Games

Baldur’s Gate™: Dark Alliance™ is a revolutionary action adventure with an epic tale of intrigue, fierce alliances, explosive spell effects and highly detailed creatures and environments. Baldur’s Gate™: Dark Alliance™ is a benchmark of technology and gameplay.

Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal is an add-on to Shadows of Amn and requires it for playing. Despite being an expansion pack, the game directly continues the story from Shadows of Amn, and is the final chapter of the Baldur's Gate saga, following the adventures of the main character through the Forgotten Realms universe. The hero(ine) encounters new characters, new lands, new items, equipment, quests, and monsters, up to the ultimate battle that concludes the overarching story.

Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn is a party-based role-playing game using the AD&D rules. The basic gameplay is similar to that of its predecessor: the player navigates a party of up to six active combatants over isometric environments, conversing with non-playable characters using branching dialogue, and fighting enemies in real-time, free-movement combat that can be paused to issue specific orders to the characters. World traveling now occurs by selecting locations on a map rather than exploring wilderness areas to reach the destination. However, the game world is larger than in the previous game, with more individual locations to visit and side quests to perform.

Kidnapped. Imprisoned. Tortured. The wizard Irenicus holds you captive in his stronghold, attempting to strip you of the powers that are your birthright. Can you resist the evil within you, forge a legend of heroic proportions, and ultimately destroy the dark essence that haunts your dreams? Or will you embrace your monstrous nature, carve a swath of destruction across the realms, and ascend to godhood as the new Lord of Murder?

Strange things are happening in the Sword Coast. The iron has gone bad, every weapon forged with it is completely worthless. Bandits plague the Coast stealing everything else that already isn't ruined. And people are muttering that it is all the work of an outside interest bent on domination. Some say that it is the Zhentarim, some say that it is the Amnish, although they have troubles of their own. Amidst all of this you have grown up in seclusion in the Candlekeep fortress, a keep of knowledge. You have never known your parents, instead you were raised by the Sage Gorion. You might have remained in this sheltered life forever, had not fate played its hand. Because of the growing threat of evil in the world, Gorion feels compelled to remove you from Candlekeep, and take you to another hiding place where he will "explain everything". And so it began...

Ever want to rule the world? With Baldies you have the resources, but do you have the strategy and skill? Build your own society complete with workers, builders, soldiers, and scientists, and use them to conquer enemy territory. When it comes to killing your foe, creativity is highly encouraged. You can skunk 'em, drown 'em, blow 'em up, and electrocute 'em. Plan your attack well. The enemy is trying to do the same to you!

Balance of the Planet is an environmental management simulation. It is the successor to Balance of Power. Chris Crawford seems to have a special liking for problems of global concern. Balance of Power dealt with politics in the cold war, its successor Balance of the Planet simulates nothing less than Earth's ecosystem. Although Maxis' Sim Earth is often credited as the first "ecosim", the title rightfully belongs to Crawford's game. Both games are equally interesting nevertheless, as they use two vastly different approaches to an enormously complex subject. Sim Earth tries to simulate the natural processes, i.e. continental drift, weather, global temperature etc. as accurately as possible, and calculates the global impact from this basic conditions. Balance of the Planet breaks down the ecological system into 150 single factors, connected in a cause-and-effect network. Rather than experiencing the ecosystem as a whole, you discover a string of subjects that influence each other. For example, when dealing with global warming, you'd be referred to carbon dioxides and methane (the causes) and rising sea level (the result). By following and understanding the links, you may thus find out in which way beef production influences inundation. There is, however, no accurate simulation of a global ecology, rather than a sophisticated schematic of factors and problems. Contrary to Sim Earth, you do not change the mechanisms of nature themselves. Instead, you're to try to influence society by funding and granting subsidies. If you raise the tax on coal considerably, coal burning and thus carbon dioxide output will be discouraged, but the strain on other forms of energy will increase. You'd be best advised to subsidise renewable energies -- which leaves less money for other pressing problems. Your job is to balance the ecology with the age-old system of reward and punishment. This has to be done in only nine turns; you are awarded or subtracted points, depending on your success. Balance of the Planet is highly customisable. You may not only load "biased" games, in which you play with a certain prejudice (e.g. pro-nuclear), but also change all the formulas used for calculations to your liking.

Bakushō Jinsei 64: Mezase! Resort Ō is an interactive board game for the Nintendo 64 based on The Game of Life. It was released only in Japan in 1998.

In Bakuretsu Muteki Bangaioh, a multi-directional shooter video game developed by Treasure, two young mech-pilots, Riki and his sister Mami share command of the powerful humanoid-shaped Bangai-O and battle villains from the "Cosmo Gang", guilty of fruit contraband, and lots of gun turrets, bombs and robots through 44 levels.