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Lost and forgotten (except by us)

Arrowgrab

Arbiter
Joined
Jan 20, 2016
Messages
602
Glad you found the first one. I was checking and I legitimately couldn't find anything that fit most of what you were describing. As to the 3rd game, I'm looking through some horror titles, since the death screen seems like something someone would take a screenshot of, but so far no dice. Could you compare the game's graphics to something? Like Gauntlet or Ultima VI?

I'd say it was a bit more detailed than Gauntlet, but less so than Ultima VI. The big difference is that it didn't have the faux-3D effect of Ultima which is created by having walls rise diagonally. If you look at a screenshot of Ultima, the "verticality" in the corner of a room is represented by a diagonal offset. IIRC, in this weird game I played, it was simply upset directly upwards.

Also, while the I used the word "tiles", that might have been misleading. Movement of the character was seamless, not tile-by-tile steps.
 

Unkillable Cat

LEST WE FORGET
Patron
Joined
May 13, 2009
Messages
27,089
Codex 2014 Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy
I was gonna post here about how the third game somewhat matches the description of a game called Bozo's Night Out, but then I see that Morpheus Kitami probably got the game nailed down.
 

Arrowgrab

Arbiter
Joined
Jan 20, 2016
Messages
602
Glad you found the first one. I was checking and I legitimately couldn't find anything that fit most of what you were describing. As to the 3rd game, I'm looking through some horror titles, since the death screen seems like something someone would take a screenshot of, but so far no dice. Could you compare the game's graphics to something? Like Gauntlet or Ultima VI?

EDIT: Is it Maxwell Manor?

Wow, that's it! Thanks!

I just looked at a gameplay video, and now, 35 years later, I STILL don't know what the fuck you're supposed to do in it... :)
 

Morpheus Kitami

Liturgist
Joined
May 14, 2020
Messages
2,476
As to the second game, I have no idea what it is. Mobygames isn't helpful with Lunar Lander variants and Lemon64 puts Jupiter/Lunar Lander as "arcade/misc" so the only thing I can suggest is looking through there.
 

KeighnMcDeath

RPG Codex Boomer
Joined
Nov 23, 2016
Messages
12,863
You know, if the music in the first part of this vid was the music in the game... I'd be more pumped to play such games again.
 

Taka-Haradin puolipeikko

Filthy Kalinite
Patron
Joined
Apr 24, 2015
Messages
19,110
Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Bubbles In Memoria
https://tallyhocorner.com/2021/08/legionnaire-the-first-rtt/
Legionnaire
Next time you find your mouse cursor gravitating towards Graviteam Tactics: Mius-Front’s red star, Total War: Napoleon’s bicorne hat, or Ultimate General: Gettysburg’s twelve-pound cannon, spare a thought for Legionnaire, the almost forgotten 1982 trailblazer that showed legions of desktop generals that simmed scraps didn’t need to be stop-start to be manageable or memorable.

legionnaire105.jpg


In early 1982, developer Chris Crawford’s stock was sky high. Endowed with unusually accomplished AI, a revolutionary scrolling map, and cutting edge graphics, his coded-in-five-months Eastern Front (1941) had garnered rave reviews, and, unexpectedly, was selling like hot pirozhki. A ‘killer app’ for the 8-bit Atari 400/800, it helped Crawford secure a prestigious job at Atari Research, and ultimately earned him over $40K in royalties (In 1982 the average price of a family home in the US was $70K).

legionnaire103.jpg

By day Crawford was slaving away on Excalibur – the Crusader Kings of its time. His evenings and weekends, he devoted to remaking one of his earlier designs, Legionnaire, a 1979 Commodore PET title that sold “about a hundred copies”.

legionnaire108.jpg


Legionnaire Mk. II was to be no lazy port. Taking full advantage of the Atari 400’s graphics coprocessor and wealth of RAM (16K!), Crawford decided to dial realism up to XI and discard a crutch wargame devs had, up until then, considered indispensable – the turn.

legionnaire107.jpg

...
 

PanickedTushkano

Educated
Joined
Sep 14, 2018
Messages
40
Arrowgrab mentioning his 1st game reminded me of Urban Assault (1998, german, Shooter/Strategy). Something like BattleZone I think. I can't find it anywhere whatsoever. Looks very apocalyptic, but has apparently aged badly.

UrbanAssault-boxart.png

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Dark Reign
(1997, australian, RTS): No clue if its has been mentioned here already. One of the first games I ever played. It came out alongside StarCraft and was received positively in at least one german gaming magazine. It has all kinds of different terrain types, which - together with the somewhat slow reaction of units to commands - could at times make a clusterfuck of unit movements. It also made range into one of the most important unit attributes. But it was still not nearly as woeful as Dark Reign 2 managed with some of its mission design. Mostly it just works. Slowly, but still. It's also nice that a lot of things can be automated. Setting the damage tolerance for your valuable Tachion Tanks to "Low" means that they will automatically go to the repair facility, which is quite useful. Or cleaning up the last survivors at the end of a mission. No problem, just tell your whole army to "Search & Destroy" and they will find those annoying little shits. Great unit voices and soundtrack, by the way.

In case of problems with running it, there's always https://www.darkreignws.com/. I used their 1.7 patch for a while and that worked under Win 8.1, though I still needed to use my old CD to be able to play the campaign. Under Win 10 it doesn't work for me anymore. Also not with the newer 1.8.1 patch. No clue about the gog-version.

