Unkillable Cat's Gaming Magazine Nostalgia Thread

[Unkillable Cat]

Thank You for mentioning the EOTB 2 review - I need to find that one immediately.

It's #123.

 

[Gauldur's Bait]

It's #123.

Found it, thanks. Disappointed by the score, almost 10 point drop compared to eotb1. It is more of the same, sure, in a sense, but there were also many improvements.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I'm reading that EotB2 review for the first time in years.

And wondering how this could ever constitute a review of a game.

Instead of being a coherent read, it's a series of paragraphs made to accompany groups of photos, with each paragraph relating to a specific...er, point the review is trying to make. The point of having a proper party build is so important that they dedicate two such text-boxes to it. And when it comes to spells, they state: "Spells can be conjured up either by memorization or by prayer. The first is infinitely preferable, 'cos you don't have to put up with someone mumbling to himself for ages and throwing holy water all over the place..."

But where things really fly off the hinges is in the text boxes where the two reviewers get to state their personal opinions. Reviewer #1 goes:

Eye of the Beholder was a brilliant RPG and you'd think it would take some beating, but no! This sequel takes the original formula and improves upon it no end. The graphics have been revamped, the control system tweaked and the overall feel is much smoother and friendlier. RPGs tend to be a bit daunting for spaced-out laser junkies like myself, but Eye of the Beholder is a different kettle of fish. The control system is dead easy to get to grips with and the tense atmosphere really draws you in. There are more traps and surprises in this sequel than in the original game. Finding your way out of the forest is hard enough, but the dungeons are truly labyrinthine. Music-wise, this is much the same as most PC games, a bit of a dead loss. The tunes are grim and uninspiring, but fortunately the decent sound effects save it. If you enjoyed the first game, then you'll find this is much more than a few extra levels. Watch out for it!

# Except for the addition of the cutscenes (which truly are brilliant pieces of pixel graphic artwork) and the new background, EotB2 uses the exact same graphics as EotB1, so no real revamping took place.

# The control system was 'tweaked' in exactly one manner: The spellbook interface was changed. Otherwise it's identical to the prequel.

# "Smoother" is not a word I would use to describe what it was like playing EotB2 back in the day, especially compared to EotB1. EotB1 ran smoothly regardless of its graphics mode, but put EotB2 into EGA mode and it would start to chug. Changing levels in EGA mode led to minute-long loading times. Upgrading to VGA improved things considerably, but even then there was a small, but noticeable, speed difference between the two games.

Reviewer #2 then goes:

Eye Of The reholder was the game which changed the face of role playing adventures, making them more fun than ever before. Everyone's been waiting for the sequel for ages, and SSI have turned in a fine product which more than does justice to the original. Basically this is an extension of the first (although of course you can play it if you're new to the game) with tweaks and improvements to graphics and gameplay. In one way that's a great strength, in another it's a weakness: fans of the first game will have kittens over this, while those who were looking for a significant march forward will be a tad disappointed. Just a tad, mind you, because nobody could realistically have asked any more of a sequel than E0B2 delivers - a solid, improved, more challenging version of the original and one which ahould keep EOB devotees happy for a very long time...

The first sentence alone is a goldmine. It sounds like utter nonsense until one realizes that he's not talking about RPGs, but about "role playing adventures." Role playing adventures, huh? One could fuel a Codex threadnaught for days just by asking people "What's a RPA?" over in RPG Discussion. But then again...when you come up with game genres at the drop of a hat, you can make any claim about them and it would be true.

Then there's "Everyone's been waiting for the sequel for ages" bit...back then they'd never heard of Duke Nukem Forever, so 9 months probably counts as "for ages". Seriouly, 9 months pass between C+VG reviewing EotB1 and EotB2.

And then there's the only fragment of criticism/review in the entire 2-page spread for the game, and it can be summed up as "It's more of the same, and that's a good thing." Talk about padding an article.

-

Video game journalism has been shit for decades, people.

