early CRPG immigration patterns

Some early D&D-type games for home computers allowed the importation of characters from other early D&D-type computer games.  Above is an attempt to map some of them.  Not all versions supported this features (the C-64 version of a game might support such a feature, while the Apple II version does not, etc.) so this map is at best an ideal.  A few interesting bits of trivia:

• The earliest version of Wizardry II straight up required you to import your PCs from the original game.  Someone eventually figured out that this limited their sales to people who had played the original and a chargen feature was eventually added.
• Deathlord is a fairly obscure computer RPG with a mythic Japanese setting.  Thieves and fighters imported from other games find themselves transformed to ninja and samurai.  Also, if you like overland exploration in the vein of Ultima III and IV, Deathlord's wilderness map is supposed to be much larger than either of those games.
• Dragon Wars started life as Bard's Tale IV, but corporate shenanigans ensued.  It's supposed to be pretty dang good.
• You can't bring your Ultima III characters into your Ultima IV game, but maybe PCs from both adventures can join forces together in Bard's Tale III!

my high score: 18,710

Online Physics Games

For another interesting new spin on an arcade classic, check out worldsbiggestpacman.com.

ridiculously nostalgic C64 picture post

You know what would be really cool?

It would be really cool if someone made a video game like this. I'd play 3-D Badass Gun Fu Short Order Cook with Explosions and Classic Rock Soundtrack until my eyes bled.

Geocities Redux: Space Invaders

I believe I first played Space Invaders at Glen’s Pizza in Flanagan, Illinois. Flanagan was the closest town to the farm I grew up on, and Glen’s was the only pizza place there. They did a nice little thin crust pizza.

I loved the art on the machine almost as much as playing the game: these weird energy creatures hurling missiles Zeus-style down at your sorry ass.

Later, when my family got an Atari 2600 (back then it was the Atari Video Console System) my sister and I played a lot of Space Invaders on it. Sure, we played other games. Lots of other games. But nowadays when you can download damn near every Atari game they made, I find myself playing Space Invaders over and over again.

For all its graphical crudeness, Space Invaders was an elegant game design. It had a sense of psychology to it. These days, video games tend to be graphical masterpieces but sometimes they fall down in terms of plot, pacing, or storyline. Space Invaders managed to deliver on all of these items, admittedly in a minimalist way.

First, the premise was a classic: stop the inexplicable Other from attempting to take over your world. Nothing fit better in the Reagan 80’s remix of 50’s cold war paranoia.

Maybe I watched too many old black-and-white B-grade sci-fi flicks as a youth, but the premise clicked for me right away. Zap the bug-eyed monsters from outer space. Right now! Who knows what they will do to us if they land?

The gameplay was simplicity itself: joystick moved you side-to-side. Press the button to fire the gun straight up. You faced two main complicating factors. For starters you could only have one bullet on the screen at time. This fact meant that a clean miss cost you precious seconds that you didn’t have. You were trying to stop an alien invasion, for chrissake! When is that gun going to reload?

The other complication was the three barriers that hovered just above your little battle platform. Ostensibly these things were there to shield you from alien fire. And I did duck behind them plenty of times. Unfortunately they all too often shielded the aliens from a shot I was trying to line up. Heck, sometimes I found it necessary to blast a hole through my own defenses.

Above all other considerations, the thing that made the game truly one of the best of all time was the nature of the Invaders themselves. They came in a confusing variety of weird designs, yet they attacked in well-ordered, tightly disciplined formations.

What were these creeps? Why were they working together? The extra creepy part was the fact that the invaders had eyes, they had faces. For the love of God, Montresor, they had faces. Those weren’t gigantic alien saucers coming at you, they were space monsters. These handfuls of freakishly arranged pixels filled me with uncertainty and dread. The only thing I knew for sure was that they had to die.

So I blasted ‘em and blasted ‘em. And then they would go into uberweird mode. As the number of invaders dwindled on the screen, the speed of the survivors increased. Soon the last few would be flying like madasses, trying to blast me, the lone defender of the Earth, to smithereens. Those last seconds of the round were tense, because hitting the last Invader was hard. One miss and I’d be kicking myself as your laser blast crept up the screen. Meanwhile, the last baddie kept getting closer and closer.

