As a pale youth, I spent many an hour perfecting my DC Universe-themed game on Adventure Construction Set, one of my favorite programs for my trusty Commodore 64.
This program allowed you to essentially design your own top-down RPG. It had a metric crapton of tile art that you could repurpose for your gaming needs, and with time and effort, you could even share your completed game with friends.
I was hoping to replicate the then-relatively recent Crisis on Infinite Earths maxiseries. Trying to rename characters and choosing semiappropriate tile graphics took so long that by the time I'd get to renaming locations, I was getting punchy.
I never quite got to the finished stage, alas; too many details kept cropping up. I'd polish up a bunch of stuff, get impatient and let the program finish designing the adventure for me, and then when I played it, I'd get things like Green Lantern entering the Fertile Crescent and being attacked by a snake or something goofy like that.
I also had the pinball and music construction sets, but this one was by far the most played.
Here's an example of the intro and a demo that highlights some of the features. This version is for the Apple II, but it's close enough for our purposes here.
Just thinking about this program makes me remember all the sounds the computer made. Closing the disc drive, listening to it whir, and thinking that you could gauge the progress of the loading by the sounds it made.
It's over 20 years later, and I still have yet to play a kickass Crisis on Infinite Earths game. Maybe I should bust the ACS out again...
Showing posts with label retrogaming. Show all posts
Showing posts with label retrogaming. Show all posts
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Retrogaming: Space Taxi
Today's game du jour of the day, Space Taxi, is another favorite from my Commodore 64 days.
In it, you operate a (wait for it) space taxi, taking passengers on presumably interplanetary journeys. There are various landing pads from which you pick up and drop off your fares; some are wide, and others are barely wide enough to land on without smooshing your prospective customer.
Once you pick up your last passenger in a level, he'll say (in passable voice synthesis), "Up, please." Make sure you navigate that portal at the top of the screen, or you will die in a mangled fiery heap.
And you won't get paid.
As the levels progress, it gets harder, with various gimmicks trying to keep you from making an honest space cabbie's salary, such as moving platforms, those pesky block holes, and the bane of many a driver's experience, a giant ping-pong game.
While it seems pretty simple, it can be a pain in the ass when you finally navigate through an 8-bit representation of Godzilla's lower intestine only to forget to drop your landing gear at the pad, and dying in aforementioned mangled fiery heap.
This game taught me to swear more effectively.
The basic gameplay can be found in the more recent Crazy Taxi. Now I'm thinking, here are two games begging for a mashup: Crazy Space Taxi!
Tell me that wouldn't rock out with your wok out.
Instead of traveling from screen to screen, you'd drive in various immersive space sectors, starting in our own solar system. Not only would it have proven gameplay potential, but awesome space graphics, too.
And you could get a passenger to ask you to "Take me to Uranus," thus promoting much puerile giggling. Just be sure, as my pal Karyne observed, not to ram the car upon reaching your destination.
Yes, we're both 12-year-old boys.
You can play an updated version, Space Taxi 2, or, if you're looking for that old-school thrill, there's some gameplay video below.
In it, you operate a (wait for it) space taxi, taking passengers on presumably interplanetary journeys. There are various landing pads from which you pick up and drop off your fares; some are wide, and others are barely wide enough to land on without smooshing your prospective customer.
Once you pick up your last passenger in a level, he'll say (in passable voice synthesis), "Up, please." Make sure you navigate that portal at the top of the screen, or you will die in a mangled fiery heap.
And you won't get paid.
As the levels progress, it gets harder, with various gimmicks trying to keep you from making an honest space cabbie's salary, such as moving platforms, those pesky block holes, and the bane of many a driver's experience, a giant ping-pong game.
While it seems pretty simple, it can be a pain in the ass when you finally navigate through an 8-bit representation of Godzilla's lower intestine only to forget to drop your landing gear at the pad, and dying in aforementioned mangled fiery heap.
This game taught me to swear more effectively.
The basic gameplay can be found in the more recent Crazy Taxi. Now I'm thinking, here are two games begging for a mashup: Crazy Space Taxi!
Tell me that wouldn't rock out with your wok out.
Instead of traveling from screen to screen, you'd drive in various immersive space sectors, starting in our own solar system. Not only would it have proven gameplay potential, but awesome space graphics, too.
And you could get a passenger to ask you to "Take me to Uranus," thus promoting much puerile giggling. Just be sure, as my pal Karyne observed, not to ram the car upon reaching your destination.
Yes, we're both 12-year-old boys.
You can play an updated version, Space Taxi 2, or, if you're looking for that old-school thrill, there's some gameplay video below.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Retrogaming: Hard Hat Mack
In sixth grade, I got to be the unofficial teacher's assistant in my computer class.
Partly because I'm just that cool, but mostly because I took the same computer class during summer school.
We had Apple IIes in our class, all with those crappy monochrome screens that were shades of amber or green. I only make note of that because they were impossible for me to see half the time, depending on the light. We did have one or two with full-color monitors, but we generally didn't use those.
So while I was the mad pimp Print Shop designer of the class, I never had much fun playing games in class (with the exception of Oregon Trail, despite the fact that my damn oxen and wagon floated away EVERY SINGLE TIME I tried to ford a river).
Until I showed up one day after school when two kids were using the color monitor to play a game, that to me, looked a lot like Donkey Kong, except different.
The kid playing lost his last man in the game, and it went back to the title screen.
Hard Hat Mack, published by some company called Electronic Arts.
It looked like a fun little game. You were a construction worker who had to achieve various goals -- welding, jumping, collecting lunch boxes -- while avoiding bad guys.
After taking a turn playing it -- and sucking mightily -- I was hooked. I had to beat this game.
Shortly after that, we got it for our computer at home, the Commodore 64. Well, technically, it was the 128, but we almost always ran it in 64 mode.
I was so excited to beat the third level, until I found out that the game just started over at the first level, but faster. But by then, I'd conned my parents into buying a good handful of games in addition to Hard Hat Mack, among them, Skyfox, Space Taxi, and Impossible Mission.
Below is some sample gameplay. Dig the sound effects and music. I can still hear it all even with the speakers turned off.
Partly because I'm just that cool, but mostly because I took the same computer class during summer school.
We had Apple IIes in our class, all with those crappy monochrome screens that were shades of amber or green. I only make note of that because they were impossible for me to see half the time, depending on the light. We did have one or two with full-color monitors, but we generally didn't use those.
So while I was the mad pimp Print Shop designer of the class, I never had much fun playing games in class (with the exception of Oregon Trail, despite the fact that my damn oxen and wagon floated away EVERY SINGLE TIME I tried to ford a river).
Until I showed up one day after school when two kids were using the color monitor to play a game, that to me, looked a lot like Donkey Kong, except different.
The kid playing lost his last man in the game, and it went back to the title screen.
Hard Hat Mack, published by some company called Electronic Arts.
It looked like a fun little game. You were a construction worker who had to achieve various goals -- welding, jumping, collecting lunch boxes -- while avoiding bad guys.
After taking a turn playing it -- and sucking mightily -- I was hooked. I had to beat this game.
Shortly after that, we got it for our computer at home, the Commodore 64. Well, technically, it was the 128, but we almost always ran it in 64 mode.
I was so excited to beat the third level, until I found out that the game just started over at the first level, but faster. But by then, I'd conned my parents into buying a good handful of games in addition to Hard Hat Mack, among them, Skyfox, Space Taxi, and Impossible Mission.
Below is some sample gameplay. Dig the sound effects and music. I can still hear it all even with the speakers turned off.
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