While ScummVM is the go-to emulator for LucasArts adventure games these days, there’s another one people should consider using. DREAMM is an emulator focused on LucasArts games that relies on low-level emulation instead of reverse engineering, providing a more accurate emulation of these games over ScummVM. The emulator was created by Aaron Giles, who previously worked at LucasArts and created many of the Mac ports for their games. You can hear him discuss the emulator here.
In addition to it providing more accurate emulation for LucasArts adventure games, having a focus on LucasArts games means it supports a lot of games ScummVM never will, like Yoda Stories, Rebel Assault 2, and Mortimer and the Riddles of the Medallion. You can view the complete list of games it supports here.
I was digging through my google drive and stumbled across a ttrpg I wrote for the 200 Word RPG Challenge contest back in 2018. It didn’t win nor should it have, but it seems alright and maybe I’ll come back to it someday.
It Came from Studio 9 is a GM-less RPG where 3-5 players are part of a crew making a B-Movie. The crew collaborates on the framework of a science fiction, horror, or adventure movie before producing a film in three acts. Players then choose one of the following roles in the movie’s production:
Director (Required) Lead Actor (Required) Supporting Actor Location Scout Stunt Person
Players then film the scenes in each act (usually two or three) by taking turns to say what they’re doing in each scene. If the action seems difficult, they must roll 2d6 to determine the result.
10+: Action is a success (Ex: Lead actor delivers a great performance)
7-9: Action is successful but there’s a complication (Ex: Location Scout gets the beach they wanted but there’s turtles everywhere)
6-: The movie has a disaster (Ex: Director couldn’t get prop guns and actors now must fight killer birds with coat hangers)
After all three acts are completed, the movie is released and the group discusses if it was a huge success, box office bomb, or film that is so bad it’s a cult classic.
Developer: Anima PPD Publisher: Got Game Entertainment Year: 2003 Genre: Adventure Game
I just noticed from browsing MobyGames out of boredom that it has been 20 years this month since the game Conspiracies was released in the US. Conspiracies is a FMV game developed by Anima Ppd Interactive that I’ve had a long fascination with. I picked the game up near release when I saw it was pretty cheap at a Best Buy, during a time when we were desperate for new adventure games but also because back then I already had a morbid curiosity in FMV games. You play as the detective Nick Delios as you investigate a murder and along the way you discover a bunch of weird subplots and bigger mysteries. This case takes the player all around the world, to outer space, traveling through time, and also a concert for a Greek blues band that the developers seem to be a fan of since you must watch a music video featuring them. It plays exactly like a Tex Murphy game, but not quite at the level of quality that we would expect from that series. It’s hard to know where to start with why this game is so fascinating to me. Richard Cobbett wrote a great article about the game for PC Gamer a while ago about it.
Our hero, Nick Delios
I guess a lot of the weirdness in Conspiracies comes from the main character, Nick Delios. He’s not particularly interesting but he’s just such an odd protagonist for an adventure game. Like all characters in FMV games, he wears the same outfit throughout the entire game but it’s just a grey hoodie and grey sweatpants. Since it was a game developed in Greece, he is also dubbed and it doesn’t quite fit but it’s also endearing at the same time?
The PC Gamer article mentions the starting puzzle where you cannot leave the apartment until you make coffee using water from your fish tank, but that’s just the beginning of the odd puzzles. Another puzzle requires you to get by a robotic dog, that is not intimidating at all, by filling an inner tube with water and feeding it to the dog. The most famous puzzle in the game requires you to get a signed cd from a real band called Blues Wire and give it to someone in another location to proceed.
Nothing about it really makes sense. Why is a band from today playing in the future? Why this Greek blues band? Why do you have to pretend you’re dying for them to give you the cd? Like most of the game, it’s not a particularly difficult puzzle, just a really weird one.
