Popular games published by company U.S. Gold

A point-and-click adventure game by LucasArts originally released in 1992. Almost a year later, it was reissued on CD-ROM as an enhanced "talkie" edition with full voice acting and digitized sound effects. In 2009, this version was also released as an unlockable extra of the Wii action game Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings, and as a digitally distributed Steam title. The seventh game to use the script language SCUMM, Fate of Atlantis has the player explore environments and interact with objects and characters by using commands constructed with predetermined verbs. It features three unique paths to select, influencing story development, gameplay and puzzles.

Following the defeat of the evil triad in the previous three Ultima games, the world of Sosaria changed beyond recognition: continents rose and sank, and new cities were built, heralding the advent of a different civilization. Unified by the reign of the benevolent monarch Lord British, the new world was renamed Britannia. Lord British wished to base people's well-being on the ethical principles of Truth, Love, and Courage, proclaiming the Eight Virtues (Honesty, Compassion, Valor, Justice, Sacrifice, Honor, Spirituality, and Humility) as the ideal everyone should strive for. The person who could accomplish full understanding and realization of these virtues would serve as a spiritual leader and a moral example for the inhabitants of Britannia; he alone would be able to obtain holy artifacts, descend into the Stygian Abyss, and access the Codex of Ultimate Wisdom. This person is the Avatar. The fourth game in the Ultima series features an improved game engine, with color graphics and enhanced character interaction: the player can have conversations with non-playable characters by typing names of various topics. However, the main difference between Ultima IV and its predecessors in the series (as well as other role-playing games) lies in the game's objectives and the ways to fulfill them. Instead of building up a character by any means possible in order to face a villain in the end of the game, in Ultima IV the player is trying to become the Avatar, a role model for people. This means upholding the Eight Virtues, basically trying to become a better person. Making morally conscious decisions and helping other people is not done expecting a material reward, but because it is the actual goal of the game and the main focus of its gameplay. The game frowns on behavior typical of most other RPGs, such as backstabbing fleeing enemies or picking up everything that isn't nailed down even if it does not belong to the protagonist. This different approach established the game's reputation as the first "true" Ultima, influencing the design philosophy of later installments and the overall spirit of the series. Character creation is done by choosing responses to morally ambiguous questions. Each of the Eight Virtues corresponds to a character class; by determining the player's personal priorities in the virtues, the game assigns a class and a starting location for the Avatar. After emerging in Britannia, the player is free to explore it in various ways (on foot, moongate teleportation, on horseback, by ship, etc.). Certain items must be collected in any order to enter the Stygian Abyss and complete the game. The Avatar also has to reach the highest level in all virtues. This is achieved by various means: donating blood increases Sacrifice, not fleeing from combat increases Valor, etc. The process, however, is not irreversible: should the Avatar overpay a blind seller, he gains Compassion points; should he, on the other hand, cheat the seller by underpaying, his level in several virtues would decrease. These unorthodox features of the game co-exist with plenty of traditional RPG elements, such as dungeons to explore and hostile monsters to kill. Enemies are encountered on the world map as well as in dungeons; combat takes place on separate top-down screens, allowing player-controlled and enemy parties freely move on them. Characters accumulate experience points and level up, gaining higher amount of hit points and access to stronger magic spells. Like in the previous installments of the series, world map, town exploration and combat are presented from a top-down view, while the dungeons are pseudo-3D and are explored from first-person perspective. Ultima IV also introduces several new gameplay features to the series and role-playing games in general. A number of initially non-playable characters living in various areas of the game world are able to to join the party and fight alongside the hero, replacing traditional player-generated characters or mercenaries and adventurers available only in special locations. Additional new elements include buying and combining reagents in order to cast spells, puzzle rooms in dungeons, and others. The FM Towns version, while identical to the others in gameplay, introduces upgraded graphics similar to those used in next installment of the series.