 

[octavius]

I bet they never even heard of Dungeon Master.
It pisses me more and more off that DM seems to fade from history, while EoB is still remembered. That GoG (and Steam?) only offers EoB does not make things better.

 

[Gauldur's Bait]

Yeah, agree that review of EOTB2 was a bit underwhelming. Especially that "waiting for ages" seemed like nothing but lazily written hype. Sure, games had a much shorter development time in the early 90s, but as Unkillable Cat pointed out, 9 months does not ages make.

 

[Infinitron]

Unkillable Cat Very interesting summary, thanks. Ed Fries is like the Robert Oppenheimer of gaming.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I just looked at the EotB1 review. It has the same layout of little text boxes as the EotB2 review, but it's a 4-page review instead of 2 pages. Page 2 has a box that compares EotB1 to Dungeon Master, noting that the only area that really differs between the two is the spell interface, so someone at C+VG knew what he was on about back then...but then I turn the page to find another box that brings up another difference between the two games - party composition. There sure is a lot of padding going on in C+VG reviews...

But let's see what the two reviewers have to say...

I'm not much of an RPG lover - all that business with calculating hit points and taking turns is a real atmosphere-killer, I think. But Dungeon Master was different; It was fast, you saw the fireballs whizzing at you, the monsters leapt out in front of you and screamed, and the puzzles were really clever too. So it became my all-time favourite game, and I've always been very wary of any lookalike that tried to steal its crown, There've been some good attempts, definitely, but until now, none has really matched the original for Ingenuity, quality and atmosphere. Eye of the Beholder is the game that has changed that. Certain aspects of this game aren't quite as good as Dungeon Master (I preferred DM's concoct-your-own-spell system and the constant problem of running out of light was novel), but there are other aspects which are better, namely the ability to interact more fully with the sewer's denizens and recruit new adventurers, and the fact that the equipment screen and the 3D window can both be visible simultaneously. The only thing Dungeon Master had that this doesn't have was originality, but I'm prepared to let that pass if you will. Now FTL, beat this, please!

I'm not what you'd call the greatest fan of this style of game - a good flight aim or a decent blast is more my thing - but Dungeon Master was definitely a title I could return to time and time again (the addictive nature and playability were enough to keep me hooked for weekends on end). Now Eye of the Beholder has arrived, and, as Paul says, there are certain factors here that improve upon the famed classic (the character interaction is absolutely excellent), but there are also a few niggling facets that leave a little to be desired, namely the delay whilst being attacked - this pause more often that not results in your taking a great deal of damage! The graphics and sound, however, are nothing short of stunning, and the sheer playability of EOB is enough to have the greenest adventurer frothing at the mouth. If RPGs are the thing to get your pulse racing, Eye of the Beholder will blow your mind. Grab it at the first opportunity, but be prepared to spend a I-o-o-o-o-n-g time playing!

Neither reviewer has a background in RPGs. Not what one would consider a requirement, per se, but at least they knew Dungeon Master and thought highly of it. But here's the thing: This review is barely a review - it feels more like an introduction to the game. They spend more time talking about how the game works, rather than outlining any pros or cons, and all such are only done in direct comparison to Dungeon Master. So the EotB1 review can be summed up as "It's like Dungeon Master, only better!"

And for those that have been reading this thread from the start - this is exactly what I was talking about concerning Julian Rignall, the Editor of C+VG. He changed the emphasis, direction and appearance of the mag so much that reviews that usually had some valid points of criticism just end up being fancy-looking fluff pieces reviewed by airheads.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Been a bit quiet on the Retro Gamer front lately, mostly because there haven't many good articles in the last couple of issues. They've been too busy fawning over Nintendo and Sega, as usual.

The latest issue, however, kicks off with a bang. First they do a news item on the System Shock 1 Remake which doesn't show or reveal anything new, but news coverage in physical media is always nice. Then we move on to the C-64 top-down shooter Die! Alien Slime! which just got patched by the original developer earlier this year after a critical bug was discovered in the game in 1989. Interested people can get the .d64 file from this link.

