G.Nius

G.Nius is a Commodore Amiga game from 1988, released by the French company Lankhor. The name is a play on the word genius, hinting that its makers were aiming at wits rather than reflexes. One or more players can join in, and the action is presented from a side view.

Lankhor was a fixture of the French games scene at the turn of the 1990s. France then possessed one of the most distinctive gaming cultures in Europe – its studios embraced artistic experiments and genre hybrids that stood apart from Anglo-Saxon production.

1988 was the Amiga's lift-off period. Commodore's 16-bit machine offered astonishing graphics and sound for its day, and European studios competed to show them off most impressively. The Amiga's enduring reputation as the computer of artists and musicians dates from precisely this time.

Little information about the game itself has survived, a common fate for smaller French titles of the period – many never left their home market, and contemporary reviews disappeared along with the paper magazines that carried them. That is exactly why registering such titles matters: every record is one more fragment in the mosaic of European gaming history, which is far more poorly mapped than its American or Japanese counterparts.

Multiplayer support in a thinking game hints at the social dimension of computer evenings back then: two or three people sat at one machine and took turns. The Amiga was an expensive computer its owners loved to show off – and games guests could join were the best vehicle for that.

OldGame.cz keeps this French title on file with its year, its publisher and the pictures that survive.