And if even one of those bastards planted their tentacles or whatever on good old Mother Earth, that’s it. Game over. You lose. You let the earth be conquered by the Nazi Mutant Hell-creatures or whatever. Smooth move, ex-lax.

But what if you got that last guy? Somewhere the bug-eyed overleader yawns at the report that one of his 200 bazillion legions being destroyed by primitive apemen. “Send in another legion. Maybe one with training or some field experience.”

So another space army would appear on your screen. They warp in from hyperspace a little bit closer to Earth than the last one. They’d be just a hair faster than the previous squad. And they would slowly creep toward you, using the exact same tactics as the guys you just blew up. It was almost as if by stopping the first batch of monsters I had made things worse, not better.

It was as if the makers of Space Invaders had managed to tap into a sort of bleak, nihilistic heroism. You look into the sky and see an enemy that you can’t comprehend, much less defeat. They are numerous beyond counting. You have no chance against them. They will conquer the Earth. Despite knowing these facts, you choose to fight. Better to die free than live a slave! Aieeeee!

What a great game.

Dig these screenshots from Space Invaders '95 disproving my theory that any game can be improved with a little toilet humor!

Do you remember when video games were cool, when hot chicks used to hang out at arcades? Me neither.

What is this strange "jumping" of which you speak?

My birthday was on Sunday, which I spent sicker than a dead dog at a plague convention. That was partially my fault though, as I spent the previous evening attending an awesome wrestling extravaganza. That only aggravated the illness I was already suffering from. But this post isn't about the TNA house show. Maybe I'll write that one tomorrow.

Instead I want to tell you about the killer present I got from the team of my sister and my mom. They went into cahoots. Sis got me an Atari 2600 console in great condition and mom got me a box of old cartridges, almost all of which have their boxes and documentation intact. It's a sweet set-up for some crappy old videogaming. I've mostly been playing Space Invaders (Which I adore. One of my oldest webpages is a tribute to that game.), direct descendants of Space Invaders, and Pitfall! It's been probably 20 years since I read the instruction booklet for Pitfall! Dig these excerpts:


Whoa! Hold up there a moment, Tex! How the hell am I supposed to use the button and the joystick at the same time?! I'm not some sort of supernerd who devotes his entire waking existence to mastering such complicated videogaming techniques!


Ahem,

ACTIVISION, YOU OWE ME

---

Also, Demon Attack has the best cover art and promo blurb ever invented.

Marooned on the ice planet Krybor,
you watch legions of
eerie creatures scream overhead.
They hover ominously.
They give you no quarter.
Attack and destroy them--or be destroyed!
Armed with your Laser Cannon,
you confront the
ultimate challenge: Survive!

Is it just me, or would "They hover ominously" work as a band name?

morality in Ultima IV

This post is mostly for Stuart's benefit. I haven't played Ultima IV in years, so if anybody has something to add or wants to clarify my addled memory, please speak up.

Chargen in Ultima IV is unlike any other game I've played. You are in a gypsy fortuneteller's wagon, where she asks you a series of moral questions. None of these questions has a right answer, but instead you must choose one virtue over another. "You and your friend battle a dragon. He thinks he slew the beast, but you know that you are the one who struck the telling blow. Do you Honestly correct him when he claims the glory for himself? Or Humbly allow him to take credit?"

After a series of these questions you end up favoring one of eight virtues over another. Each virtue is tied to a class. The first time I played I ended up being a Bard, because my answer's favored their virtue. Compassion, was it? I think so. The second time I played I gamed the system, picking Humility at every opportunity so I could play a Shepherd.

Within the game you must achieve all Eight Virtues by meditating at the eight Shrines of virtue. Locating and gaining access to the shrines is a big part of the game, as is learning the proper mantra to chant for each virtue. After successfully achieving a virtue, you can lose it. Steal from people in towns? Lose a random virtue. Speak to beggars (some of whom have valuable clues) but fail to give them alms? Looks like you need to purify yourself at the shrine again, bub. Becoming virtuous was hard work. Staying virtuous means avoiding a lot of rascally behavior that many PCs get up to in D&D games.

Some of this looks a little hamhanded and hokey nowadays. But for a computer game with swords and orcs, circa 1985, this was pretty sophisticated stuff.

