Nightmare

Weird old unreleased arcade game

Maldita Castilla

Was bored today and browsing through a thread of LPs of "hard games", thus stumbling across this little gem, inspired by Ghosts n Goblins (which I never actually played)



Anyway, it looks pretty neat and is apparently free so should be checked out!

colorful squares

Incredibly simple but hey, sometimes that's all you're after.



Game Page

other people's retro

There have been a lot of videogames in the past. Most of which I've never played. Most of which probably I've never even heard of. Sometimes this is for the best.

.... say what?

Tobari and the Night of the Curious Moon

Haven't seen one of these in a while! It's an old-school indie platformer... not the new super arty breed, but a cute Japanese thing. Well, originally Japanese. This version is fully English. Nothing amazingly special in the little bit I played of it, and the controls are kinda slidy, but if you like anime girls and cute things...

You go around whacking people with your magic staff. Some monsters will drop powerups. You can carry two powerups at a time and switch between them, or drop them to get back to your default or carry another.

And as I mentioned, free demo. (As usual, there are adult works elsewhere on DLsite, but this link is safe and leads to the non-adult part of the site.)

icewind dale

My party has now reached the dizzying heights of "somewhere around level 5" and is now no longer likely to fall over and die in a stiff breeze.

a quest for meaning

This weekend's GOG sale is 'activision' (ZOMBIE SIERRA) quest games - King's Quest, Police Quest, Space Quest.

I went to a lot of trouble many years ago to find a legit police quest collection CD. After I did, I never actually played the games because they were a bit hard to get running smoothly on my computer setup at the time. (Similarly, I have obtained Leisure Suit Larry: Love For Sail but not gotten very far into it because running it was a little awkward.)

I never owned KQ7 afaik, but my then-boyfriend bought a copy, so I did play it through once. Means my memory of it is much hazier than it is for the others. Mask Of Eternity, which is a travesty and not KQ8 at all, I have not played. That probably doesn't surprise you.

And weekend sale or no, I don't think that's likely to change now.

Hyper Princess Pitch

It's about a bratty princess (clearly slightly punning Super Princess Peach from name and design) who was always a naughty girl and never got presents from Santa.

So she BLOWS STUFF UP AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE.



(Not quite out yet. Is due to release next month for Christmas.)

Netpack

It's Nethack Meets Pac-Man.



An idea I just have to find amusing, even though I haven't actually taken the time to play it yet.

the latest technology!

Looks like someone's making a 3d steampunk platformer... that's 3d in the sense of red-and-blue glasses!

Visions of the past

On a trip to see relatives I got my hands on a pile of my old computer game stuff. Boxes, in a rare few cases, but mostly MANUALS. And copy protection. And maps. ALl the stuff that used to be jammed into these things. Not my entire collection ever, but a good bunch of stuff. So what have I got here?

The "manual" for FACEMAKER, which includes how-to-load-game for all the various computer systems it was available on (LOAD"SPIN",8) and how to 'play'. It's not exactly much of a game. Why did I even have this? (I was obviously VERY young.)

The rather thick manual for Wonderland most of which is taken up by "how to use windows", and a similarly thick but weirder shaped one for the Magnetic Scrolls Collection.

The insert map and how-to-load for that blasted Hobbit text adventure that I remember frustrating me as a kid and I've always been confused about it because when I tried to look it up I found things that didn't quite match. However, this proves it was indeed the Hobbit Software Adventure - either I just have NO memory of the graphics or I played in text-only mode because I liked words.

The foldout 'Getting Started' for Super BoulderDash.

An almost-complete box for a game called Rings of Medusa that I obviously owned but have zero memory of. It's got the box, a manual, and the loading instructions sheet, but the original disk is gone, replaced by a 3.5" backup disk.

A probably-complete box for Joan Of Arc: Siege & The Sword which I also have zero memory of. Amusing because 85% of the big box is taken up with nothing but a cardboard spacer.

... I probably bought both of those just because they had women on the covers, and then didn't play them because I don't actually like strategy games.

Sierra stuff (there's lots!):
The big map and twisty city streets guide from Quest For Glory 2. And the official hint book. And the technical manual. And the BOX. Or at least, that's the sleeve that I put on the one original Sierra box I still have. They all looked alike! And ONE original disk, probably dead, and no idea where the others are.
The fingerprint sheet AND the red-plastic-spyglass used for reading it from the Colonel's Bequest. WHich I know I lost at least once while I still had the game. Stupid annoying copy protection. :)
Hint book for Space Quest IV.
A manual from Hoyle Solitaire which I don't think i actually played, it's my mom who liked Solitaire.
The 'manual' (background story, slight tech info, and crucial copy-protection spellbook) from King's Quest III.
A fold-out "hint map" from King's Quest 1, decorated with my confused attempt to solve the Rumplestiltskin puzzle, and the official hint book. Which was one of the ones that you had to use yellow markers to make the invisible ink appear (now rather faded). The later books used the red plastic window approach. Also the game backstory-manual.
Box sleeve for King's Quest V.
The original box sleeve for King's Quest VI (5.25" version) and the included fluff/copy-protection guidebook to the isles. Also the hint book, when they gave up all this 'reveal the hidden text' rigamarole and just printed the answers.
Hero's Quest reference card and Famous Adventurer's Correspondence Manual.
A Sierra tenth anniversary product catalog.
New products catalog listing for 1988.
'A Letter From The President' explaining why gamers should buy sound cards to improve their Sierra experience.

