Monday 9 January 2006

Pic of the day: "Miss what? I don't know what you mean!" Also, I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Both come to mind during a process such as this:

Game slaughter resumes

If you are tired of this, imagine how it feels for me. Luckily I am starting to see the end of this. And I wish to record this, so the readers (and my future self, if any) can judge me as harshly as I deserve.

Havets Hersker is a game in Norwegian, that's why the name makes no sense. It is about trading and war on the high seas. Not very good, I think, or I would have played it for more than a couple days.

Eco Quest is mainly for children, focusing on ecology and starring dolphins. From Sierra. Unfortunately (for them) I developed a healthy aversion to any adventure games from Sierra. And anyway it is not the kind of game I play anymore, not for a long long time.

Winter Olympics Lillehammer '94. Sports game? Whatever could possess me to buy that? Of course, almost all of Norway was in an olympic craze. I may simply have wished to understand better what was going on. Yeah.

Dungeons & Dragons Fantasy Empires: Features a computer Dungeon Master! Eh, that's a cartoon character that is partly visible on the screen. Sorry, it was not very good even when new.

Task Force 1942, surface naval action in the south pacific. Still in its shrink wrap. This actually has a reason I can remember. I got it as a gift. Unfortunately I did not like that kind of game even then. It is a shame really. But then there is a lot of shame in my life.

Master of Orion, affectionately known as MOO, is a game that veteran gamers mention with reverence. This space strategy game by MicroProse was sometimes called "Civilization in space". Those veteran gamers better not look now. SNAP! CRACLE! POP! -At least it was a quick an painless end.

The Chessmaster 4000 Turbo - still the finest chess program in the world, in 1993. It was indeed pretty and went out of its way to try to teach me chess. Sadly my mind is too fickle and fleeting to stick with such a strenuous exercise for long. Besides, I have now utterly defected to Go. Chess holds no interest for me.

Utopia is a colorful Sim City competitor in a futuristic setting. Not as good as Sim City though. Did not last long. Also it has an Amiga look & feel.

Kingmaker - the Quest for the Crown. A strategy game set in the Wars of the Roses. I enjoyed this greatly, but it is long ago now. It no longer holds the same appeal. I have not played it in many years, and would not do so in the future either, to be honest. I know that.

Sim City 2000 on the other hand... that's a true classic. Not as advanced as Sim City 4. To be honest I would probably play SC4 if it came to that. But the memories, oh the memories... Nostalgia overload! And so recent that I could theoretically imagine playing it on my current machines. I'm saving the floppies just in case...

Ultima VII: The Black Gate and the Forge of Virtue expansion pack. Oooh! Cloth map! Must protect the cloth map! So many memories, too. While this game marked the descent into darkness (not to say madness) of the last trilogy, it still had much of the old flavor and was at least set in old Britannia. How well I remember traveling its swamps, and baking bread in the city's bakery, and hauling vegetables for the market... Sniff. I am totally sparing this one, against the better judgment of my logical mind. Perhaps next time I'm ready to let it go.

Ultima Ascension (Ultima IX). The last of them (and about time too). Buggy and of questionable content, but player-made patches have been made to fix this. There is still work in progress to create the True Ultima IX using the Morrowind game engine. But until then, I guess I keep this one. It has the benefit of being actually playable on modern machines. And it has a cloth map!!

Pagan (Ultima VIII). God, how I hate that game. It is fundamentally an attack on religion, camouflaged as a role playing game. As the Avatar, you are to summon demons by using pentacles and black and red candles. You are to learn white magic from a benevolent deity and then betray it. More stuff like that. Twisted and brimming with trendy shock value. This game was still lying in the fluffy package in which a friend returned it after borrowing it. I did not open it again. If I had known then what I know today, I would have just let him keep it. Not that it will run on today's machines. It had its own video system that was incompatible with industry standards, and almost certainly with any hardware made in this millennium and then some. Die, heathen artifact! Perish and burn! Not even your cloth map can save you from the wrath. It is of a foreign land anyway, not our beloved Britannia. - I think I'll keep this shiny pentacle coin, though. Did you know the pentacle (or pentagram) was actually a symbol of good? Called "Solomon's Seal" it was a talisman of protection, until the self-styled dark witches and Satanists perverted it for their own purposes. Hmm, perhaps I should drill a hole in it and wear it around my neck? Not that I am superstitious or anything.

The Silver Seed is an expansion pack to Serpent Isles (Ultima 7B). It goes the way of its parent, of course. Ugly evil twisted thing. Even the cover picture is too disgusting to look at.

