A WIP vertical shmup … Chaos Streams.
There’s a distinct difference with this one. This game is done entirely in ASCII graphics. If you don’t know what that is, then go look it up. Now I’ve played games that use this graphics technique for years and years, and I have always loved it. Back with Rogue and a lot of the old bulletin board door games (even though that’s ANSII, but it’s the same general idea) to the newer Rogue-likes. I love it. But a “fast paced” shmup with all text based graphics I’ve never seen. The only thing even remotely close was a Space Invaders clone. And while it was done well for what it was … let’s face it. The original Space Invaders isn’t exactly the same kind of pace as something like 19XX : War Against Destiny or Radiant Silvergun.
Unfortunately, there aren’t any downloads for this yet. And it isn’t even anywhere near being finished. There’s a video and some (what the developer called outdated) screenshots after the jump, but if you just want to head over to the forum post for the game over at The Independent Gaming Source you can click right here and get all the same stuff, and updates if or when the dev puts them up.
Me personally, I hope this guy releases something because this looks kinda cool. I just hope he changes up the sound and music and whatnot in it, because it sounds like a 3 month old smacking a keyboard.
Voxatron - Spiffy looking arena style shooter.
I haven’t seen a game quite like this in a while. The destruction in the video looks awesome and I can’t wait to play me some of this. Here’s from the site :
Voxatron is an arena shooter that takes place in a world made of voxels (little cubes, kind of). Everything in the game is displayed in a virtual 128x128x64 voxel display, including the menus and player inventory. If you look closely, you can sometimes see the inventory (score/life/ammo) casting a shadow on some of the objects on the ground.
I've been working on voxel rendering and modeling tools for a long time now, with the ultimate goal of making a large explorey adventure game. About half a year ago it fused with work I was doing on arena shooters for Conflux, and this is the result.
It's quite a simple game at heart -- mostly just Robotron set in a 3d destructible world with goofy creatures. I'm unsure how major the implications of destructibility will be for gameplay, but it sure is fun to blast away pieces of wall. I've also added an experimental wall-building pickup you can use to construct barriers to hide from scary monsters.
The game takes place in a small set of arenas. Some of them feature rooms with set action pieces, somewhere between Knightlore and Smash TV. This is some of the original adventure based design sneaking back in, and an excuse to create thematic environments.
Features:
- Custom software rendering with soft shadows.
- Built-in sound and music synthesizer (also used to make the trailer music).
- Playback & post game recording.Voxatron will be ready later this year, but I'll create a single-arena preview version too.
Hit the jump for a spiffy video. Thanks to Flare over on the GameGavel forums. One of these days I shall have the patience to do the type of games I want to do. Text based versions of shit I don’t play in the first place. That’s the master plan.
Halo 2600 was released at the Classic Gaming Expo
Who says the Atari 2600 is dead. Now … I’ll admit. I’m not a Halo fan. I personally think the game is slow paced and rather boring. But I do like what other people come with in a game. Despite the fact that this is an Atari 2600 game, and the developer limited himself to using 4K of space. So no bankswitching or any of those things to provide more space. He has managed to create an extremely playable and fun game. And even the enemies are recognizable, and of course, Master Chief is instantly recognizable his his pixelated forrm. The graphics (by Atari 2600 standards of course) are extremely good, the sound is what you would expect from the system, and the control is perfect. If you’ve ever played Berzerk, it plays a lot like that. Only you can’t shoot diagonally. Here’s a little excerpt from his thinking behind the game (you can read the quite long post via the link) :
Bio Menace for DOS
Yet another one of those old shareware games that I never got to play the full version of until recently. Bio Menace. Honestly, I don’t know a whole lot about this game other than the fact it (obviously. Something that I noticed even back in the day) uses the Commander Keen engine. But it’s also the first game I played at home with any sort of blood and guts in it. Bodies are strewn about the blasted landscape, when the aliens die they blow up into little meaty bits and eyeballs and the like. When you think about it, this is a rather violent and disturbing game. But you can learn a lot more than I could ever tell you about this on the Wikipedia page. But great graphics (for the time), great music by Bobby Prince, decent sidescrolling run and gun gameplay. While it’s not perfect, and is actually pretty hard it’s definitely worth trying. And the main character’s name is Snake and he has a mullet. You can’t get much cheesier than that. I’m going through it again now because I never got the chance to back in the day. Back then I don’t even remember passing the first level to be perfectly honest. :) As usual, all the screenshots are courtesy of MobyGames and you can find the full version download at the bottom.
Major Stryker for DOS
This is one of those games that I never played the full version of until recently. In all honesty I had almost completely forgotten about it. I snagged this off of a bulletin board back in 1993 and I remembered LOVING it. Now, granted, a lot of these old PC games don’t fare too well nowadays. But this is one of those games that definitely stands the test of time. Another thing that made this game special to me back in the day and really helped turn me on to PC gaming was the fact that I had a PC that could run this … and a Nintendo. I didn’t have a Sega Genesis or SNES, it was the PC and the Nintendo … and the Atari 2600. And it was games like this and the original Duke Nukem games that showed me that the Nintendo wasn’t all there was out there in my little world.
While there isn’t anything particularly SPECIAL about it, it’s a fully playable and damned impressive vertically scrolling shmup with sharp, detailed 16 color EGA graphics (with parallax scrolling. Trust me, it was a big deal back in the day.) and some GREAT music by Bobby Prince that I unfortunately never got to experience until today because the PC I had to play this game at the time didn’t have a sound card. Hell, the music alone is worth the download, and I wish I had it to stick on my iPod, it’s that good with a monstrous 20 song soundtrack (granted, a few of them are the typical short “You’re dead.” tunes that I tend to hear a lot) … and there are a grand total of 30 sound effects in the entire game. With one voice sample that says “Game over, man!”
