vga256

sometimes you have no choice but to drive 300km to a boondocks antique store to rescue a bunch of abandoned dos games 😍

#dosgaming #bigboxgames #RetroGaming

20 years ago i stumbled upon a "top dog" entry on Home of the Underdogs in the adventure section

part point and click adventure, part american gothic themed thriller, and part horror story; i've never found a comfortable label for it.

all these years have passed, and i'm still mesmerized by how unique the game is. some of david dew's bespoke animations still reign among the best i've ever seen in a 2d game.

it's still hard to imagine this entire experience was crafted by only three people.

here are a couple of minutes of the intro and gameplay from creative reality's DreamWeb (1994)

#dosgaming #retroGaming

i can't believe this is a real thing, and this is the first time i've ever heard about it

Seal: Magic Eye is an adventure-RPG for MS-DOS

Soft-World, a korean RPG and adventure game publisher/developer, did an amazing job of cloning Ultima VII's style, interface, sprites and tiles

it's cloned down to the smallest detail: the "journer onward" on the title screen, the pixel palette rotation effect during the load screen, and even the wonky isometric-ish projection.

it plays more like the SNES/SFC port of Ultima VII: The Black Gate - interactivity is stripped away, and it's mostly point and click dialogue.

the fact that this exists at all is incredible. now, whenever someone asks, "is there a game like Ultima VII?" i finally can say, yes!

sadly, it has no mobygames entry. work for a fellow software archivist who can translate, some day.

credit to /u/petrifiedpigs for pointing this game out
source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Ultima/comments/1gdufp3/games_similar_to_to_the_black_gate/

#ultima #dosgaming #msdos #retroGaming

great interview with Ultima manual and cover artist Denis Loubet that i somehow missed years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttcuJXBh754

#ultima #retroGaming

doing some visual design research on isometric tile-based games and came across this incredible screenshot from Celtic Tales: Balor of the Evil Eye

that entire screenshot was drawn with just sixteen colours

#gameArt #retroGaming

i haven’t found good PS1 games in the wild in nearly 20 years

today i scored for $3 each!

#retrogaming #playstation #psx

in 25+ years of retro gaming and sierra, i've never once seen someone mention Hoyle's Book of Games

despite its small stature, it was one of the most financially lucrative sierra titles, and spawned an entire series of games.

what makes it special is that opponents are (for the most part) characters from sierra titles, each playing in a style expressive of the character's personality. graham and rosella are friendly and not overly competitive, larry is silly and aggressive with his cards.

the dog? the dog is a real shithead.

#sierraOnline #retroGaming

happy 27th birthday Ultima Online.

on september 24th, UO launched with a massive subscriber base, after two public beta tests and a pre-alpha a year earlier.

this is the UO launch page in september of 1997.

following that is the "chest opening" animation for the game login (with the Stones midi playing in the background).

the first year of UO was one of the most active and fascinating experiments in player-driven democracy, and live-patching exercises i've ever seen. the skeleton crew who was kept on to update the game ran "House of Commons" chats directly with players to get feedback on the game, and help make decisions on how to deal with problems with griefing/exploits/gameplay.

the cat-and-mouse game of players discovering exploits and developers patching them became a meta-game itself, forcing patches that changed gameplay on a weekly basis.

within a couple of years, the experiment in player-led design and open-ended gameplay would more or less be over: EverQuest and (to a much larger extent) World of Warcraft would turn a living world into a locked down carnival ride. MMO companies didn't want to deal with the dynamics of a game that let players do too much, and the UO experiment was quietly decided to be a failure of design.

i don't share that opinion, and still consider it to be the finest experience i've had in an online world to this day.

#ultimaOnline #retroGaming #gamePreservation

although i've finished Conquests of Camelot several times, i've never thought to sit through the credits to the end.

i find a few things fascinating about this. first off, the game never prompts you with sound effects showing that you've received points for solving a puzzle or winning a battle, contrary to almost every other sierra adventure title.

second, unlike sierra adventures that lump all points together into a single score, this one has been stratified into three categories.

third - and this is more in comparison to RPGs where playable characters are created for at the beginning of the game, this title inverts the process. "your" king arthur is really the outcome of the choices you made over the course of the game: my particular playthrough seems to have valued soul over skill or wisdom.

#adventureGames #retroGaming #sierra

did i just drive 300 km one way in the middle of the night to pick up fifteen big box games.

yes.

yes i did.

#bigboxgames #retrogaming

re: my last post - if you didn't already know, Stephen Biesty has the most beautifully animated and hilariously voiced multimedia version of Incredible Cross-Sections, called: Stowaway!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9jKE6Y7vJQ

#retroGaming #windows311

wondrous Boardwatch BBS magazine "top 100" boards in the united states from 1994. this was based on a reader's choice vote-in.

the first two boards are (respectively) the homes of Apogee software and Epic MegaGames shareware publishers.

now just guess how many of the remaining 98 are porn boards!

credit: @fearfair on /r/bbs: https://i.redd.it/5pb1m577m9pd1.jpeg

#shareware #bbs #retroGaming