retro games

Myst Parodies

~ mpklamerus ~ 3 Comments

When Myst came out, it was a gigantic hit that made its way into pop culture. There were books, a board game, and even some discussions with Disney to do something in one of their parks. So it’s not surprising that a game as popular and challenging as Myst also had a few parodies.

Pyst

screenshot of Pyst showing the starting area of Myst covered in litter
Screenshot taken from MobyGames

The most well known of these Myst parodies is the game Pyst, released in 1996. The game was written by Peter Bergman, a member of the Firesign Theatre, and the first game developed by Parroty Interactive. The Firesign Theatre was a surreal comedy troupe that was around from 1966 to 2012. The concept for Pyst isn’t too bad. You explore Myst island after millions of others have already visited it and see how trashed it has become. The problem is that it’s just not a very good parody. The jokes all fall flat and even a short cameo by John Goodman, who was friends with the comedy troupe, couldn’t save it. It’s not very long either. You navigate the rooms in a slideshow-like format by clicking the left and right arrows to navigate to other cards, clicking on various elements in each card to find jokes, until you reach the end. That’s all there is to it. There’s no puzzles or any real sense of navigation, so the game takes about 30 minutes to play through. If you have an interest in the game, you can watch a playthrough on YouTube and probably get the same out of it as I did and with less work.

The game is not available for sale anywhere so I feel ok with linking to The Collection Chamber if you really want to download a version of it that’s already setup to work on modern PCs. Personally, I got more enjoyment from watching the bizarre Making of Pyst video and listening to the theme for the game featuring John Goodman on vocals.

Negative reviews of the game didn’t stop it from being a commercial hit. The game remained on the cd-rom best seller list for a long time due to its low cost and availability. I remember seeing the game at the checkout counter at CompUSA when it came out. The success allowed Parroty Interactive to develop a few more games:
Star Warped (1997), a parody of Star Wars.
The X-Fools (1997), a parody of The X-Files
Microshaft Winblows 98 (1998), a parody of Microsoft Windows 98

There were also plans to develop Driven, a parody of Riven: The Sequel to Myst. This would have had more of a car theme but was never completed due to the studio closing after being acquired by The Learning Company. A demo of the game exists on later Parroty Interactive and you can watch a playthrough here. Despite my criticisms of the game, I do think the Firesign Theatre is worth listening to if they sound interesting to you.

Mylk

About screen for the Myst parody MYLK. It has a photo of the authors face and says "(It does a body good. Pass it on!) Myst is conceitware by Bart Gold. If you think it's cool, send a postcard to (address here) and tell him how cool you thought it was. PC conversion by Wayne Twitchell!. Special thanks to Ivan Cockrum and Rob Friedman for helping MYLK PC become reality. Mylk was created entirely in Macromedia director" then it has copyright info and then says "And remember - it's not a parody, it's an 'homage'"
About screen for Mylk

Pyst wasn’t the first Myst parody. Mylk was a freeware game released in 1994 with a dairy theme. You find the trapped Farmer Ben and Frances the Chicken, who have little videos just like the two brothers in Myst, telling you to bring them bring pink and yellow pages that you find by exploring cheese-themed areas. It’s a fun little parody with some cute cartoon graphics and like the About screen states in the screenshot above, it was made as a tribute to the game instead of being angry at it like some of the other Myst parodies out there. If you want to check it out, it’s playable in the browser on the Internet Archive. The creator of the game would go on to write a lot of Shrek-related cartoons.

Missed

screenshot from the page saying "The Mysterious World of Missed" using the Myst font and showing a screenshot from the original game

Missed is a browser game created by Jason Bloomberg and published in 1996. You navigate the island using buttons at the bottom of the screen with a text description telling you what each button will do, with jokes about how Myst is too hard and other frustrations people had with it at the time. Fortunately the game has been preserved in the Wayback Machine. The Wayback Machine has also preserved the page detailing the making of the game and a walkthrough that you can read here.

MYSTy

screenshot of MYSTy, featuring an island with sand and docks

MYSTy is a parody released for the Macintosh in 1995 by Twin Software. You enter a Powerbook and explore an island similar to Myst. The game is playable on the Internet Archive.