Then there's the big item of the issue - Sonic's 25th Anniversary, a 10-page extravaganza in blue. I'm not a fan of Sonic (nor Sega) so I only skimmed the article to check if they would get into the untold horrors of the Sonic fanbase. While there's a section on the modding community, the article itself reads like RG prostating themselves at the altar of SEGA. However, I struck gold with a side panel (taking up a whole page) that outlines the characters in the Sonic games. It features snippets such as:

On Rouge the Bat:

Do yourself a favour and don’t Google her without SafeSearch on.

On Shadow the Hedgehog:

If you’ve ever wondered what Sonic would look like if drawn by a Linkin Park fan, wonder no more.

On Charmy Bee:

‘Why not Charmy The Bee?’ we hear you cry. While we’re not entirely sure what Sega’s line of thinking was, we’d suggest it’s because the little fool doesn’t deserve it and anyone who has heard him witter on in Sonic Heroes will probably agree. Charmy is the worst. The worst.

On Cream the Rabbit:

No, that isn’t an instruction.

On Amy Rose:

Sometimes mistaken as Sonic’s girlfriend, Amy is simply besotted with him and while the two are good friends, there’s nothing more going on unless you delve into the plentiful fan fiction (for the love of God, never do that).

And finally, on Sonic himself:

The star of the show and Sega’s enduring mascot. Factual accuracy was clearly of no concern when designing him - real hedgehogs have a top speed of around 12mph, are not blue and do not wear sneakers. Before his playable debut, he appeared as a mirror ornament in arcade driving game Rad Racer.

The retrospectives for this month are the SHMUPS Slap Fight (a game I remember from the local arcades), Top Gun (a game I never liked), Super Smash Bros (gotta suck that Nintendo cock every issue) and Auf Wiedersehen Monty...a retrospective that delves more into the political message behind the main character than the game itself.

The software house of the month in the mag is the still-running French Delphine Software - their tentpole titles include Another World/Out of this World, Flashback, Moto Racer and some lesser known adventure games like Future Wars and Cruise for a Corpse. The story of its origins is an interesting one - it was founded by Paul de Senneville, a successful composer who was responsible for the 1978 Malta entry in the Eurovision Song Contest, and he named the company after his daughter. Obviously he was not a gamer, but fortunately he hired Paul Cuisset and pretty much let him run the show, and things were good ever since. For those looking at sales figures, Another World (1991) sold a million copies, while Flashback (1993) sold 1.25 million copies. For comparison, 150.000 sold copies was considered a smash hit in 1990.

Further on there's a nice comparison view of all handheld consoles - good for an overview, but shallow on content. Judging by the ratings, the Game Boy Advance seems to have been the best of them all.

Finally, I was somewhat sad to see RG's review of Dino Dini's Kick-Off Revival and learn that it was rushed out the door in time for the European Football Championships and as a result it's an unfinished mess.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Small update because of two news tidbits:

# The computer mag PC Format finally closed its doors late last year, with #310 in December 2015 being its final issue. It had been running since 1991, so hats off for them.

# There's a guy out there that's scanning retro gaming mags and releasing them as torrents for all to download. You can find his site here and I hope you have unlimited bandwith, as we're talking hundreds of gigs of data here.

# Anyway, the aforementioned site is desperately looking for an old gaming mag, either in physical format or scanned. To quote:

Now, a plea: does anyone out there have Amiga Power issue 51, either physically or scanned? It’s the only one I’m missing, and it’s the one mag that everyone asks for. We’ve got Amiga Format and Amiga Shopper, so AP would complete the Future-Publishing-Amiga-magazines set. Please mail me if you can help!

So in the event that anyone reading this can help the man out, please contact him.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Retro Gamer #159: Points of interest:

# Beloved Spectrum titles Skool Daze and Back to Skool are getting a re-release, 30+ years after their debut. Unfortunately it's only for tablets and such and there's no option for retro graphics.

