Tendo City

The spirited debate between lazy, ABF, and myself over the merits of 90's era PC games really got me to thinking about a lot of old PC games that I used to play back then. I wasn't some huge PC gamer, but I had quite a few adventure games and RPGs and some other random stuff from back then. Maybe it's nostalgia talking, but some of those games were pretty sweet and it was cool remembering all of them again. So, with that in mind, let's talk about some old PC games!

Normality - A scifi adventure game from Gremlin set in a 1984-esque police state that put you in control of a hippy teen named Kent Knutson. Your goal is to escape from your apartment and into the city and then to bring about the downfall of said police said with the help of a group of rebels. Rather than having pre-rendered backgrounds like most adventure games from the same period, it had a first-person perspective that allowed you to move around [the engine was used again in Realms of the Haunting, which I'll probably bring up later]. It still had the same kind of point-and-click inventory gameplay seen in other adventure titles, but the 3D was a nice twist on the old formula. Normality was a very quirky game with a very quirky sensibility, much like the Lucasarts games of the time, and I recall it being an absolute blast to play.

As of yet, I have been unable to get it to work properly with DoxBox. :(

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvbiowQhjxc

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normality_(video_game)

Over a decade? That's hard, there aren't that many PC games I've played and consider great but that I haven't played at all in ten years...

Grim Fandango, maybe? Depends if we played it in '99 or '00... like many adventure games I played it once, and not again. If that's too recent, then other adventure games like Zork: Grand Inquisitor would fit. Great game, funny and well written with entertaining puzzles. It was slightly disappointing that the "spells" in teh game are just used as puzzle-solving items and nothing more, but in an adventure game, what should you expect, I guess. It's really too bad that the game was the last Zork game, it's a really good game and should have gotten a sequel, as I know they initially planned. (Need an older reason to hate Activision? :))

Rumbler, I've seen Normality before. I remember my friend playing it on his Mom's old desktop, back in the early 15th century. I recall it having an unsettling, dystopic sense to it...

I can't guarantee that I haven't played them for ten years, but I can think of a whole slew of old games from the 90's that I loved:

Sim City 2000
Sim Tower
King's Quest 1-6
Space Quest 1-5
Doom
Jedi Knight
Duke Nukem 3D
Wolfenstein
Spear of Destiny (Wolfenstein II)
Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold
Indiana Jones: The Graphic Adventure
X-Wing
Castles: Siege and Conquest
Dark Forces
Maniac Mansion

To name a few...

Quote:Over a decade? That's hard, there aren't that many PC games I've played and consider great but that I haven't played at all in ten years...

They don't have to be JUST games you haven't played in a decade, you know. Just some old PC games that you remember playing back in the 90's.

Quote:I recall it having an unsettling, dystopic sense to it...

Yeah, the setting was pretty weird. Like I said, very 1984-esque but also kind of cartoony at the same time. Overall the game was very strange.

One of the puzzles in the game was that you had to setting the drinking bird on the remote so it would bob up and down on the "ON" button so that the TV would stay on allowing you to leave your apartment undetected.

Quote:Castles: Siege and Conquest

There's another one that I played a lot of. I don't remember if I was ever very good at it, but I loved building and defending my castle and trying to manage my kingdom. There were some sequels, but I never played them.

That's Castles II: Siege and Conquest. Completely different from the first Castles, which was 100% focused on castle building. I loved the first game, amazing and unique concept... the second's just a grand strategy game, more like a Lords of the Realm but a little older and not quite as good.

Castles II was ridiculously easy to beat. I used to beat it every night. All you did was stack knights and archers. They only had 3 unit types. Castle design, as I recall, was irrelevent... there was purpose or strategy there, just have one of any shape here and there.

I got the first Castles on floppy disk, packed with its expansion pack The Northern Campaign, at some point in the early '90s. Castles 1 and 2 are on GOG.com now, but not The Northern Campaign... which is really, really too bad, because Castles: The Northern Campaign adds a whole bunch of awesome stuff to Castles 1, the game's far better with the addon.