Another World chronicles the story of a man hurtled through space and time by a nuclear experiment gone wrong. You assume the role of Lester Knight Chaykin, a young physicist. You’ll need to dodge, outwit, and overcome a host of alien monsters and deadly earthquakes that plague the alien landscape you now call home. Only a perfect blend of logic and skill will get you past the deadly obstacles that lie in waiting.

Aliens have landed in futuristic Los Angeles and it's up to the Duke to bring the pain and show them the door. After the initial entries of side-scrolling platform games, Duke Nukem 3D introduces a first-person perspective to the series and turns the game into a full-fledged shooter with 2.5D graphics. Duke's arsenal includes pistols, pipe bombs, laser trip mines, Nordenfelt guns, a chain gun and various rocket launchers, but also his mighty foot to kick enemies. The game sports a high level of interactivity. Many objects in the environment can be broken or interacted with, such as pool tables, arcade machines, glass, light switches and security cameras. The protagonist is also able to hand strippers a dollars to have them remove their top.

Throughout the 20th century, an unprecedented political and economic crisis afflicted Earth, leading to the systematic disabling of it's programme to conquer outer space through lack of funding. The highest priority now was to carryout research into new energy sources, preservation of the enviro- ment and maintenance of the cultural heritage. However, at the dawn of the 21st century, provision of considerable funds from an unknown source released by the politicians of the new, unified government, permitted a return to the space research programme. The conquest began gradually with the construction of huge, manned artificial satellites. Several lunar bases were created with the view to becoming future Earth colonies within the solar system. The considerable advancements made together with the supply of increasingly greater sums of money allowed man to explore, even as far as the planet Titan. You play the part of Conrad Hart, controlling his every move through the 6 levels of the game. During your quest, you will come across many different friends and foes whom you may wish to help or vanquish using your gun. you will have to complete many challenges in order to restore your lost memory. Each level features its own unique graphics and hazards, linked by cinematic animation sequences.

The gameplay for Ghouls 'n Ghosts is similar to that of Ghosts 'n Goblins. The player controls the knight Arthur, who must advance through a series of eerie levels and defeat a number of undead and demonic creatures in his quest to restore the souls stolen by Lucifer (Loki in the English-language Mega Drive and Sega Master System versions), including the soul of his lover, Princess Prin Prin. Along the way, Arthur can pick up a variety of weapons and armor to help him in his quest. While the core gameplay remains the same as its predecessor, the game now allows Arthur to fire directly upward and directly downward while in mid air. By jumping in certain spots, players can cause a treasure chest to erupt from the ground. By firing his weapon at the chest, players may uncover new weapons, gold armor or an evil magician that changes Arthur into an elderly man or a helpless duck. The gold armor allows players to charge up the weapon to release a powerful magical attack. Each weapon has its own special attack. There are five levels and Lucifer's chamber at the end, considered a sixth level in itself. To defeat the game, Arthur must complete level 1 to 5 twice. Upon completing level's 1 to 5 the first time, Arthur is taken back to level 1 again but this time a special weapon appears during the game. To enter Lucifer's chamber the player must have this special weapon equipped and defeat the penultimate boss.

Long after the passing of the Second Shadow, when dragons ruled the twilight sky and the stars were bright and numerous, came the Age of the Great Guilds. Blacksmiths. Shepherds. Clerics. Each dedicated to the absolute control of secret knowledge. Another such Guild was the Weavers. Over the centuries, their craft transcended the limits of physical cloth, until they wove the very fabric of reality itself. Now, a strange power has swept the Weavers into oblivion, leaving behind one Weaver boy to unravel the mystery. Help young Bobbin rescue his Guild...and you just might save the universe from an unspeakable catastrophe.

