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That was Counter-Strike. The stand-alone was a spin-off named "Condition Zero" that, IIRC, attempted to give the game a storyline of sorts.

The club has focused mainly on designing and building robots

Kickass -- we can finally play RoboSport in real life!

Play TIE Fighter instead. It's a far better game than Rogue Squadron and should run flawlessly under DOSBox. I'm sure you can find it on an abandonware site or TPB.

Want names? Nobuo Uematsu (to meet your John Williams). Shigeru Miyamoto. Masahiro Sakurai. David Crane. Gabe Newell. The entire staff of Id at one point. Activision before Bruce Davis used to feature the name of the lead on games' box art: see River Raid by Carol Shaw.

Oh wow. I was one of the enthusiastic fans of Muse Software's Robot Wars for the Apple ][. It sounds to me like Soulskill has invented a way to re-create Robot Wars in a more real and more fun way.

Here's a description of the original game.

Create code for a robot using the provided programing language, limited to 256 lines of code. Test your robot on the test bench by examining the code line by line and determining whether the bot performs as intended. Then put your finished robot in the arena with up to four other bots, set the number of battles, and watch them fight it out in a top-down view. Computer Gaming world had annual contests for several years in which readers could send their bots on disk to participate in the match, with results and prizes reported in the magazine.

I'll see your 1986 NES Ghostbusters, and raise you a 1984 Sinclair ZX Spectrum Ghostbusters!

The sound effects were most impressive. Apparently they released it for a bunch of platforms. Times have certainly changed.

But since that hasn't happen, you'll just have to live with Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic, which has even more similarity to MoM than the first two games in the series.

The old style parser adventure games grew out of the text adventure tradition, also known as interactive fiction. Many of the great old adventures have been liberated, and people are still writing new ones. You can find enough text adventures to keep you occupied for ages at the if-archive.

I'd also recommend tracking down a copy of The Lost Adventures of Legend. It contains 8 great graphic adventures that lie somewhere in between a text adventure and the "3d animated adventures" from Sierra.

Interestingly enough, the Ghostbusters cart for the 2600 was one of the best games on the system. It had an amazing amount of gameplay given the (severe) limitations of the 2600 hardware.

Much like movies based on super heroes and video games have gotten better, some even to the point of being able to be called good, the same has happened with games based on movies.

Have you played any of the Evil Dead games? Fistful of Boomstick was fun and while I didn't play all of Hail to the King, what I did play of it was good.

Have you played the original Evil Dead game? I think it proves your point about movie games having improved since that era :)

No I haven't. You've done a rare thing finding a game I was not aware of. Being a video game and evil dead geek, I'm going to have to check it out in spite of it being terrible.

Much like movies based on super heroes and video games have gotten better, some even to the point of being able to be called good, the same has happened with games based on movies. Have you played any of the Evil Dead games? Fistful of Boomstick was fun and while I didn't play all of Hail to the King, what I did play of it was good.

Have you played the original Evil Dead game? I think it proves your point about movie games having improved since that era :)

I miss ONE particular game that I don't think anyone has managed to re-create. I'd very much appreciate a new version of PSI-5 Trading co. You have your standard Elite-esque "trade stuff between planets A, B & C"-thing go on...but the beef is that you command your spaceship *completely* by just giving your crew orders - and they attempt to execute them. So you become Captain Kirk and just bark orders for your Sulu, Chekov and Scotty. I haven't heard of other such games - I mean, you are *always* expected to grab the joystick. Eve Online might come close but it's still pretty much realtime.

Yes, the Mobygames lists DOS version, but the CGA glory isn't exactly the best release.

Pinball Construction Set from 1983 was the first I remember that allowed you to create your own levels.

What I rarely see mentioned is the fact that the Bioware Austin was founded and largely staffed by the SW:Galaxies team after they were fired (or quit in some cases). I know that some key people from Bioware Canada were brought in to try to infuse the new studio with the Bioware culture, but the studio is being run by Rich Vogel and Gordon Walton, who were both heavily involved in SW:Galaxies.
 
I hope SW:TOR is a great game, but with EA and the original SW:G team involved, I don't know if a few Bioware guys can turn that tide.

