Slashdot Mirror

Do you want to know why?

Because GPLed games actually have a tiny chance in hell of being ported to the macintosh.

Seriously. I really kind of honestly believe the bit about gpled games will never quite reach the quality level of commercial software, (although i have seen some damn good shareware/freeware games) but i will say this: poorly ported gpled games are much better than *nothing*.. which, as a mac os x user, is exactly what i am getting right now.

Well.. all i have to say is thank god that it's so much easier to write emulators that run on the PPC than it is the x86 :P Lolo, i will always have you..

Umm, but anyway. Yeh. I am pretty sure i will never see a Worms Armaggeddon for mac os x, much less Worms World Party, but although i can't play OpenQuartz either, i at least have the *option* of porting the damn thing myself. Which just makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. So.. well.. THANK YOU, TEAM OPENQUARTZ!

P.S. : Sierra : Where the fuck is tribes 2?? You were promising us a simultaneous cross-platform release for awhile there!! What happened?? GRRRR!!

^_^

P.P.S. You think we could go hunt down the original creator of Scorched Earth and convince them to go GPL?

P.P.P.S. Crossfire is damn ugly. Couldn't you at least have the quality of Taskmaker? Sheesh.

...

That shouldn't be too hard. Just create a game that calls up x amount of variables and semi-randomly assigns them properties throughout the next game (location, value, etc.).

Er... You have played this game for hours on end at the expense of sleep, nutrition and sunlight, until your eyes were numb, your thumbs blistered and the controller terribly worn like the rest of us did, right?

If you're designing a second quest, I'd expect that you care enough about the game to mentally carve out a challenging and intriguing layout. Something to a quality that a computer in this age could never acomplish. Sure, you don't get infinite replay value but the experience is still *better*. Take for example, Gannon's Revenge.

Just in case anyone is trying to find its new unslashdotted address, its moved here. And yes it's really for DOS, not a ROM, it'll even work under Win9x. They've got a bunch of other remakes too.

Just in case anyone is trying to find its new unslashdotted address, its moved here. And yes it's really for DOS, not a ROM, it'll even work under Win9x. They've got a bunch of other remakes too.

Just in case anyone is trying to find its new unslashdotted address, its moved here. And yes it's really for DOS, not a ROM, it'll even work under Win9x. They've got a bunch of other remakes too.

Did anyone play the Star Control games? I have many, many great memories of playing the second game; it had a wonderful story and the "action" parts were just FUN. It was simple, but it was definitely the type you play with your neighbor for hours.

Anyway, after the orginial designers left after the second, the third game sucked. So, a fan created project has gotten together to make a new sequel to the second game, and I'm very excited about seeing it.

If you liked Star Control, help out to return it to its old glory!

Star Control: Timewarp

This guy was mentioned here on /. a few days back. Apparently he first created pong on an oscilloscope.

Given that this guy didn't even try to patent his invention, nor earn money from it in any way, he deserves a nod.

But I'm sure there's a dozen other people that "need" to be in this list. I do think it leans a bit heavily towards more recent games, undoubtedly because most gamespot readers would just go "huh?" at the mention anything pre-1985.

-----

Bachelor Party and the female version Bachelorette Party

Beat 'em and Eat 'em(due to the Atari's lo-res, I first thought the guy was holding a bazooka! Gameplay is like Kaboom, but instead of losing a bucket when you miss, the ladies fart)

Burning Desire and the female version Jungle Fever

Custer's Revenge

Knight on the Town

But, with all the emulators out there already, is this even a big deal? All that would have to be done is to port z26 or Stella, and then find a good source of Atari ROMs. This doesn't sound like it's exactly world rocking... we've had access to these games for quite a while.

Cheers!
Karma Sink

But, with all the emulators out there already, is this even a big deal? All that would have to be done is to port z26 or Stella, and then find a good source of Atari ROMs. This doesn't sound like it's exactly world rocking... we've had access to these games for quite a while.

Cheers!
Karma Sink

But, with all the emulators out there already, is this even a big deal? All that would have to be done is to port z26 or Stella, and then find a good source of Atari ROMs. This doesn't sound like it's exactly world rocking... we've had access to these games for quite a while.

Cheers!
Karma Sink

...and it is called Rise of the Triad

Hey, everyone remembers Toaplan. Or at least shmup fans like myself do. They never made anything as classic as Gradius or Raiden II, but they did solid work.