Unfortunately, the addon cannot be played with the original campaign, and overwrites the Castles folder, so you need two separate installs, and then install the addon over one of them. It's too bad because it means you can't play the original campaign with the enhancements of the addon.

It was a pretty hard game, at least when I was younger. The point of the game is, as I said, to build a castle. Once your current castle is complete, you move on to the next castle. The original game had a five or six castle campaign set in a fictionalized Wales, the expansion eight castles set in fictionalized Scotland. The game is set in the 1200s, when the English were working on conquering Wales and Scotland (historically, they succeeded at the first, but not so much the second). You play as the King or Queen of Albion, aka fantasy England. In the original game you can choose your gender, supposedly, but appear as male regardless; in The Northern Campaign, there's actually a female monarch in the throne room scenes.

Obviously, castles take a long time to complete, as they should. You place castle elements -- walls of various heights, various kinds of towers and gates, moats, etc. to build your castle out of. Then you hire workers and place them on the things you are building. Each castle element builds separately and needs its own people working on it. Segments take quite a while to build.

In addition to building, you also have to hire soldiers because occasionally local rebels or warlords will attack you. Your castle isn't finished of course, so you'll need to remember which parts of your castle are actually built and plan your defense accordingly. There are just two types really, soldiers and archers, though I think the expansion adds a little more variety. In the original game you place your troops and then kind of just watch. In The Northern Campaign you have much better control of the battle in progress, and are able to give good movement orders to your troops defending the castle, etc.

The game also has an economic model, in The Northern Campaign especially. In the addon you can buy and sell various things such as land (you play as the king/queen after all, and nobles owned land), wheat, sheep, etc. You also need food for your workers.

Finally, there are also those throne room scenes I mentioned. Every so often there will be an "event" and you will be asked to make some kind of decision. You may get something as a result (or not) depending on your choice.


Here's a comprehensive list of the things The Northern Campaign adds to the game:


-Actual female playable character -- If you play as the Queen instead of the King, your character is actually female in the throne room scenes now, instead of just using the King's art regardless.
-New campaign to the north of Albion, against the Picts (read: it's set in Scotland now, as opposed to Wales like the original game), and it's longer and harder than the original campaign. If I remember right it has eight castles this time, compared to five in Castles.
-Troop training option for your troops to make them stronger. There are five ratings for troop quality, from Poor (1) to Excellent (5). All troops in the original game are considered Good (4) by this scale.
-Goods menu added -- You can now buy and sell Grain, Wool, Wine, and Land, and loan and borrow Money. That is, the economic model is much more complex now. Grain replaces Food from Castles, and the amount available varies depending on season (more in the fall, etc). Wool for clothing helps attract workers, Wine to make you more popular. Land makes you money. You can buy, sell, and confiscate it.
-New kinds of troops -- enemy archers, Vikings
-New combat options -- Cauldrons can be placed on diagonal walls, troops can be recalled and placed in new positions during battle, enemies now have archers and will attack in waves, and it is easier to direct your troops (larger area to click on to select the unit). Also gold boxes appear around your units when you select them, and red boxes around enemies when you tell them to attack them. Your Infantry will now not move until you tell them to, instead of just automatically moving towards the enemy. In total, it means that you can actually control battles in progress now, unlike before.
-The amount of money you have and how much land you own affects your score -- being going broke and/or selling off lots of land are not looked on positively.

Also I'm pretty sure it adds some more throne room scenes.

Anyway, I found it hard and definitely didn't beat it, but also thought it was really interesting and cool -- I always loved medieval stuff, ever since I was little, and this fit that perfectly.

The only other games I can think of even comparable to the first Castles is Stronghold. That one takes a much more RTS take on things, but is also almost entirely about castle building and defense, like Castles and almost nothing else. Castles is a great classic game. Complicated, archaic in interface, yes, but so interesting and unique that it's still a pretty good game really...

