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.

© 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

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.

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.

10 POKE 646,1
20 PRINT "C64 IN FLASH!"
30 POKE 53281,2::::::::::::::::::::POKE 53281,10
40 GOTO 30

Note that you need the latest Flash Player PlugIn (9.0) to see this. Either way this is exciting stuff and shows how powerful AS 3.0 and Flash Player 9 are going to be. Additionally the current beta player is a debug-only version that throttles the speed down several times. The final Player might be quite a bit faster.

Videogame violence anno 1984 - Jack The Ripper (C64) ...

Sex and violence was a topic in video games since the early days of computer game history. Some people might not have realized it but there was always an urge to use forbidden topics in a virtual scenario not just since recently. Even among the first text adventures were subjects with quite a lot of (fictional) violence and blood. Remember The Lurking Horror from Infocom, a horror text adventure or Jack The Ripper which already introduced some graphical images of violence.

>> Continue reading "Videogame Violence Galore"

I’ve bought an Owltech PC-0301 today! That’s an adapter in form of a 5 1/2 inch drive bay insert which offers two ports for connecting Playstation controllers to the PC and use them for a crapload of things. They not only perform well for usual PC games but also worked great on PSX Emu’s and WinVice and WinUAE and MAME32 and… well that where the ones which I’ve tested so far. Gunbird with PSX Analogue Control rocks! Installation was super-easy with plugging to a free USB port and a 3-click-long driver installation from the included CD.

More and more people becoming something like a Retro-game-developer which is good news! It seems recently even the now young generation loves to play videogames that have an age of 10 years and beyond. Today’s games come with high class super realtime rendered 3D graphics and cinematic atmosphere but still the games from yesterday keep their spirit. I believe the reason for this comes a lot from the fact that the simplified graphic of old games allows more room for one’s own fantasy. While today’s high class 3D games look good while you play them (a decent hardware assumed), classics from the 8 and 16bit era look always good – in a gadget-likewise way.

>> Continue reading "The 8 and 16-Bit Revival lives!"

European Vintage Computer Festival

… was a quote from Bill Gates from 1981 according to the book Computers – An Illustrated History from Christian Wurster which I had a sneak look into some days ago in a well sorted book shop and which her majesty now surprisingly presented me as a birthday gift.

This book covers the whole history of computers from the very beginning when they filled a whole hall and were based on relay’s to current computer high tech while leading though the chapters for scientific and military computers, mainframe computers, minicomputers, then microcomputers and to desktop computers.

>> Continue reading "640 Kilobyte ought to be enough for anybody"

One of my very favorite games back on Amiga was the space RPG Hard Nova (to be reviewed in a while) which took me long cozy winter nights to solve. The predecessor of Hard Nova was a game called Sentinel Worlds 1: Future Magic which was released in 1988 by Electronic Arts and had it’s success under science fiction RPG videogamers. Me – PC-less – always looked enviously over to the PC crowd. But that only until decent DOS Emulators were developed, like DOSBox.

>> Continue reading "Lightspeed Flight and Laserfight"

My big move has been delayed for a short time! I will leave here at the end of December and move to far east in middle January! I actually packed everything and made most preparations so I’m stuck with being bored now, counting every minute and hope that time passes faster.

So what to do? One good idea I had, was to keep up with writing some blog stuff that I already planned in my mind. One if it being about one of my favorite Abandonware DOS games Jagged Alliance: Deadly Games!

Over the last couple of decades this game kept me from being bored often! With it’s cozy winter evening fireplace warmth strategy gameplay atmosphere and quietly playing midi music it charms easily to take a session of round based war monging.

>> Continue reading "16Bit-Mercenary Mess Up"

About four years ago there was a game in development that I highly anticipated but that never actually got released. The now disbanded software company Psygnosis was about to develop a new 3D version of their 16bit classic Hired Guns.

I remember playing Hired Guns back on Amiga and while the Gameplay wasn’t anything particularly new, the game had a nice and dark futuristic atmosphere with it.

The idea of the sequel was to only take four of the characters of the old version into the game that can be played together as a team and the Gameplay running on the unreal engine should have an impact on strategic team play, not just wild shooting.

I’ve lost Psygnosis’ path then and didn’t knew what happened to stop the developing on this game. Might be that they had to give up when they dissolved.

What makes me wondering is that this nice gaming idea wasn’t sold and continued by someone else!

There’s still a preview existing on ign.com but no information about why the game got discontinued.

If you know more, please feel free to drop a comment on that.

While today in the twothousands all kinds of TV series theme seems to be only about sex and interpersonal relations, they were all about humor, sarcasm and worse sci-fi in the nineties and even more back in the eigthies and seventies about action and trashy sci-fi.

So despite many people see 80/70′ties action series only as poor film making or trash, I see them with much more value today than 20 years ago and it’s an enjoyment to catch up an episode of A-Team or Airwolf on a Sunday afternoon besides all this spoiled modern tv program!

This website is all about one of the golden age of action tv series which I like to remember, The Bionic Woman, the unjustified critics told follower of The six million dollar man series! The site has a nice retro feel and even has some of the cool sound effects from the series while offering info on the cast, episodes, story etc.

I was hoping some of the episodes coming through on a p2p network someday and it seems I’m lucky today, they being one of the more hard to get tv series tho. I couldn’t find my favorite episode, Doomsday is tomorrow yet, a two parts episode which I remember very well where Jaime has to defeat an insane scientiest who is threating the world with a giant bomb named the ‘Doomsday device’ and she has to infiltrate his secret underground lair which is full of this old computer stuff and traps and all kind of things which make her life more difficult. One of these many charming examples of how people imagined the future during the mid century!

This brought up some moods of nostalgia remembering the ‘good old’ days of computing and playing 8bit games. I even found some old 5 1/4″ floppy disks with old tools and games and tried to code some assembler which is even fun in a special way compared to the today’s luxury of coding applications.

There’s also now – as you might already have found – a new category named downloads in which I will put various stuff to leech down from time to time.

Besides there are still some draft entries on hold and unfinished yet on the authoring side. I’m going to finish them when I think it’s time!

After finally having the change to access some of my over ten years old C64 floppy disks relics with the XE1541 cable, I’ve found some neat rare tools which we used back in the old days and which you might want not to miss for your D64 file collection …

So here are the two SMS tools disks which contain various useful tools from my time on the 8bit era.

>> Continue reading "When 16 colors were enough"