retro games

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

Developer: Microsoft Game Studios
Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios
Year: 1999
Genre: Puzzle

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.

screenshot of the puzzle select screen showing New York City's skyline

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.

a screenshot of the overlap screen, showing a jigsaw puzzle being put together

The game’s very 90s aesthetic and calming soundtrack just make this a really peaceful game for me to play, with the North and South America regions being the highlights in the game’s soundtrack. 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.

Pandora’s Box is no longer available for sale but it has been updated to work for modern computers on the abandonware website The Collection Chamber.

Inca

~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

Developer: Coktel Vision
Publisher: Sierra On-Line
Year: 1992
Genre: Action, Adventure

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 and it becomes too difficult towards the end, 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.

Inca is not available for sale but is updated to work on modern OS on the abandonware site The Collection Chamber along with Inca 2.

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

Developer: Terminal Reality
Publisher: Ziggurat
Year: 2023 (original version: 1995)
Genre: Action

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.

If you haven’t played the game before, it’s pretty straightforward stuff. You fly a spaceship around a planet’s surface, blowing up targets while avoiding or fighting enemy ships, and then make your way to the exit. Occasionally you have a boss fight but it’s basically this over and over. Everything feels and controls just fine, if maybe a little dated, but the repetition will probably be too much for most folks.

first person view of a ship over a planet's surface with mountains and another ship in view

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.

Terminal Velocity: Boosted Edition is available on Steam and GOG.

An Intro Guide to Marathon

~ mpklamerus ~ 2 Comments

This is a spoiler-free guide for people who wish to check out the Marathon trilogy, a series of FPS developed and published by Bungie in the mid-90s. Since we are apparently getting a new PVP-focused Marathon, I thought I would write up this intro for people who want to check out the original trilogy and see why it has so many fans even decades later. The Marathon trilogy is a sci-fi FPS series that starts with you playing a security officer trying to repel an alien invasion of your colony ship. The three games, Marathon, Marathon: Durandal, and Marathon: Infinity, were released in 1994, 1995, and 1996 respectively. With the exception of Durandal, the Marathon games were exclusive to the Macintosh. Due to it being technically superior to the Doom engine and the Macintosh being known as a platform with less games, this was seen as a big win for users of the platform and partially why it has a devoted fan base to this day.

screenshot from marathon of guy running from a creature shooting lasers and someone with a flamethrower

Why Should I Play It?

If you’re a fan of Bungie or older FPS, I would strongly recommend this game. The comic book-like artwork for all the characters is very charming, the gameplay mostly holds up, and Bungie fans will enjoy the story told in these games, which was a novel feature for FPS during this time.

How Do I Get Started?

Luckily it’s very easy to get these games for free. In 2005, Bungie said it was ok to freely distribute these games and the open source engine Aleph One makes these games playable on Windows, Mac, and Linux. You can download all three games here and it’s very easy to install the games and get them running.

Tips for Playing Marathon

There’s a couple things to keep in mind while playing the game that will help you from getting frustrated since it is an older FPS and doesn’t follow all the FPS conventions that we know today. First, please look at the keyboard mapping in options before playing. Some of the key mappings are a little odd and you might want to change them. Using terminals, doors, and switches is essential to completing the game and understanding the plot, and by default it’s at the Tab key. The game also relies on Save Terminals for saving your game, so you are unable to save at anytime through options. Terminals are also used for other things like advancing the plot and restoring health. At the bottom of your screen are two bars, a red health bar and a blue oxygen bar. At parts of the game you have to travel through areas with no oxygen and you will have to quickly move through them as your bar depletes. Hopefully knowing these quirks ahead of time makes it easier to get into, because it’s a fascinating trilogy and I think Bungie fans who like retro games will enjoy it.