However, there is one puzzle that beats them all and caused my friend and I a lot of pain when we played through it. Conspiracies is a game that gives you a ton of inventory items, many of them being completely useless, and a very limited inventory space. Some of these items are small sticks of gum that are scattered throughout the game. My friend and I were playing through the game on our own computers while chatting about it over voice chat and while we each had to dump inventory items to make space, he chose to drop some of those sticks of gum. After all, surely you don’t need six sticks of gum? Well, it turns out you do. Apparently you can figure out what items are needed and which ones aren’t by going to your apartment, and using items on your trash can. If an item isn’t needed, the game will dispose of the item in the trash, otherwise nothing will happen. You’re meant to use the gum much later in the game, where you reach a cutscene of a flying car taking off and Nick combines gum and a tiny gps and throws it at the moving car to get it to stick. If you do not have all six pieces of gum, the game reaches a fail state. We did not know this and my friend spent an hour looking for the stick of gum that he dropped somewhere in this massive 3D space to get past this point. Eventually he gave up and I just sent him my save file so he could proceed. Even the cutscene itself is ridiculous and shows Nick unwrapping and chewing on all six pieces of gum before throwing the gps unit at the flying car.
The reception to this game was a bizarre thing to watch as well. This came out during a time when the adventure game community was desperate for adventure games and would rally behind every single game in the hopes that it would “revive” the genre that many perceived as dead. I think you could make a solid argument that the genre was fine if you were including freeware games and the adventure games coming from Japan, but if you were looking for commercial adventure games for the PC then it was a rough time. Adventure game sites often gave the few commercial games we had glowing reviews, only for bigger outlets to trash the games. This led to accusations that the mainstream gaming press was biased against adventure games and sounds oddly like a conservative talking point we’d hear today but no, the games were frequently just terrible. I have a vivid memory of PC Gamer giving The Moment of Silence, a completely forgettable adventure game, a poor review and the Adventure Gamers forums having a massive thread about it. Even games that I thought were decent, like Broken Sword 3, had unrealistic expectations placed on them and people in the community expected them to single-handedly make the genre popular again. This basically went on until companies like Telltale started making games and I’m glad I don’t see it anymore other than the occasional person at a games outlet saying the genre is dead and then the resulting discourse from that.
Anyway, this all meant that when PC Gamer gave the game a poor review, as it should have, people were not pleased. The developers wrote an angry letter to PC Gamer and the magazine actually published it.
“We at Anima PPD-Interactive are new developers. Conspiracies is our first game, and it took us five years of development and our own funding. Do you believe that judging the game that hard is leaving us anything? The most likely thing that may occur is that we sell nothing in the U.S. and stop our efforts here. Is that what your magazine wants? Fewer independent developers?
Also, did you play the game till the end? You think there’s nothing worthwhile? Not even the story or the Puzzles? I think that you’re on the slope that Hollywood is on – lots of effects and explosions, but boring stories or no stories at all. Just kill, kill, kill. Of course I don’t say that our game is at the edge of technology , but all of the gamers that played our game up to now had a lot of fun. FMV games are very expensive to develop, and there aren’t many of this kind on the market anymore.
We’re very frustrated that you don’t count the story factor or human factor but only graphics and effects. As adventure gamers we feel that a game with a boring story and great graphics is worse than a game with a good story and poorer graphics.
We feel sorry that you’re not supporting us independent developers at all.”
To which PC Gamer writer Chuck Osborne responded with:
“I’m not sure which is more surprising: That we’re supposed to award brownie points to independent developers, or that Conspiracies took five years to make. As I said in my review, I’d gladly play an all-text adventure game (and have!) if it had a great story and compelling puzzles. Sadly, Conspiracies received a 23% because of its confounding plot and pathetic gameplay. To answer your question: Yes, we enthusiastically support small developers – we just don’t support bad games.“
Again, this was a thing that frequently happened with negative reviews of adventure games in the early 00’s. I remember Chuck Osborne going onto the Just Adventure forums to explain how he’s not biased against adventure games just because he gave a negative review to the latest Dreamcatcher game and what not, and other journalists would pop onto the Adventure Gamers forums to explain the same thing.
