Ween: The Prophecy thoughts

Developer: Coktel Vision
Publisher: Coktel Vision
Year: 1992
Genre: Adventure
System: DOS

two weird humanoids with giant mustaches saying "We're UKI and ORBI"

To be a fan of French DOS games is knowing that mechanically the game may not be the tightest thing, but it could be weird enough and take enough swings to be worth it. Some of my favorite games are French DOS games and include: Alone in the Dark, Little Big Adventure, Lost Eden, and The Bizarre Adventures of Woodruff and the Schnibble. I’m a huge fan of Coktel Vision so it was unfortunate that I mostly found Ween: The Prophecy to be a frustrating experience.

The game has a plot about you stopping an evil wizard, but it’s mostly an excuse for you to move to various rooms, in an almost puzzle room level-based format, and solve the various inventory puzzles before moving on to the next room. This is one of those games that quickly wraps up with a block of text when you beat the final puzzle. Unfortunately I frequently found these puzzles to rely heavily on moon logic or sometimes broken, which meant mostly doing trial and error and trying every item on everything, or just pulling up a walkthrough because I got tired of the sluggish response from every action. I took notes while playing and there’s many instances where I just did not understand what was happening in the game or instances of me trying an action, checking a walkthrough to see that I was doing the right action, but was just not trying it enough times for it to actually work. The entire game consists of these inventory puzzles so the game quickly became a huge slog to play. There are one or two points where there are multiple solutions, but those were the only clever bits in the game’s design.

an illustration of a boat and text at the bottom saying "Bad idea..."

Even worse than a game consisting of trial and error puzzles is that the game tells you that you had a bad idea, or that your character is getting frustrated, or something isn’t working. It’s aggressively hostile in a genre called Point-And-Click Adventure, where you often just want to click on something to get a description or to see what happens. Instead of either of those things happening though, you are just scolded. It’s immensely frustrating to play an adventure game where you are actually discouraged from clicking on things. I wasn’t even trying to solve a puzzle. It is just common practice to play around in an environment and click around but this is a game that does not want you to do that. I suppose to the game’s credit, I didn’t come across any softlocks.

It’s so frustrating that the game is so unfun to play because the parts surrounding it are nice. Like just about every other Coktel Vision game, I like the art and music. Charles Callet does a fantastic job on the soundtrack like he did on every other game he worked on. There’s also some really weird FMV in here that other people online seemed to find disturbing but I liked how weird it was. The weirdness is why I usually play French DOS games.

So unfortunately, I can’t really recommend this game. I generally love Coktel Vision’s games, even when the gameplay is a bit clunky like in Inca, because there’s usually a lot of really interesting stuff going on and the game has something to say. Ween: The Prophecy just does not have enough to justify playing through the game.

Ween: The Prophecy is not available for sale anywhere but is probably on your favorite abandonware site and playable through ScummVM.

Super Castlevania IV thoughts

Developer: Konami
Publisher: Konami
Year: 1991
Genre: Platformer
System: SNES

I just did my regular playthrough of Super Castlevania IV for the Halloween season. This used to be a yearly tradition for me but it’s been a while since I’ve play it so it was nice to revisit it. This time I did it through the Castlevania Anniversary Collection, which includes a lot of the early games. I suspect that anything I say in this post has been repeated a billion times better by other folks but it’s still a lovely game. It’s always been one of my favorites in the series, with some of my favorite bits of it being the directional whipping and the jazzy soundtrack. Neither seems to really come up in later entries and that’s a shame. I know Mode 7 effects only make sense on a SNES but you know what? Later games should have had those too.

I’ve always been fascinated by this being a loose remake of the first game but still being labeled the fourth game of the series. It feels like something we probably wouldn’t see today with a lot of this stuff being more standardized. At the very least it feels different from how the industry does remakes today.

a man whipping the air over a skeleton's head
Screenshot taken from MobyGames. The background in this level rotates.

If I did have any complaints about the game, it’s that I personally feel like it starts to become a slog once you get to the castle. The game moves so quickly up until then and it has a wonderful variety of environments but then you get to the castle and the variety seems to drop and there’s a big difficulty spike. It remains this way for a few levels and then I think the level design becomes a lot more interesting again towards the end. It’s still a fantastic game though and the one I probably go to if I want to recommend a level-Castlevania game, partially because I haven’t played that many that aren’t on a Nintendo console.