Yeah, there are still a few versions of Lemonade stand out there, and it's actually a great Idea. It's a simple game that still stresses the qualities he's looking for.

http://www.classicgaming.com/vault/roms/appleiirom s.LemonadeStand33375.shtml
There's the classic Apple 2 rom.

http://thebest.00go.com/DownLoads.html
Theres another clone someone made for the PC

http://javaboutique.internet.com/Lemonade/
Here's a Java version.

That's all I could find with a quick look.

Allright, alright. First of all, everyone's going to have a different list of games they think are the most influential so bickering isn't necessary.

I would like to suggest that Rise of the Triad (aka "ROTT") by Apogee has been more influential than a couple of the ones on the top 15 and several on the runners-up list. I would also like to back this up with evidence. There are too many reasons to post here, so just check out this great article written by Kevin Bowen: ROTT in Hell.

My favorite hangout for oldskool gaming is http://www.classicgaming.com. In addition to a weekly mailbag and game of the week, they have many decent hosted sites devoted to the old games and consoles. They also had a news item a while back about another new 2600 game called Thrust.

Download here

I dunno if someone else posted this yet, but I did a google search for "scorched earth" and got that link. Been playing it for a while now. Go get it.

----------

you can get the ROM here and an emulator here. Of course, I thought missile command was the best 2600 game. Btw to get the emulator to work you need to hit F10, select "configure controllers" then "keyboard" and press "up" on your keyboard, select "joystick" and then "up" and repeat for each key you want to use on your keyboard. Why there is no default keyboard config, I don't know.

That game was so awesome. I still have dreams about that damn room where you had to put the tones in the right order(i'm half tone deaf). By the way, the best C64 game of all time... Jumpman!

Ok, I hate to do this, but, the capitolist dog in my just can't help it at the mention of Jumpman...

There are two new Jumpman games under development. Randy Glover (the original author of Jumpman) is working on Jumpman II, and MidnightRyder.Com (my company) is working on Jumpman: 2049 (authorized by Randy Glover - yep, two separate Jumpman titles being developed at the same time, going different directions - fairly cool!) Drop by MidnightRyder.Com and check in on development of Jumpman: 2049, and look at Randy Glover's entries on the Developer's Diaries section for what he's up to with Jumpman II

The other person I talk to from time to time is working on something called The Jumpman Project - basically, he took the original version from IBM for the PC (no, not Jumpman Lives! produced much later - IBM actually ported a version of Jumpman way, way back during the CGA gfx era) which was some serious abandonware, and has began hacking it into shape. It now runs under Windows (and I'm sure WINE would run it, but, haven't tried yet), has a brand new partial working level editor, etc. He didn't just pirate it, like most of the abandonware stuff - he took it, and is somewhat modernizing it. Very cool. Check out Jeff's work at Jumpman Project. One really cool part - Randy knows it exists, and has no problem with his work on it :-)

Thunder Force V, for the Saturn/PSX, while it was a fun game, lacked a lot of the rich visual detail that its 2D cousins had. I've yet to see a polygon-based game that can contain the level of artistic detail in a 2D world -- simply because current levels of polys/s can't equal the detail of a flat bitmapped image. We're getting there, but still not quite close.

Unfortunately, there's a large concentration on the FPS aspect of 3D games. So the type of game that I like is very hard to find, at least in the US, though I understand in Japan (and Europe to some extent) they are still alive and kicking.

For more info, go to The Shmups! Site.

Zork isn't written in C, it's written in Z-Code. Before the invention of the "Z-machine" and consequently Z-Code, Zork's father, dungeon, was written in Fortran.
Just downloaded it from www.funet.fi, c sources that is.

Activision was nearly dead a few years back, considering changing their name and doing business packages. That's what stunned me, was seeing them still doing computer games. I'd been through their offices in Mountain View, back in 1985, when David Crane was still developing Little Computer People. (now we call these things virii)


--

Awsome Possum Kick Dr. Machino's Butt

Well this is good to hear (although we're getting a little offtopic). If you check out the MDB there's a link to some guy who investigated Retro Studios' servers (no actual cracking involved) and managed to find evidence that they worked for Nintendo. It's pretty funny.

dd *is* a Linux command; (c)1999, FSF.

Just because it was *also* one of those original Unix commands... well, Unix is used to namespace collisions. However, I'm sure any Unix purist would agree that the Linux command ls (GNU ls, that is) isn't Unix ls. Therefore, it's a Linux command.