What I rarely see mentioned is the fact that the Bioware Austin was founded and largely staffed by the SW:Galaxies team after they were fired (or quit in some cases). I know that some key people from Bioware Canada were brought in to try to infuse the new studio with the Bioware culture, but the studio is being run by Rich Vogel and Gordon Walton, who were both heavily involved in SW:Galaxies.
 
I hope SW:TOR is a great game, but with EA and the original SW:G team involved, I don't know if a few Bioware guys can turn that tide.

I don't know why the E3 organizers would want to go back to the horrible old format

Simple: They want to make money.
Or: They want to generate press for the industry's benefit.
Or: They want to generate public awareness for the industry's benefit.

Everyone bitched about how "wrong" the old event way. And yet a ton of press were there, generating a ton of press for all of the studios/etc. Studios that, for all their bitching, turned up, rented space, etc. for it.

Then they went ultra exclusive. And the press got bored because it wasn't a spectacle. And the companies realized they may as well do their own private gig, across town, and totally squeeze out the competition. And now no one paid for it and it kept dying a slow death.

A very good lesson is to ignore everyone talking about how things "should be" but instead look at what the evidence really supports. The "bad old days" that everyone "hated" kept getting more and more successful when judged by the simple metric of "did more and more vendors see it as worth being there?" The "improved" recent events failed by that simple metric.

If E3's goal is to function as a profitable event, the old way was better.
If E3's goal was to generate press attention, the old way was better.
If E3's goal was to generate public excitement with the industry, the old way was better.

If E3's goal was to be elitist but lonely to the point of insignificance, the new way rocks.

I'd say the other three are three great reasons to go back, holier-than-thou protesting about how bad it was aside.

(Speaking as a non-Gamestop stockroom industry person. *grins*)

You're thinking of the Scorpitron, named after Scorpia, a pioneer of computer game reviews, especially of the adventure and RPG variety.

inister voice of Simons will be returning to announce ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKS !

FYI, the "Voice of Simmons" is none other then legendary game developer Tom Hall.

Since he's working on his own MMO right now, I don't know how keen* he'd be on returning to the Deus Ex world for some voiceover.

*lol, I made a pun

I remember one of them being some sort of karate game. I'm thinking it was this one:
http://www.mobygames.com/game/atari-8-bit/ninja_/screenshots

I recall running the sector editor on the disk and finding out that if I did a copy of just the sectors the Atari would read onto a new disk, the game would work. The standard Atari DOS copy would fail because it would hit bad sectors (the C64 ones).

I'll bet the game ships with bugs.

Even Centipede shipped with bugs, as did Mario Paint and even Crazy Castle.

...or an overly-successful mate toss.

From what I've read, the Housers are responsible for the huge emphasis on 'realism'. DMA's original 2D GTAs were set in a completely absurd world, with gangs like the Loonies or the Mad Scientists, and secrets like occasionally seeing a whole crowd of Elvis impersonators who'd give you a point bonus for getting them all.

When the Housers got involved, they pushed it towards the emphasis on glorifying the Mafia movies that all the gangbangers, and the wiggas following the gangbangers' cultural lead, were into.

It is the synthesis of Jones's vision of a free-roaming city and the Houser's vision of how cool Scarface that was the massive success of GTA3. You can argue back and forth about who 'created' it; it's certainly the Housers who managed to grab the notoriety for it by getting Jones and the rest of the programmers and artists to bend the game into their vision of the average underemployed white guy's fantasies. In fact, the last linked article quotes on this very subject:

"While neither writes game code, we believe that they are analogous to the director of a Hollywood film, instrumental in determining the final shape of the ultimate games released."

Jones is the vision behind GTA. The Housers are the vision behind GTA3. GTA3 builds on Jones' original work, to be sure, but it would be a totally different game if they hadn't been involved. Look at his gameography, play a few, play some of the other stuff DMA released pre-Rockstar (which presumably had to get his approval): I think you'll agree that GTA3 is, thematically, very different from all Jones' games before and since.

I am not saying this is a good thing - I vastly preferred the videogamey silliness of the original GTAs - but the Housers were a big part of creating the GTA3/4 brand.

TF2 was not the first shooter game to have that kind of visual style. XIII was released in 2003, and Killer7 in 2005. There are probably even earlier examples. TF2 also doesn't hold a candle to Eternal Sonata.