Ummh.... and there apparently also is a remake called Redux for Xbox Live for some strange reason.

maxresdefault.jpg

drr_home1.jpg

The latter shot is from Redux.




Abomination - The Nemesis Project
(1999, UK, real-time-tactics): I think it might have been mentioned in this thread, but I haven't looked through it in a while. I remember trying the demo a long time ago and I couldn't really get to grips with how odd the controls were.

abomination_nemesis_project.png

A8.PNG


Restricted Area (2004, german, ARPG): Cyber-punkish ARPG. I got a copy from amazon, but now I can't find any on there anymore. Personally I have found it to be quite fun, like ARPGs tend to be for me. It lacks style in some areas, like with character design and the story is a bit shit, but you'll get a slightly different experience based on character. The soundtrack is good and fitting in my opinion and the dark industrial maps have decent atmosphere. Itemization is fun and well designed with guns and (for one character) melee weapons, bioware and cyberware and so on. The story progression uses the same maps which are also used for side missions, so they are not distinct. Random layouts I think. There are some bosses and special events and such and one woeful timed mission that is unbeatable without the right approach and running speed upgrades. The last mission requires some grinding, because everything there is much higher level than what the player will be assuming normal progression. But overall the game isn't so long, so I never did mind that. Skill system is fine, nothing more, but I like the attribute system. The first time in an ARPG where I always simultaneously want to spend on more than one.

Restricted-Area_b_9903.jpg

98016-vollbild.jpg

Restricted-Area_b_9906.jpg


Harbinger (2003, american, ARPG): I have only tried the demo. Seemed interesting enough with the unusual setting, but I still haven't played any more of it. Had some technical issues as well. Typical case of no digital copy being available. In any case, screenshots.

816455876.jpg

harbinger.jpg

Dominion - Storm over Gift 3 (1998, american, RTS, oddly by Ion Storm): I'm pretty sure it has been mentioned at some point, but whatever. It's not like the games in this thread are in danger of becoming too well known.

111615798.jpg

Domi6.png
 
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KafkaBot

Scholar
Joined
May 4, 2016
Messages
189
Bad Toys, a Wolfenstein clone made by two Czech brothers:




Nothing truly special about it, but it entertained me immensely when I was 5 years old. It was released in two different versions: black/white and colored (this one was called 3D, for some reason - you can see it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-p0K2Ti-EGw&t=89s). The B&W version is far more charming, but appears to have been lost to time, with the exception of a shareware copy available on archive.org. The "3D" release is widely available, however, to the point that it's still sold to this day.
 
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lightbane

Arcane
Joined
Dec 27, 2008
Messages
10,156
^Darn, I remember playing that one as shareware. Thanks for reminding me of its existence... Sadly, it doesn't seem to be much anyway.
 

Morpheus Kitami

Liturgist
Joined
May 14, 2020
Messages
2,476
I think its a shame nobody ever made a decent 1-bit B&W FPS. There's something about that extreme graphical limitation that forced people to do better than on systems with slightly more colors. Even during the proper peak of CGA graphics, everyone used it as a garish 4-color monster, instead of B&W+2 other colors.
That said, I find it fascinating that a lot of shareware titles I used to play as a kid were made in countries I really hadn't heard of at the time. If you remember Cyberdogs/C-Dogs, that was made by a Swede; Or Assault Trooper, which was made by Finns.
 

Morblot

Aberrant Member | Star Trek V Apologist
Patron
Joined
Aug 30, 2014
Messages
2,288
Location
Finland
PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut
Assault Trooper, which was made by Finns.

A single Finn, AFAIR. I had the registered version on a 3.5" floppy, bought it myself with my allowance money as a youngster :cool: I also played through it all those years ago but I seem to remember that the shareware version had all the best levels. Then again, that's true of something like Doom as well.

Assault_Trooper_Loading_Screen.png


Assault_Trooper_animation.gif


edit. Sorry, this is actually kind of off-topic for this thread -- pretty sure at least the other Finnbros of roughly my age remember this game and other Finnish shareware titles of the time quite well!
 

Morpheus Kitami

Liturgist
Joined
May 14, 2020
Messages
2,476
I thought his wife or something had a hand somewhere. I honestly don't know which ones are the shareware levels, since when I played it I got the full freeware version off a DOS shareware site. It was a pretty incredible title for something someone made on his own looking back at it.
edit. Sorry, this is actually kind of off-topic for this thread -- pretty sure at least the other Finnbros of roughly my age remember this game and other Finnish shareware titles of the time quite well!
Eh, most Finnish games from that time that weren't developed by Remedy definitely fall under the lost and forgotten label. I'm genuinely curious as to some of it.
 

Joggerino

Arcane
Patron
Vatnik
Joined
Oct 28, 2020
Messages
4,472
LoL retarded video from a retard. Risen is far more complex when it comes to melee combat,but the fuck is too low level to know shit about it. The game is ok tho,and yes i do remember it.
Risen as an example of good melee combat, are you serious??
 

pOcHa

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jul 12, 2015
Messages
2,851
Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Bermuda syndrome (1995)
A somewhat forgotten gem, the story is as weird as the intro video. 1st part of game you'll be navigating through jungle and caves, you end up in some sort of hobgoblin kingdom. Clunky movement is compensated by gorgeous visuals and art with dinosaurs!
4ecdf941df6ct.jpg

thanks for reminding me about this - it is not simple to make it run now, but found an easy installer here:

https://collectionchamber.blogspot.com/p/bermuda-syndrome.html

a lot of other lost underdogs there
 

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