(or, if you're RMS, a GNU/Linux command? Possibly a Linux GNU Userland Command? LGUC? Nah... just a Linux command; forget RMS, he doesn't understand about convenience and common usage in language at all. And if he rants one more time about it, I'm going to start calling him GNU/RMS, and start asking him for DNA samples so we can do research, and contribute the changes back...)

But you're right, that *is* confusing. Maybe we should start a dd FAQ, in the spirit of the Pong FAQ...
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.

Mmmm.... nostalgia...

I went to a computer day-camp once... Geeze, I don't even remeber what I did there!!! But I remember seeing *Wolfenstien* running on a *386*!!! Man, was I impressed...

I had to work really hard to get some guy there to give me Scorch on a floppy... and it *was* worth it... :-)

This game was so far ahead of its time that it was ported to GameBoy a full 12 years after its original release.

Plot: Your aircraft carrier is passing through Japanese-held territory and you, the brave Hellcat pilot, must make sure your carrier makes it out in piece. You had to bomb barracks, rocket pillboxes, and strafe soldiers as they run around on their islands. Of course, there were also dogfights with Zeros, and winning took skill. And then there were the ships! You had to sink destoyers, cruisers, battleships, and carriers, all of which were gigantic compared to your puny fighter plane.

The attention to detail was incredible: bullets kicked up dust, bombs bounced off of camoflage nets, and your carrier (which you had to land on) rolled with the waves.

For those who have played: who can possibly forget your heart pounding as you dove full-throttle straight toward a battleship in a do-it-right-the-first-time-or-die rocket attack? If you slowed down, the guns shredded you; if you got the angle wrong, you missed your target which meant that the guns would get you as you pulled out of the dive.

And who can forget the satisfaction of jumping a Zero as he scrambled to protect his base? If you did it just right, the hapless Zero would cut swathe of destruction through his island as he crashed.

Sounds good, huh? Want it? You can download the Apple ][ ROM!

But can I get an original, mint-in-the-box copy of Custer's Revenge?

I just downloaded it yesterday, and the ROM was well worth the 0.8 seconds it took to download over my 33.6kbps modem. Absolutely hilarious.

Fsck that. How 'bout the early 80s bloodfest "The Bilestoad" on the Apple ][?

Pictures of a 3-D port to the Mac

I have fond memories of hacking limbs off in the original version, in glorious 280x192 resolution at four real colors and 8 pseudo-colors. It was the bloodiest thing I'd ever seen at the time :)

I first found out about Bilestoad in a full-page print ad in Nibble magazine. I believe the phrases "graphic violence and bloodletting" and "suitable for adults only" were used. I don't think the game was ever released where I lived; I never saw it on the shelves.

One of my happier gaming moments came when someone in our user group got his hands on a copy from some warez BBS in the States. It spread like wildfire. It was bloody, shocked the parents, and more importantly after the first 15 minutes, featured really good gameplay.

Your irony for the day: From the Bilestoad Manual:

"The city controller computers were worried. If trends continued on their present course, the city would be engulfed in holocaust. The mobs were at the breaking point between frustrated apathy and psychotic violence. It was plain that drastic change was needed. [ ... ] Most never got beyond the battle. For them, it was enough to hack away at an opponent. An opportunity to release their anger and cleanse their souls was all they wanted. They could wash themselves in blood. The mobs were quelled and quieted."

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Double irony: This is the first time in my life that I'd actually read the premise of the game - a society held together by the use of virtual violence as catharsis. I'm doubly impressed by the designers' insight.

1983, folks. The original came out in 1983.

I found http://www.classicgaming.com about a year ago and, suddenly, I was 8 years old again, watching some teenager play starwars, except now I was big enough to reach the controls.

Then end result, and this is blatantly apparent in today's video games, is that technology (better sound, graphics, etc.) does not mean better game play. These games were/are great because they were built with game play in mind - not the technology. So, when something like Daikatana comes out it's easy to see why we keep playing Battle Zone, Dig-Dug, etc.

IMHO, video game corps want to keep you from playing the old games so you don't knw what you're missing.

"I will give you $20 for one!"
-Pip

You know, I wouldn't be surprised. This has happened before.

Anyone else remember the "The Fun Is Back" campaign?

Remember, folks, It doesn't get older - it gets better!

The object of the game is to guide a naked, horny, General Custer across the screen while avoiding incoming arrow fire. Waiting at the other side is a naked Indian maiden, and you earn points by... scoring. The slogan of the game was something like "When you score, you score!"

http://www.classicgaming.com/rotw/cu ster.shtml
---

It's Just Wrong. Plus, naughty bits on an Atari 2600? What were they thinking? Custer's Revenge

I can see why Sony wouldn't want to walk all over US/Euro publishers who translate a game and release it. However, many -- if not most -- Japanese games NEVER get released outside of Nippon.

