27th February 2013, 7:34 AM
Let me explain Operation: Inner Space. It was a rather odd game. I think you would call it a "shmup", except instead of being vertical or horizontal auto scrolling, it is a freely controlled "all range mode" style game. The whole thing is like a virtual online community. The premise is sorta like Tron in that you get digitized and are exploring your computer and the "net". You design your own ship, join one of the 8 "teams" in the world, and then start jumping into "levels". The game has as many levels as you have directories. You literally browse levels as your computer's directory tree, plus a few additional "fake" directories to represent special maps. The difficulty of each level scales upward as you make progress. The game asks you to collect "icons" as currency to buy upgrades to your ship. These icons are based on the actual icons in the directories, or if that directory has no icons, it will instead use generic icons to represent other files. The max icons in a level is 8, but if a directory has a lot of files in it, then you can complete the level, go back in, and it will give you the next 8. Essentially you've got a nearly unlimited number of icons to get. This was true even when the game came out in 1994 or so, as even then I had a massive directory structure. Now here's the thing. The game doesn't read .ico files. It can only read icons from .exe files. It'll pull multiple icons from those sometimes, but that's what it is limited to. If you want more "flavor" in your levels, rename your icons to .exe (Windows can still use them). Now onto the 8 teams. This "world" has a legal system. If you start attacking people who didn't provoke you, or breaking other laws like shattering icons instead of collecting them (excepting an icon that has been infected with a virus, which you should destroy as collecting it will infect you), then the enforcers get called in. They have a unique grappling claw weapon used to arrest people. Once in court, you'll have to pay a fine. Other teams have their own rules. Enforcers are the cops, there is another honorable group who aren't cops but do try to help people in trouble. There are also really evil groups who like to steal or just plain attack anyone they please. Also, there is "inner space". The normal "space" you fight in is inside your computer, but "inner space" is a level deeper inside your mind. You fight your own evil as some huge demon in that world. There are 4 gems you can get in that inner space as well, each one granting a very powerful weapon, representing the fundamental forces (strong and weak force, gravity, and light). Gather them all and you can eventually destroy your inner evil. Oh yes, some of the special directories include an arena and some race tracks. I should mention one rather well done detail. Whatever side you pick sets your initial relationship with everyone else in the game, but it can change. An avenger can eventually befriend a pirate if you help them enough. They all will talk with you as you wander around the levels, and you'll see familiar faces across them. Every individual NPC has it's own relationship to you. Sometimes helping one person will make another swear to be your eternal rival. It's a very interesting system that gives the illusion you are playing the game online, even though they are all NPCs.
All in all, it was a rather ambitious game. It is pretty fun, if you can stand the midi-est of all midi soundtracks. Play the demo and check it out. The demo is pretty expansive actually, and it's all I've ever played. As fun as the game is, it is hard to justify spending $25 on a game from the early to mid 90's. Honestly I'd love to see someone take the concept and add true online play to it some day, but as it is, try it out. I've yet to see any game quite like it.
Annoying. Yes Epic, Gears of War is cool and all, but I'd like to play some Epic Pinball too! The one bad thing about the freeware version of Boppin' is that it lacks any support at all for resolutions higher than 320x200. I mean it doesn't even handle a basic "upscaling", so if your video card flat out doesn't support that mode, the game just plain won't start, giving a generic video error. Jenni appears aware of this, and had considered releasing an update to fix that, but as of yet I've heard nothing of it. As it stands, in order to run it on my machine, I have to run it in "windowed" mode, which results in a VERY small box at my resolution. Other than that, the Windows version is the best because instead of MIDI it uses the original Amiga sounds.
I played Jetpack as a kid, yes. In fact, I linked to the freeware version of that game in the first link above, along with another game I played, God of Thunder. Interesting that a sequel is being made. That should be fun.
All in all, it was a rather ambitious game. It is pretty fun, if you can stand the midi-est of all midi soundtracks. Play the demo and check it out. The demo is pretty expansive actually, and it's all I've ever played. As fun as the game is, it is hard to justify spending $25 on a game from the early to mid 90's. Honestly I'd love to see someone take the concept and add true online play to it some day, but as it is, try it out. I've yet to see any game quite like it.
Annoying. Yes Epic, Gears of War is cool and all, but I'd like to play some Epic Pinball too! The one bad thing about the freeware version of Boppin' is that it lacks any support at all for resolutions higher than 320x200. I mean it doesn't even handle a basic "upscaling", so if your video card flat out doesn't support that mode, the game just plain won't start, giving a generic video error. Jenni appears aware of this, and had considered releasing an update to fix that, but as of yet I've heard nothing of it. As it stands, in order to run it on my machine, I have to run it in "windowed" mode, which results in a VERY small box at my resolution. Other than that, the Windows version is the best because instead of MIDI it uses the original Amiga sounds.
I played Jetpack as a kid, yes. In fact, I linked to the freeware version of that game in the first link above, along with another game I played, God of Thunder. Interesting that a sequel is being made. That should be fun.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)