# The main article of the mag is a multipage marathon for Streets of Rage 2, featuring an interview with one of the game's creators, Mikito Ichikawa.

# To coincide with the release of Worms WMD, there's also an extensive feature on the Worms series and its numerous spin-offs. (Consider this the mag's "sponsored article" of the month.)

# Codemasters turn 30 years old this year, so there's pages and pages of racing games and Dizzy.

# Cave Story+ is being ported to the Mega Drive, for those that are interested.

# The dev "in the chair" is Jim Huether, whose career spans Atari during the 2600 days and Sega and Epyx in the 1980s. His opening quote: "I’d come up with most of my ideas at Atari when I was stoned. It enhanced my ability to be creative." The interview follows those lines, culminating in step-by-step instructions in how to vaporize a banana. He does bring up one thing about Jack Tramiel of Atari fame, and why he deserves to be called a bastard:

I warned Epyx when I found out they were going to do a partnership deal over the Lynx that they were dealing with the devil [Jack Tramiel]. They kept saying they had good lawyers and the contracts were ironclad. What basically happened was Atari agreed to pay Epyx money for development and then Epyx would pay them back when they released a product and got income. But Atari kept them from releasing their system so Epyx couldn’t pay Atari what was due and therefore they could take over the rights to the Lynx system.

To explain: Epyx were the original designers of the Lynx handheld console. They entered into a partnership with Atari, where Atari would handle publishing and marketing while Epyx handled development. Now compare that to the quote above, and you'll realize how Atari cheated Epyx out of their console. If you read the Wikipedia article about the Lynx, there's a noticeable absence of information about this part of the development process.

# RG also covers the Nintendo Classic Mini: NES (Now Even Smaller) and the games featured on it. They do bring up the problem with legacy bugs being present, but the only real change they can confirm is that Punch-Out! no longer features Mike Tyson.

# Little-known Spectrum gaming character Horace gets a nod with a 2-page spread of Horace Goes Skiing. While lacking the Yeti from Ski Free, it's still an enjoyable skiing game.

# My favourite article in this issue is the Halls of the Things retrospective. HoTT (originally slated to be called Halls of the Evil Bastards) was one of 5 games that was bundled with my Amstrad CPC and therefore holds a special place in my gaming heart. It's a maze game where the goal is to enter a 7-floor tower (plus a dungeon), collect 7 rings and then escape. It's hard as nails for various reasons. The player is equipped with a large arsenal of weapons, but so are the Things and they outnumber the player a skrillion to one. The levels are also randomly generated and the Things can exist off-screen (a rarity in 1980s programming) meaning that many games have been lost due to a off-screen fireball to the face. But the biggest problem with the game is that there's no HUD - you never know how much health or ammo you have left, or even how many rings you've collected.

Anyway, back to the article. HoTT was made by three blokes who formed the oddly named company Design Design. Their catalogue isn't big, it features games so crap they defy physics (Forbidden Planet), some average titles like a Space Invaders clone, and then the awesome HoTT. Their QA session for HoTT amounted to dragging a Spectrum computer to a school in Manchester and letting the kids have a go and hear what they said about it. After getting fed up with the game industry in general, they stopped making games in 1987 and went on to do other things.

I'll always cherish the front end they had on most their games. It's a simple-looking menu system, press "1" to play the game, press "2" to read the instructions, press "3" to change controls, "4" for various options, languages and so on...and that's where the sarcastic humour kicks in. Option "5" is listed as "Does nothing whatsoever", and the menu system is stated as "Designed without a computer". Setting the language to Australian turns the screen image upside-down. Setting the language to Italian, then reading the instructions for a game gives a short "Shoot-a them down-a!" message, instead of the 3 paragraphs of instructions previously featured when English was selected. The sound menu has a large "Computers are to be seen, not heard!" message across the top, with the sound options being "1: Strange, 2: Stranger and 3: Strangest"

The menu messages alone are plenty reason to give Design Design games a go - even Forbidden Planet.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Now THIS is probably the best Retro-related news I've seen in quite a while.

