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The Return of (Old) PC Graphic Adventures
KingofGnG writes "Though they belong to a genre already considered defunct and inadequate for the mainstream video game market, adventure games have a glorious past, a past that deserves to be remembered, and, of course, replayed. At the center of a good part of this effort of collective memory, there is ScummVM, the virtual machine which acts like an interface between the feelings and the puzzles from the good old times and the modern operating systems. As already highlighted before, the ScummVM target has grown immensely over time, going from the simple support of the 'classic' adventure games par excellence published by Lucasfilm/Lucasarts, to a range that includes virtually any single puzzle-solving game developed from the beginning of time up to the advent of the (Windows) NT platform. The last video game engine added to ScummVM within the past few days is Groovie, created by the software house Trilobyte for its first title released in 1993, The 7th Guest ."
While the definition of mainstream videogames can be debated, new adventure games are still sold in places like best buy and wal-mart. That seems mainstream to me. It is true they don't have the prestige or marketing behind them that they used to but they are still good.
I picked up the Agathe Christie series on a whim at best buy one day and am presently surprised.
adventuregamers.com and justadventure.com are still 'keeping it real' so to speak.
I still play the old King's Quest games on DOSBox... good times.
Productivity of all geeks over the age of 25 has dropped markedly.
The 7th Guest/11th hour were quite good, but maddeningly difficult. I wonder if we'll get "Return to Zork" too in a few years..
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
One of my favourite games that came out on ScummVM was Beneath a steel sky. Got the floppy version years ago, on my old pentium, but didn't have the book, so I couldn't get passed a certain point (where I needed the codes). When I was searching on the internet a few years later to see if I could download some illegal version somewhere, I came across the ScummVM website. I think it's really a good initiative, because I could now play this game on my linux box (there was no Dosbox yet, or at least I didn't know about it).
... I'm like totaly addicted to scummvm since ... can't remember.
Worse, I already played many of those games when they got out circa 1990. It went to the point I spent as much time playing as I spent studying ; factor in the occasional parties, and I still wonder how I managed to make it in the end.
Scummvm has allowed me since to play the few I missed in those times. I dedicated a whole Ubuntu on Usb to play scummvm on my Asus 900A while commuting. For all their shortcomings, netbooks are perfect portable retrogaming systems.
GBA and PSP ? pah ! Gimme a break... Those machines are designed to milk the player dry ; today games are not as much mind challenging as they used to. Their life is way too short. They look good for sure, at the expense of a deep story. No wonder so many people are on WoW. I would just save the GTA serie from the modern productions (and Rockstar games in general) ; they're the only one to provide games designed to entertain the player for hours on end without assuming he's the IQ of a hamster, with a challenging puzzle and a growing level of difficulty geared toward the solution of a rich storyline.
With many of the companies that made these games now defunct and out-of-business, how do you expect to connect to the activation servers in order to play these games?
And some of these games likely came on 3.5" disks, unless you happen to have an old disk drive connected to your machine, you're also out of luck, since we all know that you need to have disk #1 in the drive in order to get past the Securom checks.
Besides, I'm sure that most of you have long since used up your 3 installs.
Sorry, what's the news here "Hey guys ScummVM has been around for eons but it's pretty cool check it out" ?
Oh did you guys here that there is MAME out there? It can play a bunch of old arcade games, maybe we should submit something to Slashdot to tell the world about it? Or can we just use Slashdot to tell people about any program we want to promote? That's really cool then because you see I have this new program called Photosounder and it does some pretty cool stuff with images and sounds you should totally try it.
You just got troll'd!
Sorry, but ScummVM doesn't "virtually include any single puzzle solving game developed from the beginning of times".
In fact a whole giant half of the gaming history is missing.
The two adventure games giants back in the days where Lucasfilm/LucasArt and Sierra.
ScummVM was designed from day to support Scumm system (the system used by all Lucas*).
But Sierra's engine aren't all there. The old AGI engine used in their first games has been worked in. But the SCI engine behind most of the classical adventure period of Sierra games is still missing.
Hopefully a merger with the FreeSCI project could one day happen and fix this big hole.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Well, that's all fine and dandy, but when are we finally going to see SCI support (for Sierra's later games)?
I remember that many years ago, the ScummVM team said, essentially, "ScummVM is for SCUMM games only, therefore we won't add SCI support even though Sierra's games were the 'other big thing' along wit LucasArts'"; these days, with support for just about any and every engine thrown into ScummVM, is there any update on whether SCI support is planned? Or at least considered?
You're a poor kid aren't you? Haven't you ever heard of sarcasm? He's being sarcastic about the current situation of DRM and the ways of the past and cracking a joke about how it will be in 20 years from now.
Hi there DrYak. I can only assume you've gotten used to that perpetual wooshing sound going over your head by now.
It wasn't meant as a troll. Actually, I think it's great that games from 20yrs back are being appreciated today. But if you have a retail copy of Spore or GTAIV (or any other recent release), do you honestly expect to be able to play it in 2018 or 2028? DRM is robbing us of our future history. The next generation of gamers will never (unless they download hacked copies) be able to experience many of today's best games.
s/hacked copies/cracked copies
Sierra games used AGI, then SCI (think point and click). ScummVM has AGI support, originally based on the slightly buggy Sarien engine.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
If you need more current games for your ZX81, here is where you want to go:
http://www.zx81.de/english/_frame_e.htm
Novembers offering looks cool. Game a month still!
