Classic Game Review – Boppin’

Remember Shareware? Those big “demos” offering about a third of a game for you to try out before buying it, free to distribute to whomever you wanted? Thats how games got around back in those days, back when we didn’t have that series of tubes called the Information super Highway, now we’re going back into the Dark Ages! You know when you’re old if you can remember the days without the internet, still with everything so readily available nowadays I can’t but feel that there was a lot more value over a game that you acquired back then, but that’s probably a personal opinion.

Anyhoo, back to Shareware. Shareware games could come from, well anywhere! from friends, family, computer magazines, that smelly kid from school you name it. Now if you were lucky you got a clean disk with a neat sticker on it describing a list of contents, most magazines did this very neatly, but most of the time, it was usually a blanque sticker with a cryptic description on the front like: Rott.arj or ComKeen4.zip, giving a slight indication of the contents. The worst were those oddly coloured, non labeled floppy’s you never knew what horrors they contained and for some reason they always made weird noises in your floppy drive, making you rue the moment you ever slid it into your computer.

But then again, it also added a sence of mystery and discovery, what did the floppy hold? what kind of game could a Rott be? and how in the hell was I supposed to extract an ARJ file again? We had an enormous pile of disks at home and scrounging through this Treasure trove had often led to some very interesting revelations, and i’ll be tapping into it regularly on TVGH to share my findings, first up: Boppin’

I fired up Boppin not knowing what to expect and was greeted by the all familiar Apogee logo, as you know Apogee means action, and when a game starts with that particular screen I know i’m in for a good time. Some of my favorite classic games hail from the Apogee library and you’ll see many of those pop by in the future. Now the first thing that struck me as odd, where the two Triangle shaped characters sitting on top of the Apogee logo waving at me. I cocked a brow in confusion and pressed on be greeted by the next screen, depicting a bloody Teddybear emanating a haunting laughter. My other brow joined the already cocked one and I wondered what kind of madness I had stepped into.

Just like the intro from Saved by the Bell

Well Madness is the right word, just explaining the storyline is enough for a man to lose his sanity,  lovecraftian style! but since I’m already running up and down the stairs of madness on a regular basis I’ll give it a shot anyway.
Imagine a multitude of universes each created by someone or somethings imagination, among one of these is the homeworld of  videogame characters Yeet and Boik, called Arcapaedia. (lost yet? I know I am!)
Whilst playing their arcade games they discover that all of the in-game monsters have gone missing.  apparently they have been stolen by Hunnybunnyz and hidden into various shapes throughout the universe. To make sure that there’s something to fight against, the two heroes set out to release all the monsters back into their games. Let’s get Boppin’!

Horrors!

Now read that three more times and plug your fingers into your ears to prevent your brain from oozing out and you’re set. The story sets the tone perfectly, as in you have no Idea what to expect.
The gameplay of Boppin is as unique as it’s storyline, i’d never seen anything like it. The only thing that comes close to comparing is a game like Tetris on the Gameboy, except imagine holding the console upside down while playing it.
Wherein Tetris blocks of various shapes fel down, and it was up to players to fit them al neatly together to remove them from the playing field, in Boppin you have to shoot blocks upward to create various shapes to be able remove those.

Throwing sushi to release monsters, makes sense.

Boppin adds the extra challenge, that each block created for the player to launch upwards is made of a certain object, shape, material, that can only be matched up with the same kind that are up in the playing field. And if that wasn’t enough, the only way to release the aforementioned monsters is to line the blocks in certain shapes, like Crosses and Squares.  and if you think that’s complicated, here’s the fun part, you can only launch the blocks upwards at 45 degree angles, miss your target or hit a block of a different pattern  and you can kiss your Hit points goodbye, complete with the wailing cry’s of the protagonists. Launch too many shapes in the wrong directions and it’s game over.

Try and make proper shapes out of that!

Explaining the gameplay is way more complicated then the game itself, it’s very easy to pick and the controls are right on. Yeet and Boik can move around the field horizontally so you can line up each throw with ease, there are also elevators and directional pads placed around each level that can give you some leverage or allow for some crazy shot combinations. The game is even better with two players, both players can play at the same time and help each other out or steal some high scores with cunning trickery, just don’t be surprised if you get a keyboard jammed in kneecap.
At the end of each stage when all the blocks are removed from the field, you get an overview ot the monsters you released and you move on to the next stage, and that’s one of the best parts of the game. Each stage is completely different from the next, sometimes you’re in a garden, throwing diamonds, in the next stage you’re on a cirquit board smashing chips around. you’ll move from sushi tables, to blueprints and badly drawn school doodles each with their own set of items to throw around. This makes you want to keep on playing, just to see what kind of wacky world is hanging around the corner.  Each world features it’s own music and they really enforce the theme of the stage, you’ll find yourself humming along in the late hours of the evening while you’re squinting at the screen looking for the right angle to throw that obsidian jewelstone.

Releasing Pac Man Ghosts inside what looks like a Colon.

The graphics and humour in Boppin’ are crude and effective, the monster sprites look great and each stage has a vibrant feel and while they are totally different from each other the whole style stays consistent. It’s always a surprise to see what kind of funky monsters are released in each level, and the variation of shapes to throw around makes each level something to look forward to. Yeet and Boik are very likable and I still giggle when I fail a level and they blow their own brains out or perform seppuku out of sheer frustration.

