#u-force

U-FORCE

‘U-Force’

[MISC] [CANADA] [MAGAZINE] [1989]

Nintendo Power Flash, Summer-Fall 1989 (#05)

So I noticed (or remembered I guess) that Legacy of the Wizard was published in the US by Broderbund. They also published Deadly Towers here as well. I know. I know... Deadly Towers sucks blah blah blarrrh! Actually it was one of my favorite NES games. I think that Deadly Towers is flawed yet underrated to an extent. If you can look past those flaws you might actually find it to be kind of fun. It's one of those games that could benefit from a remake. I'll probably do an entry about games I'd like to be remade at some point.

But now, back to Broderbund Software. Here's a Wikipedia article about the company. They're no longer around in their original form, being purchased by The Learning Company in 1998. But if anyone is still interested in looking them up the official site is broderbund.com.

Broderbund mainly developed and published games for the North American market. Although a few releases came to Japan and Europe. For instance, the NES version of Shufflepuck Cafe was only released in Japan. Although there is a fan translated ROM out there now.

I didn't know that they created the original Carmen Sandiego games. But then again I never played those games or watched the show much. So I don't know much about the franchise. Some other company milestones include being the developer of the first two games in the Prince of Persia series and Lode Runner. They brought Myst to the Macintosh and were the first company to publish a game from the Ys series in North America. That title being Ancient Land of Ys for PC back in 1989. Most of Broderbund's releases were for home computers like Amiga, Apple II, Atari ST and Commodore 64 just to name a few. As far as consoles go they had releases for NES, Sega GameGear and Sega Genesis. Here's a complete list of the games that Broderbund released on various platforms.

The company was also responsible for the U-Force. A bizarre hands free motion controller for the NES. Look it up on Youtube to see it in action. Definitely ahead of its time. But it was poorly received and not all that functional or user friendly. Nintendo wouldn't strike paydirt with motion control until the Wii. But then again, the Wii is Nintendo's own product and they definitely learned from their mistakes. But now I'm getting off topic.