TF2 was not the first shooter game to have that kind of visual style. XIII was released in 2003, and Killer7 in 2005. There are probably even earlier examples. TF2 also doesn't hold a candle to Eternal Sonata.

TF2 was not the first shooter game to have that kind of visual style. XIII was released in 2003, and Killer7 in 2005. There are probably even earlier examples. TF2 also doesn't hold a candle to Eternal Sonata.

I remember buying it so long ago, but the hype was too much for the game to live up to.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eco_(computer_game)

Screenshots from the Atari-ST version:
http://www.mobygames.com/game/atari-st/eco/screenshots

Ah, memories...

Monkey Island 2 is one of the most beautiful sequels to ever grace the game industry. If you haven't played it (which seems to be the case from the sound of your post), you should give it a try -- it's still a wonderful game 17 years later.

I was a big fan of Lucasfilm's Indy games. The Last Crusade took me back to enjoying the "hidden parts that never appeared in the movie".

But the Fate of Atlantis was even better. Just take a look at some Indy 4 screenshots.

First of all, you got this archaeological dig in Iceland. Then the Azores. Then the mayan jungle of Tikal. Also, you make a stop at Monaco and have a seance with the holder of an ancient atlantean disc. AND you have to rescue him from being kidnapped by the Nazis. Later, you go to the desert and have to deal with a greedy arab merchant. Later you take a balloon to Crete and find yourself trapped in THE labyrinth. Finally you have to steal a Nazi U-boat and get to the mythical city of Atlantis. And then you have to explore a new concentric maze to find the chamber of the gods before the Nazis - not before having a secret encounter with Nur-Ab-Sal, the evil spirit posessing the body of your new girlfriend.

This game became my new Indy standard, and this is why I wanted the Indy movie so much to have it. If you watched the latest Indy movie, play the game and you'll be more than cured.

Ah, look, there's a youtube screenshot collection with Indy's theme playing on the background!

...had plenty of cut scenes!

...had plenty of cut scenes!

...had plenty of cut scenes!

...had plenty of cut scenes!

ronnie ray-gun?

http://www.mobygames.com/game/amiga/nuclear-war/screenshots/gameShotId,203757/

Less than 1/4 of the Blizzard North people with credits on "Diablo II" went to Flagship. Also, only TWO people from Blizzard North with a credit on Diablo II are working in Irvine as of the past year! Just a few of the names who did NOT go to Flagship AND are not currently working in Irvine: http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/diablo-ii/credits http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/hellgate-london/credits - Both people named as designers (Hedlund and Sexton) - The artist who created "Diablo" (Okamura) - The original animator of "Diablo" (Haas) - The lead programmer (Seis) - The entire in-game music/audio team (Stone, Petersen, Uelman) - The character artists behind the Paladin, Sorceress, and Barbarian and countless monsters (Johnson, Dashow) - The illustration genius behind the UI art (Boos) - All three level designers (McAuley, Scandizzo, Wilson) Additionally, Bill Roper never had an office at Blizzard North during the making of any of those releases - he moved soon AFTER they were released. The idea that "Well, Hellgate was a flop, so it must have been Blizzard all along that made it..." is unfounded and stupid. The sad reality is that Blizzard North was basically cast to the wind and can never be reformed in any real way.

Less than 1/4 of the Blizzard North people with credits on "Diablo II" went to Flagship. Also, only TWO people from Blizzard North with a credit on Diablo II are working in Irvine as of the past year! Just a few of the names who did NOT go to Flagship AND are not currently working in Irvine: http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/diablo-ii/credits http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/hellgate-london/credits - Both people named as designers (Hedlund and Sexton) - The artist who created "Diablo" (Okamura) - The original animator of "Diablo" (Haas) - The lead programmer (Seis) - The entire in-game music/audio team (Stone, Petersen, Uelman) - The character artists behind the Paladin, Sorceress, and Barbarian and countless monsters (Johnson, Dashow) - The illustration genius behind the UI art (Boos) - All three level designers (McAuley, Scandizzo, Wilson) Additionally, Bill Roper never had an office at Blizzard North during the making of any of those releases - he moved soon AFTER they were released. The idea that "Well, Hellgate was a flop, so it must have been Blizzard all along that made it..." is unfounded and stupid. The sad reality is that Blizzard North was basically cast to the wind and can never be reformed in any real way.