I haven't played it much in quite some time though. Maybe I should try it seriously again. :)

That sounds very dissimilar to the game I played. It was so simplistic.

One more I stupidly forgot:

All of the Age of Empires series.

That WAS my freshman-sophomore year of High School.

Yeah, Castles II was entertaining, but radically different from the first game. I do like the first game more, it was slow paced (lots of watching castle pieces build), but interesting...

Afterlife, I wish I still had that.

It's a simulation game like Sim City, only with, well, the afterlife. As you can imagine it's more comedic in tone than serious.

I dug around through my pile of jewel cases and pulled out some old PC games for some retro fun courtesy of DOSBox. So far I've got System Shock, Flashback, Ultima 8, and Relentless: Twinsen's Odyssey from my personal catalog to work. It's cool to be able to play these old games again, it's been ages since I last booted them up. I would be nice if it wasn't such a hassle though, even with DOSBox some games still won't run very well, or at all in some cases.

I've still got a few more that I'm going to try out like Alone in the Dark 1 and 2, Thunderscape, Dark Sun: Wake of the Ravager, Whiplash, Hexen II, Interstate '76, Out of This World, and a few games from the Forgotten Realms Archive.

Finally played some Normality again today, probably for the first time in at least a decade. Surprisingly, I still remember the solution to several of the puzzles early in the game. This is an awesome game.

I wonder if I'd still remember the puzzles to adventure games I haven't played in that long, like Curse of Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, Zork Grand Inquisitor, TimeLapse...

... Well I certainly remember The Puzzle from Timelapse, but anything else I mean. :) Timelapse is a Myst-style game, and at the end of the third world (of five I believe) there's a completely evil tile sliding puzzle that we tried to beat for hours before finally giving up in extreme frustration.

I mean, it's a tile sliding puzzle, first. They're always hard. But on top of that, second, when you finished one of the quarters of the puzzle, it would lock, meaning you could only work with the remaining part of the puzzle. And last, the starting locations were randomized, so no guide could tell you what to do.

Yeah, we quit playing the game at that puzzle. Good game, but that was just stupidly hard and no fun.

As is to be expected, some of these old games that I used to think were pretty cool aren't really so hot these days. Either they were frustratingly confusing, even then, or they have game engines that are horribly dated [tried to play some Menzoboranzon today, didn't make it very far before I got bored and shut it off]. A lot of the first-person RPGs from the early-to-mid 90's fall under this category unfortunately, although there are a few that don't [namely the Wizardry games, since they're turn-based].

On the other hand, there are a number of games that are still pretty awesome today. Normality being one, it's still highly playable, very fun and funny, and, although the graphics engine is little more than a step up from Doom, it still has a colorful, cartoony look to it that holds up surprisingly well considering it's nearly 14 years old.

I also played some Tyrian today, an old shareware favorite of mine from back when I still played games on 3.5" disks. It's a fun little shooter with a nice upgrade system and it also holds up quiet nicely.

Quote:System Shock, Flashback, Ultima 8, and Relentless: Twinsen's Odyssey from my personal catalog to work. It's cool to be able to play these old games again, it's been ages since I last booted them up. I would be nice if it wasn't such a hassle though, even with DOSBox some games still won't run very well, or at all in some cases.

I've still got a few more that I'm going to try out like Alone in the Dark 1 and 2, Thunderscape, Dark Sun: Wake of the Ravager, Whiplash, Hexen II, Interstate '76, Out of This World, and a few games from the Forgotten Realms Archive.

Of all those I only have Whiplash, I76, Out of this World (Genesis version), Alone in the Dark, and Relentless: Twinsen's Adventure... though I have played the Hexen II demo several times and have the first game. The Hexen games are good. Whiplash... fun, once you can get past the very rough 3d graphics (like Screamer, for example). Alone in the Dark I've already said never did interest me. Relentless is of course great.