AAAAAAAAHHHHH!

Boppin’ is a real hidden gem and unfortunately not well know among gamers of old. It’s  one of those “ow god is it midnight already?” games and still holds up to this day, it features a simple but solid concept that is very well executed. I recommend it to any puzzle fan to grab a friend and waste the wee hours in the night, heck even if you’re not into these kind of games I’d still tell you to give it a whirl.

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Re-introduction & Classic Game Review: Cyber Troopers Virtual On

Boy a lot can happen in half a year, and looking at this blog, a lot can “not” happen as well.  A couple of times now i’ve claimed to keep this blog updated on a regular basis and failed miserably. Most of this was caused by personal matters on which I won’t go into any further on this blog as this is about the history of videogames, not my fumblings with this mythical “outside world”. But I just wanted to give you an explanation on the lack of updates, and try to make up on lost time by posting more articles and reviews and hopefully the aforementioned video’s. (see previous posts).

With my goals vaguely on order, I can assume my role as self proclaimed know it all on videogames memorabilia… but what do I know you say?  I have played videogames sinds the dawn of time (that was around age 7-8.) and have since been enthralled into that world making it my hobby, education and daytime job.  Though I have been out of the business for a while, I kept my interest and continued filling my brain with gaming knowledge and since I can’t shut up about it, I created this blog to take note of the ever growing legacy of videogames.

As the next generation of videogames is upon us, we must never forget to look back and see how it has gotten this far, as there is much to learn from the past, I will expand this blog beyond reviews and articles to include new features filled with interesting knowledge and opinions of gaming past, but more on that later, to get back into the feeling let’s start off with a Classic Game Review.

Classic Game Review – Cyber Troopers Virtual On.

-Get Ready-

Enter the mid-90s, The Sony Playstation and the Sega Saturn were just released and we were slowly transitioning from the 16 bit to the 32 bit era, games became bigger and more emphasis was put on that curious thing called “3D graphics”. Now 3D graphics weren’t new, Starfox showed us a sample with help of the FX chip on the Super NES and the PC was already sporting games with eye poppin polygons. But there was still one powerhouse that reigned supreme over every platform on this matter, the arcade!

Yes, the now legendary realm of the arcade from forgotten ages once reigned justly in the videogame world, these Titans brought us the best in cutting edge gaming technology and people were always looking forward to when the gods would step down and grace us with a console port of their games, only to find out they were mostly inferior. Not that they weren’t any fun, on the contrary,  but there was seldom a game from that time that was granted the honor of being “Arcade Perfect”.

There weren’t a lot of arcades in the Netherlands, even during their high times, in fact I think there were only 2 big ones. The good thing about that was that most of the best arcade games were gathered at one of these locations, a Titanmoot if you will.  So when my Dad took me and my brother we got to bask in all the splendor of these lost Shangri-la’s.

Now I can tell you all about all the great things witnessed there, but I’ll go into detail about that another time. Amidst all the sleek black arcade cabinets there was a White 2-seater unit sticking out, adorned with bright pink and blue colours and an odd sounding digitized voice beckoning like the siren’s call. Upon further inspection the next curiosity popped up, the control panel featured no buttons, and two joysticks. No not the simple balltops sticks found on regular arcades, no these were actually reminiscent of fighter jet sticks, and two of them! So I tilted my eyes from the control panel and stared at the screen to see for what game these twinsticks served. Now I don’t know how long I was staring there but at some point I noticed my brother standing next to me gazing at the screen with similar awe.  Giant robots rendered in clean, sharp and stylised graphics were fighting eachother using all manner of weaponry in enclosed arena like environments, dashing at eachother at blazing speed unleasing screen filling, retina scorching destruction. I managed to tear my eyes of the screen and  leaned back to peek over my brothers shoulder at the side of the cabinet to check out the Title: Sega’s Cyber Trooper Virtual On.

Bright Pink and Blue stands for Awesome.

Now Sega had a lot of “Virtua/Virtual” games out there in the arcade, There was a Virtua Racing, Fighting, Soccer and so on, but I never heard of “On” Before. So the only logical explanation is that “On” Stands for Giant Awesome Robot Battles.
As we clambered into the seats our dad provided the machine with the required coinage and the machine beckoned us to choose our Virtuaroids for battle. As our selected machines were launched from a giant carrier onto the big blue ocean, our surroundings faded as we were pit against eachother on a docking pad coloured by the orange glow of a setting sun. As you know most kids are fairly proficient in driving giant robots and the tank-like controls of the virtuals worked perfectly with the twin stick controls.  Our dad kept fueling our matches with coins as we blew eachother to smithereens and as we left the arcade at the end of the day I knew this game would rank among my favorites.

Getting hits and moving around is key.

Unfortunatly Virtual On was only released on the Ill-fated Sega Saturn, and I never got to play the game beyond the arcade, however word reached me of a PC release, and with the via that then new “internet” thing I managed to aquire a copy with the help of my cousin’s and his allmighty credit card.