Modern Parodies

screenshot from lyft showing chairs and tables in an office
Screenshot from Lyft

People are still making Myst parodies and tributes today. In 2016 there was a Myst jam on Itch.io where there were dozens of entries, most by fans of the game. There was also the attempt to make Myst more exciting by making it a FPS. It has been interesting seeing the things people take from Myst and having a more positive view of it, when it doesn’t feel like it’s everywhere and have had more time to understand the design of the game.

Mast

After publishing this post, I was made aware of Mast, a porn parody of Myst, thanks(?) to Phil Salvador and Frank Cifaldi from the Video Game History Foundation. As far as I know, this ad from an adult cd-rom magazine is all we know about it. Hopefully we’ll see it uploaded to the Internet Archive one day so we find out what this game is actually like.

an ad for mast saying it's an adult cd-rom game and who stars in it
Scan of a magazine ad by Frank Cifaldi

Nacah

Thanks to Lori on Mastodon, I am also now aware of Nacah. Nacah is a Bible-themed Myst clone by Virtue Games where you explore a group of islands that you are stranded on and solving puzzles based on the Bible. It’s not a parody of Myst but is strongly inspired by the game and is marketed as a “Biblical alternate to Myst” so it deserves a mention.

cover of Nacah with a view from inside of a cave looking out at an island and a sticker saying it's a biblical alternative to Myst

There are far more Myst parodies and tributes than I could have imagined and I suspect there’s plenty more out there. If there’s a Myst parody that you don’t see here, please let me know in the comments.

J.B. Harold: Blue Chicago Blues – English Patch

~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

J.B. Harold is a series of Japanese adventure games that started in the mid 80’s with the game Murder Club. As you can guess, each game involves you playing as the detective J.B. Harold and you investigate murders. While some of the games have received official English translations, a lot have not. So I’m thrilled to see that the 1994 game Blue Chicago Blues has just received an English fan patch. This was one of the later entries in the series and most importantly, it’s a FMV game!

a man wearing glasses and a cozy sweater
Screenshot taken from MobyGames

Most of the game is made up of interactive movies and making choices whenever the movie stops. Each choice advances the clock and it’s up to the player to solve the murder before time runs out. If you’d like to check the game out, the English fan patch is available here.

An Intro Guide to Beneath a Steel Sky

~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

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.

the main character standing on a platform in a factory while a security guard is looking for him

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.

Freeware Remakes of Adventure Games

~ mpklamerus ~ 1 Comment

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

screenshot of the game showing an isometric view of monks standing in a courtyard

(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

a gif of a man walking in and out of a shower

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

Graham standing outside of a castle with a closed gate and moat

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.

a woman walking through a swamp

Leisure Suit Larry 2
This straightforward remake of Leisure Suit Larry 2 converts the game from a parser interface to being a point-and-click adventure.

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.

a photo of Roger Wilco standing in a junkyard outside of a space ship

If you enjoyed this article and would like to help keep this site running, considering buying me a coffee

The Serious Sam/Duke Nukem Feud

~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

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

text from a post on a forum where george is critical of the game

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.

Pandora’s Box

~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

Lately I’ve been playing Pandora’s Box, a 1999 puzzle game published by Microsoft that was designed by Alexey Pajitnov, the designer of Tetris. It’s really unfortunate that it seems to have been completely forgotten because it’s a really charming collection of puzzles.

It’s a pretty straightforward collection of puzzles. There’s technically a plot about you having to recapture some tricksters that have escaped from Pandora’s box, which isn’t really how the story originally worked but whatever, it’s just there to give an excuse to do a variety of relaxing puzzles. The Wikipedia page has a good description of all the puzzle types. Not all of them are winners, the weirdly named Image Hole is a tedious slog where you just have to slowly move holes around until you see the place in a painting where they can fit in, but most of them are good and it’s a fun way to pass the time when I want to play a game to relax. I think the ones that I prefer the most are the ones that are closer to your traditional jigsaw puzzle. Overlap, Jesse’s Strips, and Outer Layer are the highlights for me and all involve you putting pieces together to form either a painting or photo, or in the case of Outer Layer, some sort of 3D artwork. Overlap and Jesse’s Strips have fun twists on the jigsaw puzzle by having pieces that overlap with each other.

