Misadventures in DOSland: Stuff you've actually heard of edition!
By ArbitraryWater 10 Comments
Yep. Since none of you seem to have any appreciation for fighting games or Street Fighter Alpha, you can forget any more of those blogs. That's what I get for putting part 1 in the title I guess. I still intend to tackle story and choice for bad RPGs one of these days, even if it means making it more of a discussion topic or... I dunno. Asking Ahoodedfigure. He seems like the type to write a long, thoughtful blog on the subject. Me? I spend my time scouring shady abandonware sites and "Whatever was on sale this week on GOG" in order to record videos of them and make surface judgements that may or may not be indicative of final product. Of course, of the games I've bothered to mess with, only Betrayal at Krondor, Dark Sun and Wizardry VII have made lasting *positive* impressions.
This week, you may be surprised to find out that I've actually found earlier, crappier versions of games you know and love, in order to savage them before the internet. Or not. It's all cool as far as I'm concerned.
Warcraft 1. (yes, the first Warcraft game.)
Ah Warcraft. Before you were THE MMO that mattered in the world, you were a trio of very good RTS games. While some aren't the biggest fans of Warcraft III, I am not one of them. I'll take more small scale micro with RPG elements over zerg rush macro most days of the week. Oh, and Warcraft II was pretty great as well. But alas, we're talking about Warcraft. Which one? Warcraft: Orcs and Humans. Notice the lack of number. This game came out in 1994. That's 2 years after Dune II and 1 year before Command and Conquer. Thus, one could justifiably call the RTS genre "Fledgling" at this point in time. Which totally explains the nonstandard mechanics. Like how you have to manually order your units to move and harvest. The page on this site says otherwise, but I'm pretty sure I was pressing the right mouse button. That right there damns Warcraft far more than it probably deserves. Like Warcraft II, there aren't a ton of differences between the factions, but hey, I'll take what I can get. This game still has a lot of that Warcraft charm for being so early, but if this video isn't proof enough, I think you're good if you just play Warcraft II. Gotta love that intro narration though.
Sid Meier's Civilization: No Roman Numeral
While the original non-remake version of Sid Meier's Colonization found its way into my hands and this blog series relatively early in its run when I randomly found it at a thrift store, I hadn't messed with actual serious Civ 1 until I found it. On the internet. And yo, is it Civilization. Albeit, a somewhat more primitive civ, but you can already see a lot of the ideas that make the latter games in the series so great here. It's obviously not great about conveying information (then again, buildings kind of do what you expect them to do. Build a granary first.), but then again these games didn't really get good at that until Civ IV, and at that point the sheer volume of the ancillary mechanics were probably enough to scare off some. There's not really a ton to say, so would you kindly watch this embedded video?
Robinson's Requiem
What, you honestly expected me to go without a single shitty obscure title that I found during a GOG sale? In this case, I present to you from the developers of Ishar (AKA: That game that I literally posted the words "What the Fuck is this Shit?" and then a video) a game that seems like everything that is bad about old games. Robinson's Requiem is a survival adventure game, whatever the hell that means. Actually, what the hell it does mean is that you can die of just about anything and not having the right cure on hand at all times will lead to your death. At least, that's what I can figure out from the internet. I couldn't even get that far.
Amazing acting right there. You know, I'm being really mean to this game, as that video is clearly not indicative of gameplay. But, like Ishar it throws you to the wolves (pun intended) without a hope, a prayer, or any sort of information whatsoever. That's bad. Then again, maybe I'm not understanding the hidden quality bro. I mean, what if Hardcore mode from Fallout: New Vegas was actually anything resembling hardcore? Oh wait. Then it'd actually suck, as opposed to Hardcore mode only being hardcore if you're a pussy who's incapable of just carrying a bunch of water. Will something something again. But hey, it was $3. No harm done, right? Oh wait. Now it's going to be on my GOG shelf forever and ever. Crap. Better put it next to Master of Orion 3.
And with that, I should probably go to bed. I seem to post these really late, don't I?