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[twillight]

This was a very cheap game, but an improvement, as it wasn't just some ultraprimitive algorithm, but opened the possibilities on something long and complex.



Sure, it was primitive, but you were a SPACESHIP! Sure, it was a 1-screen game, but you could leave the screen and come back on the other side!
You could even warp!
And yes, technicaly you were shooting the same objects, and went for a highscore, but finaly the "enemy" came in different colours, and they always blew into smaller enemies! It really opened the way.


Being primitive also comes with certain advantages:
- easy to understand how to play
- easy to filter out any bugs. Of course "bugs" practicaly never appeared in these game. Sometimes the stuff did not load, but that was it.

[twillight]

Good old pacman.



When you think about it, it's not much of a stepup from asteroids. though somehow it looks way better. Maybe because it is not just an empty space, but has definite level design.
You went ahead automaticly, and turned using justick. Will never understand why they left that controller behind.





Either way, your goal was to eat all the dots, and not touch the "ghosts". You could eat the ghosts if you ate one of the flashing dots for a limited time.
The game had gradual progress of difficulty by the dungeon design. Had a set amount of maps (pretty large set), which looped in the end.
The AI was simple, so you could feel the algorythm, and theoreticaly play to infinity (you got bonus life per whatever condition).
Bonus items also appeared: fruits, which worthed extra score.

[twillight]

In concept very similar to Pac Man, but in many ways a hugh improvement.



First, you didn't automticaly move.
Second, you could play two player. Ths feature though had design problems, namely:
- your shots did harm the other player, making cooperative problematic
- each map had only one "relatively safe spot".
Still made a pretty ok deathmatch areana if you wanned PvP instead of PvE. Then by agreement the winner made itself dead to restart.


The go alwas to eliminate all ~dragon from the screen. They started slow, and by time they sped up. And the timer spawned more enemies gradualy.
The levels' design grew harder and harder every time(aftera while there was just an empty room, no vover). Sure, it looped in the enc, but whatever.


You did gain extra lives at times, but could only have 4 as maximum.
You also could reisde for a while outside the dungeon. That was useful.
I also never had idea what you weapon was. Some kinda laser by the shots, but maybe flamethrower by the backpack-design.


Oh, and for extra, kinda like later the easter eggs, optional minibosses could appear. Ye, they were OPTIONAL.
there was the Pixie and the Wizard itself.
We had no idea if there was a backstory for a game containing lasers, space-dragons, evil pixies and wizards, but we sure thought it had to be awesome.

[twillight]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oAl94bC5Cs


Back then this was something of a curiosity. Around here anyway. We didn't have anything even remotly close until this time, or fora lot of time after, and only 1 person had it.
It looked like those quartz games, but evidently wasn't.
It had only quartz-graphic aka. black outlines, no colouration, but was not even remotely that pixeled mess like the other games.
By the way pixeled stuff was ok, because you got used to them. more on the issue as advancing.


It had a HUGH level, not even made of screens, continuous gameplay, friggin massively differentiated enemies,and we had no idea what this was, but the future was bright, unlike nowdays, where the future is made of shit.

[twillight]

Ye, it was somewhat of a platformer. but it had all kinds of gimmicks running, like you could dispose the enemy robots, kill? pick up? loot? the furniture, pick up items and use them when you see fit (consumables), it had a crapton of levels all with their own design (and we strongly suspected the enemy and room combination had a random factor creating easy to insane difficulty).
We saw there was a timer, but didn't know why. We knew we got blobs from furniture, but didn't know why. The game had a minimap. It had each time 2 rooms with a synthetizator, and we didn't know why. We thought the goal was to for all furniture, but we never managed that.
Still, just as a random platformer it was fun, and we knew there must be some ending, and if we'd be dedicated enough, we'd be able to get there.


Dedication was a thing sometimes these ancient games demanded. There was only oh-so-many-things you could insert into a game after all. So the difficulty was to either speed up (like Wizard of Wor), mess with the random to cheat against the player (Tetris), or make it very precise, like Libra.





Libra only had a couple of levels, which of course looped. The "ultimate" part was actualy that plant-vine, which had pixel-tight passage only for a fraction of a second even.
It was fun to find out all the puzzles (thinking on the tower you had to shot down).

[twillight]

Compared to eg. Monkey Island, this one had the advantage of cross-platform development.





In the video the colours look like the C64 version, but I think the music is somewhat faster.
The PC-version sucked dick in comparsion.





Let's also mention around here PC was far from bein accessible, and in that time sucked dick in comparsion. But the ruskis didn't advance with the hardware, so fuck the space program, wether fake or true, we cared about everyday life, and USSR clearly sucked dick after while.


You should take note that
- we didn't have manual, although here we suspected we'd be better off with that to a margin

- we still played the game, even despite lacking idea on the language. We played with a big-ass dictionary on our laps
- there was no internet, so we had to guess out what each character does for starter. We never managed to develop the pictures, so there went the black guy. Surfer Dude sucked ass, that we noticed. Razor could use a ton of optional stuff, and she had a mahawk, so she was an alltime favourite. Bernard was considered essential. We wished we could swap Dave to Mr. Sunglasses.