The game’s very 90s aesthetic and calming soundtrack just make this a really peaceful game for me to play. It’s too bad that Microsoft doesn’t seem to care about any of their old computer games outside of Age of Empires. There’s plenty of games like this, Motocross Madness, and Freelancer that could really use a rerelease but are just kinda stuck as abandonware and forgotten by most people.

That all said, go check it out! It’s not too difficult to get it working on modern versions of Windows and it’s available to download here. I guess I can just link to an abandonware site? I suppose I can since it’s my own site and I can do whatever? Anyway, it’s not available for sale so you’re not hurting anyone by just downloading it.

Inca

~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

Played Inca, an adventure game/rail shooter by Coktel Vision and released in 1992 about Incas and conquistadors fighting in space. If that sounds like a lot, that’s because it is! You journey through time and space to grab some important looking orbs to become El Dorado and bring the rebirth the Inca empire, all while fighting conquistadors flying boats in space. The game has you alternating through these shooting segments (there’s also some on foot) with traditional point-and-click adventure game parts. Since this is a French DOS game, none of it is really that well designed but it’s all fascinating and certainly a lot more playable than other DOS games that hop around between different genres, even with the difficulty spikes. I’ll definitely play Inca 2 at some point because the weird combination of it all and the FMV is very interesting to me.

I’ve been playing Goblins 3 this month for Adventure Game Club, which is by the same developer, so it’s fun looking at the credits and seeing that the people involved with that goofy game also worked on this right before that game. I don’t know if I could recommend it because it certainly is a clunky game, but it’s easy to get running in DOS Box if you want to try it and it has passwords and stuff you can do to make the action segments a little bit easier. I would definitely recommend watching the intro which starts off normal enough and then suddenly shifts into “what the hell am I watching?”

I love French DOS games

An Intro Guide to Gobliiins

~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

This is a spoiler-free guide for people who wish to check out the series Gobliiins, a point-and-click adventure game series created by Pierre Gilhodes and Muriel Tramis. This is not a walkthrough and is just meant as an intro to help people get into the series and a little background on the games. There are five games in the series. The first three were released in 1991, 1992, and 1993. Many years later, after Coktel Vision had shut down, Pierre Gilhodes created a Gobliiins 4 in 2009 and recently released Gobliiins 5 in 2023, after getting funding for it on Kickstarter. The number of i’s in a Goblins game changes based on the number you play as. So Gobliins 2 has two playable goblins and Goblins 3 (also known as Goblins Quest 3 in the US) has one playable goblin at the start, but you have other playable characters as well.

goblin standing on a flying boat in the sky

Why Should I Play It?

The Gobliiins series is an entertaining series of point-and-click adventure games that have great art, animation, and music, with really charming sound effects and talking noises for the characters as well. If your interest in adventure games is more focused on the puzzles than plot, which isn’t a big focus for this series, then I would recommend these games. The puzzles can be challenging but even failure can be fun to watch in these games and for the most part (with the exception of the first game) you cannot die or lose in a Gobliiins game so you are encouraged to try everything to see what funny results occur even when it’s not the correct solution.

How Do I Get Started?

Fortunately it’s very easy to get most of the games in the series. Goblins 1-3 are available in a pack on GOG, which includes both the floppy disk and cd-rom versions of the games, which all run in ScummVM. While I’m fine with the cd-rom versions of the games since that’s what I grew up with, many people prefer the floppy disk versions due to them having a different soundtrack. Some people even prefer the Amiga version of Gobliins 2 over the PC versions since that has a different soundtrack. So when playing these games, I would maybe just go on youtube and listen to brief snippets of the soundtracks to see what you prefer but if you don’t feel like doing that, it’s probably safer to go with the floppy disk versions. Unfortunately Gobliiins 4 is now abandonware and you’ll have to find it on your abandonware site of choice. Gobliiins 5 is available on Itch and coming to Steam very soon.

