Just finished watching Hyperland, a documentary about hypertext and other related computer technologies in 1990. It was created by Douglas Adams and stars Tom Baker (Doctor Who) as a software agent that shows Douglas the future of tv, Interactive Multimedia. I thought it was a fascinating time capsule of what Douglas thought the internet was going to be like in the future, even before people were using web browsers. The documentary talks to a variety of people like Ted Nelson and Robert Winter, but the highlight for me was Amanda Goodenough presenting Inigo Gets Out, an application for kids made with Hypercard. There’s even a fun little reference to Douglas Adams writing interactive fiction in the 80’s.
Hyperland gets some stuff wrong as anything like this is always going to but he was right about a surprising amount. Even less desirable elements like your fridge being connected to the internet are predicted here. If you have an interest in Douglas Adams or computer history I think it’s worth checking out. There’s a lot of interesting interviews about hypertext history, Tom Baker is a lot of fun to watch, and it’s only 50 minutes. You can watch it for free on the Internet Archive.
A weird but fun thing I like to do is post photos of old computer stores on Cohost and Mastodon, which means that I have found a ton of random things over the last couple of years. I’m going to start posting more organized collections here in case something happens to either place, since that account is now the only source of some photos after the sources have gone down (see my CompUSA post here).
One I’ve always loved finding more photos and documents of has been Egghead Software. If you’re feeling nostalgic for computers in the early 90’s, or specifically the Egghead Software store chain, check out their quarterly reports that have been archived here. For some reason it’s a chain that doesn’t have a ton of photos like other computer stores do, so it was fun finding these. I also thought it was interesting reading the reports in the later years and watching the slow decline they were going through.
I’ve also found a lot of random photos of now closed computer stores by checking out Facebook groups that former employees post in. I’ve only gone in public groups but there’s been a lot of interesting things that employees kept from the store like these items. Unfortunately the groups seem to randomly disappear, probably from Facebook constantly making changes, so there’s always a feeling I have to grab the photos before they’re gone forever.
I was a massive fan of the Atari 50 collection by Digital Eclipse so I was thrilled when they announced The Making of Karateka. I think people have been asking for decades for a Criterion Collection style rerelease of old games, where interviews and documents are packaged with the game. It follows the same format of the Atari 50 collection, where you are presented with multiple timelines, each documenting a different era, and scroll through the timelines to see various documents, interviews with people involved, and games to play. I wasn’t sure how much you could do for just one game but it’s the perfect rerelease to me, no complaints. It’s stunning how much was preserved by Jordan. I knew he had journals during the making of his games because I had read the one he released for Prince of Persia, but the collection also features playable prototypes for games that were never released and letters sent back and forth between him and Broderbund. The remakes created by Digital Eclipse for the games in the collection are a lot of fun too.
I’m hoping the collection is a big hit and we’ll see more of these. I don’t know how many are possible because it’s hard to imagine anyone preserving everything as well as Jordan Mechner has, but I’m sure Digital Eclipse has a few in the works if they announced this is the beginning of a Gold Master Series that “presents iconic games in an innovative “interactive documentary” format, putting the shared history of games and their creators into one comprehensive package.” I think my dream version of one of these that I think would actually be possible, meaning a game not owned by a giant company like Lucasarts or Sierra, would be something like Llamasoft. Seeing prototypes and interviews for anything they put out would be fantastic.
This is a spoiler-free guide for people who wish to check out Beneath a Steel Sky, a point-and-click adventure game created by Revolution Software and released in 1994. This is not a walkthrough and is just meant as an intro to help people get into the game and a little background on it.
Why Should I Play It?
Even though it was released a few decades ago, it still holds up very well! It was an early game by Revolution Software, who would go on to create the Broken Sword series. The cyberpunk mystery was co-designed and features art by Dave Gibbons, most famously known as the artist for Watchmen, giving the game a distinct style. The game also has a charming mix of comedy and earnestness. The game became a cult hit and eventually led to a sequel, Beyond a Steel Sky, in 2021.
How Do I Get Started?
It’s very easy to start playing the game. The game was made freeware in 2003 and is available on the ScummVM website. If you haven’t used ScummVM and want everything configured for you, it’s all set up in a free download on GOG.