Guess which game is getting a comic book release?

Midwinter

Writer Dan Whitehead (Eurogamer)
Artist PJ Holden (Judge Dredd)
Cover artist Steve Pugh (Hellblazer, Preacher, Animal Man)

This is possible because the late Mike Singleton, creator of Midwinter (as well as games such as Lords of Midnight) owned the rights to all of his games himself, so it was simply a matter of getting his family on board to get this off the ground.

I'll be picking up this series once it wraps up.

 

[octavius]

It was such a pity that Singleton died before the mythic Eye of the Moon could finally be completed. And pity that he jumped on the real time wagon. How good couldn't Citadel and Midwinter be had they been turn based? Citadel was an unplayable clusterfuck, while I won Midwinter easily by just send a demolion guy to the enemy HQ. <sigh>

 

[Unkillable Cat]

And pity that he jumped on the real time wagon. How good couldn't Citadel and Midwinter be had they been turn based? Citadel was an unplayable clusterfuck, while I won Midwinter easily by just send a demolion guy to the enemy HQ. <sigh>

Dude, Singleton didn't jump on no damn wagon, he was trying to push the thing to get it started.

The basic concept for Midwinter is massive, and was impossible for hardware of the time to pull off as a full-fledged real-time game. His "real-time" solution is actually pretty abstract...to the point that it's constructed of 2-hour turns. The game is both real-time and turn-based at the same time.

And yes, I also beat the game once by just taking Cpt. Stark (the starting character) and raced for the enemy HQ and blew it up. That shows how open-ended the game is, there are multiple paths available towards the end.

 

[pippin]

I bet they never even heard of Dungeon Master.
It pisses me more and more off that DM seems to fade from history, while EoB is still remembered. That GoG (and Steam?) only offers EoB does not make things better.

The power of the DND brand?

 

[Unkillable Cat]

The power of the DND brand?

Here's a little truth about how GOG works: They go for the cheapest, easiest targets in terms of licensing agreements, providing documentation and extras and technical know-how needed to get the old titles working again.

GOG deserves praise (and a few bucks) on the first count alone; they go the extra mile needed to find and resolve the legal mumbo-jumbo.

On the second count they're no better than Polish car thieves, at least 66%+ (Disclaimer: Number pulled from my own ass, but still a decent estimate) of their documentation is taken directly from replacementdocs.com, except they clear out the watermark.

Again, on the third count they turn to the fan-base and the geeks that have overcome obsolete UIs and OSs to allow 20+ year old games to be played on modern media, then rip off their free methods and shamelessly use them to get their product going, and rarely bother doing as much as to credit the right people.

Any game that provides a challenge on any of these three fronts will be subjected to extreme beancounter scrutiny in order to justify forking over money to get things done. If positive, then it will get released on GOG. Otherwise, no.

 

[pippin]

GOG got the old DND games just recently and they had earned a name of their own long before that. What I meant is that DND has more "pull" than a random game released a long time ago. It's sad but that's how it happens.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Well, getting your hands on the entire D&D catalog is a major pull obviously, but Dungeon Master is:

# the highest selling title on the Atari ST computer

# one of the biggest reasons people bought Atari STs

# one of the biggest reasons people bought the 1Mb memory upgrade for the Amiga 500 (to the point that retailers started bundling the game with the memory upgrade) as the game required it

# the originator if an entire sub-genre of dungeon crawlers

It is NOT just some random game. Why we're not seeing it on GOG is the reason I made my last post. There's also the possibility that they're looking to relase DM1, Chaos Strikes Back and DM2 all at once...except CSB doesn't have an official PC version, so they would have to look for outside-the-box solutions to that one.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Hang on... something's off here.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Reading the latest issue of Retro Gamer.