Gameplay isn’t anything you haven’t played before, you move around and shoot straight up. There are powerups in the game that give you different types of shots (including the ability to shoot behind yourself). But even on the beginner level this is one hell of a hard game. At least it is to me. I’ve never had this many problems with a shmup, not even the bullet hell style games. :)
Great game with some even better music. And is well worth the price of free because it was released as such at one point. If you like shmups or good video game music, it’s definitely worth a try. It may look dated, but fun games are fun games. All screenshots courtesy of MobyGames. Hit the jump to see them and download the game.
Double Dragon for the the PC
Back in the day, this was my introduction to the Double Dragon series. Not the arcade version (though I knew it was an arcade port), and not the NES version. THIS particular port. And I remember having such HORRID memories of the game. Maybe I just couldn’t stand the constant gangups (if you’ve got enemies on either side of you, prepare for a beating). Maybe I just wasn’t that much into beat ‘em ups at the time. I don’t know. Or maybe it was the keyboard control scheme for it. Unlike the more popular NES version, this one actually supports two player cooperative play, which was a big draw for the day. And that made it slightly more arcade like in it’s experience.
Hardware Review – Senario 101 Games in 1
I don’t do a lot of hardware reviews, mostly because I don’t get that much in the way of hardware. But this one is kind of neat and has a bit of history behind it. This is one of those NES pirate deals where they just stick a whole bunch of early NES games onto a ROM, build a controller around it and sell it. The deal with this one is, it was available at Wallgreens for $9.99. Of course, I didn’t know about it until WELL after the fact, so I didn’t get to snag one when they actually had them in stock, because I get a LOT of these TV plug and play games. I probably own around 20 of them. The idea behind them is really cool, just stick some batteries in, hook it up to your TV’s audio/video ports, turn it on and go. And for most, like the ones based off the Sega Genesis, Intellivision, Commodore 64 and Atari 2600 (among others) they’re pretty cool. Even though a lot of them use the NES on a chip like this one does which results in merely PORTS of the games. With the exception being the Sega Genesis based ones and the Atari Flashback 2 (which I unfortunately don’t have). But this isn’t about those. This is about this company that shamelessly removed the copyright information off of a bunch of very early Nintendo 8 bit games and selling it. And throwing in a couple of public domain games just to fill in the hole.
OverKill for DOS
If I remember correctly, this was the game that caused me to go out and get a controller for the computer … and in 1992 there was only one real choice : the Gravis PC Gamepad. I think I still have one of those around somewhere. Though I haven’t any idea if it works. But regardless, this is one of those games that I only had the shareware version of when I was younger. Hell, I was running it on a computer that didn’t even have a sound card. So I never got to listen to the kickass music this game was pumping out till MUCH later. Though, it did use the PC speaker for the shots and sound effects (which actually sound pretty decent) so at least I got part of the experience, even though it was limited to “pew pew pew” and a few garbled sounds that vaguely sound like explosions. I remember screwing on that little joystick attachment to the Gravis Pad and playing with that after I decided the directional pad wasn’t as good as it could be for a game like this.
Super C for DOS
Why the DOS version? Why not the arcade version. Or the NES version. Because back in those days I didn’t get to a lot of arcades and I mostly had an old PC to work with, so this is the version of it I would have played if I didn’t have an NES. Don’t judge it by the piss poor EGA graphics though, it plays great and is just as balls hard as any other version of the game. I tried to play it earlier and didn’t even make it past the first level, gonna have to try again once I have a little more patience and can remember where everything is. Considering what PCs were back in 1990, and the fact that they couldn’t force people to buy a 386 for this when most people were still running either an 8088 or a 286, this isn’t a half bad port and is at least worth trying for those of you who are curious about what we had to deal with as far as arcade ports back in the day. I was going to put the original Contra for DOS on here as well, but that’s an unplayable atrocity of a game. Thankfully I never played it back in the day and stuck with the NES version. PCs of the day just weren’t set up to handle a game like that. You just use the arrow keys to move around and aim and use the 0/Insert key on your numerical pad to jump and ./Del to fire.
The sound is pretty good, the graphics, despite the fact that they’re EGA are pretty well detailed. The game manages to keep track of the hectic nature of the overall game great and the music is good. And, above all else, the control is solid. Even the 4 color CGA graphics look halfway decent, though nowadays there’s no reason to even play it that way unless you just want to see it like that for some reason.
Kinda makes me when I had a 286 layin’ around somewhere so I could play this game on it.
If you let it sit for a little bit, it even has the arcade’s corny opening (minus the voices) and is definitely worth a watch. All images via Mobygames beacuse I can’t get far enough in the game to take good screenshots. :)
The Golden Tee Golf : Home Edition TV Game from Radica Games
This thing has gotten a LOT of flack. I don’t think I’ve ever actually read anything good about it, but it’s mostly from people who are familiar with the arcade game. And it’s totally understandable, because though I’ve only actually played the arcade arcade version of it a couple of times … I know how fanatical people are about this. The arcade game is a GORGEOUS game that obviously plays extremely well with it’s unique and damned innovative trackball control scheme. It’s definitely a hard core game for video game golf nuts.
This is NOT that arcade game. Flat out. As an arcade translation, it’s pathetic. The only thing it has in relation to the arcade game is the name, the fact it’s a golf game and the trackball … which I’ll get to in a minute. This honestly shouldn’t have even been called Golden Tee Golf purely because of the hardware. A TV game setup is NOT capable of doing a good reproduction of it. And that’s how I’m going to review it, completely ignoring the Golden Tee name and just going on it’s own merits. Which it DOES have.