This next part is completely optional. The ScummVM Music Enhancement Project is a site containing alternate/enhanced versions of soundtracks for games that run in ScummVM, They’re all available for free and have instructions for how to replace the music. If you would like to see how the two soundtracks compare, you can check out this video here and see what you like more.
Tips for Playing Beneath a Steel Sky
For the most part, Beneath a Steel Sky is easy to get into if you’ve played other point-and-click adventures but here’s a couple things to keep in mind when playing.
Read the Comic Prequel Packaged with the game was a comic that sets up the game and explains the backstory. For the most part this comic also appears in the game’s intro but it’s still worth reading to see an extended version with more art by Dave Gibbons. You can read the comic here.
Save Often You will want to save regularly and rotate between a few save files. There are a few points in the game where you can die and the game does not automatically restore you to a safe point when it happens. It’s not in a ton of places but it’s still a good idea to save just in case. It’s also a good idea to rotate between a few save files. There aren’t really any softlocks except technically at the end where forgetting an item in a room may lead to a dead end scenario in the next room, but it’s nothing to be concerned about as long as you have a couple save files you are actively switching between.
Using Hints is Ok Compared to a lot of adventure games from the era, Beneath a Steel Sky isn’t on the more difficult end of the genre. But everyone finds different puzzles to be difficult and if being stuck is ruining your enjoyment of the game, feel free to look up a hint. I think the page for the game on UHS Hints does a good job of helping with puzzles without giving away too much.
A year ago I wrote a couple of articles (here and here) recommending some indie adventure games for Halloween, and since it is the Halloween season again, or at least it is according to a lot of enthusiastic people, I thought I would do a few more recommendations.
The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow
The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow is a folk horror point-and-click adventure game developed by Cloak and Dagger Games and published by Wadjet Eye Games. I’m a big fan of both studios and even mentioned Football Game by Cloak and Dagger Games in a previous recommendation article. This may be their best game so far. The game features some fantastic art and sound. I especially love the use of light and color in the artwork. The game is very approachable for people newer to point-and-click adventures, with a more simplistic interface and never feeling too frustrating.
The Aching
I’ve mentioned this game on the blog before but it’s a very nice game and I’d love to see more people check it out. The Aching is a parser graphic adventure inspired by classic Sierra adventure games from the 80’s. I enjoyed the game’s horror setting and how it feels like a game from the 80’s without the frustrating softlocks you frequently run into in those games. I don’t mind death in adventure games but this game has a unique take on it where you must do things that would typically cause player death to proceed. I also think it’s cool that the game is built to run on DOS, although it has a DOSBox wrapper so it runs on Windows without any issues.
ParaMonsters and the Haunted Escape Room
If you’re looking for something a little less scary this Halloween season, check out ParaMonsters and the Haunted Escape Room. It’s a very short (30 to 60 minutes) and cute adventure game where you help a group of monsters investigate an escape room that may be haunted. It’s been in one or two of the big bundles on Itch too so you may already own it.
No Rest for the Wicked
No Rest for the Wicked is a short, comedy game where you are a vampire’s servant and must help him make the spell that will bring humanity to an end. The free game features voice acting, nice pixel art, and well-designed puzzles. But don’t take my word for it, it won the 2023 AdventureJam game jam, where teams have 14 days to develop an adventure game.
I was thinking about the large amount of freeware remakes of classic adventure games earlier this week and started putting together a list for myself to see what was out there and just to have something to revisit when I want to replay some of these games. For a period in the early 00’s, a lot of these remakes were a big deal to me because I either didn’t own the original game or didn’t know how to get them working on machines at the time so this was the only way I could play these games. Here’s the list I made, with the games sorted in alphabetical order. Some of the remakes are a bit older but with ScummVM now supporting Adventure Game Studio, you should be able to load them into there without issues. Let me know if I’ve left any good remakes out. I’m not saying that these remakes are better than the original game but I think it’s interesting they exist and I like seeing how people think they can improve on a game and how. It’s an incredibly amount of effort for free projects.
