Back then I always knew the Atari was no match for the mighty C64 and for some part (16Kb RAM) this is true. But I never really realized until recently that the Atari 600/800 XL had much better graphics than the C64. The 256 color palette was already way ahead of it’s time and it had 4 sound voices instead of C64s 3 voices etc. But I suggest you see for yourself about that in this nifty video showing gameplay of a 2010 produced game, the RPG named His Dark Majesty …

video with courtesy of marquisor

© 2010 H1DD3N.R350URC3. | Permalink | 1 comment | Tags: 8Bit, Atari, Atari800, Classic Gaming, Fantasy, RPG, turn-based, Video, YouTube | Add to del.icio.us]]> http://blog.hexagonstar.com/his-dark-majesty-atari-800-xl/feed/ 1 http://blog.hexagonstar.com/running-sentinel-worlds-on-dosbox-with-tandy-sound/ http://blog.hexagonstar.com/running-sentinel-worlds-on-dosbox-with-tandy-sound/#comments Thu, 19 Aug 2010 05:57:11 +0000 sascha http://blog.hexagonstar.com/?p=1757

I’ve mentioned before that it’s possible to run Sentinel Worlds I: Future Magic in DOSBox with Tandy sound enabled but I couldn’t figure out how to get it working. Today I’m back with good news in that I can tell you how to get this fixed so the trillions of SWFM fans out there can enjoy this fantastic game with the excellent Tandy sound!

>> Continue reading "Running Sentinel Worlds on DOSBox with Tandy Sound"

Shoot First, a game by Beau Blyth, is a mix of a Roguelike and Run-N-Gun where you explore a randomly generated dungeon while searching for precious items and encountering vile enemy monsters of all kinds. You get thrown into the dungeon at a random entry point from where you have to make your way to the next-lower floor. On the way you find chests that you can shoot open to reveal useful items and occasionally you find companions who join your party or damsels which you have to rescue from captivity. If you escort them safely to the next exit they will thank you with a reward item.

The game isn’t your generic rogue-like, it’s actually very fast-paced. To get forward you have to encounter many monsters and dispatch them or at least evade them but the enemy AI is quite smart. Many monsters will try to flank or evade you and try to shoot you while you’re hiding in a tunnel. That said, Shoot First is not an easy game. The enemies shoot a lot and they shoot well. Many of them are also quite powerful. To counter this, you’re able to shoot into any direction or strafe-shoot into one direction while running. You can also increase in level which will improve your character’s skills. You’re doing so by shooting monsters and collect small, yellow artifacts (gold?) that are revealed after a monster dies. Still the game is rather difficult to beat and to be honest I haven’t made it any further than to the third floor so far.

>> Continue reading "Shoot First"

Flash Version of Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar

Kohina – www.kohina.com – Everybody knows them, very 8bit, very piko piko, a lot of C64 tunes mixed with a very good selection of Japanese Videogame and Arcade music. Sometimes also Spectrum music that sounds more like sizzling oil in the frying pan.

Nectarine – www.scenemusic.eu/demovibes – The Demoscene Radio, lots of the typical European Demoscene music and as that very good. Unfortunately they recently often also play some very strange vocal pop/rock-like homebrew stuff that sounds everything else but good.

No-Life Radio – nolife-radio.com – Surprisingly good station! Lots of varying game soundtrack, both Western and Japanese, 8-bit, 16-bit and modern soundtracks in abundance, spiked with Jingles by GlaDOS

Retro PC Game Music Streaming Radio – gyusyabu.ddo.jp/MP3/MP3.html – A Japanese radio stream and the name is program here … plays nonstop pre-2K DOS/Adlib style Game music. Nice for a change when you’re grew tired of Kohina.

Radio SEGA – www.radiosega.net – Haven’t given this one much time to listen to yet but obviously plays a lot of music of SEGA titles.

CGM UKScene Radio – www.lmp.d2g.com – Somehow very similar in style to Nectarine. As of now only lo-fi stream available. It’s a good idea to listen to Nectarine and whenever they play those horrid vocal tracks, switch to this station!

… Know of any other related streams that are worth to mention? Let me know!

Ultima is the one role-playing game where you start in the present world and then travel into a fantasy parallel world of Britannia, usually via a portal. Here’s a nice video (from RetroHD) of the last game in the Ultima series, Ultima 9 -- Ascension which introduces the beginning of the game.

In Fighting Force you play the role of one ruffian (or ruffine) who is hired to intrude the premises of a certain villain named Zeng with the goal to eliminate him.  So much for the story!

The graphics are of the typical early era PSX low-poly style but the environments that act as staging grounds for the rumble work surprisingly well. The gameplay is fun for a couple of rounds. You have a set of attack moves and combos available and you are able to pick up stuff from the ground like weapons, sandwiches, coke cans as well as bundles of dollar bills and even gold bars! Some items like cars, vending machines and trash cans can be destroyed to spawn makeshift weapons like metal bars that help dispatching bad guys quicker.

But the one feature that makes Fighting Force worth mentioning is the soundtrack by Martin Iveson. A well shuffled mixture of Electro and Techno beats blended perfectly together with filtered guitar riffs, fat bass lines and police sirens, sometimes uptempo and other times  subtle and atmospheric. This is one of those soundtracks that has a very personal note and stands on its own among the deluge of orchestral mass ware and prefab sound loops often found in games today.

There has been a lot of hype around the release of Mass Effect 2 some weeks back and some people already start claiming that this game is going to be the Future of RPGs. Rampant Coyote took a stance and so did The Brainy Gamer. Being an old hand RPGer and having played Mass Effect 1 to the end and started playing part 2 I feel I need to have my say to the hype around that game.

>> Continue reading "Mass Effect 2: The Future of RPGs? Oh really?"

