The late-century nightmare
SNEG, a company devoted to completing GOG’s manifesto of dredging up good old games, has dropped another three PC titles of yore. This time, it’s Take No Prisoners, Cyclones, and Necrodome. Those are some real ‘90s names!
All three games are from Raven Software, the company that brought us Hexen, Star Wars: Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, and are now working in Activision Blizzard’s Call of Duty mines.
First up, we have Take No Prisoners. This is a 1997 top-down shooter set in the post-apocalypse. You play as Slade, a man tasked with finding some sort of crystal. It’s, oh gosh… You can just smell the 1990s on it.
Moving on, we’re at Cyclones. In this 1994 FPS, you play as Havoc, a man who is essentially Robo-Cop. It was a pretty ambitious first-person shooter, being an early title with mouse control for aiming. Once again, it looks dated, but I absolutely love early first-person shooters, so I absolutely love the look of Cyclones.
Finally, we have Necrodome. This one is a 1996 vehicular combat game. This one was right on the cusp of the big vehicular boom that started with 1995’s Twisted Metal. Good times.
Keepers of the time capsule
All of these look like something I’d enjoy tinkering around with. While GOG has moved up in the world and become a more traditional storefront, I still love seeing people dredge up the forgotten PC games that may have been missed. SNEG was actually formed by the former senior vice president of business development at GOG, Oleg Klapovskiy. There doesn’t seem to be any bad blood there (SNEG publishes on GOG), but Klopovskiy’s favorite part of the job seems to have been digital excavation, so he backed Elena Roor to return to it.
The preservation of video games is something I’m extremely passionate about, so I’ll be keeping an eye on SNEG. My only regret in this line of work is that there isn’t enough time to play everything, but, dammit, I still try.
Cyclones, Necrodome, and Take No Prisoners are available right now on GOG and Steam.