The PC version is actually a port of the Saturn version, and while the conversion is inferior to that of it’s arcade counterpart it still captures the feel of original. Virtual On’s graphics sport that unique Sega-Feel that most Sega Arcade games featured at that time, crisp colourfull graphics, high framerates and that blocky aesthetic defining the Virtua series.  This works perfectly in the square surroundings of the battle arena’s but even more on Virtuaroid design. The blocky features of the robots only enhance the style and create a good harmony with the surroundings, the use of bright colour makes them stand out clearly and create a good contras with the backdrops. if I could describe Virtual’s visuals in one word, it’s Polygons, Polygons everywhere. The game doesn’t use any fancy particle effects, even the explosions are made of big circle shaped polygons and it perfectly defines the look of the game and makes it stand out among the rest.

Giant Polygon lasers, the only way to blow stuff up.

During each bout the players are dropped into Arena’s with varied sizes and settings, featuring ancient temples, giant space elevators, moon hangars and whatnot. Littered around these battlegrounds are obstructions like containers and walls that help you avoid enemy fire and gives you breathing time for your weapons to reload. The goal of the game is basically to blow eachother up, two mech’s enter one mech leaves. Each Virtuaroid varies in size and strength, similar to a beat em up. All mech’s are fitted with 3 weapons, a close range strike, a ranged attack and something with a big explosive range, like mines or grenades, when pressing both fire buttons a special is unleashed and when timed correctly can turn the tide of any battle. Along the fire buttons are the boost buttons, which allows you to zip arround fast to avoid enemy fire and gain an advantagious position.  This makes every battle fast and frantic, but fun, and when giant robots are finally called into service, i’ll be the first to sign up.

The best way to play Virtual On.

In the arcades the game works perfectly with the twin stick controls, however on the consoles and PC the controls are tricky and hard to get a hang on, you will get the hang of it on the long term, but it can get a tad frustrating at times. unfortunatly, the twin stick controller was only made for the saturn, so I had to fumble with the keyboard, but I didn’t let that spoil the fun.
Another gripe I have with the game is the music, in all fairness they are true Sega arcade style tunes and are kind of a staple of the series, but the game features very cheery upbeat music that you wouldn’t really expect during epic hardcore robot battles. They are recognisable i’ll give you that, and when you hear those ear wrecking tunes, you know you’re playing Virtual on.

In the end Virtual On stands out, and in a good way, it’s fast, frantic and fun if you can overcome the controls The first Virtual On is hard to find these days, but the Sequel, Oratorio Tangram is available on XBLA/PSN and it features more Mech’s and better graphics, be sure to check it out even if it’s just to cringe at that typical music.

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Classic Game Review – Eternal Champions

Eternal Champions, Eternal Classic.

Strangely enough one of my first experiences with Eternal Champions was a pretty poor one. Like before, we go back several decades into the past to see where it all started.
I was at a pc/gaming expo, I cant recall when or where this was exactly, only that I can thank my parents for taking me there, since these things were a rare occurance in the Netherlands.
The one thing I can recall strongly is the plenthora of weird controllers that were demo’d there, for instance I saw the debut of the Fragmaster  there (look it up), according to the guy in the stand, mouse and keyboard would be a thing of the past with this weird horseshoe controller, apparently in the future human hands would also be mutated into grotesk multi-limbed tentacles because that was the only way you could properly control this abomination (Still if i’d see one today i’d buy it in a split second).

I also got to try out a prototype head tracking… thing, a ginormous VR helmet contraption with a giant sensor on the front, that would allow you to mimic your head movements on the screen in an Unreal demo, the problem was you’d have to move your head at extreme angles to get any results, making you A. lose sight of the screen, B. utterly destroy your spinal cord C. Look like a complete moron while doing so. ( plus the huge sensor in the front would probably fry your lobe with extensive use.)

The Cover alone makes this game worthy of a purchase.

But the worst one of all was the Sega Activator, which can only be described as a giant octagonal sensor ring, placed on the floor with the player positioned in the centre, each “facet” of the ring would emit a IR laser upwards and when interrupted by say, an arm or a leg, would send a signal to the console like a controller input. This would generate the effect that when you swinged a punch or a kick, the character on screen would recieve that command and act accordingly. The game that was used to demo the device was none other then, you guessed it Eternal Champions.

I had heard of the game, seen some screenshots of it, but it never enjoyed my full interest or attention. (wisdom unfortunatly comes with the ages). Curious as I was, I had to try it out, I mean motion control was the future of gaming right? It was a disaster, picking a character was hard enough, but I was dragon punching and spin kicking all the way, while my onscreen character jitterd a few inches, threw a random punch and was eventually K.O’d by the in-game Timer. Ow I didn’t lose or anything because my opponent had the same problems and in the end we just ended up tired without a single landed hit. I gave the poor man at the stand a tip of my hat and didn’t give it a second thought.

Move forward a few months, me and my brother were avid gamers and since we both wanted to play at the same time, most of the time, we played two player games on his Sega Megadrive. And what better way to enforce our sibling rivalry then with beat-em-ups, one of our favorite genres at the time. Since we didn’t have a lot of cash (and we were cheapskates) we rented a lot of games at the local video store, this resulted in a lot of hit and misses because back then you often picked a game based on the cover art. One day we wanted to try a new one and stumbled on Eternal Champions, I recall us both being a bit sceptical about renting it, it wasnt a capcom game and everyone knew Street Fighter was the best, plus I remembered playing it with the Activator and the horrors that ensued, but to this day i’m very glad we brought it home with us that day.

