Obscure Old Games

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We once roamed the vast forums of Corona Coming Attractions. Some of us had been around from The Before Times, in the Days of Excelsior, while others of us had only recently begun our trek. When our home became filled with much evil, including the villainous Cannot-Post-in-This-Browser and the dreaded Cannot-Log-In, we flounced away most huffily to this new home away from home. We follow the flag of Jubboiter and talk about movies, life, the universe, and everything, often in a most vulgar fashion. All are welcome here, so long as they do not take offense to our particular idiom.
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Mal Shot First
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Obscure Old Games

Post by Mal Shot First »

I've been a fan of Home of the Underdogs for over a decade now, and it's always a good place to revisit every once in a while for some DOS-nostalgia. Many of the games on their website are even available for download.

Here's one I had never heard of:
http://www.homeoftheunderdogs.net/game.php?id=160

Sounds pretty rad. Spacey and Dalty might like it, but I don't know if those types of games are their cup of tea.
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Re: Obscure Old Games

Post by Mal Shot First »

Reading about Conquest of the new World just put a big smile on my face.

Additional screenshots available at MobyGames.

Goes for $50 on Amazon. Jeez!
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Re: Obscure Old Games

Post by Dalty »

I don't know if it was obscure in the US. Here in the UK i freakin' loved E-L-I-T-E on the old BBC Model B.
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Re: Obscure Old Games

Post by The Swollen Goiter of God »

How many pies has the BBC had its fingers in? Did the BBC also sell boomboxes and VCRs back in the day? Was there ever a BBC cereal?
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Re: Obscure Old Games

Post by Mal Shot First »

E.L.I.T.E. looks pretty cool, sort of like an ancestor of Wing Commander. It also looks like it was available on multiple platforms.
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Re: Obscure Old Games

Post by Dalty »

It was absolutely amazing! The thought of a free universe game where you made your own luck on a 32K machine back in the 80s was just mind blowing!! I spent many, many, many hours of my youth playing it.
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Re: Obscure Old Games

Post by The Swollen Goiter of God »

I wouldn't call these obscure, but they're old:

Kingdom of Kroz (1987)

Defender of the Crown (1986)

The hotlinked YouTube video for Defender of the Crown is the Commodore 64 version. That's the version I know. The Commodore Amiga version is probably the more beloved version, since it was graphically superior.

This one may be somewhat obscure:

Bruce Lee (1983)

I played it a lot. I also played Questprobe featuring The Hulk (1984) a lot. The Hulk game was a graphical adventure game. I didn't have a book to go with it, so I was pretty terrible at it. I was also a kindergartner when I started playing it, so it's not surprising that I sucked at it. Still, I'd plug away for hours. I'd amuse myself by coming up with increasingly absurd commands.

There was a graphical adventure game for the Apple IIe I liked to play, too. Here's how I gained access to the Apple IIe:

When I moved to Crossville, I was put in a special class for the kids who had moved to Crossville from out-of-state. To this day, it seems weird to me that the class even existed. The idea behind it, I think, was that these kids needed to be corralled and shown that they were not alone. Or maybe it was supposed to help the kids deal with culture shock. Or maybe it was supposed to give the kids access to computers, since maybe it was assumed that they came from some technologically advanced Metropolis. I dunno. Maybe it was a class designed to give this one teacher a job. Whatever the case, from fourth to sixth grade, I was sent to this class for an hour a day. All the teacher did was sit at her desk while we played games on the Apple IIe. It was neat to be the only kids in school with computer access, but it was a bummer to lose the study period. Study periods were in the library, which meant library access and quiet time for reading.

What's that? That's right. The game. It was Michael Crichton's Amazon (1984). We didn't have the fancy colors like you see in the hotlinked video. We just had the standard black and green.

Amazon started out pretty much the same way the movie Congo would start out years later. My guess is that the game was based on the novel. I've never read the novel, so I don't know. Wikipedia probably knows. The Congo and the Amazon are two different places, but a jungle's a jungle, I guess. I don't remember any gorillas in Amazon, but I'm sure that's because the Amazon is not their natural habitat. There was a parrot in the game. I think it probably served the same purpose the gorilla served in the movie. (I've only seen the first fifteen minutes or so of the movie, so I'm just guessing. I've seen the trailers. That gorilla looks pretty fake.)

