Microsoft Fury 3

Starting off you might be wondering, what happened to the first two games, right? Since this is the third entry there must be some prequels or other games in the series that came before Fury 3. But the truth is that this is actually a standalone game, and it’s not really 3 as in this part, but more like 3D. In fact, the game manual clarifies that it is “Fury to the Third Power'', but all of this is irrelevant to talk about the game. If you've never heard of this game, which is likely, you can start off by imagining something like Starfox made natively for Windows 95. But is it any good? Well, let’s talk about that.

About the game

Fury 3 is a very straightforward game, the plot is ridiculously simple and so is the gameplay, but you have to keep in mind that this game really helped to sell Windows 95 in many ways.

So, basically, robots are bad, and you'll have to fly through nine different planets to defeat them and liberate them from their evil robotic hands That's as far as this game goes in terms of the plot. This game was an arcade shooter, back when arcade machines were really popular, and as such, one of your main goals is just to blow things up. And that actually works great.

Fly through different planets

This game uses basically the same logic as Star Wars when making the planets. This means that even though there are different planets, all of them only have about one theme. For instance, you get to go on a mission on an underwater planet, but there's also a mission on a City planet, where everywhere you look there's a city. There's even an Egyptian-like planet, which doesn't really make sense but it's cool to have it.

Impact

It's no secret that games help to sell any piece of software out, and Windows 95 needed some help in advertising the OS. Fury 3 was perfect, proving that Windows was a great gaming platform, as this game basically came preinstalled.

The game even has some extra details to make it much more Windows-friendly in appearance. It runs in window mode, which is the most in-your-face way of reminding you this is a windows game. All the settings for the game are in labels on the windows just as if you're navigating through the OS itself. It worked great to make it a simple and effective way of proving just how well windows worked for gaming. As well as the capabilities to run nice 3D graphics.

We have to review this game keeping in mind that it’s more like a sample of what Windows could do than an actual game. In that sense, it is forgivable that there’s basically close to no plot or story.

Pros

• Nice visuals
• Huge levels
• Fun gameplay

Cons

• Too simple
• No plot
• Repetitive

Billed as Microsoft's first action/arcade game, this one-player shooter drops you into the pilot's seat of the Fury3 in the middle of a space-age civil war. Your 24 missions cross eight planets, each with three parallel playing fields - the surface, inside the planet, and above the clouds.

The spacecraft flies with six degrees freedom of movement, and you can control it from a special cockpit mode that gives you a 360-degree view of the action that's independent of the aircraft. Your weaponry includes plasma guns, lasers, guided missiles, and smart bombs.