We fired up the game and were greeted by the familiar shining SEGA logo, suddenly a reptillian creature materialised out of clear water and struck the logo with his spinning clawhand, destroying it with an ear shattering explosion! We had to see that again! we pressed the reset button and to our surprise saw a different character akin to gangster from the fifties swing in on a rope kicking the logo to pieces midflight, while tipping his hat and flipping a coin with a grin afterwards. This process repeated a couple of times till we saw all the characters molest the SEGA logo in any way possible and the tip of our fingers started to bleed from ramming that reset button, but this single startup feature set the game on a straight course for awesome.

After the Title screen we were greeted by the Eternal Champion, the main antagonist of the game and were introduced to one of the games strongest points. The story.
Beat em ups usually have flimsy stories with oddball character archs that serves as filler between the fights, but this was a whole different.. uh. story.

Apparently each of the playable unique individuals died at various points in time, the Eternal Champion plucked them from their timeline at the moment of their death, seeking the ultimate fighting challenge and as a reward, offer to return the victor back to their own timeline moments before their death, allowing them to alter their timeline and survive. For it’s time I thought this was a very clever premise, and provided an excellent motivation for each fighter to win the competition. To make it even better, the game featured detailed character profiles, describing their life, abilities and the eventual cause of their death, these were very well written and the somber music in the background made me quite sad, now that’s impressive for a 16 bit game!

This guy is hard as nails.

The first thing that strikes you in Eternal Champions is how many options the game gives you, aside from the standard one player and versus mode, there was a tournament option, the aforementioned character bio’s and a very, VERY robust training mode to hone your skills with your favorite character against AI opponents or combat drones that could set at specific heights and response times. It really felt like a complete package.

But what about the gameplay? all my Aktivator induced worries flew out the window the moment  we fought our first couple of bouts, each character has a very unique fighting style and moveset, and no special move feels the same. The hits connect well and the moves really feel like they have a lot of force behind them. The game makes use of the 6 button layout, featured on the newer megadrive controllers, since my brother and I were cheapskates and rather spent money on games then on periphials we ended up playing most of our beat-em-ups with the classic 3 button layout, far from ideal but we mastered the technique at some point and never looked back.

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Classic Game Review – Axelay

Making up for lost time, another classic game review of one of my favorite SNES titles.

Shoot em up’s aka “Schmups” are an interesting genre and also one of the older ones out there. They usually involve a lone spaceship/giant robot/kolibri (look it up) against innumerable enemies each firing a similar amount of bullets toward said shiprobotkolibri.

These games focus primarily on challenge, forcing the player to memorize complex attack patterns all the whilst testing their much needed ninja reflexes by throwing everything but the kitchen sink at them, on second thought the kitchen sink is probably the first thing that’ll try to kill you.

Lets go back 20 years, things like the internet and youtube were nonexistant (well they were there but they need a lot of coal and a steady fire to keep it running) , and actual game footage was a rare sight.
There were only a few ways to actually see a game in motion: On those rare game tv shows like Video Power (i’ll get to that later), seeing the game run in Demo mode in a store or hold the game package in front of your face and wiggle it up and down while staring at the screenshots on the back.
Since I live in the Netherlands you could forget about seeing proper game related stuff on TV and people kept looking weird at me while I was waving around game boxes in front of my face, so I had to get my fix on the Demo units in the Toy stores.

This tends to happen a lot in these kinds of games…

Everytime I went to town with my mom I’d stay behind at one of the stores and hang around the game section until she was done, browsing all the wonderfull box arts and pressing my nose against the screens of the demo’s on display till my eyes bled and had the demo completely memorised.  Back then you bought your game based on the boxart and the screenshots on the back, or if you were a rich kid and had a subscription to a magazine you could base your purchases on reviews.
It added a sense of mystery, no developement logs, no previews, no video reviews, it made spending your hard saved penny’s on a title all the more intense, then again you could also be buying a turd of a game for all you knew…

One day I was at the local Intertoys expecting the demo tv to show Super Probotector (again, Europe, Contra was way cooler with robots.) which had been running for a few weeks now, nothing wrong with that, but seeing Red Falcon blow up the city in the intro gets old after the 40th time. But no, something new was running!

What the heck is an Axelay? awesome thats what!

It was a top down shooter, i’d seen those before on the PC, like Major Stryker and Space Goose, but this one looked amazing, the screen was literally pouring down from the horizon as the lone vessel dispached countless of enemies above a green ocean using all manner of weaponry, switching them on the fly to adapt to the different enemy types. The screen faded an the title appeared, Axelay…whoa!

I kept staring at the screen, I had to see more, the title faded and the next demo level appeared, showing to my surprise a side scrolling shooter, with the same ship blasting through space wreckage, maneuvering past giant mechanised doors into a humongous spinning colony, using different weapons to dispatch new enemy types. My eyes switched to the console  in the glass cabinet for a microsecond…mh the clerk didn’t change the cartridge, this was the same game! I was gobsmacked.

I didn’t own a SNES back then, but a good friend of mine let me play on his, and to my luck he actually purchased the game so I was able to experience it’s splendor first hand. (thanks Ed.)