If the game's just the book, but retooled for a different setting, it was probably for some rights issues. Maybe the movie rights had been sold in the eighties, and it just took a decade to get it made.
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Re: Obscure Old Games

Post by Mal Shot First »

The games in the Castles series by Interplay are often compared to Defender of the Crown (in fact, the reviewer in the first link below even directly compares Castles to Defender of the Crown).
Castles
Castles II
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Re: Obscure Old Games

Post by The Swollen Goiter of God »

I missed the boat on Castles. We had the Commodore 64 from '84 to '88 or '89. I didn't have another computer until my senior year in high school. I think it had Windows 2.1 on it. Most of the games Wal-Mart was selling at the time required 3.1 or higher. All I could really do with that computer was type papers and print them out on the ol' dot matrix. I think it came with a game or two, and it had the ancient Microsoft Paint/licensed PC Paintbrush clone. Internet wouldn't happen for me until college.
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Re: Obscure Old Games

Post by Dalty »

Ghostbusters on the C64 was the best thing I had ever seen at the time.

I was lucky enough to have a Commodore Amiga for a lot of my teenage years. Before PC really came through and steam-rollered everything.

Then I got a Super Nintendo, PSOne, PS2 and up to today's PS3. I can't find a compelling enough reason to shell out on a PS4 yet as my PS3 is primarily used as a BluRay player these days.
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Re: Obscure Old Games

Post by The Swollen Goiter of God »

Bananarama's Bouncy Bits wrote:I can't find a compelling enough reason to shell out on a PS4 yet as my PS3 is primarily used as a BluRay player these days.
Dalty. Dalty, Dalty, Dalty. What about this?
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Re: Obscure Old Games

Post by Dalty »

I know, it calls to me, but I talk myself down.
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Re: Obscure Old Games

Post by The Swollen Goiter of God »

Do you get drunk, decide to do it, then change your mind on the bus ride to the store? Because some of us do that.
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Re: Obscure Old Games

Post by Dalty »

I don't take the bus.
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Re: Obscure Old Games

Post by Mal Shot First »

Mal Shot First wrote:Goes for $50 on Amazon. Jeez!
Only $5.99 on Good Old Games!
http://www.gog.com/game/conquest_of_the_new_world
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Re: Obscure Old Games

Post by Mal Shot First »

The Swollen Goiter of God wrote:I missed the boat on Castles.
$5.99 for Castles 1+2 on Good Old Games!
http://www.gog.com/game/castles_castles_2
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Re: Obscure Old Games

Post by The Swollen Goiter of God »

I can't afford $5.99.
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Re: Obscure Old Games

Post by Mal Shot First »

Image
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Re: Obscure Old Games

Post by The Swollen Goiter of God »

Don't worry, Mal. I'm sure I can get a free copy.

On the other hand, it does appear that GOG.com has a deal with Interplay. That's pretty cool. It also appears the games on their site are all DRM-free games. It makes me not want to steal.
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Re: Obscure Old Games

Post by The Swollen Goiter of God »

When I moved away for college, I bought a PC with scholarship money. It had Windows 95 on it. I bought a handful of games to go with it. They all came from Wal-Mart, so I don't know how obscure they were. I'm absolutely certain three of them--Populous: The Beginning, Dragon's Lair, and Star Wars: X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter--weren't obscure. The fourth was a thing called Star Warped. I've mentioned it to people, but I don't know if anybody else has ever told me they had it or knew of it. Maybe it's at least somewhat obscure. That, or maybe I was talking to people who either didn't shop at Wal-Mart or weren't drawn to Star Wars parodies.

It has some mini games, but I wouldn't call Star Warped itself a "game," exactly. The games are all pretty easy, and most of them are built around dumb little jokes and sight gags. It also has some scripted videos. The ones I remember are things like the "Scrapped Scripts"--or Star Wars as told by Tarantino, Woody Allen, Spike Lee, and the writers of Seinfeld. (I may be forgetting one.) I remember some of the impersonations being decent and some being pretty poor. All in all, it was a mixed bag. It was Star Wars-related, though, so I spent a lot of time with it.

I've found a "Let's Play Star Warped" video on-line. I haven't seen any of this stuff in over fifteen years. I'm going to post it before I view it. Maybe we can watch it together:



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Re: Obscure Old Games

Post by Mal Shot First »

I'm at work right now so I can't watch them with the sound on. :/
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Re: Obscure Old Games

Post by Mal Shot First »

Mal Shot First wrote::/
Maybe I should change that to C:/ in the spirit of this thread.
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Re: Obscure Old Games

Post by The Swollen Goiter of God »

I'm watching it. Turns out Brian Posehn is the voice of one of the "brothers" who guide you through the disc.

The guy doing the "Let's Play" video is trying to be funny. It's annoying. Also, the sound on his mic drops out for a split second every now and then.
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Re: Obscure Old Games

Post by The Swollen Goiter of God »

The Swollen Goiter of God wrote:The guy doing the "Let's Play" video is trying to be funny. It's annoying.
I guess this is true of most of the gamers who post "Let's Play" videos.
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Re: Obscure Old Games

Post by The Swollen Goiter of God »

The other "brother" is voiced by Robbie Rist, turns out. He's had a long history in showbiz, but Mal might know him best as the voice of Michelangelo in the first three live action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies.
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