PC to tabletop: Ultima IV

There's been a lot of talk lately about video games like Worlds of Warcraft and Final Fantasy informing design decisions in the upcoming 4th edition of D&D. I fall in the camp that I don't care where a good mechanical idea comes from, but I'm not yet sure whether I want what other people consider to be good ideas in computer gaming. Still, I agree with the basic premise that a video game has the potential to positively impact tabletop play. Case in point: Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar.

I don't really play PC games any more and Ultima IV represented the highpoint of my interaction with computer gaming. I had played a bootleg copy of Ultima III, a less ambitious but still fun predecessor and I tried to enjoy the sequel but largely found it exchanged the soul the the earlier installments for greater technical sophistication and graphical embellishment.

Ultima IV featured great exploration of a huge overland map, secrets to be discovered, clues to be found, and interesting people to interact with. I found the dungeons genuinely thrilling and travel by sea exhilarating. And the quest of the game featured something previously unencountered in various Bard's Tales and Might & Magics and such: the evil to be defeated was not an external threat like an evil wizard or something. Rather the goal was to ennoble the hearts of the inhabitants of Britannia by leading an exemplary life of virtue. It was a game with a genuine moral dimension, not just a lameass alignment system.

The graphics were pretty weak, even by '80s Commodore 64 standards, but I loved the overhead view of the overland and town maps. The art was stylized in a way that made the lack of detail less important, in the way that a chess piece can be abstract but still symbolic.

One of the greatest thing abotu Ultima IV was the extra thing-a-ma-bobs that came in the box. (I guess someone at EN World decided that we would start calling this stuff "regalia".) For starters, you get an awesome cloth map of Britannia. Most of it is quite accurate, such that you can navigate large chunks of wilderness travel with it. The labels are all in a modified Viking style runic. A key for translation came in the box, but it wasn't necessary to use it to finish the game.









You also got two nifty stapled digest-sized books. I love digest-sized gamebooks. They just seem so light and fun. One of the books was titled The History of Britannia as told by Kyle the Younger. It was a great little mechanics-free overview of the gameworld, printed on a lovely heavy stock cream colored paper with brown ink and adorable little illustrations. Flipping through this book is a delight. Everything a starting player needs to know about the gameworld is contained in this small book, all presented in nice little snippets.

The second book was the spellbook. The cover was dark red with shiny gold runes on it. How can you not like that book? Inside each spell gets a one page description, largely free of mechanics and such, and a fullpage illo of some cool-looking wizard using the spell. Spells in Ultima IV weren't divided along class or level lines. Magic was just... magic. You might not have enough Magic Points to cast a particular spell, but you would only find something like that out via trial and error. The spellbook also explained the spell component system. There were only six or eight components and all spells made use of one or more of that set. The majority of these components could be bought at magic shoppes. But the two most potent components had to be found in the game.

Finally, each Ultima IV box came with a little cheap metal ankh, the symbol of morality in the game. In retrospect this use of the ankh has shades of Crystal Dragon Jesus written all over it. But I still treasure the ankh that came with my original copy of the game.


I look back at Ultima IV and see a lot of stuff I would enjoy in my tabletop games. Wouldn't it be great to be able to hand out a cute little booklet of campaign information, instead of a drab printout? And presenting a spellbook that looks like an occult tome would be the bee's knees. A cloth or parchment player map that looks genuine and is useful but that doesn't exactly match the official campaign map would be great. And I'd love to give out some sort of little gew-gaw to give players as a momento of a campaign. That's not even touching on the actual morality at work in Ultima IV. I'm not sure exactly what to do with that.

Q: Jeff, how awesome is Serious Sam?

1) When I finished the game on easy mode, I immediately started over at the next highest difficulty. I literally went from "End of game, huh?" to "Let's fire that puppy up again!" in the space of a few seconds. I have never done that on a video game before now. Usually I have zero interest in replaying stuff I've already tackled. But Serious Sam provides gobs of frantic action feeling. (It turns out that in Medium difficulty you can hurt yourself with misplaced grenade and rocket fire. That took some getting used to. No more dropping grenades at point blank range to clear out Beggar Mobs.)

