retro games

ScummVM 2.8.0 is Out

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A new version of ScummVM is out and this one is a big release to me. The biggest part of the release for me is that it supports more games made with Director, which are a massive headache to play today. So now I can easily play games like The Dark Eye, Gadget, and Classical Cats, which has a very good post about getting it to work in ScummVM.

Here are the new games that it supports:

  • Adibou 1
  • The Dark Eye
  • Dark Side
  • Escape From Hell
  • Gadget: Invention Travel and Adventure
  • Gobliiins 5
  • The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow
  • Kingdom: The Far Reaches
  • Might and Magic Book One
  • Muppet Treasure Island
  • Nancy Drew: The Final Scene
  • Nancy Drew: Message in a Haunted Mansion
  • Nancy Drew: Secrets Can Kill
  • Nancy Drew: Stay Tuned for Danger
  • Nancy Drew: Treasure in the Royal Tower
  • Primordia
  • Reah: Face the Unknown
  • Schizm: Mysterious Journey
  • Shardlight
  • Strangeland
  • Syberia and Syberia II (macOS versions only)
  • Technobabylon
  • The Vampire Diaries
  • Whispers of a Machine
  • Wrath of the Gods and four other Director titles.
  • 14 AGS titles by Stranga and Cloak and Dagger

Blog Post Grab Bag

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Here’s a bunch of recent blog and website posts that I really enjoyed. I doubt this is a thing I’ll be doing every week. There’s just been so many posts I’ve enjoyed lately and didn’t know where to talk about it. As usually, these are places I follow through Inoreader, a free RSS feed reader for the web, and I think they’re worth adding to your RSS feed reader of choice.

Did you know there’s a lot of RPGs? Deep Hell lists 50 of them

Over at A Critical Hit, Kate Willaert goes into how a Popeye game became Donkey Kong and the origins of Mario.

Misty talks about getting Classical Cats to work in ScummVM’s Director engine.

Indie Tsushin has a nice interview with Japanese indie game developer HesoRider.

Bobbins’ Olde Tomb Of Videogames has another post highlighting great games this week. The highlight for me was the Joust remake since I feel the need to play every version of Joust that I can find.

If you liked this post, Critical Distance does a much, much better version of it. Follow them and check out their most recent roundup of posts about games.

Retro Gaming Roundup (Dec. 13, 2023)

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A bunch of various retro gaming related things happened that I thought were worth posting about so instead of creating a dozen posts, here they are.

In addition to announced that Jeff Minter collection last week, Digital Eclipse also added 12 more games to their Atari 50 collection for free. It’s been fantastic seeing the company doing so much fantastic stuff this last year.

The MSX game Illusion City is getting an English translation. It’s still in the testing phase before release but it looks great.

gif of Illusion City showing a top down view of an office and an option menu in english

The Video Game History Foundation released a video yesterday showing the levels that never made it into Sonic 2. They’ve been showing off great stuff every day this month in order to raise funds so if you’re into games preservation, consider supporting them by clicking the donation link in the video.

Footage from the game Habitat has been found! Habitat was an online game created by Lucasfilm Games/Lucasarts in the mid 80s. There really wasn’t much footage or screenshots from it until now. This post goes into detail about how the footage was found but if you want to start watching it, you can do so here. The other parts have also been uploaded to the channel. If you’d like to play the game, it’s actually been relaunched as NeoHabitat and available for free.

Jennell Jaquays, most famously know as the designer of the D&D modules Dark Tower and Caverns of Thracia as well as her work on computer games like Age of Empires and Quake 2/3, has a GoFundMe to help pay for the medical costs she has while recovering from her illness. Consider supporting it if you can afford to do so.

DemonStar Rerelease

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top down view of a space ship shooting at a giant space ship

The 1997 game DemonStar just got a rerelease on Steam with a bunch of new features. I never played it before but it’s by the same designer as Raptor: Call of the Shadows and I liked that so I guess I should play this too? The reviews so far seem pretty positive. The rerelease was created by the original designer, which is always fun to see. I know that a rerelease of Raptor is being worked on right now by the same person and even has a teaser.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2577180/DemonStar__Original_Missions/

Happy 30th Birthday to Doom!

