In a grim future where a once-benevolent alien technology has turned against humanity, only a ragtag group of ace pilots can save the Earth from total annihilation. Code name: Thunder Force! Witness the first 32-bit installment of the massively popular shooter series! Five spectacular weapons with multiple power-up levels let you blast through waves of metallic predators, and look good doing it. A constant barrage of innovative enemies keeps you intrigued while you struggle to stay alive. A speaker-imploding soundtrack has your foot tapping as your fingers are mashing. Unbelievable rendered cutscenes draw, no-DRAG you kicking and screaming into the action. Put simply, it's the ultimate hardcore gaming blast-o-rama!
The player controls Spike Spiegel's Swordfish II from a third person perspective. Each level involves chasing another ship (the bounty head) along a set track through different environments, while enemies (spaceships, robots, etc.) attack. Each stage ends with a boss battle, confronting your target.
Between stages, bonus points earned can be spent to purchase upgrades for the ship (faster speed, more powerful ammo, stronger laser).
Run Buddy, stylized as "run buddy", is a single map for Boom by Michael Krause released in April 1998. Its notability is in the large scale of its architecture and liberal use of open spaces, which contributed to slowdown issues due to reject inefficiencies. A "fast" version using RMB to calculate the reject was released in May 1998.
Adrenix is a Descent style 6DOF FPS by Digital Dialect.
Scott Griffon is a military pilot who has hunted rebels for years as part of an elite anti-insurrection squad. But now he changes sides because Medtech, a government facility which conducts medical experiments on humans, kidnapped his fiance. You take his role and fly an advanced fighter craft to destroy Medtech.
To survive, you must master an arsenal of weapons including the Molnia Arc, Vortex Shield, and Micro Missiles. But be warned, your opposition is armed to the teeth and will attack without mercy. Regarding gameplay the game is similar to Descent: Flying a ship in first person perspective while shooting enemies. The 24 levels are mostly not the typical narrow mazes but relatively open and offer varied mission goals like protecting convoys, performing covert extractions or executing strikers on strategic targets.
Outwars is a science fiction third-person shooter developed by SingleTrac and published by Microsoft in 1998.
The game also features an 8-player multiplayer mode allowing players to compete with and against one another in the modes: Free for All, Assassin, Smear the cyborg, Team War, Team Mission, and Capture the flag.
A rather unusual feature of Outwars is that the legs and the torso can be controlled separately. This extra function can however be disabled by reconfiguring the controls.
Aliens Online was a massively multiplayer first person shooter released on the GameStorm subscription service. Players could choose to wield a pulse rifle as a member of the Colonial Marines, or stick to the shadows as one of H. R. Giger's iconic Aliens. Gameplay pit the two species against each other in a standard team deathmatch with limited respawns. Players could fight in one of five initial maps, with multiple games running simultaneously and selected from an in-game chat area and browser.
Online play was shut down in 2000 after the GameStorm network was sold to Electronic Arts.
Third person shooter with platforming elements about bombastic, if a bit dimwitted, superhero Captain Blasto. Alien overlord Bosc has conquered Uranus, kidnapped Space Babes and now wants Earth. Blasto must stop him.
Abyss of Pandemonium - The Final Mission is a unofficial commercial partial conversion for Quake developed by Impel Development Team and published by Perfect Publishing. It was released on April 14, 1998. It includes 16 new levels (10 single player/6 death match), six new foes, four new weapons and 1 power-up.
Rocket Arena 2 is one of the most popular Quake 2 mods of all time. It's innovative "multi-arena" maps allows players to choose from up to 10 arenas on a single level, and have matches going on in all of them simulatnously. The refined "pickup" mode introduces players to the fast-paced teamplay style of Clan Arena.
The Sword of Ares is a 1998 unlicensed total conversion for Quake.
The game adds several features not available in vanilla Quakes, such as the ability to switch to a third-person view (which may be a bit buggy) and several selectable player skins.
The Sword of Ares was made of free content but was distributed as shareware. It appears that the registered version (as a separate PAK file) was eventually made available by the author as a free download too, as it can be found on PlanetQuake mirrors alongside the shareware release. It is an unofficial commercial total conversion, whether it was licensed by id Software is unclear.
The game retailed at $9.99 on their official website.
3 levels, increasing in difficulty and complexity. First, you go through a prison complex before entering an "Anti-Duke" training center where the aliens learn how to fight against Duke. In the finale, you have to find the power plant to shut down the whole installation.
Duke crashes down in a stolen alien cruiser but this time he is a little closer to home. Look for the new features. There's a special powerup called the SuperDukePak and a new actors amongst other things.
The Ultimate Simpsons Doom is a graphics and sound mod made by Myk Friedman & Walter Stabosz and released in 1998. In the modification, you play as Homer Simpson killing evil clones of his friends, family, neighbors, and co-workers (they replace the normal monsters). As it only replaces graphics and sounds it can be used with either Doom or Doom II.
Players can choose to play either of these previously released titles. In the first game, use a light gun to shoot infected human "zombies", aliens and their mothership. In the second game, players shoot terrorists.