Konami’s Axelay is one of my top ranking SNES games, to start off the graphics are one of the best seen on the system, the top down sections feature parralax scrolling, which gives the effect that the world is rolling down from the horizon as you fly over it, and the game uses large amounts of mode 7 effects, big rotating sprites giving an amazing sense of scale and magnitude.

Mode 7 goodness.

No stage is the same, from lush green earth like planets to space colony’s, Lava planets and something resembling the human colon, each stage featured unique enemies and weapons which drives the player to keep playing to see what the next stage will hold. Massive bosses guarded the end of each stage and the switch in perspective on each level allowed for some very cool strategy’s needed to beat them.

Things heat up in the later stages.

The sound in this game is nothing short of spectacular, each weapon has the desired effect stuck on them and the game features those satisfying heavy explosions only the SNES can produce, picking your weapons and hearing that super crisp voice sample confirming your selection never fails to impress.

But probably the best part is the soundtrack, composer Taro Kudou created unique themes for each stage, each fitting the atmosphere they portray and keep the player pumped till the very end. One of my favorite songs to this day is the colony theme from stage 2, hearing that song hit it’s peak, and seeing your home planet appear through the open sections of the colony as it slowly rotates past, is one of those game defying moments I will never forget.

These kind of setpieces are what make the game shine.

All that fancy stuff of course is useless if the gameplay doesnt hold up, well there’s one word to sum it up, as the Spanish Peacock said to the Scotchman: B-A-L-A-N-C-E, balance.
Axelay is a very well balanced game, has just the right length, just the right difficulty, just the right amount of variation in each stage to keep it fresh, but familiar. The controls are spot on, and when you die, you’re usually to blame yourself.

This fight never gets old.

Each stages allows you to pick three weapons, and after each stage a new one gets added, this adds to the replayability as you try each stage with a different loadout, none of the weapons are underpowered, so you want to check them all out in each combination. Never have I played another Schmup this satisfying.

At the beginning of this year I aquired a copy of the game for myself, and i’d pop this gem in anyday. if you like the genre and never played it, you certainly missed out.

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Classic Game Review – Ultima Underworld, The Stygian Abyss.

After a year of absence, through the Shadowgate and past the Lands of Lore I return from the darkest of crevasse to entertain you with tales of old, historical facts and experiences of the ever growing lineage of videogames.
I’ve had some startup problems in the past, but I hope to offer a steady flow of posts this time and the aforementioned videos are also still underway, so keep checking!

Like all games from that time, the box art was stellar.

Now from the darkest of crevasse I shall take thee into, yet another dark crevasse! namely the Stygian Abyss of the Ultima Underworld!

Treachery and doom!

Let me take you back roughly 20 years ago, aquiring pc games was very interesting back then. Sure you could buy games in the store just like today, but they usually weren’t bigger then a few floppy disks so people were swapping them out faster then venerial diseases.
Of course the downside of that was that you didn’t get any boxart or manuals with it, unless someone was kind enough to photocopy all the pages of the manual but even then they were hard to read as most of the screenshots didn’t really copy all that well, also most games back then still featured actual manuals, thick logs with tons of information and backstory to supplement the game. I used to love buying a game and reading through those masterpieces, setting the mood for the game and sniffing that sweet new manual aroma (You know what i’m talking about).
But the point is, most games we got back then were copies of originals, with only the label revealing any information of it’s contents be it Underworld.arj or Rott.zip, and the suggestion of the person who gave it to us to “check it out, it’s cool!”

Flaming letters are usually evil.

And so we entered the Stygian Abyss, with little to no knowledge what the hell we were doing and where we were going, only adding more to the mystery of the experience!
I say “we” because while I have played Ultima Underworld myself, the first main experience I had with the game was looking over the shoulder of my dad while he treaded through the dungeon in search of Baron Almric’s Daughter. So in this case you could see me as a “Chronicler of Deeds” regarding my first experience with this game.

Brittannia is in peryl! …apparently!

A disembodied head swirling from the void speaks to us foretelling us of a brother plotting a great evil! The idea that a floating face was talking didn’t surprise us that much, but the fact that he was actually talking to us with a real voice coming out of the speakers is what stunned me in particular. We had gotten this game around the same time my dad acquired an actual soundblaster for his pc, remember these were the Dark Ages, pc’s only gave ear shattering beeps and boops unless you installed an actual sound card into your computer.

This was one of those awesome 90’s intros, hand drawn pixel animated faces and stiff dialogue, but I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Since we had no prior knowledge of the Ultima series we knew nothing of the avatar and the whole backstory of the game’s universe but apparently we were at the wrong place at the wrong time and charged with the task of rescueing the Baron’s daughter from the aforementioned Stygian Abyss in order to clear our name.

Candles offered some light, until you found the more better torches.

So there we stood, clothed in rags,  the doors of the only way out closed shut as the last line of sunlight vanished with a loud clang and only to be seen again when the voice of the Baron’s daughter sounded.
And we had no idea how everything worked…

The Stygian Abyss is a First Person Role playing game, wherein the player creates an avatar and guides him through layers and layers of dungeons vanquishing foes and befriending inhabitants during his/her quest.
And that’s were it went wrong in the first place.