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Yesterday was the 30th anniversary of the release of Doom, one of my favorite games. A lot of neat Doom related events happened.

There was a reunion of John Carmack and John Romero where they reflected on the game. You can watch that on Twitch.

John Romero’s megawad SIGIL got a sequel. You can download both for free here but there’s also an option to purchase a version with new music as well.

screenshot of Evilternity 2 of some sort of temple at dusk
Screenshot from Eviternity II of the map Quetzalcoatl by Dragonfly

The megawad Evilternity also got a surprise sequel that contains 36 maps. As the page states, DSDA Doom and GZDoom are both good ways to play these new maps.

If you’re looking for more Doom to play even after all that, there’s the 2023 Cacowards, which highlight great maps and mods that came out this year.

Indie Game Roundup (Dec. 8, 2023)

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Finally, the awards that people have been looking forward, the most interesting indie games releases and news this week, at least to me.

Wigglypaint
This delightful tool made in Decker, a Hypercard-inspired designer, lets you create drawings that remind me of the squigglevision in shows like Home Movies and Dr. Katz. I absolutely cannot draw but it’s so much for anyway that I don’t care.

my attempt at drawing Jim Walls, the designer of the Police Quest series

Indiepocalypse 47
A new Indiepocalypse is out, which means I am required by law to post about it. This issue is another great collection of games and I recommend the one commissioned for the issue, Touhou Lonely Lovely Bonfire by Lily Valeen, the designer of BOSSGAME.

Rosewater
Technically it came out last week but I forgot to post about it. A new trailer for Rosewater is out. It’s a western point-and-click adventure game coming out next year that I’ve been waiting for since last year and I think it looks great

Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story
Digital Eclipse announced that the next game in their retrospective series will be focused on Jeff Minter and his games. I was a massive fan of their Karateka one and I love Jeff Minter games so this will probably end up being my 2024 game of the year. I absolutely cannot wait.

The University of Michigan/Eastern Michigan University Student Game Showcase
This is a bit more local but every semester the students in the game development programs at both schools do a showcase of their games. Yesterday was their latest and there’s another great batch of games to play so go check them out.

Retro Gaming Roundup (Dec. 4, 2023)

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A surprising amount of retro stuff happened this week that I found exciting. The biggest thing happening now is that the Video Game History Foundation has been highlighting some of the important things they’ve done for the first 25 days in December to help raise funds to keep going. You can check the calendar out here. Obviously my favorite bit is the Making of Riven documentary getting a remaster.

Desert Bus, a game famous for intentionally being the most boring game ever made, just got a port to the Playdate.

title screen of soul crystal, showing a hand reaching through an open door

A German text adventure from 1992 for the Commodore 64, Soul Crystal, just got an English translation. I’m not familiar with the game but it’s apparently pretty good and I think the art and music are fantastic from the extremely quick peek I took at it.

A bunch of SSI games are coming soon to GOG and Steam. I never heard of any of these games but a lot of strategy game folks seem to be excited about them so I guess that means it’s worth a look

A remaster of Beyond Good and Evil is coming out in 2024. Still a great game so I’m looking forward to that. Never got really excited about anything I saw from the sequel in development and still no updates on that so…..oh well.

A remaster of Turok 3 just came out. I never actually played this one but grew up playing Turok 1, 2, and Rage Wars on the N64 so it’s interesting to me. Nightdive did a nice job with the remasters for 1 and 2 and my understanding is that this is the last good Turok game so I’ll probably play this at some point.

A Boy and His Blob for the NES and Game Boy just got a rerelease. I could never get into these game and strongly preferred the one for the Wii but you know what? Games I don’t like should get rereleases and remasters too.

Finally, enjoy this demo written for DOS. Realistically you probably won’t install and run that so here’s a YouTube video of it as well.