Wizorb

This looks cool - it's like breakout meets NES Zelda.

Wizorb Debut Trailer from pixeltao on Vimeo.

Not out yet though.

Alternate Reality

I played these when I was a kid! Well, the first one at least. I don't remember much except potions and learning the word 'greaves'. And getting attacked by wraiths.

Don't know if they'll hold as much fascination now, but it's worth a look...

The Heart Is Safe

A very simple platformer idea, but cutely done and fun for a few minutes play.

Flash or download here.

raise your glass

in memory of Jerry Lawson, who invented the first cartridge-based video game console, and died earlier this month.

This has inspired a bit of research on my part, as I wasn't born yet and don't know much about the pre-Atari consoles, and didn't entirely understand the difference between the Fairchild Channel F and the Magnavox Odyssey (which someone was WHINING about in the comments of said article as being REALLY the first console).

If I understand right, what it comes down to is that the Odyssey could play multiple games but the code for those games was present in the base hardware and the cards you put in only adjusted the options, setting which subset of features would be made available. That, combined with the picture the user manually attaches to the TV screen, creates the impression of different games while actually being quite limited in what you can do with it.

The Channel F, on the other hand, had programs on cartridges, and thus sufficiently weird people can write new games for it even today.

Spike McFang

Poking around youtube leads me to information on another cute looking SNES game I'd never heard of...



(Hrm, I don't seem to have a category for "Sort-of Zelda Like Action Adventure")

cranky but still deals

The various Quest collections (Space/King's/Police) are on sale this weekend at Good Old Games.

lesbian spider queens of mars

I only had a split second to look at it because I'm busy but, well, you expect weird from that title, right? Retro pixely arcade-i-ness where you tie women up in your web and then grab them to score points?




http://bit.ly/hZ6rBW

Chaos Stream

A shmup someone's working on that uses the most retro of retro graphics... ascii.

My First Video Game Heroine

So, the ending of KQ3 obviously makes me think of KQ4 (which starts, like, seconds later). I was quite fond of it. And thus I wonder - was this the first video game I played with a female character as the protagonist?

Obviously, she's not the first actual female character leading a videogame. Ms Pac-Man is technically female (although I'd argue not a character) and there's Metroid, of course. But I never played Metroid.

The Princess is a playable character in the english Super Mario 2 and might sortof count. She's only one of four, but I played her in every level unless there was some secret reason not to. Not just because of girliness, I also liked her hover power. However, datewise, that launched shortly after KQIV, and I can't tell what I might have played first. (I probably played KQIV right away, as I had the AGI version. I had both versions eventually, but I had tons of fun messing with the debug codes in AGI.)

I was probably a happy kid that year though! Two major game franchises that I was big fans of, now letting me play as a girl, and the girl wasn't useless. Crucially, owing to the limited graphics and sound of the time, there was not a whole lot of extra characterisation heaped on either princess. They were both blondes in skirts, sure, but they weren't stuck being comically kawaii with high-pitched squealing. In fact, the Rosella of my mind was pretty fierce.

I mean, imagine the day that girl's had! (series spoilers) Her kingdom is in ruins and she's either volunteered or been dragged off to DIE at the hands of a dragon. She gets rescued at the last minute by a total stranger who turns out to be a long-lost relative and stumbles home, at which point her father promptly keels over from a heart attack. In a panic she flees to a magic mirror and gets yanked through it to another place where she's manhandled by flying monkeys, swallowed by a whale, menaced by man-eating ogres, chased by zombies and mummies, swims to and from multiple islands, gets locked up, threatened with a forced marriage, and has to save multiple people from death... and this all takes place within 24 hours!


Rosella of Daventry by ~Flameprincess88 on deviantART

This girl. She rocked.

I don't recall there being any suggestion at all that there was anything odd about a girl going adventuring, or that she was in any way inferior to the previous lead characters. In fact the ending of Kq3 showed that she had an adventurous spirit, as she was right there reaching for the hat along with her brother.

And even though, later, I did want her to get together with Edgar, I was pleased at the time that she didn't instantly marry a guy just because he was present and suddenly not-ugly. (However, I was not hugely fond of KQ7. It was a letdown after KQ6 which I thought was great...)