During the start of the game, you get to pick what kind of character you want, how you look and what skills you want to focus on.
Since swimming was a big part of the game, the first few avatars kept drowning untill we picked the swimming skill which saved a lot of hassle when gurgling through the underground rivers. Small details like, picking a right or left handed character, meant you actually had to put the weapon in the right slot in order to be able to draw it, it sounds silly but it took us few moments to figure that one out.
As you can see from the screenshots the game featured a robust interface and while we dabbled into the fabled 3rd dimension before with Wolvenstein 3D, this was on a whole different level, with elevated area’s, pits, underwater lakes and currents. The graphics were good and consistent, the interface may look big and obtrusive, but it never stood in the way, as it was a big part of the gameplay.

There was a lot to see in the game.

As we took our first steps into the dungeon, we inevitably encountered our first foes, ranging from rats, to big maggots and those infernal rock slinging goblins! Combat was tricky as you had to charge up your swing and time it right to get a good hit, and it was very easy to lose track of your enemy in those dark corridors, but your prime warning for battle was that nerve wrecking music that began once the battle unfolded.

It was a great mechanic to explain to us that danger was imminent, and since there were friendly NPC’s running around as well it prevented us from chopping at everything at first sight, as these inhabitants offered means of trade and backstory for the player.

You would find all sorts of junk.

During the game the player finds all manner of items and equipment to improve your character, ranging from a pile of debris (god you found a lot of those) to armor and food. I always found it funny to find a roast chicken or a fresh loaf of bread in a dark and danky dungeon, and this game always made me hungry for some reason, as your bags would soon be packed with all manner of food. There was a magic system in the game featuring runes, but we didn’t understand it at the time and any success we had with a spell backfired most of the time, so it was mostly unused.
It was pretty easy to get lost in all those dark hallways, but the ingame map featured the option to write down notes on the map itself, so you could look back and see what doors where locked and which jumps led to certain doom, to this day I still miss being able to scribble on maps in most games.

Brilliant!

Deeper and deeper we went, through underground settlements and cavernous wastelands, meeting ever stronger foes ranging from gray lizard men to green lizard men! Until at some point… we got stuck. Yes, we never finished the game unfortunately, either we just couldn’t find the exit, or our game was bugged and after a very long play session we moved on and left our avatar stranded in one of the later levels of the game. It was unfortunate though, the whole run, figuring out how the game worked along the way really made the experience worthwhile.

If you’re a big fan of games like Oblivion and Skyrim, and not shy of replaying the classics I recommend a playthrough since this is the game Bethesda drew their inspiration from for their Elder Scrolls series. The graphics are still impressive for it’s time(remember this was released a year before Doom). The soundtrack is all adlib goodness and gives that eerily lonely feeling, and even though the controls in the game are a tad stiff, the rest still holds up.

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2012, more posts, videos and whatnot!

Another Year past, another year added to videogame history. As a gaming history gets long and longer,  I hope to make this blog a bigger part of my life and start updating it on a more regular basis.

Coming up this month a review of a classic shoot up on the snes and an article i’ve tinkering on.

Also in the pipeline is some sort of video review/blog to show of actual footage of the game with snappy comments and tidbits. Don’t worry I’ll refrain from showing my hideous visage in these vids , because it’s meant to be about the games but since my english sounds something like Autin Powers’ Goldmember (look it up) I need to brush that up before I start shattering eardrums.

Game on!

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Classic Game Review – Mortal Kombat

Goro lives…

I’m a big fan of beat em ups, and I remember fondly my first experience with the genre. A good friend of mine was probably one of the first person in my hometown who bought a Super Nintendo. I’d seen the marvels of the nintendo 8-bit console at another friends house but this was a whole new league of gaming. 16 whopping bits of super power left me gawking at his tv screen as mario jumped onto my retina’s in stellar 15-bit rgb colours. Back then money was sparse and I didnt have enough to buy one for my own, but I was able to see and play a lot of great titles thanks to my friend. ( Cheers Ed, wherever you are.)

One day at school my friend asked me to come over to check out a new game he bought called Street Fighter II. He explained to me that it was a beat-em-up where you’d fight eachother one on one and you could pick from a range of cooky characters. When I got to play it I was blown away, the competetive nature of the game was very addicting the the genre immediatly took hold of me and never let go.  When I ran home I was dragon punching and Hurricane kicking all the way (several people were injured in a martial arts related car accident that day).

So real it hurts, when arcade cabinets beat up small kids!

Time passed and my brother aquired a Sega Genesis in a very interesting manner (i’ll get back to this some time) and we were able to spend our scrawny savings on all kinds of games ourselves. because we liked to game together and the beat-em-up virus had grabbed hold of my brother as well we always kept an eye out for brawlers. So we started to buy magazines to get a better view of what games were coming out. Of course those magazines were expensive as well and we weren’t able to buy them every month, but each magazine was an adventure by itself. they were filled to the brim with screenshots and stories of games to come and we would read them till they fell apart.

Mortal Kombat.

At the end of 1992, we bought a copy of a magazine called Sega Mean Machines, and on the cover the text “MORTAL KOMBAT for GENESIS REVEALED!” was slapped into your face. What? Mortal kombat? whats that? and why is it spelled wrong? I opened the magazine on the mentioned page and was stunned. It was like Street Fighter! but… with real people! is this real? At first I thought it was fake, nothing looked that good. The characters looked like they were photographed from real life. I stated to read the article while my eyes constantly veered off to the screenshots. There was mention of blood, violence and something called a “Fatality”.  These kind of things make a 10 year old boy VERY curious.