The game must have been a success because in 2011, 8 years after the first game, there was a Conspiracies 2. Even with the long gap between games, it manages to bring back everyone from the first game, including the people who did the dubbing for the English version. It’s an improvement over the first game, although I felt like it removed the weirdness from the game so I never finished it. One day I’ll have to, so I can see how the cliffhanger from the first game is resolved.
While they only developed the two games, Anima PPD seems to still be around today doing video production. You can even buy physical copies of Conspiracies 1 and 2 from their website. I believe this is the only place where you can legally buy them, as they never got a release on Steam or GOG. I hope they do get a digital release someday. While it’s clear I don’t think they’re “Good” games, they are fascinating and must have done something right if I’m still thinking about Conspiracies 20 years later.
On a final note, after our playthrough of the first game together, my friend wrote the studio an email thanking them for making the game. I don’t think the email was entirely sincere but there wasn’t any sarcasm in it either. To his surprise, the studio responded and sent him a bunch of Conspiracies swag like a poster and a copy of the game with a bonus dvd of extra material, which I believe was signed? Just an incredibly kind gesture from a small studio that didn’t need to do so, and this enthusiasm is probably why I’m still recommending it to streamers and enjoyers of obscure games today. It’s not a good game and I strongly recommend having a walkthrough open while playing it, but good lord is it a fascinating fever dream.
When people are nostalgic for the 90’s internet, it seems like they’re often thinking about personal sites that are built around silly purposes. Being fascinated with this era means I get to stumble across these sites such as the Cybertub. This was a site created in the mid 90s just for measuring the temperature of a hot tub in Ypsilanti, Michigan. The Cybertub was created by Paul Haas in early 1994 and by the beginning of 1995, appears to have been getting 1000 visitors a day. The earliest coverage I can find of the site is from the Ann Arbor News in January, 1995. The article has an interview with Paul about how the Cybertub is just a fun little personal project that he made to make sure the hot tub’s water doesn’t drop to freezing temperatures, as well as other parts of his site like the temperature monitor for his fridge. The site seemed to have continued growing in popularity where even the New York Times covered the site in late 1995.
I’m not sure when the popularity of the site started to decline but the legacy of the Cybertub lives on. At BornHack 2019, a hacker camp in Denmark, a large wood-fired hot tub used an internet connected temperature sensor, and if you look at the comments you can see someone from the camp thanking Paul. “I am proud to call Paul Haas one of early mentors. Thank you Paul.”
A really neat thing I wanted to do a shout out to is all the recipe collections on Itch.io. Since it’s a site focused on games but supports other things, I think it’s cool that people are using the Books section to upload their recipe zines. I made a collection here that you can check out to find some of them. There’s a wide variety of themes, one is paired with a tabletop rpg and others are inspired by video games. You can find more by checking out some of the tags on Itch like recipes, food, and cooking.
It’s not on Itch but I also wanted to mention Alpha Chrome Yayo’s album Let’s Get Cookin’, which also features a cookbook as part of the purchase on Bandcamp. It’s a good album and I just like seeing people finding unique ways of distributing recipes.
The 1994 DOS game Pizza Connection/Pizza Tycoon also came with a recipe book of pizza recipes and it’s also part of the download if you get it on GOG. More games should come with recipes. Even the ones that have nothing to do with food.
A nice little feature I’ve discovered this year in ScummVM is the ability to replace the soundtracks of some games with other versions. The ScummVM website mentions it but I didn’t know of it until I saw that George Sanger, also known as The Fat Man, started selling soundtracks of his games on Bandcamp that also included files for ScummVM that allow you to listen to a higher quality version of the soundtrack of games like Putt-Putt Saves the Zoo while you play. It’s been really nice listening to these while revisiting the games with my kids. The soundtracks you can do this with are currently:
Cover of the Putt-Putt Goes to the Moon soundtrack
But I would also encourage you to check out the other albums on his Bandcamp page because there’s a lot of great stuff on there.
Tom McGurk has also rereleased his soundtrack for Spy Fox 2, which comes with files for ScummVM.