© 2010 H1DD3N.R350URC3. | Permalink | No comments yet | Tags: DOS, Game Music, Nostalgia, RPG, Sci-Fi, Tandy, Video | Add to del.icio.us]]> http://blog.hexagonstar.com/swfm-with-tandy-sound/feed/ 0 http://blog.hexagonstar.com/sword-of-fargoal-for-iphone/ http://blog.hexagonstar.com/sword-of-fargoal-for-iphone/#comments Sun, 13 Dec 2009 03:52:52 +0000 sascha http://blog.hexagonstar.com/?p=1460 The classic dungeon crawler Sword of Fargoal has been released for the iPhone and it turns out that it’s one of the few computer/console-game-to-iPhone conversions I’ve came across that are actually fun to play on the touch-screen (unlike, say, Sonic, Bomberman et al). Go check it out if you’re into RPGs with an ever-changing maze-like dungeon accompanied by nicely done atmospheric music and sound effects.

Official Sword of Fargoal Website

While doing contract work for the Dark Brotherhood you are being sent to attend a party where the guests are invited to search for a treasure that is supposed to be hidden in a house in that they are going to be locked in, except that there is no treasure and you are not one of the treasure hunters but an assassin hired by the house owner to kill all the other guests. Can a quest be more macabre and fun than this?!

The Whodunit quest which you are being assigned to in the latter part of the Dark Brotherhood guild quest series was somehow the highlight of it all for me. Not only combined it the cozy whodunit mystery with a medieval fantasy setting but it put you in the role of the killer instead of the detective. What made this quest so gleefully entertaining wasn’t the fact that you are the perpetrator but the way how you could manipulate the characters and watch how they became more and more terrified after somebody crossed the bar. There are several different ways how the NPC’s react which is especially interesting in the end when only three or two are left, even if eventually the quest concludes always in the same outcome.

Future Magic was first released for DOS and a port for the C64 was published later which looked almost equally good as the DOS version with excellent graphics done by Michael Kosaka. At times the game is quite bizarre. For example there is a planet with ranchers and farms just like in an old western. Another planet has two very high towers that reach into the orbit and these are the only colonies on the otherwise untouched surface. On another, icy planet you scout an abandoned research base which is overrun by saber-toothed creatures … but this is how the games were made in the golden age of RPG. Despite the number in the title a follower was never developed for Future Magic but instead the acclaimed Hard Nova served as a spiritual sequel.

The game let’s you control a group of five space mercs who are send out on a mission to stop mysteriously appearing raiders which are attacking ships in the local system. Right after your ships drops out of hyperspeed you are being attacked by them. However while the other ships of the space convoy with that you came are trying to fight them you are able to take some distance and locate a yacht floating in nearby space. It’s the space yacht of a tycoon named Grager which turns out to be a luxurious vessel full with the newest technology.

Later in the game the SAS unit around Captain Price is moving forward to the missile base deeply hidden in the Altay Mountains in Russia when suddenly two ICBMs are being launched in close vicinity. This is one of those “I cant believe this just happened!!”-moments in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.

The two games are very atmospheric and full of 60ties flair, concealed spy gadgets, exotic locations, fast-paced action, insanely dangerous situations  and spiked with a good dose of humor. Gladly they don’t take themselves too serious unlike some other games of the genre.

In this video Cate Archer and a ninja named Isako (who is - rather unwillingly -- one of the villains henchmen) are fighting it out in ‘No One Lives Forever 2‘ in an impossible showdown taking place in a trailer home which is being hurled away by an approaching tornado and somehow both are getting out of it alive.

With a standard keyboard we lefties actually have a  slight advantage over right-handers when it comes to playing First-Person-Shooters or third-person-view games since we have a nicely separated block of keys that we can use for controls with the right hand where right-handers would need to use some obnoxious key layouts in the depths of the left side of their keyboard, in particular the notorious WASD keys.

>> Continue reading "For less Left-Hander Discrimination in Gaming!"

Realms of Arkania is classic hardcore role-playing, flip3D style intermezzed with isometric combat screens and you can get this for a ridiculous cheap price now.

So far gog.com is only releasing DOS or Windows based games. For some games I wish they’d add Amiga games to their line-up simply because many Amiga games were better than their DOS conversions, just take a look at highly regarded Hired Guns. in case of Hired Guns you feel that the developers were a team of Amiga enthusiasts. The DOS version feels bland and rushed compared to the shiny and atmosphere-oozing Amiga version.

Either way, for DOS games Good Old Games are packing their releases up with a copy of DOSBox pre-configured and ready to install and run. For Amiga versions they would probably have to pack up a copy of WinUAE to assure a hassle-free experience. Not sure how that would work out.

But after we finished bouncing off the intruders and I’ve started a dialogue with him it turned out that he’s not such a gentleman after all. In nearly every second sentence in his dialogue he makes use of the notorious ‘F word’! No exaggeration! After a short while listening to his insults (calling me a moron several times) I got fed up of his overuse of nasty language and started to loathe this guy. Note that it turns out that he’s supposed to be an unlikable character but this could have also been very well transported without the overuse of bad language. … *Spoilers ahead*!

>> Continue reading "Bad Language in Games"

Developers can introduce their creations and find other developers – both professional and hobbyist – to get working together on a project. Games made in Flash are welcome and there’s even a category for it.

The game is basically still the same since I left it! Many of the same old bugs and a gameplay that has only distantly something to do with RPG. Examples: Tried to continue the ‘Secret of the Syrens’ quest but the Black Sun Bunker at the waypoint never spawns,I want to call my mount pet inside the Kashyyk Hunting Grounds but it doesn’t spawn, I want to attack that imperial trooper that permanently shoots at me but I can’t because he’s stuck inside a wall … the list could go on for a while.

>> Continue reading "SWG … once again"