For example: a survey of the Shmups! Xenocide Files/Review Archive shows that the percentage of 2D shooters on 32-bit consoles that made it out of Japan is small. There are some exceptions (R-Type Delta, Thunderforce V Perfect System), but they are the exceptions. And it's not like there's a lot to translate...

If all we had to do was wait 3 months for a publisher to translate a game, that would be one thing. But when no publisher is willing or interested in releasing a game unless it is 3D polygonal eye-candy, the market becomes derivative, and the players suffer.

yes you can find it here

the Oregon Trail Apple II Disk Image and Applewin emulator are at the bottom of the page :)

"I long for the days of nes, snes, and genesis, where game programmers had to come up with ORIGINAL ideas. "
And frequently didn't. Can we say Mortal Kombat and [insert SNES Street Fighter clone here]?

"Now it's almost always shoot-em-ups!"
Please don't confuse 3D first-person-shooters with the traditional shoot-em-ups; as defined at Shmups. ;)

That "press-release" is anything but believable, however, the score is not that far-fetched at all.
After about 10 levels, there are very few chances to score points on anything but pills, and the odd fruit. (power pills stop working) I know that past this point, I will usually average between 10,000 and 20,00 per level, until my will breaks, then I die. (That's on Ms Pac)

On the original PacMan, there was no randomness to the ghosts'(monsters for the purests) movments. There was a fairly widely know pattern ( here and here) that could beat the ghosts on every level(43 seconds per level). Later, Namco released a mod-chip that would randomize the ghosts movements to give the "wiz-kidz" something new to do.

So... on an original Pac Man, if you apply the pattern flawlessly on every level until the game dies at level 255, you would obtain the theoretical maximum Pac Man score.
3,333,360 / 255 is 13,720.000 pts per level, which is a very reasonable average.

but...

I seems apparent that quite a few people have witnessed the game roll-over at L255, and I can't see how the score would vary too much from 3,333,360 after 255 levels of about 13,000 per level. So I don't see this as such a great feat.
Not to mention that the artical is clearly fake. It's written like a crappy tabloid.

http://www.classicgaming.com/pac-ma n/split00.gif

No, I don't know why a blank space appears in the text of that link, but it shouldn't be there. It still works if you just click on it, though.

Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

It's been a while since I've played PacMan, i don't think this is possible.

After you pass 250 levels, an overflow existed, which would make the game essentially unplayable. A screenshot of what happens at this point is here.

Assuming at best 20,000 points per level, 5,000,000 is about the peak. However, if I remember right, the score would overflow at 2 million.

In any case, some of us bored people in school played long enough to crash the game at level 250 years ago, and it's nothing new.

If anyone really wants, i could try to ask around at work about what score the overflow happened.

Kevin Day
Game Programmer
Midway Games
(no, I had nothing to do with PacMan.. before my time)

you do realize that the blue sky rangers programmed vectron to be unbeatable, right? Intelivision RULES!!! classicgaming
blue sky rangers
-davek

Emunews is carrying the announcement and mirroring the emulator. Download it here.
'New N64 Emu Plays Commercial ROMs! A major new emulator has debuted. The world's first Nintendo 64 emulator that actually plays commercial games! Epsilon and RealityMan are the authors behind this masterpiece. Called UltraHLE, this one's for Windows 95. It requires at least PII 300 and a 3dfx graphics card
"UltraHLE gives PC owners the first chance ever to run commercially available Nintendo 64 games (rom
images). The current aim of UltraHLE is not to run as many games as possible, it is to run some of the best titles as well as possible (e.g. Super Mario 64, Zelda: Ocarina of Time etc)."'

Emunews is carrying the announcement and mirroring the emulator. Download it here.
'New N64 Emu Plays Commercial ROMs! A major new emulator has debuted. The world's first Nintendo 64 emulator that actually plays commercial games! Epsilon and RealityMan are the authors behind this masterpiece. Called UltraHLE, this one's for Windows 95. It requires at least PII 300 and a 3dfx graphics card
"UltraHLE gives PC owners the first chance ever to run commercially available Nintendo 64 games (rom
images). The current aim of UltraHLE is not to run as many games as possible, it is to run some of the best titles as well as possible (e.g. Super Mario 64, Zelda: Ocarina of Time etc)."'