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is there anyway of running this game without ems memory??

[The Fifth Horseman]

Your max health increases at the end of each episode

IIRC, you need to find a max-health-up item of some sort.

[guesst]

Originally posted by Bomm@Feb 15 2006, 08:15 PM
is there anyway of running this game without ems memory??

What do you mean? Do you need to turn off EMS or do you not have any EMS.

Since I can answer the first, assuming you're using DOSBox, edit dosbox.conf and look for EMS=true under memory, near the end. Change it to EMS=false and voila. No EMS.

[GeometriX]

I must admit that Blackthorne was always one of my favourite Blizzard games. I really enjoyed the gameplay. I agree that it seems a little shallow compared to the likes of PoP, Flashback & Out of this World, but I think Blackthorne is to platformers what Quake is to FPSers, just good old mindless fun! And btw, playing this game on a decent sound system (5/7.1) sure does rock! The game always had awesome sound, but on a modern setup it's phenomenal.

PS: It is certainly much more playable on SNES, controls are easier, framerate is better and you can get some really nice graphics filtering with ZSNES.

[Office_Monk]

Originally posted by RastaJew@Oct 20 2005, 07:37 PM
This game wants to be an "athletic platformer" like Flashback and Out of this World but it doesn't quite measure up. It lacks the cutscenes of Flashback and particularly Out of this World that immersed the player in the game world. In Blackthorne you get to the last screen of one episode. someone tells you "Go find <whoever> in the forest", there's a repeat of the intro scene of Sarlac telling the orcs to go kick some behind but with different text, and you're suddenly in the first forest level.
So obviously the story isn't that fleshed out either. There's backstory but not much happens during the game. There are a few NPC good guys around but they don't have much purpose. They are basically an alternative to having health and weapons just lying on the ground. Sometimes you can save them or help them fight an orc or get a hint from them. I wouldn't even call them characters because they all use the same sprite and none of them have more than about eight words to say about how much they hate Sarlac. At the end of each "episode" there's a different looking NPC who says about twenty words instead. It would have been nice if when you think back on the game you could remember a certain character like Fallout's Harold the ghoul. But in Blackthorne you don't even really connect with the player character and his story.
The levels are repetitive. The levels are split into screens like in Flashback but each screen has jumps and puzzles and fights that you've already seen elsewhere. It's just running around, climbing ladders, shooting monsters, finding keys/bridge passes/bombs to get past a barrier and make it to the end. In Flashback it didn't feel like you were just trying to get to the end of the level. You were trying to complete a mission for an NPC and you could find diary entries and stuff which would trigger cutscenes.
The screens look repetitive too. The graphics are good (especially in the forest and the swamp) but every screen is made up of identical platforms and walls. Every screen looks the same from the beginning of an episode to the end.

So Blackthorne needed to have more plot, characters and variety to be a classic. That's why the first 4 highest rated games on Mobygames are point and click adventures.

I think Blackthorne just wanted to be the videogame equivalent of a quick action movie: there's some story, but the action is what's important.

Besides, how cool is it to fire behind you: Hasta la vista, baby!

[Raasted]

Indeed - the "fire-behind-you" feature is one of those things that charactarise the game - it acutally doesn't make much sense, it isn't necessary at all - but it is great fun, and look good too

/Raasted

I cant get this damn thing to work. I dragged it to a dos box and it said cannot find the dot.dat file.

I played it on the snes and thought it was the coolest game ever.

[The Fifth Horseman]

Wait. Do you mean DosBox emulator?

Did you try running DosBox first and then the game?
Note - there are frontends, like DFEND, that allow you to simplify the process and store separate settings for different games. Useful if you have problems with the "raw" DosBox.

Still dosent work.

Nice logos.

[The Fifth Horseman]

Try redownloading.