That's basically all you need to know.

Mortal Kombat was released on major consoles in 1993 and immedeatly caused a shitstorm. The game featured the afformentioned fatalities, which allowed you to kill your opponent in a gruesome matter after defeating him. Hearts were pulled out, people were set ablaze and heads were ripped off with spinal cords included. There was already some discussion about the arcade version, but the console release brought the violence to the masses and under the attention of the media.  The game was censored for it’s home console release, but violence was there nonetheless. To make matters worse, the Sega Genesis version had a hidden code that would enable the blood and original fatalities! (A,B,A,C,A,B,B. Never forget people!)
According to talk shows, moms were horrified by the violent nature of the game and forbid their children to play it. It eventually lead to the creation of the ESRB rating system. Now that’s impressive!

Of course all that stuff sounded amazing to all the kids who wanted to play it. Unfortunatly my parents caught wind of the whole situation and forbade me to play the game. So I did what every obedient child does, I went over to my friends place and played it there. And I wasnt the only one! The room was filled with kids from school who wanted a peek at the game. The stories of the violence spread like wildfire and everything your parents forbid is interesting to kids that age.

A Toasty Fatality.

The game was amazing, the whole 90’s Budget Kung-Fu Bloodsport movie atmosphere totally immersed you into the game. As you pressed start, the loud ringing of a gong welcomed you to the character select screen, and man did it look good. Ninja’s, assassins, movies stars and Bruce lee lookalikes were displayed in near photorealistic sprites with smooth animation. The battles took places in ancient temples, Shrines and even on a small walkway above a spike filled pit during a full moon. It looked so real, wich made the violence extra convincing.

The gameplay was very interesting, each character basically had the same moveset of roundhouse kicks, sweeps, punch combo’s and the trademark uppercut. It made the fights feel really balanced. What made each character unique was their special moves. One ninja would throw harpoons at his opponent and pull them towards him while shouting “GET OVER HERE!” another would freeze their adversary with an ice bolt. Thunder gods would fly across the screen screaming and ramming their victim against the wall while murderers would throw knives at your face.  It was a sight to behold, and most importantly, incredibly fun!

The famous Pit Stage

Mortal Kombat remains one of my favorite beat em ups to date, it was followed up by an even better sequel and the series continued to grow as the years went by. This year marked the release of the ninth installment of the series and after some dissapointment in previous releases this one goes back to it’s dark roots and is better then ever . But I will never forget the impact the first game had on me, as I finished up this “review” I noticed I told more about my experience around the game, rather then getting into detail about the gameplay. Perhaps that is what made this game extra special to me.

Flawless Victory!

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The Videogame Historian – The Return!

 

Ascending from the ultima underworlds, returning from my battles at kilrah and ready to challenge my greatest foe…consistency!

After almost a year of doing…god knows what,  I, the videogame historian will be posting my blog again, starting this november I will be writing a Classic game review bi-monthly and will add more types of articles along the way.

So if you liked what I wrote so far, stay tuned! there’s a whole lot coming up! :).

– TVGH –

 

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If GTA was made in the 80s – Retro City Rampage.

I wonder, with all these new-classic games coming out, are we going full circle with videogames? I see more and more of these great 8-16 bit titles coming out and the crowd seems to be screaming for them.
I saw the trailer of this little gem today and it shines in pure retro brilliance! take a peek! it’s on wiiware soon.

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Classic Game Review – The Chaos Engine.

The little Engine that could, and did.

Sometime in the last century…

It was around 1993. I think. It was a long time ago, but I do remember it very well. I was there with my family, we had a PC for a while now and my interest in videogames grew steadily with each passing year, so my parents took me to a computer expo, who’s name and location are now long forgotten.

I was fascinated with all the new games that were coming out, people were returning to Zork, aliens invaded the Earth in X-Com and the gates of hell finally opened opened with the release of Doom. I remember getting a first glimpse of Raptor, Call of the Shadows. It was great, yet amongst all these awesome games there was one that would leave a lasting impression on me for quite some time. There was a booth with a larger then average screen showing the game on display, TV’s weren’t that big back in those days so it really stood out. Big black speakers pumped out the games electronic beats and attracted anyone who passed by to take a gander. I saw two figures running around a forest fighting all manner of creatures and hazards, while a electronic sounding voice commented on some of their actions. The graphics were unique that they were cartoony and realisitic at the same time ( remember it was 1993 and I was 11 at that time) and the music blew me away, but that could have had something to do with the ginormous speakers pointed at me.

Into the Forest

It grabbed me and as we left the the expo I was sadded that I wasnt able to find out what the game was called.

A year passed and a nasty tumble off the stairs forced me into a wheelchair for a while, which lead to me playing games a lot more. One day my mom took me to the stores and I was rummaging through the Sega Genesis games, as my brother aquired one in a very interesting manner and we both were blowing all our disposable income on any game we could get.

And there it was. The boxart mesmerised me, a pitch black background with six character portraits of some very fascinating characters. I gazed up to the title: “The Chaos Engine” .

The fantastic cover.

