Pocahontas

It's 1995, Disney just had their grand animated Pocahontas film in cinemas, and game stores were flooded with a bunch of quick licensed titles. This one, however, isn't a licensed game — GT Interactive went their own way and approached the story of the Native American girl without Disney's big eyes and singing trees.

Pocahontas is an action platformer set in the North American wilderness, where you play as the titular heroine. The story loosely draws from the legend of a chief's young daughter and her relationship with European colonists, though the game adaptation diverges from historical facts just as willingly as the Hollywood film. The goal is to work through a series of levels, overcome obstacles and enemies.

Gameplay is straightforward — you jump, dodge hazards, occasionally collect items. The controls feel exactly as you'd expect from an average platformer of 1995: functional, without much inventiveness. Difficulty fluctuates irregularly, which was more the rule than the exception back then. The graphics match the capabilities of DOS at the time, and the developers managed to capture the atmosphere of nature better than you'd expect from a purely commercial project.

This is a game that wasn't born from love of the subject matter, but because the name Pocahontas was everywhere in 1995. Still, it's not as hopeless as the worst licensed dreck of that era. I remember games like this sitting on shelves next to schoolbooks in stationery shops for just a few coins — you bought it more because you had pocket change left over than because of the manufacturer's big name. Today it belongs more in the category of curiosities than classics.

Nowadays, mainly those wanting to map out everything that came out in the DOS platformer era will play it, to see what the market looked like when big names drew attention to smaller titles too. As a pure gaming experience, it offers nothing you couldn't find done better elsewhere — but as a time capsule from 1995, it has its place. You can get through it in an afternoon in your browser and won't miss anything you'd regret.