An Intro Guide to Blake Stone

~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

This is a spoiler-free guide for people who wish to check out the series Blake Stone, two first person shooter games developed for DOS by JAM Productions and published by Apogee. This is not a walkthrough and is just meant as an intro to the series to help people get started playing the games. The two games are sci-fi first person shooters made with the Wolfenstein 3-D engine where you play as a British spy named Blake Stone and must stop the evil Dr. Goldfire. The first game, Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold, was released one week before Doom in December, 1993. The second game, Blake Stone: Planet Strike, was released a year later in 1994. Planet Strike is a sequel similar to how Spear of Destiny is a sequel to Wolfestein 3-D, where there are not any major overhauls but it changes the graphics for the enemies and makes a variety of little changes. The first game had strong sales until the technically superior Doom came out and Planet Strike struggled to sell with it still using the dated Wolfenstein 3-D engine. The development studio shut down fairly soon after the release of Planet Strike.

screenshot of the player shooting a gun at the guard

Why Should I Play It?

Even though it was quickly overshadowed by the superior game Doom, I think there’s still a lot to appreciate about this series. It has a lot of features that weren’t in either Wolfestein 3-D or Doom such as vending machines, friendly NPCs you can interact with, a silent weapon for not alerting other guards, being able to travel back to previous levels, and it did some things before Doom like an auto map and textured floors and ceilings. If you’re a fan of retro FPS, you will probably enjoy playing this series.

How Do I Get Started?

It’s easy to get the games running on modern computers. If you don’t have the series, you can buy them on GOG or Steam. While they run well in DOSBox, I recommend the BStone Source Port. This adds a some nice features like customizable key bindings and improves the graphics a small amount. Just download the latest release here

Tips for Playing Blake Stone

There’s a couple things to keep in mind while playing the games that will help you avoid some headaches people can run into with this series, and to fully appreciate them.

Search for Secret Walls
If you’re unfamiliar with early 90s FPS, one important thing to know is that they frequently had secret rooms filled with health and ammo hidden behind walls. The way to discover these is pretty much by spamming the Open Door button while walking along walls.

Save Often
You will want to save regularly. Encounters with enemies can go poorly and may require reloading, especially since there are some enemies that can drain your health very quickly.

Read the Manual
There’s nothing too important in here. I just think the comic they included as the backstory is kinda neat.

An Intro Guide to Realms of the Haunting

~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

This is a spoiler-free guide for people who wish to check out the game Realms of the Haunting, a first person shooter and adventure game hybrid developed by Gremlin Interactive and published by Interplay in 1996. This is not a walkthrough and is just meant as an intro to the game to help people get started playing it. Gremlin Interactive was a British software developer that had been around since the 80s. In the mid 90s they developed a 3D engine that they used for a first person adventure game called Normality and then used the engine to develop their FPS/adventure hybrid Realms of the Haunting. The game plays a bit like a 90s fps but also features inventory items and puzzles, mazes, and journals to read. The game reviewed very well at release but as far as I can tell, was not a huge commercial hit. You can read a good review of the game and its history here.

first person view of a player shooting a monster in an old house

Why Should I Play It?

If you’re someone who has an interest in both adventure games and first person shooters, I think it’s worth playing. While the game isn’t without its flaws (see review I linked to above), there still hasn’t been anything like it since then. Even with the massive retro FPS revival happening right now, I haven’t seen anyone developing a game that lists this as its inspiration even though I think the FPS/adventure combination is very novel. There’s also a lot of FMV in the game which I find very charming. You can listen to the Adventure Game Club talk about it here

How Do I Get Started?

It’s easy to get the game running on modern computers. The game runs pretty well on DOSBox if you already own it. If you don’t have the game, you can buy it on GOG or Steam. I strongly recommend the UK to US patch. The patch allows the user to change the difficulty and also the key bindings. This is really important because by default the controls for this game are pretty clunky and you may want to switch the keys to what every other FPS uses.

Tips for Playing Realms of the Haunting

There’s a couple things to keep in mind while playing the game that will help you avoid some headaches people can run into with this game, and to fully appreciate the game.

Save Often
You will want to save regularly. Encounters with enemies or traps can go poorly and may require reloading, especially since there are points in the game where the game isn’t generous with health pickups. As far as I know, there are no softlocks in this game that require you to restart the game because of something you missed or action you took.

Don’t Save on Moving Platforms
There are a couple parts in this game where you have to do some platform jumping. Due to the clunky controls, people will be tempted to save each time they make a successful jump. Do not do this! There is a bug in the game that will cause you to fall to your doom as soon as you load a save on a moving platform. Just save before and after each platform jumping segment and use multiple save files.