Super Castlevania IV is part of the Castlevania Anniversary Collection, available on Switch, XBox, Playstation 4, and Windows.

The Lost Oregon City Gold thoughts

Developer: Oh, a Rock! Studios
Publisher: Oh, a Rock! Studios
Year: 2022
Genre: Adventure
System: Windows

a dad thinking while his two daughters look. It's asking you what "25 cents" means.
Photo from Itch.io page

The Lost Oregon City Gold is an adventure game where a dad and his two daughters stumble across an old letter from an ancestor with clues pointing them to $25,000 in lost gold. It’s up to you to explore Oregon and find it. Most of the game is played in a first person view where you click on arrows to navigate various spaces in Oregon, made up of photos, and talking to people or solving puzzles that will point you to the next clue in your treasure hunt. Occasionally you make choices in dialog but they’re pretty low stakes decisions and there are parts where you can answer questions about Oregon’s history that you learn by playing the game. I suppose that technically this makes the game an edutainment title, but that might be a stretch.

image of a hand on a computer screen and text saying "Day 153. Got slapped for mispronouncing "Oregon"

As you can see, it’s not a very serious game. Photos of people, played by the devs and family and friends, are used for all of the characters and the plot itself is very silly. It all works for me though. Something I really like about the games by Oh, a Rock! Studios is that they all feel like a group of folks having lots of fun making games for each other but without all the inside jokes so they’re still very approachable for folks outside the group. They’re all just like a nice, relaxing, and goofy hangout session and would also recommend Internet Court and The Awkward Steve Duology for the same vibe. They don’t take themselves seriously but the games aren’t doing any sort of ironically bad FMV either.

The Lost Oregon City Gold is available on Steam and Itch.io for Windows, Linux, and Mac.

The Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse thoughts

Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Year: 1992
Genre: Platformer
System: SNES

The Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse is platformer where you play a Mickey Mouse and must save Pluto after he’s been kidnapped by Emperor Pete (Spoiler: The whole thing is a dream). You do all your standard platforming stuff while going through a variety of environments. The main gimmick in this one is that you get a new type of power in each new area. I had played this one a long time ago and thought it would be fun to revisit and…..eh…..it’s fine. I thought I would have enjoyed it more since I have such a soft spot for this era of Capcom games but I often found myself getting frustrated by how finnicky the controls felt to me and the hit boxes on some of the bosses, which ended up being my least favorite part of the game. I was surprised by all of this because I remember it being a fairly short game back in the day, which must have warped in my mind to it being easy. Although I probably did play it on easy mode back in the day instead of at a harder difficulty.

Anyway, sometimes you revisit a game from your childhood and it ends up being merely ok. At least all the art and music is great and what I would expect from an early 90s Capcom game. The game eventually got a rerelease on the GBA where you can also play as Minnie and I believe this version also adds some mini games, but I don’t think there’s any way to play the game today.

The Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse has not been rereleased and is available on your favorite emulation site.

He Fucked the Girl Out of Me

Developer: Taylor McCue
Publisher: Taylor McCue
Year: 2022
Genre: Visual Novel
System: Game Boy

pixel art I did of the game's box of ghosts hugging a girl

He Fucked the Girl Out of Me is a short Game Boy visual novel created in GB Studio about the developer’s experiences being a transgender sex worker and the trauma that came from doing that work. The player advances the story by walking around different scenes and talking to various characters and is about 40 minutes long.

a woman saying to a ghost: He's waiting for us. I'll see you inside"

He Fucked the Girl Out of Me was one of my favorite games of 2022 for many reasons. It’s incredible to see someone put out a semi-autobiographical story like this where where they are so vulnerable. The game uses the limitations of the Game Boy so well and I think the artwork in this game is fantastic. Another thing I loved about it was that it was for a platform created by Nintendo. Even today, Nintendo is known as a company that does not approve of adult queer content on their platforms and I loved seeing someone use one of their consoles to tell a personal story. It’s inspiring seeing retro consoles and computers being used to create experimental games and tell stories that we didn’t see very often in games thirty years ago, when queer games like Caper in the Castro and GayBlade were a rarity.

Unfortunately this is one of the games that has been hit by the Itch.io deindexings, making it harder to find. I know the developer has put it on the Internet Archive and encouraged other people to host downloads of it, but it’s still heartbreaking that queer stories like this are under attack because of pressure by Mastercard and Visa. I hope that one day people will be able to create their art without capitalism trying to stamp it out.

