Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Star Guard — an Old-School Platformer Done Right

Posted by Soulskill on from the 39-deaths-i-am-terrible dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Rock, Paper, Shotgun points out a new game called Star Guard, a Flash-based platformer for Mac and PC that's a throwback to the early days of computer gaming, yet still entertaining. They describe it thus: 'Its greatest strength, to my mind, is throwing out the old-school traditions of difficulty. It does certainly get tricky, requiring the platformer standbys of carefully timed jumps and learning enemy patterns — there's something of a Metroid vibe to it. But you don't get punished for failing to meet one of its challenges — you're just plunged a few feet back to most recent checkpoint, and carry on. Lives are not finite, but the small mound of green pixels that mark your corpses are a maudlin testament to your ineptitude. However, death is useful — I ritually found myself sending in a suicide spaceman, taking out an enemy or a mine so that the path was clear for my next go. ... However, it doesn't leave people who pride themselves on their gaming skill, and demand their games to be hard, out in the cold. At the end of each level, your score alters dramatically depending on how many times you died.'"

18 of 107 comments (clear)

  1. Just watched the video... by Yvan256 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    There's old-school and then there's too-old-school.

    I'm not one to usually say this, but the graphics really do look dated (what is that, CGA graphics flashback?), as well as the gameplay and sound effects (almost sounds like the simple PC speaker that we got rid of a long time ago, thank you very much).

    This game seems boring at best. And why compile the damn thing for PC and Mac? Why not just embed the damn Flash game into the webpage itself?

    1. Re:Just watched the video... by Yvan256 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      If you want to see a good game with simple graphics, look at http://www.canabalt.com/.

      Damn thing only has 6 colors and yet it looks amazing.

      As for being a good game, watching the video sure doesn't makes me want to play it, and I've started playing videogames in the Atari 2006 era so I'm not biased against old-school games (Night Stalker on Intellivision is a good game, for reference).

    2. Re:Just watched the video... by scaryjohn · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I haven't tried to play it yet, but I would give two thumbs up to the CGA color scheme if they'd used the CGA palate: #55ff55 instead of #00ff00, et c. As someone who played old timey games on old timey hardware, seeing the VGA palate in retro games or in emulators always throws me off.

      --
      One might ask the same about birds. What ARE birds? We just don't know.
    3. Re:Just watched the video... by Yvan256 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      IMHO Star Guard wasn't worthy of a Slashdot article and smells more like an ad, even if the game is free.

      There's also the fact that if it's a Flash game, why not embed it in the webpage directly? I'm not running random programs from the 'net, and that includes games.

    4. Re:Just watched the video... by mikael · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Perhaps it is the simplicity of the graphics and sound - all those DOS games didn't use more than a handful of commands to interact with the screen (draw points, draw lines, draw circles/eliipses, fill circles/ellipses, paste pixelmap), and the sound command (which directly set the frequency of the speaker).

      You might just find that PC's still have the speaker built in - I found out that when keeping the [Shift] key pressed for more than eight seconds, then there was a Frogger type sound and something called Speed-Keys popped up.

      Take away the Dolby surround sound, the 24-bit HD framebuffer with motion-capture character animation and most games would probably have the same gameplay as these DOS games. Though, there are better Flash games

      Super Mario 63 is a Flash version of the Super Mario platform games.

      Crazy Planets is a missile type game based on the curvature of a planet, rather than a simple grid

      --
      Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
    5. Re:Just watched the video... by c6gunner · · Score: 2, Informative

      Wrong on both points. CGA was only 4 colors

      Built around the Motorola MC6845 display controller, the CGA card featured several graphics and text modes. The highest resolution of any mode was 640×200, and the highest color depth supported was 4-bit (16 colors).

      and the PC speaker just went "beep".

      A PC speaker generates waveforms using the Programmable Interval Timer.[citation needed] The PC speaker was often used in very innovative ways to create the impression of polyphonic music or sound effects within computer games of its era, such as the LucasArts series of adventure games from the mid-1990s, using swift arpeggios.[citation needed] Several programs, including MP (Module Player, 1989), ScreamTracker, Fast Tracker, Impulse Tracker, and even device drivers for Linux[3] and Microsoft Windows, could play pulse-code modulation (PCM) sound through the PC speaker using special techniques explained later in this article. Several games such as Space Hulk and Pinball Fantasies were noted for their elaborate sound effects; Space Hulk in particular even had full speech.

      I'm guessing that the people who modded you "informative" were probably born in the 90's.

