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Them old games you loved

Started by kalowski, October 10, 2021, 08:41:58 PM

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evilcommiedictator

I just need someone who will play Beachhead II against me, especially. the last knife-fighting over a chasm game.

BAH
BAH
YOU CANT MATCH ME
BAH
AHHH-ORRRRR-AHHHH-*splash*

Mister Six


Cold Meat Platter


Beagle 2

I didn't understand what I was supposed to be doing on The Sentinel at the time (it was on a disk of copied games with no instructions). Having watched ten minutes of a man on YouTube explaining how to play it last night, I'm none the wiser.

Them old game I loved: Oids.



I'm surprised that this only came out a year after Thrust, it's twice the game and I had assumed it was directly influenced by it, but it must have already been in development. It's as enjoyable to play now as it ever was, although extremely tricky at times. I remember the sound effects playing a big part, the crunch of the NovaBombs and the throb of the repelling towers. It had a level designer, and I have really fond memories of coming home from school to see what challenge my older brother had set for me the night before. To try and recreate this vibe with my son may push me into buying the Amiga mini when it comes out. Desperate dad stuff.

If I ever had the time I would absolutely love to try and make a game like this in GameMaker Studio.

The Culture Bunker

Mercenary on Speccy got a 99% review, I remember - I bought it for £2.99 in my town's video shop (Flix) and it really was that good. The idea of having this whole world to explore on my humble +2 was amazing at the time: alright, so it was mostly flat terrain and everything was done in a series of underground mazes, but it was still a big 'wow' factor at the time. I made some hand-drawn maps of the various complexes but I'm not sure I ever got to the very end.

I remember the Andy Capp game being ahead of it's time in some ways too.

Glebe

I love them ol' time games and roll.

Mister Six

Quote from: The Culture Bunker on October 22, 2021, 01:29:17 PM
I remember the Andy Capp game being ahead of it's time in some ways too.

Ha, I think I got that for my dad on his birthday, and he was left somewhat bewildered. There were lots of these kinds of things - Tir Na Nog, Dun Darach, Marsport, Heavy on the Magik[nb] Actually those four might all have been by the same people.[/nb] - big winding maps full of people standing around, and objects to be used in oblique fashion. I loved them, even though it never occurred to me to bother drawing a map, nor could my child-brain figure out what I was supposed to be doing. Just loved "exploring" these worlds, milling around with the locals, popping into shops.

If you'd showed me Skyrim at that age my head would have literally exploded, Scanners-style.

kalowski

Tir Na Nog and Dun Darach definitely were. Dun Darach was the sequel. I loved them, but just like you Mister Six, I just spent hours walking around. Don't think I ever progressed more than 2% into the actual game.

Glebe

I couldn't complete Heavy on the Magic cos it had a bug in it, I think.

batwings

Lords of Midnight on the C64. The landscaping effect in the graphics was very immersive for its day. Has it really been over 30 years since I played it?





Glebe

Had that and I couldn't get the horse lads to move. It was just "What do you want me to do, my Liege?" and they wouldn't do nowt. Had a couple of goes of it and sacked it off.

The Culture Bunker

The Spectrum game that baffled me the most was 'Frankie Goes to Hollywood', which made about as much sense as a Paul Morley article. I went back to it when I was about 20 via some emulator and was still clueless.

kalowski

Quote from: batwings on October 26, 2021, 08:21:15 PM
Lords of Midnight on the C64. The landscaping effect in the graphics was very immersive for its day. Has it really been over 30 years since I played it?



Had this on the Spectrum but remember it being impenetrable. But it did look good, you're right.

kngen

I think you needed a keyboard overlay or something along those lines to get all the proper commands (which, obviously, my bootleg cassette with 100 other games didn't have). Without it I could only move between two places, and then do fuck all. Annoying, as it looked really cool (but pay a tenner for the official version - fuck that!) 

The first game I ever played was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on the NES, which entered our home when my big brother got "a Nintendo" from Santa. A cracking (if difficult) game and I'm always surprised to see how much hate it gets online. It's comparable to Zelda II The Adventure of Link, with its mix of platforming action and overworld exploration. Given how popular Turtles was, they could have got away a lot less effort.


AsparagusTrevor

I don't remember it being hated at the time, I think it's AVGN's fault it's developed a bad reputation. Having said that, it was bastard hard, unfairly so.