He Fucked the Girl Out of Me is available on Steam, Itch.io, and the Internet Archive.

Five Years Old Memories thoughts

Developer: Komitsu
Publisher: Komitsu
Year: 2024
Genre: Visual Novel
System: Windows

a man drinking a beer and sitting in a chair


Five Years Old Memories is a short interactive experience where you listen to people in Japan talk about memories they have from when they were about five years old and interacting with animations that play while they talk. It’s very short and only takes about 20 minutes to play through. I’ve played it a few times now, with my most recent playthrough happening because I thought it would be fun to revisit and also get all the achivements, which rewarded me by stumbling upon an element or two that I wouldn’t have seen otherwise. The art is fantastic and it’s really cute seeing this storybook-like pictures animating as you listen to their stories. There’s not a whole lot to say about this one other than I really like it and think it’s worth checking out if this sounds appealing to you since it’s only $3.

Five Years Old Memories is available on Steam, Itch.io, and iOS.

Mystery House (1980) thoughts

Developer: On-Line Systems
Publisher: On-Line Systems
Year: 1980
Genre: Adventure
System: Apple II

I finally played one of the first graphic adventures (the first I know of but I thought “this”very first” was under debate?) and the first game by Roberta Williams and Sierra and: It’s cute.

Mystery House is a text adventure with very basic line graphics where you are locked in a house with other folks and must find some hidden jewels. You start seeing dead bodies showing up and need to figure out who the murderer is and stop them before it’s too late. The actual design of the game is very basic, as you would expect for an adventure on home computers at this time, and you type in commands to walk around the house, find clues and items, and use them to progress elsewhere. It’s a pretty short game where you restart a few times since it relies on learning through failure a little bit but it’s not as cruel about it as a lot of later adventure games. The biggest thing I actually fought with was the parser. Even though it’s incredibly early in the genre’s lifespan, other text adventures already had better parsers at the time. I also found that the graphics also make the game harder since pure text tells you everything you can interact with, this game needs you to guess what the correct object name is to interact with it. Sometimes it’s also just hard to see what you should be trying to use. The game also features a pretty annoying maze. So maybe not a game I would really recommend to folks for the plot but I still had a fun enough time playing something of historical importance. Renga in Blue has a very good writeup of the game and I definitely liked it more than him, but I agree with all of the criticisms of it.

a person laying on the floor that has been strangled with pantyhose

One of the weirdest parts of the game to me is that there is an optional person you may never see, a grave digger named Joe. You can walk to a graveyard outside of the house (so I guess you aren’t actually locked in?) with six graves dug in the yard. If you walk into one of the graves, he buries you alive. But you don’t actually need to see him or go into the grave to complete the game so I have no idea why this screen exists. You can also stab him and kill him, which seems a bit excessive. But he does try to kill you if given the opportunity so I guess he deserves it? It’s all really weird.

It also got a release in Japan a little bit later with some slightly better graphics. I don’t know how the rest of the game or its parser is.

Anyway, glad I played it. It’s dated and simplistic but it’s also short enough that I think if you’re a little generous with the walkthrough to deal with the clunky parser, you might have some fun with the novelty of playing the first Sierra game.

Mystery House is public domain and available for free to download such as the ScummVM website.

Agony thoughts

Developer: Art & Magic
Publisher: Psygnosis
Year: 1992
Genre: Arcade

I am still going through my retro gaming phase and thought I would finally check out a game that has been in my Amiga backlog for a long time, the shmup Agony. It’s a pretty straightforward arcade shooter. You’ve been transformed into an owl and must stop an evil wizard by flying through levels and shooting at stuff. You occasionally pick up powerups that you can use at any time to briefly help you through obstacles but there aren’t any innovations in this one. It’s not anything I’m upset about and I enjoyed the shooting quite a bit, but that’s not why people still talk about the game today.

an owl flying at sunset and shooting a giant wave

Where the game really shines is the art and music. The vibes are amazing. Everything is gorgeous and features incredible animation. I wonder if people lost their minds over Psygnosis finally publishing a game where you play as an owl. Between each level is a transition screen where you have some really nice art to look at as the game loads the next level.

art of a tree next to the water with rays of sun peeking through the branches

The game itself mostly isn’t too difficult to play except for the big difficulty spike at the end. I guess that’s expected because it’s an arcade game and people would beat the game in 15 minutes without that, but I actually found the first few levels to be cozy and relaxing. Like I said, it’s pretty simplistic and why there isn’t much to say about this one, but I had a good time with it and would recommend it if you’re looking for some games that are exclusive to the Amiga. I’m surprised that this one didn’t get ported anywhere else since it probably could have worked in some form on other platforms.