Another place where you can find mods for game soundtracks is through the ScummVM Music Enhancement Project by James Woodcock. The project is focused on recreating midi soundtracks of games at a higher audio quality level and isn’t trying to do an “improved” soundtrack or make any drastic changes, and the site is very open about how they are a big fan of the original soundtracks and are just doing it as a fun personal project. Also from reading this post about The Gene Machine, it sounds like he gets permission before releasing an enhanced soundtrack. I think they’re really neat and will have to use them when I replay some of these games. You can check out a video doing a comparison of the original and new Beneath a Steel Sky soundtracks here:
Currently the games supported by the ScummVM Music Enhancement Project are:
It sounds like there’s an enhanced soundtrack being made for Simon the Sorcerer 2 right now, so be sure to follow the project for future updates.
The ScummVM website also links to ways to replace the Loom soundtrack with your preferred version of Swan Lake and building a talkie version of the original Monkey Island 1 and 2 using the voice acting from the special editions. I just think it’s really nice that these things exist when we revisit some of our favorite games.
Update: A lot of people replied on social media of other sites they liked so I have added a list of them at the end.
This morning I went looking for a shareware game I remembered playing 20 years ago and discovered that not only was the game now free, the same website I downloaded the game from two decades ago was still up. This led to me thinking about other old shareware game developer sites I knew of, and discovering some others that were new to me as well.
Spheres of Chaos
This was the game that kicked off my whole dig into old shareware developer sites this morning. Spheres of Chaos is an arcade game like Asteroids, where you fly around shooting at various objects and they break into smaller bits, while dodging other space ships trying to shoot at you. The game was originally released in 1992 for the Acorn Archimedes and then re-released in 1998 for the PC, where it has received a few updates since then. The visuals remind me a lot of Llamasoft’s games, with a psychedelic aesthetic with bright colors coming from every movement and explosion. I originally discovered this game almost 20 years ago, on the Idle Thumbs website before it launched a podcast. The review does a much better job explaining why you should play it than I could. At the time, I did not have a credit card or the money to pay for the small amount the developer was charging. Fast forward to this morning when I suddenly remembered playing this game and dug around the site to find the name of the game. I was pleasantly surprised to see the website was still up, looking the exact same as it did when I first downloaded the demo, and the game was now available for free. Best of all, the game still holds up! It was a blast flying around, blowing everything up, and the screen filling up with various colors. Highly recommended if you’re a Llamasoft fan.
Redwood Games
This led me to discovering some shareware game developers that still have websites going, even if they aren’t actively developing new games. Redwood Games was created about 1990 by Karen Crowther and the studio is most famous for the games Math Rescue and Word Rescue, which were published by Apogee Software. Both games are still available on Steam today. The site also features downloads of other games they worked on like Talking ABC’s and the shareware version of Pickle Wars.
Gray Design Associates
Screenshot taken from the Gray Design Associates website
Gray Design Associates is the name of the developer owned by David Gray, most famously known for The Hugo Trilogy of adventure games, which started with the 1990 game Hugo’s House of Horrors. While GOG does sell the Windows version of the games running in ScummVM, David’s website sells both versions of the trilogy in the bundle if you want to own the DOS versions as well. It’s also the only place where you can legally buy Nitemare 3-D, the FPS spinoff of the Hugo games released in 1995. Since then, David has been focused on creating jigsaw puzzle games and still makes them to this day.
SophSoft
SophSoft is a developer that started in 1982 and is still going today! As someone that is interested in the history of Michigan game development, it’s cool seeing someone that has been making games for so long in Lansing, Michigan. Their portfolio also shows games they helped with, such as Legacy of the Ancients and The Legend of Blacksilver by another local game developer, Quest Software.
Adept Software
Adept Software is a software developer that is most famous for the shareware game Jetpack. The developer started in 1996 and is still working on things today. The Classic Games section of their site is a delight, resembling a 90’s website, and features their classic games for free.
Game Crafters
Game Crafters was a studio that developed one game, The Adventures of Maddog Williams in the Dungeons of Duridian in 1992. That hasn’t stopped the studio from having a website with updates as recently as 2012. The site has downloads of the game for various platforms and you can also read news posts about an attempt to make a sequel in the early 00’s.