I had the Commodore 64 version, where all the turtles were functionally identical (i.e. all as shit as each other) and there were no special weapons (projectiles; shurikens, boomerangs etc) even though the instruction book told you what they all did. It did have a few less enemies, but it was still much harder than the NES version. When I finally played the NES version on a friend's console I found it relatively easy to get to the end after a few attempts which I never managed on my beige tape-chewer.

Still, at least the C64 didn't have an impossible-to-make jump like the infamous MS-DOS and Amiga versions.

KennyMonster

Quote from: badaids on October 11, 2021, 09:30:49 AM
Ah, another visitor! Stay a while... stay forever!

Wasn't that Impossible Mission?


Famous Mortimer

Quote from: AsparagusTrevor on November 08, 2021, 11:30:41 PM
Still, at least the C64 didn't have an impossible-to-make jump like the infamous MS-DOS and Amiga versions.
I do love stuff like this in old games. I think it was the C64 version of "Driller" which was impossible to complete because one of the later levels had its drilling spot in an area you couldn't get to. Or, slightly less bad, "The Sentinel" not having an ending of any sort because the programmer didn't expect anyone to ever get there.

KennyMonster


Wasn't Jet Set Willy or Manic Miner one of the first to have no ending because they didn't really think anyone would be that bothered to persevere with it?

That rang a bell with Jet set willy. Just looked it up.

QuoteUnfortunately, when the game was released it had several major bugs that made the game impossible to complete.

The most severe of these, known as The Attic Bug occurred when a player entered the screen called The Attic. After this, several other rooms would become corrupted, which caused problems such as all of the monsters vanishing from The Chapel and entering We must perform a Quirkafleeg from the 'wrong' direction causing instant death. Originally Software Projects claimed that this was intentionally done in order to make the game harder; however, they later retracted that claim and issued instructions on how to modify the game to correct the bug. This was one of the first times that a video game company had issued such a 'patch'.

The problem was actually a buffer overflow caused by one of the creatures in The Attic. The creature, which was an arrow, had an error in it's movement path which caused the sprite to move beyond the memory reserved for video and into memory reserved for important game data. This data was overwritten and therefore corrupted, causing the bug itself.

Other problems occurred with item placement. The invisible item in the First Landing was in an impossible to reach place. Software Projects released a fix for this when they released the fix for The Attic Bug, which moved the item into The Hall. A similar problem occurred in The Conservatory Roof where an item was placed too close to a creature making it impossible to collect before dying. Software Projects fixed this also, by removing the killer object.

The final bug occurred in The Banyan Tree. The player was supposed to be able to leave the room in an upwards direction, but a solid item had been put in the way making it impassable. Software Projects fixed this by changing the item so that it could be moved through.

Norton Canes

Quote from: Mister Six on October 22, 2021, 11:22:35 PM
There were lots of these kinds of things - Tir Na Nog, Dun Darach, Marsport, Heavy on the Magik - big winding maps full of people standing around, and objects to be used in oblique fashion. I loved them, even though it never occurred to me to bother drawing a map, nor could my child-brain figure out what I was supposed to be doing. Just loved "exploring" these worlds, milling around with the locals, popping into shops

I could never really get into those Gargoyle games because you could only look to one side of the street as you walked along, so when exploring you had to constantly retrace you steps in the other direction to see the other side and make sure you didn't miss anything. They looked fantastic though. 

Cerys


Alberon

Played Lords of Midnight, but played the sequel Doomdark's Revenge more. Drew elaborate lists of which characters could recruit other characters and did beat it a couple of times.

There are PC versions available now. I downloaded them when they free (I don't know if they still are).

FAKE EDIT: They are.

https://www.gog.com/game/the_lords_of_midnight
https://www.gog.com/game/doomdarks_revenge

Norton Canes

The couple of things that put me off Doomdark's Revenge were the cyan graphics with the stripy sky - nowhere near as aesthetically pleasing as Lords of Midnight's crisp blue and white - and the slow rate at which the screens were rendered, especially when mists had to be drawn. Oh and the tunnels... 

I wonder what colour scheme he would have gone with for The Eye of the Moon, which was supposed to be set in warmer southern climes? Resplendent in green and yellow?

Norton Canes

Also wonder if he ever toyed with random landscape generation? That would have been fantastic.