It's MEGA MAN versus the powerful leaders and fighting forces of Monsteropolis - that strange multi-layered land of robot-like humanoids created by the wrongly-performed experiments with human beings by Dr. Wily. Mega Man - the chosen defender of the human race. For he dares to single-handedly penetrate Monsteropolis' seven separate societies to stop the rapid expansion of strange misrepresentations of humans. Mega Man's goal is monumental. He must infiltrate seven separate heavily-guarded empires. By himself, he must break down and destroy the following empire leaders: Cutman, Gutsman, Iceman, Bombman, Fireman, Elecman, and Dr. Wily. The action involves Mega Man armed only with laser beam weapons, encountering strangely-configured humanoids. They're atop, in and out of fortified prison-like structures strengthened with thick walls. Hidden amid gun turrets embedded in concrete uprights, even in subterranean passages below icefields. WOW!

Ben and Andy, the two top Special Service agents have accepted a very dangerous assignment – the elimination of Mr.K and his Artificial Life System. Mr. K plans to rid the earth of human life forms using the killer robots he’s created, and no one but Ben and Andy can stop him!

Final Fight is a side-scrolling beat-'em-up produced by Capcom. Final Fight can be played by up to two players simultaneously. Before the game begins, the player chooses between the three main characters: Haggar, Cody, and Guy. Each has his own fighting style and attributes. Health gauges are displayed for both player and enemy characters. The controls for Final Fight consist of an eight-way joystick and two buttons for attacking and jumping respectively. Pressing the attack button repeatedly when attacking an enemy or multiple enemies will cause the player character to perform a combo. The final blow of the combo can be changed to a throw if the player moves the joystick in the opposite direction just before landing it. The player can also perform a jump attack. Pressing the attack and jump buttons simultaneously allows the player to perform a special attack that strikes all surrounding enemies, but will drain a small portion of the player's health. Enemies can be grabbed simply by walking into one of them. When an enemy is grabbed, the player can perform a grab attack by pressing the attack button or perform a throw by tilting the joystick left or right. A thrown enemy can be tossed at another for additional damage. Items such as weapons, health recovery items, and items awarding extra points can be picked up by standing over one and pressing the attack button. Weapons have limited uses and will disappear if the player is disarmed by an enemy too much or when the player moves to a new area. Final Fight consists of six stages or "rounds", as well as two bonus rounds. Each round takes place in a different section of Metro City such as the Slums and the Subway, with most rounds featuring more than one level. At the end of each round the player will face a boss character unique to that round.

You play a small green guy who needs to blow up eight towers, because their presence is somehow poisoning the water of planets which could potentially be ideal colonies. Unfortunately you need to get to the top of these towers to blow them up. You make your way up to the top of the tower via walkways around the outside of the towers. You need to jump over, kick, and run from various enemies in your journey to the top. Most vertical movement is achieved by jumping onto moving ledges at the right moment. The game was considered revolutionary in its time for its graphic technique. As the main character walked around the outside of the tower, the character was fixed in the middle of the screen while the tower itself rotated. This gave it a pseudo-3D effect. Towers are linked together via a voyage through the sea in your trusty MK.7 submarine. This plays out as a side-scrolling collect-'em-up in which bonus points can be obtained.

Bruce Lee is a video game designed by Ron J. Fortier, with graphics by Kelly Day and music by John A. Fitzpatrick. It was originally developed for the Atari 8-bit family and published in 1984 by Datasoft, along with a port for the Commodore 64. The game was converted to the ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC and published by U.S. Gold in the same year. An MSX version was published in 1985 by Comptiq. Bruce Lee is a platform game/beat 'em up hybrid, in which the player controls Bruce Lee.

Released during the Cold War era, Raid Over Moscow is an action game in which the player (an American space pilot) has to stop three Soviet nuclear attacks on North America, then fight his way into and destroy a nuclear facility located in Moscow's Kremlin. According to the game's storyline, the United States is unable to respond to the attack directly due to the dismantlement of its nuclear arsenal.

