Retro Replay Review

Gameplay

Name: Gamebox 2: 50 Spiele
Item: Gamebox 2: 50 Spiele
Author: Retro Replay

Gamebox 2: 50 Spiele offers an incredible breadth of gameplay styles, from high-octane action to deep strategy. With 50 titles spanning seven CDs, you can dive into vehicular combat in Desert Strike and Jungle Strike, test your reflexes in Slipstream 5000, or marshal armies in The Patrician. Each disc offers a different flavor, ensuring that you’ll rarely feel that you’re repeating the same experience.

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While the compilation brings classics like Earthworm Jim 2 and Barbarian together with niche sports simulations such as 3D World Tennis and Nick Faldo’s Championship Golf, the quality of the games is uneven. Some titles feel dated, with stiff controls or outdated AI, but there are gems hidden throughout. Colony Wars 2492, for example, still shines with its fast-paced space dogfighting, and Premier Manager 3 remains a robust challenge for fans of football management sims.

Disc swapping can interrupt the flow—seven CDs means quite a bit of drive activity if you hop between genres. However, the convenience of having all these titles in one package outweighs the occasional pause to change discs. The included PDF manuals keep you from hunting down instruction booklets, letting you jump right into the tutorials and reference sections whenever you need them.

Graphics

Graphically, Gamebox 2 is a time capsule of early to mid-’90s PC gaming. You’ll find everything from chunky 2D sprites in Litil Divil to early polygonal environments in Battle Arena Toshinden. Some games, like Shadowlands and Retribution, push the PlayStation-era aesthetic on PC, showcasing moody lighting and detailed textures for their time.

Not every title aged gracefully. A handful of the compilation’s more obscure simulations—such as Boong?! and Millemiglia—use simplistic, pixelated visuals that can feel underwhelming by modern standards. Yet these rough edges often contribute to their charm, especially for nostalgic players. High-profile entries like Earthworm Jim 2, on the other hand, still look crisp and colorful thanks to their cartoon-inspired art direction.

The presentation varies not only in fidelity but in resolution support. Some older games max out at 640×480, which appears small on modern monitors unless you’re willing to play in a windowed mode. Still, the compilation strikes a fair balance, and the PDF manuals even include suggested video settings adjustments to help you squeeze the best performance and appearance from each title.

Story

Because Gamebox 2 is a collection rather than a single narrative, “story” here refers to the breadth of plotting and world-building across 50 games. You’ll go from leading Hannibal’s armies across the Alps through the corridors of power in Das Amt, to liberating alien worlds in Dynatech. The variety of settings—from the medieval fantasy of Ishar 3: The Seven Gates of Infinity to the satirical sci-fi of Earthworm Jim 2—keeps the narrative pacing fresh.

Some games, such as Shadowlands and Space Crusade, deliver surprisingly deep lore and character arcs, making them feel like standalone epics despite their age. Conversely, arcade-style titles like Hustler or Super Trio focus almost entirely on gameplay loops with minimal story context. If you’re buying Gamebox 2 for narrative depth, be prepared to pick and choose which disks to prioritize.

The absence of a unified storyline in the compilation can also be its strength: you’re free to skip between genres without narrative dissonance. Each title’s PDF manual includes plot summaries and character backgrounds, which help you quickly understand motivations and objectives before you press “Play.”

Overall Experience

Gamebox 2: 50 Spiele offers tremendous value for fans of retro PC gaming or anyone looking to explore gaming history. The package’s seven-CD set and on-disc PDF manuals make installation straightforward, provided you have a CD-ROM drive (or a virtual drive workaround). The mix of well-known hits and obscure curios means there’s always something new to discover, even for veteran players.

Organization is key, and Funsoft’s menu interface keeps things neat—selecting a game by disk number or title is intuitive, although searching by genre would have been a welcome addition. Once you’ve installed the compilation, you can launch most games directly from the desktop shortcuts generated during setup, bypassing the menu for quick play sessions.

Despite minor hiccups like disc switching and occasional compatibility issues on modern hardware, Gamebox 2 remains an engaging anthology. Whether you’re chasing nostalgia with classics like Barbarian and Premier Manager, or hunting down overlooked gems like Tendo and Retribution, this compilation delivers a wealth of experiences that justify both the retail price and the effort of setup. For collectors and curious gamers alike, Gamebox 2: 50 Spiele stands as a compelling time machine to an era when PC gaming was rapidly evolving.