I've thought about trying more Ultima games before (I only have Ultima Underworld and Ultima 1 thanks to PC Gamer's Classic Games Collection from the late '90s, on the magazine's disc one month), but just never have... I do agree that it's very hard to go back and play '80s or early '90s RPGs. I do have Wizardry VI and VII, and tried to play those several years back. I eventually stopped because of the manual mapping, very high difficulty level, numerous frustrating design decisions, etc. Wiz VI was worth playing some of, to see what it's like, but those games are so hard to play from a modern perspective...

Since we're talking old PC games:

http://www.abandonia.com/

I've even snagged a few games off there even though I have the physical copy still. Some of those games are kind of hard to install these days.

Quote: I do have Wizardry VI and VII, and tried to play those several years back. I eventually stopped because of the manual mapping, very high difficulty level, numerous frustrating design decisions, etc. Wiz VI was worth playing some of, to see what it's like, but those games are so hard to play from a modern perspective...

I only played Wizardry Gold [Windows 95 version of Wizardry 7], of the old Wiz games, but it was a really awesome game back then. I haven't yet gotten it to work, so I can't give an update on what I think of it today, but I think it probably holds up okay. Wizardry 8, the last game in the series, is pretty good too, but REALLY hard. It's the kind of game that doesn't hold your hand at all and expects you to play smart on your own.

Wizardry 8 is a game that I only played the demo of, thought was fantastic, but didn't buy then... and obviously since it's gotten much harder to find. I absolutely mean to play it sometime, though, for sure.

Wizardry Gold... honestly it'd probably be easier to get the DOS games (VI, VII, etc.) working, Win9x games which don't easily work in Win Vista/7 just will probably never work I think. I have several such titles, nothing I know of can make them work in Vista... but DOS is easy. Not all older Windows games have problems of course, but the ones that do seem to have bad ones.

... I'm sure I wrote stuff about Wizardry VI back when I tried playing it, but can't find anything at the moment. The kind of stuff that made me stop playing though...

-Character creation -- Basically it all depends on one random number. A single random number determines how many skill points you get, and that determines not only how good a character you start with, but which classes you can choose. There's no "reroll" button or "back up" or "cancel" or something, so you just need to go through the full character creation process every time until you get lucky and get one with a high enough number to get the number of points and class you want.

-If you fail to open a lock it can jam. It's very easy to fail and very easy to jam locks. Jammed locks are nearly impossible for lower-level characters to open and can get you permanently stuck if you're not really careful.

-Either draw out the maps yourself on graph paper or print off maps from the internet. There is no ingame mapping.

-One save slot. Save anywhere (as long as you're not in battle).

-All the areas look identical... I know this is true for all the first-person RPGs back then, but I didn't PLAY first-person RPGs back then, so I don't have nostalgia value for this stuff...

-Related to the above, when you need to find something the only "solution" I ever found was face every direction on every tile and search, until you find it. If it wasn't for that guide that at least told me the areas to look in for each vitally important hidden desk or passage or bed or whatever, I'd never have gotten even as far as I did. (That is, all furniture, etc, is entirely invisible, so good luck standing in the right place to search the invisible chest...)

The graphics were simple but nice, the writing good, the game interesting in its extreme hardcore nature, but it just wasn't tolerable for more than a few floors before I gave up.


Wizardry VII for DOS does have a map, but you don't get it at the start. You need to find it first, and it's WELL hidden in the first area -- without a guide, good luck! Also even then you can't just use it. You need someone with the correct skill in order to use it, and, you guessed it, no one will have that for some time. I didn't play far enough to see how useful the map actually is...


And stuff like that is why I think the high point of PC RPGs was between about 1997 and 2002. :)

Of course I do love the classic Quest for Glory series, but those are quite different... and awesome... a few minor issues (such as that there's no quest log of course in the first four games so don't stop playing for long enough to forget what you're supposed to be doing!), but mostly just amazing. The first one is the only one that I actually played 10+ years ago though, I didn't own the other four games until five or six years ago.

