And there it is again — the gnawing hunger, the growing feeling of desperation, soft-boiled bloodshot eyes staring at the clock slowly ticking towards dawn, the angry punk music drifting out of the speakers seeming distant in the cold, pre-dawn ambience.

It was my own fault, I tell myself, in some weak attempt to find consolation. All bodies require food, and mine is no exception; underfeed the beast for over a week and it breaks free of its bonds in a frenzy, rabidly consuming anything and everything within sight, no prize great enough to satiate its hunger.

The clock ticks past another digit.

It won’t be long now.

While it may not be quite a forgotten gem, Alundra — a Zelda-esque action RPG on the PlayStation 1 — is certainly a game that deserves a second look, especially as I don’t feel it really got the exposure it deserved when it was new. While on the surface it may simply seem to be a fairly generic late-90s J-RPG with a vague resemblance to Landstalker, Alundra blended SNES-style sprite-based graphics with flashy visual effects and a refreshingly mature storyline, to create a game which seemed remarkably original for its time.

If the SNES was 32-bit, it'd look like this.

Okay, I’ll admit it — some aspects of the story are straight out of Gandalf’s Book of RPG Clichés, and the game makes little effort to disguise that fact. You play the part of an elf boy with mysterious powers, and the game begins with you being washed ashore near a sleepy village, the sole survivor of a shipwreck. The village is being terrorized by an ancient and evil demon, and the spirit of a powerful guardian has summoned you to help in the fight by vanquishing monsters both real and in the twisted nightmares of the hapless villagers. Thankfully, that’s about where the generic RPG aspects end.

The unique nature of the game is twofold; firstly, Alundra is a Dreamwalker, and as you might imagine from the name, has the power to enter the dreams of the villagers who are being plagued by nightmares influenced by the demon Melzas. Many of the game’s “dungeons” actually involve exploring the dreamscapes of the villagers, and thanks to the game’s excellent soundtrack some of the dreams are downright eerie, while others — such as Kline’s nightmare — are hauntingly beautiful.

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Ahh, Christmas; a time traditionally associated with fluffy snow and light-hearted well-wishers, a time of caring, gifts and family, and mysterious midnight household intrusions by a fat pensioner with Alzheimer’s and the polar opposite of kleptomania. Naturally, in my fairly cynical and twisted view of the world, I tend to see it differently; streets lined with muddy slush as traffic desperately flies by in a rush to reach some party or another, malls choked with masses of aggressive shoppers shoving their way towards the last bargain, garish lights and obnoxious songs within a stone’s throw of any would-be quiet sanctuary.

But Grave, I hear you cry — it’s merely September! Why a rant about Christmas now, so soon before the fact?

Yes, it’s merely September — and that, unfortunately, is the crux of the problem.

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While I must admit my penchant for old games tends to lean towards the console variety — especially the late 8-bit and early 16-bit eras which I so fondly recall growing up with — those of you who may miss the older age of PC gaming should be happy to know that the aptly-named Good Old Games is currently in early access beta testing, and plans to open its doors to the public soon.

While it obviously won’t be possible to get hold of just anything, a number of well-loved classics — Fallout, MDK, Operation Flashpoint, Freespace 2, to name but a few — are not only available for pocket change ($9.99 or lower), but are also XP and Vista compatible, DRM-free, and come with extras like MP3 soundtracks and high-resolution wallpapers. It almost seems too good to be true!

While the site’s still in beta testing, they’re accepting sign-ups, so if you hurry there’s still going to be room to jump the gun and get access sooner rather than later. Either way, this is great news for both avid retrogamers, and those of you who would like to revisit some old classics. Here’s hoping the site’s successful!

All credit goes to Kyle at Electron Hut for the original story.

While I’m shedding light on some of the forgotten classics in Forgotten Gems, it’s not all fun and games, and sometimes a game is just so bad it deserves to get featured as the Turd of the Week, so dire that it should be avoided at all costs. This week, we’ll be taking a look at The Immortal on the Sega Genesis, hailed by some as a precursor to the isometric dungeon-crawler Diablo, but I’m here to tell you just why that’s not the case. I’m going to get hate-mail for this, I just know it.

The collar tag reads, "Property of Arrakis."

Despite my eternal love for the Genesis — due largely in part to it being the first actual console I ever owned — I must confess that, despite it being home to many classics of the era, it was also home to many dire failed experiments. The Immortal, an attempt at a D&D-esque dungeon crawler, was one of these. Say what you like about the isometric view being unique or revolutionary for its time, but it’s nothing that Landstalker or Light Crusader didn’t do better — and with a great deal more enjoyable gameplay, I might add.

The Immortal casts you in the part of a young wizard who is quite literally anything but immortal. In fact, the game is littered with traps, monsters, traps, puzzles, and traps — all of which seem designed to make your day just that little bit worse, by killing you in a gruesome way.

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