  2. Runs on Linux just fine! by flajann · · Score: 3, Informative

    I don't know why they would specify "Mac or PC" with a Flash game. It ran on my Linux system just fine. They had me thinking it wouldn't work under Linux for some reason (and I do know of some Flash apps that crap out under Linux!)

    --
    Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
    1. Re:Runs on Linux just fine! by Yvan256 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If it's really a Flash game then why embed a stupid video on the webpage instead of the game itself?

    2. Re:Runs on Linux just fine! by rliden · · Score: 2, Informative

      If you're going to be that broad with the definition of "PC" then Mac would fit in that category as well since it's also a personal computer. It's pretty much accepted slang that PC means Windows when describing OS versions.

      --
      Don't think of it as a flame, more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage.
    3. Re:Runs on Linux just fine! by SharpFang · · Score: 2, Informative

      Wait, you used it on Linux/x86?
      Well, then it's a PC. They never said "Windows".

      --
      45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
    4. Re:Runs on Linux just fine! by Vexorian · · Score: 2, Informative

      Did you somehow happen to be running your Linux on a PC?

      --

      Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
  3. Spelunky by Allicorn · · Score: 3, Interesting

    http://www.spelunkyworld.com/

    Utterly unforgiving, cute, fascinating, free, old-school platformer.

    (windows only sadly)

    --
    OMG!!! Ponies!!!
  4. How shocking by Angst+Badger · · Score: 5, Insightful

    yet still entertaining

    Shockingly, we played games in the 8-bit era just as obsessively as the current generation plays games in the present day. Still more shockingly, we enjoyed the hell out of them without spending a lot of time thinking about how much better the graphics would be in twenty or thirty years.

    This isn't a getoffmylawn post, though I'm sure someone will react that way. The graphics in the current games are pretty impressive; I'm often amazed at how good each new round of games looks. But as a great many gamers who weren't born until well after that 8-bit (or, for that matter, 16-bit) era will readily complain, there are still a lot of genuinely awful but visually impressive games out there. As with software generally, presentation can enhance functionality, but cannot replace it. And, of course, when it comes to games, functionality is enjoyability.

    Good games are good games. Better technology can sometimes add to them and sometimes not, if the various attempts to "upgrade" Pac-Man with 3D graphics are any indication. Play the games that are fun, and leave the marketroids to bloviate about their benchmarks.

    --
    Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
    1. Re:How shocking by Garrett+Fox · · Score: 2, Informative

      "presentation can enhance functionality, but cannot replace it."

      That's the key part. The game advertised in the article seems like it rejected that advice on the theory, "Oldschool games focused more on gameplay, so let's go out of our way to make it look primitive instead of getting some halfway-decent graphics and sound." Ie., decent graphics and solid gameplay aren't mutually exclusive.

      I nominate Cave Story (freeware) as an example of classic Metroid/Castlevania-style gameplay done right in the modern era. The graphics are roughly 16-bit-era, the music is memorable without the use of the Japan Symphony Orchestra, and there's simple, fun gameplay with an interesting story (and even a hidden extended storyline).

      --
      Revive the Constitution.
  5. How did this make Slashdot? by richtaur · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm not bitching here, I promise: I am legitimately curious. I've played dozens of games like this and I know people who make games like this who would LOVE to get their game on Slashdot.

    So what am I missing? How is this different or unique enough to justify a Slashdot posting? ... Anybody?

    1. Re:How did this make Slashdot? by Jesus_666 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Plus, it's not even written that well. The control scheme (which is never explained) makes sense only on QWERTY keyboards and can't be changed and the game occasionally freezes (but that might just be the incredibly buggy "MAC 10,0,32,18" Flash player). The "PC" and "Mac" versions appear to be identical in everything but name and neither is a native binary.

      I have no idea why this was considered newsworthy, it's just bad.

      --
      USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
  6. Re:Gamepad? by PyroMosh · · Score: 2, Informative

    I too was rather irked at that. But there are lots of gamepad to keyboard emulators out there.

    For instance, Xpadder. That one doesn't even require any kind of install. Just run it, configure it the way you like, and play.

    --
    Touch everywhere, even when inappropriate.
  7. And yet he kept on playing... by John+Pfeiffer · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Fine. I beat the damn game. Not because I was enjoying it, but because I'd be GOD DAMNED if I didn't beat this damnable game! The first part of the boss fight was BULLSHIT. It took me 60 lives to beat Level 9 on my second try. Fuck that. ARRGH! At least now I can delete it from my hard drive.

    --

    Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*