Outpost: This science fiction colony game is the most realistic of its kind I have seen. That may not say much, but it is still a redeeming feature. I enjoyed it deeply and unconditionally, except that it is more than a little dated by now. I don't expect to play it again, but just in case, I'm keeping the CD.

Sofie's Verden is Norwegian and is the original title of "Sophie's World". The game wasn't as good as the book. I just know I'd never open it again anyway.

Deadlock – Planetary Conquest. I don't remember if it locked up, but it is definitely dead. Strategy game, but not one that impressed me.

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, however... that's a strategy game that did impress me. Despite its misleading title (it was actually not made by Sid so much as Brian Reynolds, say would-be insiders. I don't know, but it sure was good. The quotes from the imaginary leaders alone are worth buying it, and playing it trough at least once. Several of them have featured in my journal from time to time, as they actually said things better than I could. I don't know who wrote their lines, but he (or possibly she, though they don't sound feminine) was a genius of epic proportions. A keeper.

Sim By (presumably Sim Town in English) is a cross between Sim City and the never finished Simville, but for children and with a heavy focus on ecology. Not too bad, but not good enough for a middle aged man such as I to keep playing. Also, The Sims and later The Sims 2 have expanded to fill that niche with far more immersive gameplay.

Ocean Trader is set in the modern age of bulk and tank ships. It is simple but good, just not good enough to hold my attention in the long run. Also (c)1995 Software 2000.

Theme Hospital: There has never been anything like it, which is why I am reluctant to throw it away even though I don't feel like playing it anymore. There may be a time in my future when I may want to play it again. Probably not though, since there is unlikely to be a time in my future when my best friend is a medical student. I'll just keep the CD until next time I move (if ever, which I sincerely hope, just not for the next couple years).

OS/2... wait, that's not a game. A joke, perhaps, but not a game. To the garbage heap of history with it.

Speaking of which... MS-DOS 5 upgrade. I have seen smaller bibles than the handbook that came in this box. But who will save it now? Contains 5.25" floppy disks only. Besides, I replaced it with DR-DOS 6. I actually have a computer at work running that still. No, seriously. But enough about that, back to old games.

Magic the Gathering: This was actually quite good. It was horrendously slow back when it was new, but I bet it would run great on newer machines. Sadly I have lost all interest in the game. I just threw away the MtG comic books, and the trading cards probably will go the same way. Did have some fun with those for a little while, but there have come ever new editions later that I haven't even heard of. I don't think the cards are worth anything to anyone now, nor is the game.

Wing Commander: Privateer: This was the game I meant when I said I would rather play a successor to the original Wing Commander if I found a platform that could run that kind of games and at the correct speed. I loved this game, with its mix of interplanetary trading and dogfights in space. The joy of flying in space ... a part of me will probably always miss the age when we could experience that in our dreams. I'll keep this one till next time I move, I think, as the lone relic from that great line of Origin games.

Star Trek – the Next Generation – a Final Unity. While the expression "a final unity" has become part of my active vocabulary, the game is not worth more space than this, I think.

The Settlers is, I believe, known in the USA as "Serf City" or some such, probably due to copyright or trademark issues. The original, cartoonish game that did not take itself seriously was actually made by a German company (Bluebyte). Who could have thought Germans could make anything worthwhile in the modern age? It just goes to show, never judge a person by their ethnicity, not even such a deplorable ethnicity as the German. However, the game is far, far past its "best before" date. Sorry. And it's not like there is a lack of successors.

Theme Park: About as original as Theme Hospital, but less in my field of interest. Also very old now. I believe there are newer games with a similar theme, as it were. I know this game came out around the same time as the first "Alone in the Dark" (which I incidentally never bought, there are limits even to me). I know I joked that there would be a combined successor called "Alone in Theme Park".

Frontier – Elite II was an awesome game of its time, blending science fiction trading and some fighting with real life astronomy lessons. I loved it, but it was kinda long in the tooth even back then. It is time for it to join the memories, lost in the fog of faraway history. Dreams of a future that would never come.

Rise & Rule of Ancient Empires was yet another Civilization challenger, and like them all, it failed. There is not much more to say. Not even honorable mention. I was disappointed even as I played it, though it did have a few interesting features. It was not this game that came to rise and rule the world of strategy gaming, though. It did not stand the test of time...

That will have to do. There are a few more left, but I need something to prop up some computer equipment until I move it in a couple days. More to the point, my hands are almost numb from tearing apart so much cardboard over the last few days. A friend is coming over with a car to drive stuff to the garbage / recycling center. I think I may well have a car full now. That's a creepy image, is it not? A car full of months and months of wasted money and time. And some very fond memories.