The Abbey of Crime
(Taken from Wikipedia) La abadía del crimen (The Abbey of Crime) is a video game written by Paco Menéndez with graphics made by Juan Delcán and published in 1987 by Opera Soft. It was conceived as a version of Umberto Eco’s 1980 book The Name of the Rose. Paco Menéndez and Opera Soft were unable to secure the rights for the name, so the game was released as La abadía del crimen.
The Abbey of Crime Extensum is a remake that updates the visuals while maintaining the style of the original game.
Barahir Barahir’s Adventure: Askar’s Castle is a remake of the game Barahir, originally created for the Atari 8-bit in 1993 and was only available in Polish. This remake translates the game to English and makes it playable on Windows and Linux. The remake also features 40 different palettes for you to switch between.
The Beast This remake of the ZX Spectrum game from 1988, with the original designer’s permission, makes it playable on modern machines while making various small enhancements to make it more accessible.
The Black Cauldron The Black Cauldron is a game based off the Disney movie, designed by Al Lowe and published by Sierra in 1986. This remake is a straightforward one that converts the game from using a text parser interface to a point-and-click one.
Black Sect Black Sect is a 1993 first-person adventure game by Lankhor, which is sort of a remake of their 1990 game La secte noir. The remake translates the game to English and has a few enhancements that make the game easier such as (text from MobyGames): Timeflow is based on player actions. This prevents missing important events. Unlimited save slots. 2 action cursors instead of more than 20 in the original game. Smart cursor that lights up over interactive areas. Extra puzzles. Changed puzzles to suit the new interface. Updated hint system. New sounds and music
Black Sect 2 This is an English remake of the French graphic adventure game ‘La Crypte Des Maudits’, originally released for the Amstrad CPC in French language only by Lankhor. The remake also lets you choose from various palettes that you can switch between while playing.
Chaluul’s Curse A remake in Adventure Game Studio of a game originally released in 1995 for DOS and in German language only as a bonus game on the cover CD of the German games magazine “PC Spiel”, issue 11/1995. The remake is in English and features music, rewritten puzzles to make them more logical, and extra responses to player actions.
Enclosure
Enclosure 3-D is a remake of the 2004 freeware adventure game but puts the game in an impressive 3D engine that maintains the style of the original game.
Gateway This remake of Gateway by Legend Entertainment converts the text adventure into a point-and-click adventure in the style of their later games, while keeping the art and music of the original game.
Grandad and The Quest for The Holey Vest This is a remake of the original Atari ST game from 1992 that makes the game playable on Windows and Linux and makes some changes to make the game easier to play: -Point-and-click system instead of the original game’s keyboard-only system -Graphical inventory items instead of the original game’s text-only list -No more softlocks -Removes time limit
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy This was a remake of the Infocom text adventure created by the BBC in the mid 00s which adds some graphics and some features to make it a little easier to play like a hint system and compass.
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis It’s only a demo but fans of this game may find the 3D remake interesting.
Invincible Island This remake of a ZX Spectrum text adventure converts the game to an interface that can be played by disabled folks by only having to press the space bar for actions.
King’s Quest 1
There are a couple of remakes of King’s Quest 1. The most famous one remakes the game in a VGA art style, has an option to remove the softlocks, and adds voice acting, including the voice of Josh Mandel who voiced King Graham in some of the original Sierra games. AGD Interactive did a few remakes of Sierra games that you’ll see on here and then went on to create some commercial adventure games so consider checking those out and supporting them.
The other remake, King’s Quest 1 Redux, maintains the style of the original game but builds upon it by adding new features and extra polish, while cleaning up numerous small issues.
King’s Quest 2 AGD Interactive’s remake of King’s Quest 2 is a looser remake than their remake of King’s Quest 1. Much like that remake, it features new art and voice acting but dramatically redesigns areas of the game and expands it.
King’s Quest 3 There are a couple of King’s Quest 3 out there. Just like with King’s Quest 1 and 2, AGD Interactive has created a remake. It adds new art and voice acting and redesigns parts of the game. It doesn’t change as much as their King’s Quest 2 remake but also isn’t a 1:1 remake like they did for King’s Quest 1.