Side-scrolling shoot-em-up, in a similar style to such games as Gradius, R-Type and Scramble. The aim is to wipe out the enemy, which has gathered around the allied airspace of 'Area 88', in a series of military aircraft-based scenarios. You choose one of three unique pilots; Shin Kazama, Micky Schymon or Greg Gates, each with varying abilities at damage repair, weapon handling and flying skill, and engage the enemy over a series of challenging missions. The player starts out with the weakest plane, the F8E Crusader, which can only be armed with a very basic range weapons. But, through completing various missions, enough cash can be raised to purchase higher-quality aircraft. These superior planes are more agile, have improved resilience to damage and have a greater range of fire. Furthermore, the more advanced fighters can be armed with superior special weapons, such as napalm. The missions include attacks on sand bases, the nuclear submarine 'Seavet' and enemy supply camps, as well as seeing off groups of airborne 'bandits' who swarm-in on Area 88. The enemy is plentiful, and the pace is frantic. Shoot at everything on the screen that moves, and the allied forces might just come out on top......

The players are members of a covert counter-terrorist team of mercenaries known as the "Wolf Force". The aim of the game was to rescue the former President from rebels in the fictional African country of Zutula, which bears resemblance to the apartheid regime in South Africa. The game has six main levels, plus the final level where your mission is to rescue the former U.S. president from the Hercules Transport. The game's arsenal include real-world machine guns, shot guns, flame throwers, and grenade launchers. Several missions even have pilotable vehicles available.

A two-fisted action game from the people who brought you the smash hit movie. The chase is on...all the way to the greatest treasure in history, the Holy Grail. And if you can survive the treacherous caves of Colorado...the medieval catacombs of Venice...the deadly ramparts of Schloss Brunwald...and the cunning traps of the Grail Temple...then you've earned your whip and your hat! Whip those bad guys...as only Indy can! Relive the greatest action scenes from the greatest Indy movie of them all. It's red hot, slam-bam action, Indiana Jones and LucasFilm style!

An evil being known as Ligar is about to conquer the land of Argool. Such is his power that no living creature dares to cross paths with him. But the legendary warrior Rygar rises from his grave to restore peace and justice. Armed with his famed weapon Diskarmor, Rygar begins to traverse the vast lands that lead to the lair of the demon, as his minions are trying in vain to stop him...

This game is based entirely on the first Star Wars movie, Episode IV: A New Hope. The opening of the game features an animated cinematic of the opening scene of the film. After that the player takes control of Luke Skywalker, driving the landspeeder across Tatooine in search of R2-D2. Luke Skywalker explores various locations throughout Tatooine, fighting numerous enemies including Jawas and Stormtroopers. The game features many locations from the movie including the Chalmun's Cantina in Mos Eisley where Luke meets Han Solo for the first time. This section of the game features a classic 8-bit rendition of the "Cantina Band" theme as played by the fictitious band, Figrin D'an and the Modal Nodes, in the feature film. The game also contains many famous lines from the movie including Obi-Wan Kenobi's plea to Luke to join him in his trip to Alderann and Han Solo's description of the smell from the Death Star's trash compactor. The player eventually lands on the Death Star and has to destroy the tractor beam to escape. The game also features first person segments of piloting the Millenium Falcon through that Asteroid field that was once Alderaan, and shooting down Tie Fighters in both the Millenium Falcon and an X-Wing fighter. The finale of the game features a top down view of Luke Skywalker's X-Wing flying through the Death Star trenches. After the player successfully fires a torpedo into the Death Star's exposed exhaust port, a cinematic of the Death Star exploding and Luke Skywalker being awarded a medal on Yavin IV is shown. The game featured the characters Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Princess Leia, R2-D2, and C-3PO. The game however does not feature Darth Vader or Chewbacca, both of whom are major characters in the film.

Black Tiger, known in Japan as Black Dragon, is a 1987 action game released for the arcades by Capcom. A barbarian hero jumps and fights his way through a variety of colourful, enemy-packed levels. The sprawling, eight-way scrolling, two-dimensional levels are packed with hidden bonuses to encourage and reward exploration. Though a percentage of these bonuses consist of dubious and often self-evident "advice", most come in the form of "Zenny coins", currency that allows the player to buy such items as an upgrade to their weapons and armour, keys for treasure chests, and anti-poisoning potions. Special items that reveal coins, upgraded armour, full vitality, extra lives, extra time, or simply bonus points may be found by attacking certain walls. The player's vitality bar will also increase up to three times as a reward for reaching score benchmarks.