As I turned the game around to check the screenshots it hit me. This was the game I saw on the Expo! I had to have it! I badgered my mom to get me this game, at first she was hesitant. I scrambled some of my last savings together and she pitched in (Thanks again Mom.) and I was able to get it. At home the Genesis was set in the living room, as stairs were a tad hard to climb for me at that time, I booted up the game and was blown away by the first thing I saw.

The intro displayed the power of the chaos engine

I loved the game, it was challenging, I could play it with my brother cooperatively and it oozed atmosphere. It had the top down view of a Zelda game, but the action was more akin to a Contra title, heck there were even some RPG elements in between the levels where you could increase some of the stats of your characters. It left a lasting impression, and thats why I chose it for my first review. I’ll go into the details of the game some more and be sure to check my blog later as I will be posting a supplimentary video to my reviews, as soon as I get that capturing tool running.

The Chaos engine.

The Chaos Engine tells the story of a baron Fortesque and his incredible invention, the aforementioned Chaos Engine, a device capable of bending time, space and matter. Like any good brilliant invention the thing goes haywire and the entire British Empire is turned upside down. Strange creatures appear and weird machinery runs amok as British isles are isolated from the rest of the world.
Six Soldiers of Fortune are hired to enter the mainland and destroy the engine before the entire world goes completley banana’s.

What set the story apart for me is that it introduced me tot that wonderfull Victorian Steampunk setting. It was something I had not seen before in a videogame, advanced mechanical devices in a classical age with an overall British flavour. It made the game stand out in the way it’s story was told and how it was presented.

Classic steampunk setting

The Player could choose two from six mercenaries, The Brigand and the Mercenary, all-rounders who packed a punch and could take a few hits as well. The Thug and The Navvy, big lugs with bigger guns, sporting firepower and thick hides but not that nimble. And the Gentleman who bears a striking resemblance to Sherlock holmes, and the Scientist, whom was actually know as the Preacher in some versions but the publisher thought it was a bit too risky for some regions, ( Though the Idea of an monster ass kicking preacher sounds pretty awesome to me, as to anyone who has seen the movie “Braindead” ). What these last two lacked in muscle they made up for with powerfull weaponry, speed and destrucive specials.

Node Activated!

Each merc had a weapon that could be upgraded at the shop in between levels and a special ability. These ranged from Molotovs, Bombs to the more exotic Decoy dummy and Enemy Freeze ray. Some even had acces to a map to get a quick peek of the layout.
Picking your team to get the best of both world was a lot of fun and it added a lot of replay value to the game as each merc played a bit different from another. If you were playing with a friend you could pick classes that complemented eachother and you could really focus on teamwork. If you were playing alone the computer AI acted pretty competend for a meatshield, but you did have access to the AI’s special power.

Surrounded by all manner of chaos

In each stage the player had to activate several nodes to gain acces to the exit, these were scattered throughout the level. The player had to fight his/her way through the zone, fending off the monstrosities created by the Chaos Engine. Weird blue men hurling weirder blue balls, Lizardmen, Giant hands, Living dust clouds, the enemies you faced were clearly the product of a chaotic machine and every new zone featured different enemies and ways to defeat them. The Player moved from lush forests to dark workshops, the mansion itself and in the end it’s dank sewers for the final confrontation.
The game was pretty challenging, even on the easy setting the player was quickly overwhelmed with enemies and required some fancy manouvres to get out of alive. It was pretty lenghty as well, as each level had multiple secret areas to discover hiding many treasures wich was used to upgrade your characters.

The sewers offered quite a few challenges

As said before this all happened in a steampunk setting and the graphics of the game brought that to the screen perfectly. The game was made by the Bitmap Brothers. If you take a look at some of their other games like Speedball, GODS or Magic Pockets, you can see that they created a recognisable graphical style for themselves in all their titles and often show more shading drawn intotheir graphics wich leads to objects in the games having more volume and depth. The Chaos Engine portrays this really good, you can tell it’s a Bitmap Bros game and it works great with the Victorian Steampunk setting. Objects and characters are very detailed and animate pretty well.  I loved the graphics, I played the Genesis version and I’ve had many people tell me the Amiga versions looks and sounds way better. I have played those versions and while they do look and sound better, the Genesis version is the one I remembered and I consider it the best version for me with regard to the memories attached to it.

Two player goodness

The same goes for the sound. The Amiga version of the game sounds clearer, but the Genesis  has that grainy, tinny sound that’s kind of reminiscent of a tesla coil buzz, wich only adds to the charm.
The music in the game is fantastic, it features industrial tunes that fit perfectlty with the style and setting of the game. That metallic voice that keeps you up to date of your actions never gets old and you’ll be quoting “Node Activated!” after a few minutes of playing. Oddly enough there arent any sound effects for weapons fire, but it’s not something you’ll miss after a few minutes of play.

While the game has its flaws, the Genesis version especially featured some spectacular slowdown in some places and the AI could botch up now and then, I firmly believe that it still holds up to this day. It features a challenge not often found in games these days anymore, some terrific replay value and most of all, great presentation. The Chaos Engine has a special place in my heart and I still pop it in occasionally. If you like classic games (heck even if you don’t) and haven’t played the Chaos Engine, I urge you to check it out, it’s not one to be missed.

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