Infamous Adventures also created a remake of the game that updates the art. This one is a more straightforward remake of the game that keeps the design of the original but it does add new cutscenes, a few new characters, expanded narration or dialogue, additions and changes to some of the plot, full speech, new or modified locations, and Easter eggs. After creating a couple of remakes, they went on to create a couple of commercial adventure games inspired by Sierra, so consider checking their games out.
King’s Quest 4 King’s Quest 4: The Perils of Rosella Retold is a remake that converts the game to a point-and-click interface, removes the softlocks in the original game, and adds some of the assets from the Amiga version which are considered to be an improvement.
Maniac Mansion Maniac Mansion Deluxe updates the game to look more like Lucasarts adventure games from the early 90’s.
There is also a 3D remake called Meteor Mess. While I prefer pixel art, the remake does feature a lot of nice quality of life features like hotspot highlighting, removal of dead ends, and a new solution path for Jeff.
While it’s not complete, someone did a port of the NES version of the game to the Game Boy as a test.
Megacorp Megacorp Redux is a remake of the 1987 adventure game that changes some puzzles, maps, and adds more story elements
Quest For Glory 2 AGD Interactive’s remake of Quest for Glory 2 updates the graphics to a VGA style and makes some minor enhancements. The game supports the character import/export feature so you can import your character from Sierra’s original Quest for Glory 1 and import them into Quest for Glory 3 once you’ve completed the game.
Space Quest 2 This remake by Infamous Adventures updates the game to a VGA art style, point-and-click interface, and adds voice acting, while sticking to the design of the original game.
Space Quest 3 Space Quest 3D recreates the game in 3D and features new music and voice acting as well.
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If you are a fan of classic graphic adventures that use a parser, such as the King’s Quest and Space Quest series, then you’ll want to check out the modern parser adventure scene, where people are building new games that look and play like games from that era but updated to have a more robust parser and avoiding problems like softlocks.
My favorite of these is Snail Trek. It’s a fairly short episodic series where you play as a group of snails checking out a planet to see if it can be a new homeworld for them. I loved how flexible the parser was and how it would offer word suggestions. The player is also encouraged to check out player deaths because they’re humorous and will reload you back to before you made your mistake. The first episode of four is free.
Most of the modern parser graphic adventures seem to be on Itch so I made a list of them. I recommend playing all of them. None of them are too long and they all have something unique to offer. The Aching is a new game for DOS that has a Dosbox wrapper so you don’t have to do any weird configuration to play it in Windows. The Crimson Diamond is a mystery inspired by the classic Sierra game The Colonel’s Bequest. It’s currently in development so the download on the Itch and Steam page is just a demo but you can watch dev streams for the game every Tuesday. The Tachyon Dreams trilogy and Spy Quest series are by developers of modern adventure games like Blood Nova. Enclosure 3D is a remake of an adventure game from 2004 but with a really snazzy 3D engine that I would love to see applied to more parser games.
There’s also games not on Itch like Betrayed Alliance and Fortune and Glory, a text parser rpg that is currently in development. I’m sure there’s plenty of games I’m missing but it’s exciting seeing so many developers revisiting ideas from games in the 80s and building upon them.
There’s a ton of books about adventure games and interactive fiction. Here are some of the ones I recommend:
Hardcoregaming101.net Presents: The Guide to Classic Graphic Adventures
This is a collection of adventure game reviews from the site Hardcore Gaming 101. While it’s more focused on classic adventure games from the 80s and 90s, I think it’s a valuable resource for discovering old games and seeing how some people feel about some of the classic adventure games that everyone knows. If you bought the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality on Itch.io from a few years ago, you already own a copy.
What Is Your Quest?: From Adventure Games to Interactive Books
This book by Anastasia Salter is an excellent history of the interactive fiction and adventure game genres. One thing that really impressed me was the coverage of the fan game community that popped up during the 00’s. This is an era that’s rarely discussed in discussions of the adventure game genre, so it was a delight to discover games I was unaware of.
Jane Jensen: Gabriel Knight, Adventure Games, Hidden Objects
This is another book by Anastasia Salter that I really enjoyed. This one is a history of Jane Jensen’s career. While most discussions of her career only cover her time making adventure for Sierra during the 90’s, this also goes into great details of her time making more casual games in the 00’s, her games from her Kickstarter, and her career now writing gay romance novels. Jane Jensen is my favorite designer at Sierra so I loved hearing about her career in casual games and why she moved on to writing novels.