The situation: for three days have the strategic central computers of the great powers acted up. An unknown person manipulates their programmes; at the end of these programmes is the starting command for the intercontinental rocket. The countdown is on, only 6 hours keep the humanity from an atomic inferno. An unknown person? Only professor Elvin, the insane computer expert could crack the top secret start code, Elvin, who entrenches himself in his intangible subterraneous, guarded by 90 murderous robots, that until now had hunted down every intruder. No one who has ever set foot on the lift to Elvins cave labyrinth has returned back alive. The last hope: Special Agent 4125, the most cunning, toughest and most indiscriminate man, that the secret service can offer. Only ice cold reckoning and superior physical condition give this unarmed hero a tiny chance to avert the disaster in the last minute. The game: your task is to put a stop to evil Elvin Atombender's game. For this you have to enter in his laboratory, protected by a vault somewhere on his underground stronghold. To open the laboratory's door you need a nine letters password, each letter of which Elvin coded into a punchcard, just for cutting in four each one of them, painting them in different colors and hiding the resulting pieces everywhere in his base's furniture. So all you have to do is search into every object of every room for pieces of puzzle while surviving the robots, the pits and doctor Elvin's annoying voice, retrieve all the 36 pieces, put them together in groups of four, and head for the laboratory, where an unpleasant surprise waits you

Pitstop II is the first 3D racing game to implement a split-screen simultaneous two-player game mode. Players could be in completely different places on the racing track, and each split screen would show the view of the track according to the player's position.

Solomon's Key is a puzzle game developed by Tecmo in 1986 for arcade release on custom hardware based on the Z80 chipset. The game is generally recognized as one of the most difficult games to appear on the NES. The player, controlling a sorcerer known only as Dana must overcome unlimited enemy spawning, challenging level designs, a countdown timer, instant death from any physical contact with enemies, and limited ways to dispatch enemies.

Viewed top-down, the controls involve trapping the ball under your foot, giving you time to prepare passes. Running with the ball is tricky at first, as it doesn't stick to your foot the way it did in contemporary football games. Complex moves such as overhead kicks, back-heels and long-range through-ball passes can be completed with practice.

The players, up to four at once in the arcade version, select among four playable fantasy-based characters; Thor the Warrior, Merlin the Wizard, Thyra the Valkyrie, or Questor the Elf. Each character has his or her own unique strength and weaknesses. For example, the Warrior is strongest in hand-to-hand combat, the Wizard has the most powerful magic, the Valkyrie has the best armour and the Elf is the fastest in movement. Upon selecting a playable character, the gameplay is set within a series of top-down, third-person perspective mazes where the object is to find and touch the designated exit in every level. An assortment of special items can be located in each level that increase player's character's health, unlock doors, gain more points and magical potions that can destroy all of the enemies on screen. The enemies are an assortment of fantasy-based monsters, including ghosts, grunts, demons, lobbers, sorcerers and thieves. Each enters the level through specific generators, which can be destroyed. While there are no bosses in the game, the most dangerous enemy is "Death", who can not only drain a character's health, but is difficult to destroy. As the game progresses, higher levels of skill are needed to reach the exit, with success often depending on the willingness of the players to cooperate by sharing food and luring monsters into places where they can be engaged and slaughtered more conveniently. While contact with enemies reduces the player's health, it also slowly drains on its own, thus creating a time limit. When a character's health reaches zero, that character dies. The character can be revived in place with full health by spending a game credit (i.e. inserting a coin) within a certain short time window after it died. This allows even the least proficient players to keep playing indefinitely, if they are willing to keep inserting coins.