Genre: Simulation
Developer: Bullfrog
Publisher: Electronic Arts

Before the days when all releases had parkour, cover mechanics, and a minimap full of icons in the corner, games used to experiment with new and novel ways of doing things. Populous lays out its user interface like a sorcerer's table, with an open book representing the map on one side, and a surreal, portal-like view into the "real world" center stage, where the player can see cute little people constructing cute little buildings on excellently drawn grassy plains, deserts, and even hellscapes.

Populous originated on the Amiga, and the game was scaled back in various ways to squeeze it onto the gazillion other platforms to which it was ported. The ST rendition gets the full Amiga graphics, a phenomenal digitally sampled title screen song, and even the Amiga's digital sound effects-- but like the DOS version, misses out on the ambient noise, heartbeat background track. This might seem like a big deal, but in practice it winds up not being much of a loss because it lets the entertaining sound effects shine.

With its gamut of icons spread all over the screen and its terribly-written manual tutorial, Populous seems impenetrably daunting at first, when in fact it's extremely simple to play. The gameplay consists of flattering terrain for the player's side, and roughening it for the opposition, while setting a "goto" marker for the friendly troops, turning them into knights as accumulated mana permits. Fun spells let the player cause all sorts of mayhem for the opponent, like dousing the enemy's populated areas with swamps, razing them with earthquakes, or even flooding the entire map, Noah's Ark-style!

As the game that single handedly created the "god" simulation subgenre, Populous is notable in that the player's minions just do their own thing, with the player acting as more of a guide and occasional interventionist. Simple to play but difficult to master, the game's combination of distinctive aesthetic, expressive sound effects, novel looking interface, save game support, and whopping 500 levels of varying terrain and map layouts mean that this rock solid ST port of Populous is easy to pick up, and difficult to put down. This version even allows for null modem cable-based two player!