RealMagic

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When it became clear that full motion video on cd-rom was a selling feature for games in the early 90’s, hardware manufacturers wanted to be a part of it as well. Sigma Designs’ RealMagic card, also sometimes known as ReelMagic, was a MPEG accelerator card that allowed users to play video up to 30 frames per second by plugging into a video card’s feature connector. While developers were initially excited to support it in 1993 and companies like Access Software, Interplay, Psygnosis, Readysoft, and Sierra On-Line announced they would create games for it, but the card only got a handful of games that support it. The card only being for a very specific niche and price tag of $450 meant the card had a short lifespan. Some of the known games that had special editions released for it include:

  • Dragon’s Lair
  • Space Ace
  • Return to Zork
  • The Horde
  • Entity
  • Flash Traffic
  • Crime Patrol
  • Crime Patrol 2: Drug Wars
  • Lord of the Rings
  • Man Enough
  • Conspiracy
  • Space Pirates
  • Return to Cyber City
  • Prince Interactive
  • The Psychotron
  • Silent Steel

There’s other games that reportedly exist for it as well that have never been confirmed, such as Gabriel Knight 1 and King’s Quest 6, although these might have just been mentioned on the demo disc. The demo disc that shipped with the card has videos on it for games that never shipped for it, such as The 11th Hour, which was an early video of the game that uses an old version of the game’s logo. If you’re interested in checking out some of these games, there is a fork of DosBox that has ReelMagic support. I wouldn’t say the changes it makes to the games will make you re-evaluate them, they are noticeable. Return to Zork features FMV of people talking instead of digitized sprites, Crime Patrol features better quality video, and Lord of the Rings uses footage from Ralph Bashki’s animated film. The Return to Zork one is fascinating because while it adds more FMV, it uses the floppy disk version’s soundtrack, which is less impressive. It also leaves in takes where actors flub their lines and ruin some of the game’s jokes, where the more mainstream release of the game would edit around those. The strangest part is that it has video of dialogue not in the other release that gives more context to some puzzles, which are one of the more frustrating parts of the game. While I can’t say I’m surprised it never took off, it’s kinda fun checking out games from childhood that are actually slightly better than how I remember them.

Retro Gaming Roundup (Nov. 27, 2023)

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A screenshot from The Realm, showing various cartoon fantasy folks standing in a room

Here’s a quick collection of retro gaming things that I found interesting this last week.

The 1997 MMO The Realm is back. It was originally published and run by Sierra and the rights have been sold to various companies since then. A new publisher has gained the rights and has launched the game again. The article goes into more detail about how the previous owner mismanaged the license and what the relaunch means for the game. I’ve never played it before but it makes me happy whenever I see a MMO that has kept going even after decades.

DOSember starts next month! DOScember is an event where streamers play tons of DOS games. It’s a fun way to watch people play classic games and the people involved are very lovely.

And to end with some self promotion, the next DOS Games Jam starts next month. Come join if you want to try making a game in a casual, unranked jam. Even if you have no interest in making a game, the page for the jam links to entries from previous jams if you want to discover some new DOS games.

Retro Gaming Roundup

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Every week I’m going to start doing a dump of links and other retro gaming related things that I thought were interesting this last week.

screenshot from Heroes of Might and Magic 2, showing a boat traveling across water.
Screenshot from the fheroes2 project

The folks at Time Extension did an interview with the people behind the fheroes2 project. Fheroes2 is an open source multiplatform project that reproduces the original game but makes improvements like support for high-resolutions, improved AI, numerous fixes and UI improvements. It just got a big update two days ago too. Fgeroes2 requires the original files, which are available on GOG.

Half-Life received a massive update for its 25th anniversary.

Mattias Gustavsson made a massive post on their Itch.io blog about Drakborgen, a board game from 1985. The post is filled with lots of pictures of the game and now I really want to try it.

The DOS game Father World now has an English translation.

I posted about it earlier but Myst Online got big update for its 20th anniversary and it seems like the biggest part, an addition to the main area, was added this last Saturday and the game had an in-game celebration for it. I’m happy the game is still around and think it’s worth checking out. If you’d like to try it out, it’s available for free.

Finally, this update is more for people that live in the state of Michigan but it looks like Marvin’s Marvelous Mechanical Museum got a little bit of an extension before it may possibly get knocked down. I’m hoping that the amount of pressure that everyone is putting on the city will result in some sort of protection for the arcade or at least buy them enough time to move somewhere else, since the planned demolition would be to just make additional parking lot space for a grocery store. Unfortunately it looks like Pinball Pete’s in Ann Arbor is facing demolition and people are trying to figure out ways to keep that place alive too. It’s a rough time for arcades in my area.