This next part is where things might be a little controversial. If you’re looking for a game to start with in the series, a lot of people would recommend Goblins 3 and I would agree with this. It has the most solid game design of the three original games and some of the best art in the series too. Plus the series is so light on plot that you won’t be confused by anything if you skip ahead and will just miss some references. Gobliiins 1 is very hard to recommend to beginners due to its health meter. So much of the humor in the series is connected to failing or seeing your characters get hit in a cartoonish way and the first game will remove health anytime this happens, almost defeating the point of the game. Your health bar also carries over between levels and there are only one or two places in the game where you can refill it, meaning you either have to replay levels after you figure them out and not lose health, or the game almost becomes unplayable towards the end. I would also hesitate to recommend Gobliins 2 to beginners even as a fan, due to some of the frustrating puzzle design. The game has two characters that have the same abilities but sometimes requires you to arbitrarily use one to solve a puzzle. It also has puzzles requiring chains of actions that must be executed perfectly or else you have to redo the whole puzzle.

That all said, if you play through Goblins 3 and enjoy it, I would recommend playing the others if you want more. If you want to check the game out, consider playing it with us in the Adventure Game Club, where it is our game for June.

An Intro Guide to Duke Nukem 2

~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

This is a spoiler-free guide for people who wish to check out the game Duke Nukem 2, a 2D platformer developed and published by Apogee in 1993. This is not a walkthrough and is just meant as an intro to help people get started. Duke Nukem is a franchise that is mostly famous for being a first person shooter with a main character that says one liners while you’re blowing everything up, but before this happened, it was a 2D platformer series. The first game was released in 1991 and was a big hit, so a sequel followed in 1993.

image of the Rigel Engine running Duke 2, showing it in wide screen. Screenshot is of Duke shooting lasers at an explosion

Why Should I Play It?

The first two Duke Nukem games are still pretty charming platformers. While they’re a bit dated by today’s standards, especially the first game, I think they’re fun and worth checking out if you enjoy DOS games. It’s also fun seeing the earlier versions of the Duke Nukem character who would become a lot more crude and have more attitude starting with Duke Nukem 3D.

How Do I Get Started?

Because of the long and weird legal history of 3D Realms going under and the Duke Nukem property going to Gearbox, Duke Nukem 1 and 2 are no longer on Steam and GOG. However, they still seem to be on the ZOOM games platform along with a different version of Duke Nukem 3D that’s not on other stores and Duke Nukem: The Manhattan Project. Not to be confused with ZOOM, the video chat service, it is a site similar to GOG that is focused on buying DRM-free copies of old games. I know it’s a little hard to believe this is a real site legally selling games when it looks the way it does and is somehow the only place selling these games, but my understanding is that they somehow signed a contract forever ago that allows them to continue selling them? I don’t completely understand it. In any case, this is the only place where you can legally get the games so I’m linking to it.

Once you have a copy of the game, there’s a couple of ways to play it. If you want to play the game as it was originally shipped, there’s always DOSBox. However, if you would like to play the game with some minor enhancements, I would recommend the Rigel Engine. The engine is a reimplementation of Duke Nukem 2 that offers the following features:

  • wide-screen mode
  • smooth scrolling & movement mode with increased frame rate
  • quick saving
  • improved game controller support
  • extended modding features

The widescreen mode and smooth scrolling really do a lot to improve the experience of playing it today so I would strongly recommend giving it a shot.

Terminal Velocity: Boosted Edition

~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

I didn’t even notice it until I saw it in my GOG library, but I guess a rerelease of Terminal Velocity happened a couple months ago. Apparently buying the game on GOG over 10 years ago meant that I get the new version for free, which is nice. I’ve been playing it for the last day and…..it’s fine. The game was previously on GOG but running on DOSBox but with the new remaster it does the things you’d expect one to do, higher resolutions, adds achievements, improves the view draw distance, and runs natively on Windows. The original game is still included as a bonus too. It’s all fine even if I expected a little more from it. I’m sure it’s nostalgia doing most of the work but I’m having a good time with it. I find it kind of amusing that fixing the draw distance introduces a new issue, that you can see and shoot your enemies far before they notice you.

I’m certainly not upset at all about this existing but I’m not really sure who it’s for. I don’t think I could really recommend the game to people who never played it before since it’s a pretty repetitive game and feels odd to fly around in, and people either already bought the DOS version or they’re busy moaning about the new version on GOG. It’s a perfectly fine update though and I’m glad it exists. I’d love for it to lead to a rerelease of Fury³ and Hellbender, which aren’t available anywhere since they’re Windows 95 games and won’t run anymore. This is probably unlikely to happen since Microsoft seems to have no interest in any of their old games outside of Age of Empires, but I’d love to be proven wrong.