MVP Software
MVP Software was a publisher in Grand Rapids, Michigan that started in 1985 and kept going all the way to 2014. While the site itself isn’t anything exciting to look at, I think it’s great that it’s still up and offering free downloads of all the games they’re legally allowed to offer such as Pickle Wars, the game I mentioned earlier by Redwood Games.
If you enjoyed reading about these studios and visiting their sites, I highly recommend the book Shareware Heroes. The book goes into detail about the shareware scene, including some of the developers mentioned here. If there’s an older site belonging to a game developer that you’re a fan of, or you’re a game developer with a site that’s been around for a long time, feel free to leave it in the comments!
Sites Recommended by Others!
I didn’t expect people on social media to have so many other shareware game dev sites that they like so I have made a list of them here!
3D Realms – The legacy version of their site. (Suggested by Richard Moss) Bluemoon Interactive – Developer of classic DOS games like Skyroads. The history section of the site has links to download full versions of their games. (Suggested by Pulsar) Cap’n Magneto – Shareware game for the Mac. (Richard Moss) Carr Software – Developer of shareware games, all available in a bundle. (Hard Drive Noises) Crazy Bytes – Recommended by LunarLoony Everett Kaser Software – Developer of Sherlock and other games. A great post by Ian Michael here about why he is a fan of the developer. Goodsol – Developer of a Solitaire application that is updated every year (Richard Moss) Hamumu Games – Developer of shareware games that has recently rereleased them on Steam. (Andy Hat) JunkGames – Recommended by LunarLoony KPixGames – Developer of PathPix and other shareware games (ROTOPE) Lena Games – Developer of Solitaire shareware and other games (LunarLoony) Louise Hope – A World Builder dev that includes games you can play in your browser. (Mike Piontek) Ray Dunakin – World Builder dev, including a modern Mac remake of one game (Mike Piontek) Sean O’Connor – Suggested by Greg. “Sean O’Connor made a rather addicting Empire clone called “Mother of All Battles” for Windows 3.0 that is still getting some updates and being sold today!” Semicolon – Modern ports of his old software, including Mac games (Richard Moss) Spiderweb Software – Actively making rpgs since the 90’s (Andy Hat) Stick Software – Developer of various applications and games for the Mac (Richard Moss) Storm Impact – Developer of MacSki and other Mac games. The downloads come in an emulator friendly format. (Mike Piontek) Wendell Hicken – Creator of Scorched Earth (kilowatt) Winograd – Developer of Mac and Windows games (Richard Moss) Zugg Software – Creator of MUD clients (Richard Moss)
With Unity doing all of their nonsense lately, I really enjoyed this post from Nathalie Lawhead about alternative game engines. Of course not everyone can switch game engines but with a lot of people considering switching to something else, or even writing their own, I thought this was a nice list. Even if you weren’t using Unity, or you are and have no plans to switch, it’s worth reading. Sometimes it’s nice to just make a tiny game in another engine, just to try it out and possibly make something outside of your comfort zone, without the pressure of it having to be something amazing.
Sometimes between the time when I posted this to my computer store social media account a few years ago and now, most of the archives for this newspaper went down so I thought I would repost the Wayback Machine link for the Star Bulletin reporting in 1998 that the Computer City stores in its Waikele and Kakaako locations closed pending a $275 million acquisition by CompUSA. I just realized now that this lines up with when my local Computer City in Northville, Michigan had closed after only being open for two years. From browsing Wikipedia, it sounds like CompUSA had no interest in keeping the Computer City brand and either closed the stores (mine was fairly close to a CompUSA) or converted them to CompUSA stores.
From the Star-Bulletin: “Dr. Doug Johnson of Kaimuki is assisted by Computer City associate Nancy Tapia, while he carts off the very last computer system sold at Computer City’s Victoria Ward store. The store is now closed, making way for Pier 1 Imports.“
Sales associates John Powell, left, talks with Edmund Chu and his brother, Richard Chu, about Apple computers in the new Computer City store on Auahi Street, across from Ward Centre in Kakaako. Photo by Kathryn Bender, Star-Bulletin