Conserve Ammo
Even though there’s technically no softlocks, the game can feel like it’s impossible to complete if you’re not careful about your ammo and health. Early on in the game, try to use your melee weapons when possible so you’ll have lots of ammo. Also consider redoing an enemy encounter if you lose a lot of health.

Read the Manual
When I played the game, I didn’t realize you could easily switch weapons using keybindings and I played the entire game switching weapons through the inventory screen. Don’t make the same mistake I did! This great review of the game at The Genesis Temple mentions that there’s also a patch floating around that gives the game WASD + mouse controls.

It’s Ok to Use Hints!
Adventure games can be tough and puzzles that make sense to one person may not be easy for someone else. If you’re feeling frustrated by being stuck on a puzzle too long and it’s becoming less fun, consider looking up a hint. I feel like the guide on UHS Hints is good at helping the player without giving too much away.

An Intro Guide to Zork Nemesis

~ mpklamerus ~ Leave a comment

This is a spoiler-free guide for people who wish to check out the game Zork Nemesis: The Forbidden Lands, a first-person point-and-click adventure game developed by Zombie LLC and published by Activision and released in 1996. This is not a walkthrough and is just meant as an intro to the game to help people get started playing it. During the 80s, game developer Infocom created many text adventure games, with Zork being their most famous series of games. Towards the end of the decade, Infocom made some poor business decisions and it also become tougher to make text adventures commercially viable so they were acquired by Activision and eventually closed. However, this didn’t mean the end of the Zork series and there were three commercial Zork games released in the 90s, Return to Zork in 1993, Zork Nemesis in 1996, and Zork: Grand Inquisitor in 1997. At the time Zork Nemesis was a bit of a divisive game, it did well critically and sold well but a few fans were put off by the game’s darker tone, which was a change from the heavily comedic tone of the previous game or two in the series. Some people were also put off by the game being influenced by Myst, a highly popular adventure game at the time. It seems like people have come around since then and appreciate the one-off change in tone, which still has dark humor but isn’t as silly as the games before and after it.

Why Should I Play It?

If you’re an adventure game or Zork fan, I think it’s worth playing. I think Zork fans will appreciate the change in tone while still feeling like a Zork game but even if you’ve never played a Zork game, fans of the genre should find it enjoyable. There’s a lot of variety in the environments, the plot is interesting, the acting in the FMV scenes is the right level of camp, it has an incredible soundtrack and for the most part the puzzle feel challenging but fair. If you’ve never played a Zork game before, the game does make references to the world established in previous games and you might get a little more from the game if you’ve played other Zork games, but it’s very standalone and doesn’t rely on playing other games to understand the story..

How Do I Get Started?

It’s easy to get the game running on modern computers. If you already own the game, you just need to copy the files to a directory and open it with ScummVM. If you don’t have the game, you can buy it on GOG or Steam and copy the files into ScummVM from there. The versions on those sites use DOSBox and I heard people say they ran into some bugs from there. I also strongly recommend the subtitles patch. The sound mixing in the game is sometimes a little off and it makes it hard to hear dialog while playing the game. The patch also makes the audio puzzles a little easier, which may or may not be a plus for you depending on how you feel about that style of puzzle.

Tips for Playing Zork Nemesis

There’s a couple things to keep in mind while playing the game that will help you avoid some headaches people can run into with this game, and to fully appreciate the game.

Save Often
You will want to save regularly. There’s a few points where the player can die and a reload is required. As far as I know, there are no softlocks in this game that require you to restart the game because of something you missed or action you took.

Take Notes
During the game, you will come across journals and other things that are used in puzzles in other parts of the game. I highly recommend having a notebook or paper to write notes and diagrams in so you have something to reference for these puzzles.

It’s Ok to Use Hints!
Adventure games can be tough and puzzles that make sense to one person may not be easy for someone else. If you’re feeling frustrated by being stuck on a puzzle too long and it’s becoming less fun, consider looking up a hint. I feel like the guide on UHS Hints is good at helping the player without giving too much away.