The Sierra Adventure
The Sierra Adventure is an incredibly detailed history of the game developer Sierra. While the book is written by a huge fan of the company, it isn’t afraid to cover games that were poorly received and mistakes the company made.
The power was out at my home for two days last week so I was unable to do one of these, so here’s the FMV stuff I’ve been into lately. It’s a short one since I’ve only played one game but I thought it was cool. I previously mentioned that the game engine Narrat now supports video for its scenes and character portraits and the first game to use it was submitted to the Narrat game jam that just ended. A walk through the forest is a game where you walk on a trail, identifying plants and reading thoughts from the developer. I thought it was a pleasant game to play and it inspired me to work on two different things so hopefully I can share one of those in the next few weeks, depending on how busy I am. It’s a really nice and short game that’s playable in the browser so go check it out.
I figured that during blaugust I could start dumping my memories of weird games forum drama as well so I could be free of this knowledge and have it preserved somewhere as well. Today I will talk about the great Serious Sam/Duke Nukem feud of the early 00s. In the early 00’s I was (and I still am) a huge fan of the Serious Sam series and even spent a ton of time on the forums for Seriously!, the biggest Serious Sam fan site in the world, where the dev team for the series would also often post. This is where I became aware of the feud, which I think was mostly playful but I’m not 100% sure, between the developers of Serious Sam and George Broussard, one of the creators of the Duke Nukem series and many other games before and after.
It all started in 2000, when Croteam was working on Serious Sam and just released a vertical slice to get a publisher interested in their game. It was getting a lot of positive praise because it was released at a time when the dominant FPS style at the time was the Rainbow Six style of game. That is, except for a comment by George
To be clear, even though I disagree with it, this post is fine. It’s just a post on (I think?) the 3D Realms forums and I suspect that there was a thread about the demo and people were just discussing it. People are allowed to state their opinions online about video games. It still ended up coming to the attention of the Serious Sam devs, possibly during their interview with Old Man Murray, and rubbed them the wrong way, which is also understandable. Croteam ended up getting a publisher and releasing Serious Sam: The First Encounter, which was a big hit and Croteam started getting a following and developing a sequel. From what I recall, it ended up being discussed on the Seriously! forums in a thread and there were probably jokes about Duke Nukem Forever taking so long. I’m sure it’s been preserved on the Internet Archive but I’m not going to dig it up because I already found something tangential to it and it was a big oof.
As mentioned in the Old Man Murray interview, this is actually why Serious Sam: The First Encounter has a sewer level. It’s probably my least favorite level in the game but now you know why it exists.
Over the years, the Serious Sam series has made a bunch of references poking fun at the Duke Nukem franchise. The first actual reference to Duke Nukem appears in Serious Sam: The Second Encounter. There’s a secret phone booth you can access where Sam calls someone asking for a man named Blondie and saying he’s been waiting forever for him to show up. There’s also a very brief reference to Duke in Serious Sam for the X-Box, which is a combined release of the First and Second Encounters.
Things get a little weirder in Serious Sam 2. There’s a reference to Blondie again in a cutscene and you can find a skeleton of someone named Duke with another Duke Nukem Forever joke thrown in. There’s also a minor character named George B. Gnaar, who is named after George.
After this point Croteam moved on and it was basically forgotten. As far as I know, the only time anyone associated with Duke Nukem poked back was with the Duke Nukem 3D: 20th Anniversary World Tour where there is a secret in one of the new levels. Similar to the secret with the Doom marine in the original Duke 3D, you can find Serious Sam’s corpse and Duke will say “Why so serious….Sam?” I think this new episode was developed by Gearbox or a team outside of 3D Realms, which had been closed at this time before the name and IPs were acquired by folks that had nothing to do with the original studio.
The final reference I’ve seen was in Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem, a standalone DLC released in 2022, which features a magazine referencing Blondie. I believe this was mostly by an external team but clearly fans of the game remember that original beef between the two studios.
Well, there you have it. There was a beef between two game studios that you now know about and I can dump this info from my brain.