2) I got the sequel and started playing it, too. But then on the first level I encountered a buch of non-combatants and a friggin' crate stacking puzzle. I don't want civilians in my non-stop shoot 'em ups and I sure as hell don't want to stop blasting baddies to stack some damn crates. If I wanted to stack crates, I'd get a job in a warehouse. That stuff is like pure anti-fun in this kind of game. So I popped out the disk and played some more of the original. But you know what? The first game is so damn fun I'm considering putting up with the unnecessary additions in the sequel.

I may have to shoot all the civilians, though.

Arctic Thunder & Heinz 57

So the wifi connection at the resort went down after my last post, but my family and I are now safely back in the Land of Lincoln. The bar at the resort we stayed at had a few videogames in the back corner. My daughter and I fell in love with one of these games, a snowmobile racer called Arctic Thunder. While Elizabeth loves racer games of all sort, most of them do little for me. But Arctic Thunder is seven shades of awesome. The little saddle-type seat you sit in is equipped with rumble technology and the accelerator being on the handle bar means that my daughter can completely operate the game herself. She can't reach the gas pedal on most arcade race games. But the real joy of Arctic Thunder is in its sheer over-the-top gonzo-osity. For your choice of racers you can play an extreme sports enthusiast, but you can also select a superspy or a gorilla. Possible race courses include normal places like the Swiss Alps but also a haunted forest, a lost city in the Himalayas, and a post-snowpocalyptic Washington, D.C. In short, you can play an ape-man piloting an atomic snowmobile through the Oval Office. No lie. I have done this myself. Turns out Arctic Thunder was released for the Xbox a few years back and you can bet your bippy I'll be tracking down a copy.

So Wisconsin seems just a little bit weird to me. Part of it is that the state has hills and forests, whereas I'm used to the vast flat farmlands of Illinois. Hills and mountains are awesome, but they always strike me as a little unnatural. Another factor, no doubt, is the cheese shops and fireworks emporiums that you can find on practically ever street corner. We don't have either in Illinois, and seeing a giant statue of a mouse eating a wedge of cheese every few blocks is just odd. But I really think the thing that set off my weird-ometer the most was the gift shop at the resort. They had all the usual touristy crap that you expect from such a place. But they also had two bottles of Heinz 57 steak sauce. No ketchup. No mustard. No barbecue sauce. No other condiments at all, and precious little else that would assist in the making of a meal. But for $2.50 you could buy one of two ten ounce bottles of Heinz 57. I just don't get it. It's like going to the library and finding a live aardvark filed among the encyclopedias. I almost bought one just to prove to myself that they were real.

This is why I like Serious Sam

Last night I fought a giant alien devil guy.


The battle ended on top of the Great Pyramid of Cheops, with a gigantic UFO floating overhead.

new (old) videogames

There's a place on Neil Street in Champaign called Game Crazy that sells used video games. I got the following Xbox games for less than 5 buck apiece there. But man, it took for frickin' ever to check out. I don't think I'll be going back any time soon. Normally I don't mind a wait to get a bargain, but my wife and daughter were with me. There's no good reason why they should have to hang around for 20 minutes just so I can buy this crap:

I'm not a big fan of backyard wrestling or the extreme style it poorly apes. Too much blood, too many props, and not enough proper grappling for my tastes. And many of the wrestlers have no sense of ring psychology or match storytelling. But five bucks for a new wrestling game was too cheap to pass up. The make-a-wrestler section delivers pretty good results. The wrestling engine is a bit over the top (no surprise there) but does allow for some technical holds and reversals. And much of the terrain in the various fighting venues can be destroyed. You can Irish whip a mofo into a plywood shed, shatter the shed, then pick up the plywood and beat the dude with it. I hate that kind of wrestling in real life, but as a video game where no one really gets hurt? Good times.

I knew Celebrity Deathmatch was going to be awful when I bought it. The real questions were how awful and in what ways. Answers: unbelievably awful and like the show but even worse. Still, any game where I can play Mr. T and beat the hell out of Marilyn Manson can't be all bad. Not that I loathe Marilyn Manson or anything, but Mr. T dropping the A Team van on him as a finishing move just seemed so right.

I've been meaning to get this game for years, ever since Old Man Murray did those two awesome interviews with the head of the all-Croatian design team. It's the only first person shooter I've really wanted since that time I nearly wrecked my academic career playing Doom when I should've been studying for finals. So far Serious Sam is fun and stupid in all the right ways. I swear to Grodd, it's like the Rifts of first person shooters.