In the latest issue they're covering Lemmings! - the original game, they barely touch on the franchise in general. Very good coverage, where they go into the design process, the almost innumerable conversions, dodging copyright infringements and having trouble selling the game to publishers (they all loved it, but found it too risky to publish - Psygnosis only took it on the second go).

...

It all but confirms a theory that I first put forth in 2000 or so: That Lemmings is the last game where its game mechanics are based on an original idea. I have not seen or heard from ANYONE in 15 years who can point to a game older than Lemmings that can be considered an inspiration, and I have not seen any game since 1991 that can be considered "original" in this same regard.

I'm resurrecting this thread for only one reason: To prove myself wrong.

Veteran Codexers may remember how I've harped on for years about Lemmings being "the last game developed based on an original idea." Well, today I can finally demonstrate that I was wrong with not one, but three examples.

Going in reverse chronological order and only with a partial match, we start with Interphase (1989).

The dreams of the future are now reality; fully trained professionals whose purpose is to create optical stored REM moments — dreams to obliterate the cares of waking thought.

Yet the DreamTrack (TM) Corporation have created an insidious implant within the latest DreamTrack (TM) that is being mastered for release within the labyrinth of the Corporation's mainframe complex.
As a rogue dreamer, you have to enter the mainframe and direct your partner to the track itself - the minds of every future generation will be trusting to your skill and intellect.

You control Chad (yes, really) who's surfing in cyberspace to interface with the systems of DreamTrack HQ, while your girlfriend Kaf-E (pictured above) is physically in the building, trying to reach the mainframe to steal the DreamTrack. Gameplay-wise this means you're surfing through a game environment eerily similar to the cyberspace-sections in System Shock, finding system controls for various lifts, door and security cameras and disabling/using them to guide Kaf-E through the building. Unfortunately Kaf-E is not very smart, and will walk into doors and such unless you help her out. Sound familiar to anyone?

Sadly this game seems to be mostly forgotten by today's standards, as I can't find much info on it online... which might explain why it's taken me so long to notice it and make the connection.

Moving on we get to one of the dodgiest game releases on the Amstrad CPC: Bridge-It (1984).

Cover hidden under a spoiler because it's crap

I've been debating with myself whether to link it to Lemmings or not, as the connection is very loose, and the game is very crap. There's a S-pattern way with four bridges on it. A number of people are looking to get across, and your goal is to lower the bridges at the right time so that the people can cross safely to the other side. That's it, that's all there is to it (minus the crappy graphics, music and sluggish controls). You're trying to save the people, yes... but at the same time the game is essentially a gigantic Quick Time Event.

But there's an even earlier game with an even looser connection, but still featuring a kernel of Lemmings-gameplay, and that game is Spike (1983) on the Vectrex.

The image sums up the gameplay pretty well. You control Spike, whose girlfriend Molly has been kidnapped. To accomplish that, you need to navigate the same level over and over again:

You move Spike left or right, only stopping to kick baddies to stun them, trying to reach the key and then leave through the exit at the top. But where's the Lemmings-aspect? You also control the ladder/exit, moving it about to allow Spike to get around the level.

As static screenshots don't do the Vectrex justice, I've added a video so you can see (and hear!) the game for yourselves.



Notice how the ladder moved about between a few predetermined positions? That's the player's doing.

So there you have it, Lemmings is not a game based on an original idea. It's still the first game that takes the "save them, don't kill them"-premise and runs with it, but that's not the same.

More importantly, what does this mean? It means that the last original idea used in a video game came about in the 1980s somewhere. And that's just sad.

Is Interphase the last game based on an original idea? I'm not sure. Its primary gameplay is to fly around in a 3D environment and shoot stuff, so it's doing proto-Descent gameplay as well as Lemmings-esque gameplay. It sure has an interesting and original setting, though.

So what was the last game made that was based on an original idea? I ain't got a fucking clue. But anyway, a 20-year old hypothesis has finally been killed off.