I tried to play Wizardry 7 again. Man, it has not aged well at all. Rose-tinted glass, ect. It's still playable, more than a lot of other ones, but I'm not sure if I have the patience to sit down with it and try to figure everything out. Disappointing, but not entirely unexpected.

Basically, with Wiz 7, take everything I said about Wiz 6 but make things slightly (only slightly!) less evil and confusing, and make the graphics nicer.]

Yeah, it's still a completely evil game incredibly hard to play from a modern perspective, just like every game in the series before it. Like that mapping thing I mentioned, so cruel... :)

Finally got a frontend for DOSBox, which makes things much easier to deal with. It's called D-Fend Reloaded and I can use it to boot up all my DOS games just by clicking on an icon and I can sort all my games by year, genre, developer, and publisher. Much easier than continuing to use the horribly-awful DOS interface.

I don't mind DOS, the only thing that would be nice (with a frontend) is custom dosbox.conf files for games that don't work with a standard one -- if you're using a disc image and need to mount it there, if it requires specific sound/driver setups (such as Zone 66), etc. Having to change that stuff every time just to play a game is annoying.

DOS itself though, that I don't mind at all... I used DOS for years, it's a pretty easy OS to use as long as you know how to do things. If I'm playing DOS games, I like having to get to them through DOS... doing it through some Windows shell would be cheating, and kind of beside the point besides. :)

Great Rumbler Wrote:The spirited debate between lazy, ABF, and myself over the merits of 90's era PC games really got me to thinking about a lot of old PC games that I used to play back then. I wasn't some huge PC gamer, but I had quite a few adventure games and RPGs and some other random stuff from back then. Maybe it's nostalgia talking, but some of those games were pretty sweet and it was cool remembering all of them again. So, with that in mind, let's talk about some old PC games!

Normality - A scifi adventure game from Gremlin set in a 1984-esque police state that put you in control of a hippy teen named Kent Knutson. Your goal is to escape from your apartment and into the city and then to bring about the downfall of said police said with the help of a group of rebels. Rather than having pre-rendered backgrounds like most adventure games from the same period, it had a first-person perspective that allowed you to move around [the engine was used again in Realms of the Haunting, which I'll probably bring up later]. It still had the same kind of point-and-click inventory gameplay seen in other adventure titles, but the 3D was a nice twist on the old formula. Normality was a very quirky game with a very quirky sensibility, much like the Lucasarts games of the time, and I recall it being an absolute blast to play.

As of yet, I have been unable to get it to work properly with DoxBox. :(

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvbiowQhjxc

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normality_(video_game)

I was watching on YouTube some guy posted all 40 million hours of him playing and beating normality. It looked like a really cool game... I was really getting into watching him play it, but then I accidentally closed the page and was unable to find the play list again.

You can buy a Euro import of Normality for less than $10. It's worth it for that price, definitely.

Quote:DOS itself though, that I don't mind at all... I used DOS for years, it's a pretty easy OS to use as long as you know how to do things. If I'm playing DOS games, I like having to get to them through DOS... doing it through some Windows shell would be cheating, and kind of beside the point besides.

The point? The point is that I want to play DOS games. The frontend makes that a lot easier since I'm spending less time fiddling with a command line and more time actually playing games. Plus I can input data about what year the game came out, who made it, what genre it's from, and even browse images from the games that I've saved. I know exactly what game I'm about to play before I even boot it up, even if it's one that I don't play very often.

And I can actually rename all my folders to the name of the game, instead of some abbreviated title or smashed together title that takes extra time to type out.

When you know what you're doing the command prompt is not always slower than a graphical interface... plus I still kind of like DOS, I wouldn't want it to be buried under some boring Windows interface. I'm playing DOS games, not Windows ones! Why would I want them to run like they're in Windows? That's my opinion, anyway.