Not that it matters, but there are a barrel-throwing orangoutans in Donkey Kong Country...

I think Outcast used height maps too, but what about TerraNova?

So where does Prince of Persia 3D fit in?

As someone who runs a software collector's mailing list and a co-author of a collectible software grading scale, I think I'm qualified to report: It depends. The collectible value of software is pretty much the same as any other collectible:

• Desirability (not the same as rarity)
• Availability
• Condition

The reason rarity != value is because, if nobody knows about it, nobody wants it. I own a fairly nice copy of Wibarm, and I believe I'm the only one left in the USA to own it. But since nobody has heard about it, and it's not part of some Infocom/Sierra/Lucasarts legacy, nobody would offer me more than $20 for it.

Condition is obviously important. Incomplete items are worth nearly nothing, and even if it's complete it should be in decent condition (ie. the box isn't crushed). If it's in mint condition (still shrinkwrapped), you are holding gold.

One exception to this is diskettes: For reasons I don't quite agree with, most collectors feel that the condition of the diskette media is not nearly as important as the other materials, mainly because most of the software has been cracked and available. I disagree, because without working originals, you can never be sure if the cracked versions are complete (and in my experience easily 15% of them are not).

The ebay market for collectible software started to dry up around 2005, but for a very long time it was a hotbed of collectible software buying and selling. You can still find some reasonable bargains (ie. an average of $20-$30 a title) but most of the time it still costs $200 for a Kilrathi Saga, or $1600 for an original Infocom Starcross Saucer.

As someone who runs a software collector's mailing list and a co-author of a collectible software grading scale, I think I'm qualified to report: It depends. The collectible value of software is pretty much the same as any other collectible:

• Desirability (not the same as rarity)
• Availability
• Condition

The reason rarity != value is because, if nobody knows about it, nobody wants it. I own a fairly nice copy of Wibarm, and I believe I'm the only one left in the USA to own it. But since nobody has heard about it, and it's not part of some Infocom/Sierra/Lucasarts legacy, nobody would offer me more than $20 for it.

Condition is obviously important. Incomplete items are worth nearly nothing, and even if it's complete it should be in decent condition (ie. the box isn't crushed). If it's in mint condition (still shrinkwrapped), you are holding gold.

One exception to this is diskettes: For reasons I don't quite agree with, most collectors feel that the condition of the diskette media is not nearly as important as the other materials, mainly because most of the software has been cracked and available. I disagree, because without working originals, you can never be sure if the cracked versions are complete (and in my experience easily 15% of them are not).

The ebay market for collectible software started to dry up around 2005, but for a very long time it was a hotbed of collectible software buying and selling. You can still find some reasonable bargains (ie. an average of $20-$30 a title) but most of the time it still costs $200 for a Kilrathi Saga, or $1600 for an original Infocom Starcross Saucer.

As someone who runs a software collector's mailing list and a co-author of a collectible software grading scale, I think I'm qualified to report: It depends. The collectible value of software is pretty much the same as any other collectible:

• Desirability (not the same as rarity)
• Availability
• Condition

The reason rarity != value is because, if nobody knows about it, nobody wants it. I own a fairly nice copy of Wibarm, and I believe I'm the only one left in the USA to own it. But since nobody has heard about it, and it's not part of some Infocom/Sierra/Lucasarts legacy, nobody would offer me more than $20 for it.

Condition is obviously important. Incomplete items are worth nearly nothing, and even if it's complete it should be in decent condition (ie. the box isn't crushed). If it's in mint condition (still shrinkwrapped), you are holding gold.

One exception to this is diskettes: For reasons I don't quite agree with, most collectors feel that the condition of the diskette media is not nearly as important as the other materials, mainly because most of the software has been cracked and available. I disagree, because without working originals, you can never be sure if the cracked versions are complete (and in my experience easily 15% of them are not).

The ebay market for collectible software started to dry up around 2005, but for a very long time it was a hotbed of collectible software buying and selling. You can still find some reasonable bargains (ie. an average of $20-$30 a title) but most of the time it still costs $200 for a Kilrathi Saga, or $1600 for an original Infocom Starcross Saucer.

