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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
The DOS game Father World has received an English patch on Itch.io. The game was originally released in South Korea in 1994 but doesn’t seem to have been officially released anywhere outside of the country since then. It is an action adventure platformer game similar to games like Another World, and is more focused on telling a story and exploration than action setpieces. If you want to see what the game is like, pixel_turkey streamed the game on her Twitch channel.
The update is exciting to me because it contains so much stuff that hasn’t been available for the long time. In addition to nice fixes like real widescreen support, looking better at higher resolutions, and a variety of bug fixes, Half-Life now contains content from the Half-Life: Further Data and Half-Life Uplink CDs that came out at the game’s launch to promote it through video cards, magazines, and retail stores.
Half-Life Uplink was a CD released through magazines and hardware manufacturers that contains a demo for the game with all new levels. Half-Life: Further Data was released through retail stores and contains new multiplayer maps and skins, including a fan favorite skin I used to play as, Too Much Coffee Man.
There’s so other nice updates too. The game now includes the original models for Gordon and Barney from the Half-Life alpha as multiplayer skins, 4 new multiplayer maps by Valve developers, Steam Deck and controller support, and the original Valve logo video and menu from the 1998 release. Just a very nice update for a classic game that I’ve put so many hours into.
I don’t watch streamers too often but when I do, it’s usually of adventure games. It’s my favorite genre of game and I like watching people figure out puzzles or talk about why one doesn’t work when they come across a bad one. Luckily there’s a ton of great folks streaming adventure games and this list only covers a very small amount of them. Generally I find all these streamers to be relaxing and I’m not into streams where people are yelling a lot.
Emmxyzzy – Streamer from Australia that plays MS-DOS games, which includes a lot of adventure games. They translated the first commercial Czech MS-DOS game to English, The Secret of Donkey Island.
sonneveld – Another streamer from Australia that plays a variety of adventure games, with a focus on older games. They also helped translate The Secret of Donkey Island into English.
SummerB76 – Very chill streamer with a focus on adventure games but there’s also plenty of other fun streams like the ones for wine making simulator Hundred Days with her brother who makes wine in real life. Also a speedrunner of the new Colossal Cave remake by Ken and Roberta Williams.
pixel_turkey – Streamer focused on retro games, which includes a lot of adventure games. Also a great pixel artist
The Genesis Temple – Games historian that streams a ton of obscure games as well as games in other languages and live translating them as they are played.
robotspacer – Streams a variety of adventure games and has also been building an adventure game for the Macintosh using World Builder
Julia Minamata – Developer of The Crimson Diamond that streams development of the game every Tuesday night along with playing some retro games.
LotusLovesLotus – Indie game streamer that includes a lot of new adventure games and single player story-driven games.
PS_Garak – Every Tuesday night Ben, Sarah, and Grayson do a comedy stream where they play adventure games (both new and old) and go on fun tangents.
BogusMeatFactory – Variety streamer that includes playing a lot of adventure games and text adventures.
The Obscuritory – Video Game History Foundation member and owner of The Obscuritory website Phil Salvador streams incredibly obscure games on Wednesday nights.
Grundislav – Francisco González, the developer of the Ben Jordan series, A Golden Wake, Shardlight, and Lamplight City has been streaming development of his newest game Rosewater!
ivydupler – Video game voice actress for games like Whispers of a Machine and Unavowed streams a variety of games, with a focus on adventure games and the Nancy Drew series.
Conversations with Curtis – The lead actor of the FMV game Phantasmagoria 2 started doing interviews with the cast of the game at the beginning of the pandemic, which has evolved into doing streams of the game he was in as well as other adventure games, both old and new. Highlights include his streams with the lead actress of Phantasmagoria 1 and co-host Daniel doing a ton of interviews with classic adventure game developers. It’s also just been fun watching someone who is new to games developing opinions on the genre and correct takes like new adventure games being just as good, if not better, than classic adventure games.
