Age of Empires
"Age of Empires", released on October 26, 1997, was the first game in the series, as well as the first major release from Ensemble Studios. It was one of the first history-based real-time strategy games made, utilizing the Genie game engine. GameSpot described it as a mix of "Civilization" and "". The game gives players a choice of 12 civilizations to develop from the Stone Age to the Iron Age. The expansion pack, "The Rise of Rome", published by Microsoft on October 31, 1998, introduced new features and four new civilizations, including the Romans. Although the two games had contained many software bugs, patches resolved many of the problems.
Revenge of the Apes
Planet of the Apes, later released as Revenge of the Apes, is a video game originally developed in 1983 by 20th Century Fox for the Atari 2600. Planned as the "Planet of the Apes" franchise's first video game, it was still in the prototype phase when Fox shuttered its game division during the video game crash of 1983. It went unreleased and was assumed lost until 2002, when collectors identified a mislabeled cartridge as the missing "Planet of the Apes" game. It was completed and released as "Revenge of the Apes" by Retrodesign in 2003.