The one embedded in Fallout 3 was pretty cool to find. It being on a green screen really helped to bring back the feeling of playing them in the old days.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
You can hear the tunes from the 7th Guest and 11th Hour again, and download them, from Amiestreet: http://amiestreet.com/music/the-fat-man-and-team-fat/7-11-soundtrack-to-the-7th-guest/ I tried to make the audio CD a real nice experience, flowing from track to track, and kind of telling a story. I think it came out pretty enjoyable--it feels better to listen to than the CD that came with the game, or the mp3's. At least to me. I hope you enjoy it... http://www.texasmusicroundup.com/The_Fat_Man_p/ru0206.htm
Sorry for the troll accusations. It's just that I've seen so much troll copy-pasted on /. with only the names replaced (trolls about linux games, trolls about DRM, etc.) that I assumed it was one. Sorry I should think I little bit more before reacting.
Regarding the conservation of video games after a long time when the company has gone belly up :
Some game genres on classical computers have used extensive copy protection systems based on detection of original floppies.
(Commodore, Atari, Amiga...)
And currently the only reliable source for vintage games for these systems are the cracked copies.
So I think that indeed, as you suggest, the current official games are dead for future history and that future history will have to rely on current cracks. (Or the good will of developers to release one last DRM-free version before the company goes belly up. But this unlikely).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
DOSBox seems to be more compatible with more games. This seems like a hassle.
And don't forget about the adventure games that somehow worked something from the original manual into the gameplay. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, I'm scowling at you.
Yup. I remember. You had to constantly read your own copy of the Grail's book to advance in the game, just like Indy in the movie.
But also the various "Conquest" series of Sierra games which came packaged with extensive documentation about the era of the game and everything in the game being very strongly based on that culture leading the player to constantly cross check their documentation.
I personally think that it's a much more brilliant and unobtrusive mechanism for copy-protection than the average "Please type word 65 of paragraph 11 of page 174 of the manual" (Or even worse : the horribly long magical incantations from King Quest III that you had to copy as is).
Of course it integrates a lot better with puzzle/detective oriented gameplay like in adventure games or not too much combat oriented RPGs. Whereas today market is 99% FPS, and I really don't see how to integrate phases asking the player to pause the game and start mining the documentation looking for crucial clues in games which are usually action packed and fast packed (I don't know : detailed map of the battlefield that the player must scrutinize in order to sport possible place where the damn sniper who is constantly head-shoting has hidden ? Heroic fantasy gates that only open on answer of complex riddles that require knowledge about the in-game historical back-ground ?)
And not to forget the single most important factor that encouraged people to actually buy the games :
the games came in decent boxes *WITH* all the aforementioned documentation together with lots of additional merchandise :
additional books (Space Quest II came with a comics book) nice cloth maps that you could pin on the wall (a must have in some RPG with complicated geography) posters, even weirder stuff (Space Quest III came with a "Andromeda Guy" disguise). In the past, Infocom has been renown for the "feelies" bundled with the game.
A genuine legal game box had a lot of significant advantage over a pirated copy.
Today, most of the games are sold in small plastic shitty boxes. Containing only the disc, and the activation code. If you're very lucky, you'll get a small "quick-start" leaflet explaining you how to download Acrobat from Adobe's site in order to be able to print the documentation on your own.
There's absolutely no difference between a retail game, and something that you burn yourself and throw in a plastic box.
The diminishing quality of game packages, I think, has a small role to play in the fact that lots of pirate don't even see what's the advantage of getting a retail box.
Note that both my brother and I tend to buy my games in "Limited Edition" and similar package (Bought Dreamfall together with the artwork book, bought Paradise (intl:Last king of Africa) with the making of, etc.
Because if I'm going to give money to support the authors, I definitely want to have something worth the money in return - not just something that looks exactly like a home made CD/DVD. I really appreciate the art books, etc.
Nonetheless we download the game cracks right after installing the games, because we're just fed up with yet again some obscure DRM system that fails to recognize the original disc. (The first few Starforce games I've met, were systematically detecting forbidden background task - even if my Windows partition is empty and has no DeamonTools or whatever installed. The first few SecuROMs just was unable to detect the original disc. I haven't bothered to check if later versions of the games did fix these bugs - I just crack them by default)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
How the hell can a submission titled "The Return of (Old) PC Graphic Adventures," on a geek oriented website, no less, leave out the amazing Adventure Game Studio project and associated community? There is so much original, independent, and FREE adventure gaming awesomeness coming out of of here, I recommend any fan of the genre check it out.
Adventure Game Studio
In particular, I have to give a hearty recommendation to "No Action Jackson." The graphic style is a dead ringer for DoTT, and it's amazing on it's own merits.
"The game centres around Jackson, a young, role-playing obsessed nebbish who's got a D&D game scheduled with two of his friends. The only problem is that his mother refuses to let him leave the house because his grandparents are visiting. Jackson's first task is to somehow get out of the house without his mother and grandparents noticing. After finally escaping, Jackson is horrified to discover that his two friends have completely stood him up. You spend the rest of the game trying to track them down and convince them to play D&D as planned."
No Action Jackson
The dialog and puzzles are all what you would have expected out of a quality Lucas or Sierra game old. Do yourself a favor and check it out! There is plenty more where that came from. I mean, I love what the ScummVM team has done, but AGS is way more interesting to me, as it's delivering a lot more new and original gaming content.
"To lead the people, you must walk behind them"
I'll be sure to give it to you.
I AM THE WINNAR