Despite its complexity the game had no save, and we definitely wished it had. Oh ye, we did meet the concept of saves mainly through PC (more of that next time). Also, the telescope-puzzle killed us.
First: it was bugged, so half the time it didn't even work.
Second, you only had limited coins to mess with it.
Third: if you turned it the wrong way, that was game over, and you didn't geta tombstone either. And we only suspected this, for the better of the game, else we'd've said it was trash. But as we weren't sure, and could blow up a hamster in a microwave, this game though never solved, was considered badass. And it had graphic, and all kinds of puzzles in it, thus we loved it.

[twillight]

Ghostbusters was a ... that-time-fun movie-based game.





The guy at the link has a different version than I had (which was C64), but mostly the same.
There were some annoying things in this, especialy lacking manual (I had original disc, but they didn't provide the manual). This was problem for the last part of the game, so I never got inside the Zuul-building, did not climb the stairs, and not defeated Ghozer.
You also had to figure out what the items did by yourself, and man, some were essential. Like w/o the googles the friggin ghosts in houses only could be seen through the windows! And it was very advantageous to be able to deal with StayPuffed,as each of its attack costed a ton of money.
And this is where save comes into play. C64 only used ROM, so anything running got lost when you turned off the machine. High scores, stages, whatever. But this game, if you got Game Over, gave you acode, which gave you the collected money, so you could buy the best stuff for the next go.
The problem was, the part to get into the zool-building took like forever, so after a while you gave up ever figuring out the ending.
The game was no shit though. It just demanded a manual.
Btw, there was a trick, that if you put you two guy at a house facing the same direction, on top of each other, the ghost did not move further, so if it was already above the trap, you sure catched it. Way easier this method.


Now Civilisation was a whole new level.





It sure was complex. That attracted literaly everyone. Despite it being a pile of shit.
- you could not save.
- you never had enough resouces to build stuff.
- the AI massively cheated against you.
- the random tended to put you on the smallest island ever, so you were screwed.
- you couldn't tell what natural resources the current hex had, so positioning your city right was impossible. You got reckted by the game here too.
- bloody cavemen were enough to keep order in 300 century cities.
- anything but tyranny sucked.
- diplomacy sucked.
- the game ate ass.
But the game offered concepts never seen, so mention it here.



But there was an all-time shitfestever too: Sim City!
- you had no save
- your starting money was enough only for 1 small house
- there was no goal
- there were no enemies
- there was no score
- you could destroy everything you built in a week under1 minute by pushing one of the "catastrophe" buttons. this mean during the week you never turned off your computer, so it catched fire, or something.

What this piece of grabage was? None ever figured it out. It was worse than Elite, which everywhere got 10 out of 5 star reviews, but 9 times out of 10 refused to even start, and even if it loaded, the only thing it did was shooting lasers in space. And we tried every bloody key-combinations humanly possible.

[twillight]

So, there was this little game, which actualy got played when the 2nd game got into the store, but none had the computer to play the 2nd, so everybody played the 1st, which got good hearsay by then.





By modern standar this is awfuly slow, and not much at all, but actualy back then it was the shining new age. The graphic back thenwas like nothing to compare with, the story was astonishing, and it SPOKE, and that helped us learning the language. It was funny, used the new icon-system, and you replayed it, because your pal got the rank of DemiGod at the end and you did not, or you got curious if there's a god-rank or not.
It no loingerwas "you and me", you had characters. Elves, orcs, mages, demons, those weakling elementals too just to mention...
And you also had different objectives. You didn't do the same thing over and over, but you had defend, destroy, and protect.
Then it turned by time to the hogwash WoW with its pandas, but who cares.

[twillight]

Ok, almost forgot this.
Sure, it was simple, especialy w/o manual, and convenience reasons everyone played it where you didn't have to switch tyres. So just laps after laps after laps.
And one of the three stables were agreeably shit.






What it did offer though, was the feel of F1. It rly felt genuine the experience.

[twillight]

Some genres were never were anything but shit. But even they could have an accident and produce something playworthy. For this instance let's remember the text-advantures.






Despite its title, it was a hungarian game. Someone should port it to english though. Despite it's highly offensive content. It was practicaly the most ancient school-shoter game to be blunt. I was not based on real even though, and is perfectly fine for a bloodthirsty 15 years brain. It was maybe even done by such person.


Textbased games always had the problem of figuring out the most obscure WORD to type in, and that was crap. Despite you doing all things right, with the right intention, if you didn't use THE EXACT phrase the developer had in mind, you got rected. And they didn't shame off from Moon Logic, and timed tasks either (limiting chances of tries and so on). Ye, I'm looking at you Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy!
Not being able to give anything aside text, this genre notoriously relied on nonsensical puzzles too.
Later, like for the Spellcasting series they gave lists of words, from which came SCUMMVM Lucastarts games, but nah. They were overly difficult.


Why I put this game so late? Cause this came very late. And was enjoyable. It actualy birthed 2 sequels - incrising in difficulty, declining in the violence which made this a mindless fun. Because the 1st was such goodness, people played the sequels for completion.


One bad thing though: the swearing is useless, it never gets involved by the story. Like the stamina stat in Diablo 2.