H1DD3N.R350URC3 » Video

Game Music: Thunder Force IV

sascha — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 07:22:09 +0000

The Mega Drive once again proves to be among the finest game consoles when taking it’s sound capabilities into account. Here’s one of countless tunes that gives you the full spectrum of beauty of Yamaha FM soundchip engineering craftmanship, Thunder Force IV’s “The Sky Line” …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEnYrJynuSc

Game Music: Einhänder (1997)

sascha — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 07:51:37 +0000

Back in the 90s during the heights of the PSX (or Playstation 1) we find Einhänder (アインハンダー), a horizontal shoot’Em’Up with an excellent Techno soundtrack by Kenichiro Fukui. The only downside to this track is that it’s too short. Let’s listen Einhänder – Dawn …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNaFPKHBpiI

Flash gets Low-Level 3D API, golden Times for Game Devs ahead

sascha — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 04:50:24 +0000

I’ve heard plans and rumors about this before but it seems now it’s official: The next versions of the Flash and AIR runtimes will have a low-level 3D API on board that utilizes DirectX, OpenGL and OpenGL ES. Maybe this racing demo video will convince most game devs who were skeptical about the Flash platform before.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgwi0lWgX8w

The demo was coded by the guys who maintain Alternative3D, one of the the few software-rendered 3D engines for Flash that are better suited for 3D game development. The engine has recently been made free of charge for commercial development. The makers only require a back link to their product website in your game now.

I find Alternativa3D quite attractive, in particular after seeing videos and screenshots of War.ru, an online multiplayer Role-playing game that reminds me of RPGs classics like Wizardry, just with better graphics. Unfortunately the whole game is in Russian only for now and so far I haven’t been able to log in, the load procedure is very slow and always gets stuck at some point for me.

Still the game looks very promising with some nice looking 3D environments. The actors (NPC’s and creatures) seem to be inanimate billboard sprites though so they only look impressive on a static screenshot but imagine what would be possible with the newly achieved 3D power! I’m looking forward to create vast 3D environments with autonomous actor AIs a’la Oblivion or Fallout 3! The only bottleneck will – yet again – be the content creation.

Starflight

sascha — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 05:02:25 +0000

A video courtesy of CRPGAddict that shows the final gameplay of the classic space exploration/role-playing game Starflight. I remember playing this game back in the day on the Amiga but never really came around to finish it. But now that I’ve read how the game’s story resolves with a big surprise in it toward the end it dims to me what a great plot this game had. There are many of today’s modern role-playing games that story-wise would pale in comparison that Starflight.
This was also one of those games from the era where I realized my affinity for science fiction-themed games. Back then whenever there was a new review to be read in a game magazine about a space-themed adventure or RPG my eyes started glowing. I liked the idea of flying around with the ship and explore a vast number of planets and Starflight was basically a whole galaxy squeezed on a floppy disk.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3Q7M_X3S9w

If you’re interested in classic role-playing games I recommend to check out CRPGAddict’s blog! I don’t know how he manages to find the time but he already finished playing 26 games since he started last year. And not only that! He analyzed them, drew maps about them, and reviewed them in a very detailed way. On top of that he made a long list of CRPGs that he yet wants to play and review and it seems he’s serious about it. Determination is everything!

There’s also the whole write-down about Starflight, no less than nine blog posts!! Check it out! You will certainly have enough to read for a while!

Interview with Lord British

sascha — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 03:46:16 +0000

An elaborate interview from 2009 with Richard Garriott aka Lord British talking about his beginnings as a game maker, his weird house and toy collection, Tabula Rasa and his flight into space. Some people call him a nerd (probably because they’re envious) but I think he just simply had the chance to do the right thing at the right time, following his passion about making games and becoming very successful with it, eventually earning millions. This is something that is not so easily possible anymore today like it was back in the pioneer days of home-computing. However he’s the living proof that the single most important driving force to be successful is to have passion about what you’re doing, being it creating games or anything else. Watch and be inspired!

Ultima: Worlds of Adventure 2: Martian Dreams

sascha — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 17:22:07 +0000

Another secret gem from the Golden Age of RPG, Origin’s Martian Dreams can best be described as a fantastic Steampunk themed role-playing game set in a ‘Ultima meets Jules Verne universe’ where you travel with Nikola Tesla, Sigmund Freud, Nellie Bly and several others to Mars to rescue a handful of important people that stranded there some years before. If this doesn’t sound like a good premise then what does?!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MERLa33hY2k

His Dark Majesty (Atari 800 XL)

sascha — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 17:26:31 +0000

Back when I was younger … much younger … the first computer I ever possessed was a Atari 600 XL which I got from my parents after a lot of begging. I had exactly one game for it, a cartridge with Jungle Hunt on it. Needless to say this got boring very quickly. My friends all had a C64 already and so it wasn’t until long that I also got a C64 and sold the Atari to a friend.

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 …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tAraITwuwQ

video with courtesy of marquisor

Ultima IX Ascension – Intro Video

sascha — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 07:38:43 +0000

What’s best to do on a stormy spring autumn evening in your cozy carpeted living room with fireplace lightened messy bachelor apartment on the seventh floor while the wind cries outside through the trees concrete gaps? Correct! Playing a nice and well-matured Role-playing Game like for example Ultima.

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.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wsFJa9VgWA

Moments In Gaming 5: Fighting Force

sascha — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 17:29:11 +0000

Today’s installment of Moments In Gaming covers the 1997 Playstation game Fighting Force. It was one of those games in the late nineties era of video games where the fresh 3D technology of the Playstation spawned an avalanche of outstanding 3D games.

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.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iokMWUtOFC8

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.

Sentinel Worlds 1: Future Magic with Tandy Sound Enabled

sascha — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 11:16:34 +0000

Today’s video pick (yeah right, as if I had a new post everyday here) is from YouTube user Five5Six and about how he managed to get Sentinel Worlds 1: Future Magic to run on DOSBox with Tandy sound enabled. That’s right, Tandy sound! By default the game uses those bleepy PC speaker sounds as in my own video. Personally I haven’t yet figured out how to get Tandy sound working with this game, so there … a video with the marvelous Tandy-enabled sound of SW1:FM in all it’s glory …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O48HgFio6wI