As someone who runs a software collector's mailing list and a co-author of a collectible software grading scale, I think I'm qualified to report: It depends. The collectible value of software is pretty much the same as any other collectible:

• Desirability (not the same as rarity)
• Availability
• Condition

The reason rarity != value is because, if nobody knows about it, nobody wants it. I own a fairly nice copy of Wibarm, and I believe I'm the only one left in the USA to own it. But since nobody has heard about it, and it's not part of some Infocom/Sierra/Lucasarts legacy, nobody would offer me more than $20 for it.

Condition is obviously important. Incomplete items are worth nearly nothing, and even if it's complete it should be in decent condition (ie. the box isn't crushed). If it's in mint condition (still shrinkwrapped), you are holding gold.

One exception to this is diskettes: For reasons I don't quite agree with, most collectors feel that the condition of the diskette media is not nearly as important as the other materials, mainly because most of the software has been cracked and available. I disagree, because without working originals, you can never be sure if the cracked versions are complete (and in my experience easily 15% of them are not).

The ebay market for collectible software started to dry up around 2005, but for a very long time it was a hotbed of collectible software buying and selling. You can still find some reasonable bargains (ie. an average of $20-$30 a title) but most of the time it still costs $200 for a Kilrathi Saga, or $1600 for an original Infocom Starcross Saucer.

Man I rocked Vanguard on my Atari 2600 way back in 1982.

I haven't really played it much since, so I'm not sure know why he's spending all this time optimizing it?

Maybe they're working on Zond's AI, he was quite a wuss

It has Udo Kier in it.

I imagine it'd be pretty cool to play Hide and Seek in a 3D environment, although the hiding space options would be rather limited.

How about setting up a CAVE-like environment for some really VR Descent?

Oh, I don't know. Trying to become a virtual astronaut might be a lot of fun.

Competing with other players online in a simulation of the sorts of intellectual and reflex / endurance challenges required to actually become an astronaut would definitely give the game some content. Learning about NASA's current and future technology and being in the know to share with your classmates and parents would be pretty cool.(I know I loved the stuff when growing up).

Being part of a community with like minded.. dare I say, science geeks, sharing common experience, sounds like it could be a lot of fun.

When you consider games like Starflight and Flight Simulator were some of the best selling games of all time, it starts to seem like not such a bad idea. And, I'm not at all opposed to sponsors like IBM, Lockheed Martin, Tang, or the Discovery Channel which I would not deem out of place.

There's a lot of possibilities. Despite the project being flushed, I think the potential is there for something really cool. In fact, the market just maybe is ripe for a bloody game where you don't shoot other people all the time. It's been done many, many times before with surprising results.

Oh, I don't know. Trying to become a virtual astronaut might be a lot of fun.

Competing with other players online in a simulation of the sorts of intellectual and reflex / endurance challenges required to actually become an astronaut would definitely give the game some content. Learning about NASA's current and future technology and being in the know to share with your classmates and parents would be pretty cool.(I know I loved the stuff when growing up).

Being part of a community with like minded.. dare I say, science geeks, sharing common experience, sounds like it could be a lot of fun.

When you consider games like Starflight and Flight Simulator were some of the best selling games of all time, it starts to seem like not such a bad idea. And, I'm not at all opposed to sponsors like IBM, Lockheed Martin, Tang, or the Discovery Channel which I would not deem out of place.

There's a lot of possibilities. Despite the project being flushed, I think the potential is there for something really cool. In fact, the market just maybe is ripe for a bloody game where you don't shoot other people all the time. It's been done many, many times before with surprising results.

Then please, tell us your industry so that the rest of us can steer clear of it,

Game development, which inherits software methodology from the broader software industry, but munges it through the wringer of crunch hell.

See, some of us grew up with the concept that eliminating or avoiding bugs was more important than adding features.

Right. And so after you add any given feature, you will have bugs to squash, as one inevitably leads to the other. So your last phase will inevitably involve bug squashing.

Otherwise you're saying that when you enter your beta period, you have zero unexpected (early adopter) bugs. That must be some sweet beta period. What do you do?