One of the developers wrote about the making of the game on his site and it also includes a download of the game. I don’t know if that means it’s officially freeware but clearly no one cares and no one is selling it today so have at it. I also just recommend looking around the site if you want to see more Amiga game dev history.

Agony is available on your favorite Amiga rom site.

RoboCop (Amstrad CPC)

Developer: Ocean Software
Publisher: Ocean Software
Year: 1988
Genre: Arcade

I don’t know why this became RoboCop video game week for me. I completed that Unfinished Business game and then I guess RetroAchivements got me to start playing old British games. I believe this is a loose adaptation of the RoboCop arcade game by Data East. It’s a 2D scroller where you walk through stages shooting various gang members with the game switching things up at a couple points, like two levels where you have to shoot someone taking hostage

a 2D view of robocop riding an elevator

I think this is actually the first Amstrad game I’ve ever played and thought it was pretty neat. The use of color was really interesting to me and I’ll have to check out more games for the platform, especially if there are any exclusives. I’ve heard the ZX Spectrum version is better but wanted to give this computer a shot since I’ve played games similar to this one before like RoboCop 1 and 3 on the NES. While the game is clunky, movement is awkward and I thought the mini games don’t really work, I can see why it was a hit and has its fans. The NES already had better arcade games at this point and I think the Amiga was out there as well, I imagine that it was fun to have something like this on the home computer.

The inclusion of mini games feels like a thing that’s very specific to British computer games in the 80s? I suppose the thought is that it adds a lot of variety but I don’t know if I’ve ever enjoyed any of these in any game? In this game the hostage saving is frustrating because you have to shoot the hostage taker a lot of times like it’s a boss fight and I hated the Suspect Identification mini game because I felt like it’s incredibly fussy about getting everything right or else you lose.

I still had a better time with this than RoboCop 3, where I was constantly fighting with the controls and got frustrated with the instant deaths. Like that game, it’s only a handful of levels but once you’re done, it loops around back to the first level, giving it more of an arcade game-like feel. Little quirks like the game only having music and no sound did not bother me and it was fun dipping into an area of gaming I wasn’t familiar with.

RoboCop is probably available on your favorite rom site.

RoboCop 3 (NES)

Developer: Probe
Publisher: Ocean Software
Year: 1992
Genre: Platformer

Well, after completing RoboCop: Rogue City ‒ Unfinished Business, I wanted to finally play this one since I’ve been a fan of the soundtrack of it for a long time. This post will be the farthest thing from a hot take because I’m here to confirm that like the movie it’s based on, RoboCop 3 is not an amazing game. Like the previous RoboCop NES games, it’s a platformer where you walk through levels and shoot bad guys. While those were developed by Ocean, this one is by Probe and only published by Ocean. None of the RoboCop NES games are that amazing but this is the worst one. The controls just feel off and the difficulty is cranked up to a very high degree to make up for the game only having five levels. One of these levels is just a repeat of the previous level but in reverse order.

Robocop flying from an exploding building while wearing a jetpack, and a woman and girl are holding onto him.

RoboCop 3 does a really “fun” thing where if your body takes enough damage, parts will malfunction. You can repair parts between missions by finding powerups that you use on the Repair screen between missions. It’s a really interesting idea in theory but is just not executed well. It’s too bad because I don’t really like criticizing games that are ambitious but it turns a game that was already hard to control into something even more frustrating. I watched Jeff Gerstmann play this and agree with his take that this is more frustrating than when RoboCop 1 is just frustrating to play because of clunky controls. Choices were made to make the game more difficult and it just makes the game worse.

So overall I wouldn’t recommend the game but I can recommend the soundtrack Jeroen Tel. It absolutely rules. Listen to this theme!

From listening to it, it sounds like something that was made for the Commodore 64. I do want to give that version a shot because from reading the YouTube comments and watching a few seconds of it, it does seem like a better version. It still seems to have some clunky movement but something about it being on a computer makes it more acceptable to me.

RoboCop 3 isn’t available legally anywhere but it’s easy to find on your favorite rom site.