I know how to work DOS, but that doesn't make it faster than this:



All my games are in one place with all the details laid out for me to peruse at my leisure. No mounting, no trying to figure out which file boots the game, and I know exactly what each and every game is. I can even save my CPU presets.

Also, I played two more games extensively today: One Must Fall 2097 and Flashback. Both of them are still pretty awesome. Flashback, of course, is an action platformer with lots of science fiction added in. The CD version has some awesome CG clips peppered around and they definitely add a little spice to the experience.

OMF is actually a fairly deep game, I'd forgotten most of what the game is like until today. You've got a pretty good range of robots and pilots, some interesting levels each with their own environmental hazards, and the tournament mode where you gain money to update your robot and purchase new and better ones is a pretty cool addition. It lacks the combo depth of a game like Street Fighter 2, but it makes up for that in other ways.

Quote:plus I still kind of like DOS, I wouldn't want it to be buried under some boring Windows interface. I'm playing DOS games, not Windows ones! Why would I want them to run like they're in Windows? That's my opinion, anyway.

I want to play games, not play DOS.

And that's obviously where we differ.

I mean, as I said I can see some benefit for sure, but I do like getting to games through DOS... :)

Does it make the games play better or more fun? No. Does it take more of my time away from playing said games? Yes.

Ergo, DOSBox frontend for me.

Sierra was pretty progressive during the late 80's and 90's. For one thing they were co-founded by Roberta Williams who went on to create and develop King's Quest, the Laura Bow series, and Phatasmagoria. They also worked closely with Lori Ann Cole [the creator of the Quest for Glory series], eventually hiring her on full time, and Jane Jensen who created the Gabriel Knight series.

I played some more Wizardry 7 today and I'm starting to remember why I liked it so much. Yeah, it's still fairly complex and not overly kind, but it's fun and it's got some neat touches that you don't really see anymore in games. Of course, there's still the old "I need to get back to the healing fountain but I this forest maze looks the same no matter which direction I go in so I end up getting killed by a pack of dandiphoots" going on, BUT THAT ASIDE it's good stuff.

King's Quest and Space Quest, both adventure series by Sierra, were huge for my brother and I into the 90's. So many great memories... my brother preferred SQ, and I prefered KQ. Man, those were fun times when I was younger... I still remember when I beat King's Quest II, how proud I was. I don't recall if I beat the Perils of Rosella, but man that was a badass game, too... never beat III, V or VI, though I did get very far into them. I beat the redone version of KQ I. Space Quest III was the best of that series, too.

My favorite was Space Quest 5, it had the perfect mix of humor and seriousness along with some cool music. Unfortunately, they never released a CD version, so no Gary Owens. :(

Space Quest V is the only one of the series I own. Good series, though it suffers from the same problems as so many Sierra adventure games, such as annoying random deaths and such. Also I never finished it because that EVA part near the end of the game is impossible. Even with slowdown I couldn't get to both things I needed and get back without running out of air or whatever.

It's kind of surprising how many adult-oriented games there were on the PC during the 90's, even from major companies. There's games like the Leisure Suit Larry series, Rex Nebular, some titles from CokTel Visions, the Spellcasting series, Leather Goddesses of Phobos, and lots of other random titles. They were getting away with stuff that console games would have been roasted for doing back then and have only just started doing with the past few years.

Console manufacturers didn't (and still don't) allow those kinds of games. That's why there were none.

I just got Duke Nukem Atomic Edition working on Vista, with the help of a badass new launcher and a super badass new 3D graphics upgrade... it's a whole new game, and I'm loving it. If you're not familiar with this 1996 release, it may be worth the time to rediscover it. One of the biggest changes is that all the old 2D sprites are now rendered in 3D, including the babes!

A Black Falcon Wrote:Console manufacturers didn't (and still don't) allow those kinds of games. That's why there were none.

Console makers got sent to testify before Congress because of blood in Mortal Kombat and grainy FMV of girls running around in nightgowns in Night Trap.