New old videogames

I recently purchased some used XBox games. Showdown: Legends of Wrestling is a noticeable improvement on Legends of Wrestling II, though I'm not sure if you could go so far as to call it a good game. But it's a video game where Ravishing Rick Rude (RIP) talks some smack to my custom character (Jeff "The Flatulent Beast" Hogan) and then I get to beat Mr. Rude up. That's entertainment. I also picked up Midway Arcade Treasure 2 and Capcom Classics vol II, both of which are chock full of fun old arcade games. Pat was over yesterday and we played Magic Sword, an old side-scrolling platformer/beat 'em up with a fantasy theme. Since virtual quarters are as plentiful as pressing the the Start button, we played through all 51 levels in maybe an hour or so.

One of the neat features of this game are the NPC adventurers. Each player controls their own character but can recruit an NPC that follows them around. In the above graphic the guy with the axe and the dude with the sword are the players. Swordy has a cleric following him around, while Mr. Axe is accompanied by a barbarian babe with a crossbow. My favorite NPC was probably the Fire Ninja.

Also note the hostile Easter Island head. The monsters in this game are awesome!

Here's the Swordsman with his NPC buddy, Large Redheaded Barbarian Dude. This game features a surprising number of bear fights. More games should feature bears attempting to maul the good guys.

Bat-tastic!

This post nicely demonstrated how out of touch I am with the world of video games. Traveller's Tales, the makers of the super-fun LEGO Star Wars games, are working on video game expansion of the LEGO Batman sub-franchise. This news was apparently announced in September.

I'm not even that big of a LEGO fan. These games are just good, silly fun.

Have you seen this jedi?

My folks got me Lego Star Wars II for Christmas. My daughter Elizabeth and I really enjoyed the first installment but this one really improves upon the original. The one thing that's a problem is that we can't play Elizabeth's alltime favorite Star Wars character, Mace Windu, right out of the box.


Although Lego Star Wars II only covers A New Hope through Return of the Jedi, I was expecting Mace Windu to be available because of the new character editor feature. As you finish levels new character parts are unlocked for use in the creator. It seemed like finishing a level added people from that particular adventure to the editor. But I cleared the entirety of Empire Strikes Back and still no Lando parts. Purple lightsabers are an equipment option, but I seem to be unable to build the one dude known for wielding such a device.

In the meantime, I made Leia Organa, Jedi Princess:


This image was made with Mini-Mizer, a cute little Lego People graphic program that does all the work for you. My Princess Leia in the game has the traditional buns on the side of her head and a purple lightsaber. The blue pants are just cause I thought she needed some color with her traditional all-white look.

I R the Champion

Last week I finally won the world title in Legends of Wrestling II for the Xbox. I've been playing this game off and on since September of last year. A few weeks back I hit a bad spot where Kid Skull found himself unable to advance in 'career mode' because I couldn't win this one battle royal in St. Louis. I played that same battle royal a few dozens times. Eventually I edited Kid Skull to be bandaged up and wearing a leg brace and such. The poor guy took multiple beatings at the hands of Harley Race, Bob Orton, Bob Backlund, and the One Man Gang.

So I switched wrestlers and played my heel, Jeff "The Flatulent Beast" Hogan. He's your basic Mary Sue vehicle. He has a goatee and everything. "The Flatulent Beast" is one of the pre-loaded wrestler nicknames the announcer knows, so how could I resist calling my guy that? Jeff "No relation to that other guy named" Hogan ended up defeating the Iron Sheik for the big belt, just like the Hulkster did back in 1984. How cool is that? And I successfully defended the championship against the eighth wonder of the world, Andre the Giant. Awesome.

And the 'coins' I earned for my world title victory allowed me to finally buy access to this guy:

I originally bought Legends II because Andy Kaufman was available as a playable character. And it only took me 15 months to finally unlock the dude. Man, do I hate unlockables.

I think for my next trick I'll set up a tournament where Andy wrestles a bunch of women. Only one female character comes with the game, a fictional Southern promoter named Belle Jackson (of course). But you can build women wrestlers with the character creator/editor. I've got a couple, my favorite is Alice 'the Anvil' Anderson.