Alive
• The Ultima Collection
• Interstate ’76

Random grab-bag of obscure acquisitions from recent online auctions:

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• Butt-Ugly Martians: Martian Boot Camp — the only title in this acquisition set not presently in the database
• Aces of the Deep
• Dinosaur Adventure 3-D
• Ultimate Pinball

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• Lock-On: Modern Air Combat
• Gore: Ultimate Soldier
• Zax: The Alien Hunter
• Ariel’s Story Studio — also not in the database, but likely not a technical game

15 discs, fresh from my favorite thrift store. Let’s start with the Barbie titles acquired which, remarkably, are still not in my collection:

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• Barbie Super Sports
• Barbie Horse Adventures: Mystery Ride — there seems to be a series of Barbie horse adventure titles and this one remains absent from MobyGames
• Barbie Sparkling Ice Show — it’s unclear to me whether this is a game but it’s already in MobyGames

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• Show Down in Ghost Town — same series of games as Phantom of the Knight
• Guild Wars — I hear this is popular, but I don’t know much about it; the disc was cheap so it goes in my collection

Here are the purportedly educational games from this haul:

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• Star Wars Math: Jabba’s Game Galaxy — unusual in its artwork portraying various Star Wars rogues in more of a kid-friendly rendition
• ClueFinders 4th Grade Adventures — I have only played one ClueFinders game so far but I remember enjoying it
• Museum Madness
• The King And I: Animated Thinking Adventure — based on the animated move

Here are games that I group by no more than the common property that they came with no cover art, only bare discs:

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• SSN-21 Seawolf
• Microsoft Fury^3 — oh wait, I do have the back of the jewel case available for this game and the tiny screenshots and the controls cheat sheet makes it seem like a Descent clone
• Fisher-Price: Time to Play Pet Shop
• The Great Word Adventure 1: Tune Land — featuring Howie Mandel, part of “Lil’ Howie’s Fun House”

And 2 more titles which probably don’t qualify as games, but I still collect schlock like this, especially as outlandish as this:

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• Mary-Kate & Ashley’s Dance Party of the Century — first title of this ‘franchise’ I have acquired
• Nick-O-Matic Design Factory — boasts over 650 projects

Here’s a new score that came in, mostly adventure games. There really isn’t much here that needs to go into MobyGames. But the games were essentially free so I acquired them anyway.

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• Jump Raven: I’m looking forward to having a closer look at this one because it’s a 1993 game from “Cyberflix: The Interactive Movie Company” and I’m all about the old multimedia-heavy FMV games.
• Jutland: I already have this title but this is a slightly different version (1.1). Again, it was basically free, so no big deal.
• The Viva Adventure Anthology: This is not in MobyGames yet but all of its constituent games are, so it should be pretty straightforward.
  • Agon: The Mysterious Codex
  • Black Buccaneer
  • The Omega Stone
  • Paradise
  • Physicus
  • Riddle of the Sphinx
  • Syberia II

Okay, seriously, I’m totally going to ease up off the new game acquisitions after this. It’s just that the same person who was getting rid of all those real time strategy games seen in a recent acquisition log was also giving away a bunch of other random, old, CD-ROM games. Many of them were still new in their original boxes. All of the boxes come from the era when computer boxes were growing to mammoth proportions; enormous specimens that contained a jewel case if you were lucky, but more likely just enclosed a lot of complicated corrugated cardboard along with a CD-ROM in a paper sleeve.

I received 16 games total today. 4 of them are not currently in the MobyGames database:

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• Mission Chameleon
• Cyber Chess
• Amazing Learning Games with Rayman
• Fantasy Football Draft Kit ’99

Here is a selection of other titles that came in today, presented for their oddity. Remarkably, each is already in the database:

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• Rules of the Game
• Action Man: Raid on Island X (I’ve never heard of this Hasbro franchise before but apparently there is a video game series consisting of no less than 5 games)
• MTV Total Request Live Trivia
• Extreme Bullrider (from the same people who brought you Extreme Angler)
• Star Wars Demolition (Sega Dreamcast)