Compared to what PC games were doing at the same time, that's absolutely tame.

I still have to wonder why congress would be involved at all. If they're going to sue them, do it, otherwise there's no point in such a song and dance if no laws are being violated.

Well, the problem, in the mind of Congress, was that console makers were giving their blessing to and allowing the sale of adult-oriented material to minors. Which is why they got involved, involvement that led to the creation of and enforcement of the ESRB rating system.

Of course, they completely overlooked the fact that PC games at the same time were far more adult-oriented, even containing sex and nudity. But that's Congress for you.

Yeah, but on the PC there was no company which decided which games should be released and which shouldn't. It's much more open. That means it'd be a little bit harder of a target... plus I guess even then console games were more popular. Also console games aimed more at kids; perhaps that PC games usually aim a little older helped them?

You are right though, it's an interesting and somewhat odd contrast.

There was probably also the perception that PCs were tools designed for older people [i.e. adults] to work on, whereas consoles were toys designed for children.

And, like you said, there's no one company that decides what games should or should not be made for the PC, it's totally open. So there wasn't a couple of major corporations with a target painted on their back for Congress to pile on.

Great Rumbler Wrote:There was probably also the perception that PCs were tools designed for older people [i.e. adults] to work on, whereas consoles were toys designed for children.

Yeah, I said that in my last post. I'm sure that that was part of it, and it is at least somewhat valid really -- computers ARE much more varied machines and DO have older userbases, even if we just look at games. And consoles are more for kids, even more so back then than today. I mean, now there is much more aim at hte 20something audience too, but then it was mostly kids, games like Mortal Kombat and Night Trap were in a way pioneering... though MK was kind of a cynical one, a "not for kids" game with an audience that included a great many children... :) But oh well, most gamers were younger then so that was to be expected.

Quote:And, like you said, there's no one company that decides what games should or should not be made for the PC, it's totally open. So there wasn't a couple of major corporations with a target painted on their back for Congress to pile on.

Yeah. They could have aimed at publishers and retail stores, I guess, but that'd be a much wider target than just looking at two companies...

Oh yeah, and speaking of cynical, the way Nintendo beat up Sega in the press and in the hearings and then turned around and, by late 1994, allowed in violent games on their system too (albeit with ESRB ratings) was kind of obviously an attempt to hurt Sega more than anything. A successful attempt, too.

Ever play Betrayal at Krondor? The CD version was just put up on GOG.com... I have it already (on actual CD), but if you don't, it really should be a must-play, no question.

I used to have it a long time ago, don't know if I still do. I have a copy of Betrayal at Antara, a Windows 95 game, but it runs too fast in the overworld and I haven't set down and tried to fix it yet.

Also, I played a little bit of the first Ringworld adventure game, Revenge of the Patriarch. It's pretty fun, looks good, and has decent puzzles. It's also reasonably well-written. It makes me realize that there just aren't very many serious scifi games anymore.

I haven't played Antara, but opinions on it are pretty universal that it's alright, but the first game is better... (and the last one, Return to Krondor, is probably the worst). BaK of course is DOS so it just runs in emulation.

I played Betrayal at Krondor a bit today. From what I've seen so far, it looks like a nice medium in the RPG genre for the early 90's. The early battles aren't overly difficult and it's got a huge, open world but one that's a bit more focused than most on account of it mostly taking place along a series of majors roads and the immediate surroundings, rather than having a wide open country to wander through.

The dungeons are disappointingly maze-like, but that's to be expected. This is definitely a game that I can see myself playing more of.

Honestly, I own it on CD (since a year or two ago) and had the freeware floppy version for years before that, but I never played it as much as I should... some of the battles are frustrating, and it has some annoying oldschool aspects to it. I should play it a lot more than I have though, for sure...

It, along with Wizardry 7, Quest for Glory IV, and maybe Dark Sun 2 as well [haven't played enough of that again to decided yet], are probably among the most playable today of RPGs released during the early 90's.