Retro game of the week: Journey to Silius (NES)

Journey to Silius is a NES game released in 1990, developed and produced by Sunsoft.
It has some gameplay similarities akin to Contra or Mega Man, and featured unusually strong music for that time; low-quality bass tones added depth to the usual square and triangle waves of the 8-bit machine.
Originally, the game was supposed to use the Terminator license, but after Sunsoft lost the rights, the game was further edited, primarily by changing the main character sprite.

Journey to Silius had five stages in total.
Not much, some will say. However, the main reason I remember Silius, besides the brilliant music, is because of its high difficulty. Five stages was more than enough. Needless to say, I never completed it. Don't think I ever will.

Get the soundtrack (25 MB) here, and click here to play the game in your browser.

2nd Download of the week: Helium Boy (PC)

Helium Boy is a nice Swedish-developed 3D platformer, of some sort. Gameplay is simple enough: Collect the stars, don't let the birds or ninjas puncture your balloons, and watch out for the water. You probably know the deal by now. Controls are a bit awkward at first, so I suggest you have a look at the tutorial before you play.

Download Helium Boy (11 MB) by clicking here.

Internet game of the week: Miestas (Flash)

If most games had even half the charm of this one, I wouldn't be complaining so much. Miestas is an all too short effort, but a very pleasant one. It has a delightful jazz tune to accompany its hand drawn, cut-and-paste graphics. Go on, solve a puzzle or two.
It'll put you in a good mood.

Follow this link to play Miestas.

Download of the week: Alex Adventure (PC)

Alex Adventure is a fine, almost surreal, little platform game with weird colours and strange creatures. Well, it is surreal, no doubt about it. Collect three different artefacts in this two-stage demo. Go ahead and try it.

Click here to download the demo (8 MB).

Retro game of the week: Alien Breed (AMIGA/PC)

Alien Breed is a top-down sci-fi shooter influenced, heavily, and unofficially, by the Alien films. It was released in 1991 by Team17 for the Amiga and later in 1993 by MicroLeague for DOS. It quickly became a classic. Team17 then decided to release a special edition of the game before finishing the sequel. This interim release came a year later, in 1992. Alien Breed Obliteration is a remake based on the interim version, rewritten from scratch with subtle improvements, featuring 15 new levels. Your mission is still the same though: blast your way through the alien invasion. It even has a co-op mode, so two players can once again team up and share the keyboard. Good times.

Click here to download Alien Breed - Obliteration (1.6 MB).