Defcon 5

Posted on July 4, 2007 by Multimedia Mike

It’s Independence Day here in the U.S.A. and I thought it would be apropos to play the Sega Saturn version of Independence Day (having already covered the Windows version on this blog). However, my Saturn console disagreed. But since the unit was already hooked up, and since I have more than enough Saturn games yet to play, I’ll try a recent acquisition– Defcon 5.

Regrettably, this post will be done entirely without the help of visual aids. I don’t have the capacity to capture from my Sega Saturn on my new PC. I did take the time today to finally crack my new DV capture bridge, purchased some months ago along with the new PC. However, it does not capture from the Saturn. I’m still working on solving that problem (GameCube/Dreamcast/PS2/VCR, no problem). The disc also has FILM files for FMV. Regrettably, none are anywhere near interesting enough to commit to YouTube.

Moving on to the actual game, the affair starts off with an overwrought intro FMV characteristic of the early days of CD-ROM games. I fear that this is a prelude to interactive movie-style gameplay. The story has something like — let’s see if I can synopsize this correctly — a mega-corporation that does interplanetary mining has a bunch of space stations to protect their mining operations from alien threats. Thing is, no aliens have ever been encountered in the history of human endeavor, so these stations are really just a paranoid measure whose continued operational costs are increasingly difficult to justify to the beancounters. Budget cuts demand that these stations will go unstaffed in 60 days and will need to have their software upgraded so that they can operate autonomously. The lead engineer — excuse me, cyberneer — on the project got killed upgrading the second to last station. Your job is to upgrade that last station’s software.

Great, so this game simulates the menial, trained-monkey action items performed by futuristic IT peons. However, wouldn’t you know, just as you are trying to carry out your upgrade mission, unidentified spaceships start closing in on this last space station. Could they be the fabled aliens whose appearance might have justified the space stations’ operating budget?

Personally, I tend to think the so-called alien threat really consists of disgruntled, laid-off space station employees in disguise, Scooby-Doo-style.

Anyway, the gameplay consists of Wolfenstein 3D-type gameplay as you wander around this station while a digitized voice implores you to find the control center to upgrade the software. The graphics are primitive by 1995 3D standards but I’m relieved that it’s not a pre-rendered FMV maze. That relief trend sharply reverses as I begin to navigate the corridors. Either my character is a stereotypically, grotesquely obese IT knowledge worker, or there is horrible hit detection in this game– it’s almost impossible to walk between 2 support posts that are more than a meter apart from each other. Plus, you bounce backwards slightly but sharply when you contact an object which makes walking a tedious exercise.

I had a weapon and I know I was supposed to encounter aliens in short order because that’s what the nice lady computer voice kept foreshadowing. But I just didn’t stick around long enough. I later examined the instruction manual that saw fit to publish a 12-step walkthrough for how to complete the first tedious task in the game.

This is what happens when IT employees carry their professional experience over to game development.

Multiple Sample Discs

Posted on July 1, 2007 by Multimedia Mike

My recent batch of acquisitions included not only a plethora of actual games, but a number of sample discs as well. One is a Generator disc, volume 1 of a series of Sega Dreamcast sample discs. I have yet to delve into this one.

Next is a fairly non-descript optical disc simply labeled “Merchandise Video” and bears the ubiquitous PlayStation symbol. The circumference of the disc lists a number of games. I pop it into my DVD player (which doubles as my PlayStation 2) and it begins playing immediately. The disc plays a brief commercial for each of the games previously listed and loops when it gets to the end of the string. Pressing “Menu” seems to just reset the commercials. This leads me to believe that this disc is meant to be played on autopilot in a sealed PS2 kiosk. The promotional material for God of War is enticing but nothing else on the disc really impressed me.

Next up is the Ubi Soft Product Catalog 2004-2005. This is perhaps the most fascinating disc of the crop if only for the dire message: “Content not approved for consumer use. Not for distribution to the public.” Forbidden material– I’m intrigued. The disc is a CD-ROM that contains promotional material for a number of Ubi Soft games for a variety of platforms. Each game comes with some screenshots and some general artwork. Several come with trailers and other video files that are encoded in a diversity of multimedia formats. Nothing too special so far. The most interesting aspect is that every game entry comes with a “fact sheet” — a .DOC file that describes the game in a single printed page — as well as a directory named “Product Presentation – NOT FOR PUBLIC USE”. This contains a PowerPoint presentation that basically sells the game. My question was, “Sell to whom?” At first, I figured that maybe this was for investor relations, a sort of video game company prospectus. But on deeper examination, it appears that the slides attempt to sell the game to a retail establishment. This is a fascinating glimpse into the video game industry. I’m pretty sure the slides are trying to convince retailers why they should devote shelf space to these titles, or perhaps give particular titles more prominent real estate on the selling floor. For example, many of the presentations have a slide devoted to “THE BRAND” which documents the strong selling history of the franchise (and most of these games belong to franchises; Ubi Soft is not known for taking chances on unknowns, though neither is any other publisher).

A lot of the material reminds me of documents I see on the inside of corporate America that are customarily marked “Company Confidential — Not For External Distribution” (which is something that makes every corporate drone chuckle with the knowledge that no one inside the company could possibly care about the document, much less an outsider). Anyway, I doubt that this is actual confidential material. As mentioned, this is probably intended as industry marketing material. There is also the fact that the marketing material is not yet finalized. For example, Prince of Persia: Warrior Within is still known as Prince of Persia 2 throughout the disc’s material.

As for the audio/visual promotional material, there is nothing that really catches my eye. Sure, all of the screenshots and artwork are sharp. But there are no videos that deserve instant YouTube treatment. However, I couldn’t believe the timeliness of this screenshot from Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory:

Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory -- June 29, 2007

That brought back fond memories of Crystalis’ prophetic “End Day” (1997/10/01).

The last sampler disc is called Sega Screams Volume 1. It is for the Sega Saturn. I have not explored it using my Saturn console yet, but I can view some of the files on it. Here is one movie that’s fun enough to upload to YouTube, the intro of the Saturn version of Virtual On: Cyber Troopers:

Cereal Clue

Posted on June 24, 2007 by Multimedia Mike

Today’s game is another Hasbro board game transposed into a computer game, along the same line as Operation. This is Clue, and unlike Operation, it is the classic game directly transposed into a computer game with no added value. Like Operation, however, this game came in a box of General Mills cereal and the disc implores us to collect “them” all. I’m not entirely sure how many there are but a little googling on the topic of “general mills hasbro cd-rom promotion” reveals that The Clue and Operation titles must have run as parts of separate promotions.

My first task is to determine whether this game is the same as the Clue title that is already in MobyGames, which bears the full title of Clue: Murder at Boddy Mansion. The extended title is not featured anywhere in this game. But based on some screenshots I found on some other sites, this appears to be the same game (it was difficult to determine since there is an assortment of graphical quality levels).

The game comes in quite a few languages including US & UK English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, and Swedish. Various bits of the localization point to the Clue/Cluedo dichotomy, the latter being the game’s name in Britain and perhaps elsewhere in Europe. I would like to know if it’s pronounced as “cloo-doo” or “cloo-doh”.

As previously indicated, the game is simply a direct adaptation of the classic board game onto the computer screen. At least 3 characters need to play. It can be just you against 2-5 computer players. It can even be 3-6 computer players, if you’re simply the voyeuristic type. There is TCP/IP-based multiplayer with other human players, if you’re really willing to go through that much trouble. At the highest detail levels, the graphics are beautifully rendered but terribly confusing with all the translucent walls. Regrettably, the game actually looks much better, or is less madness-inducing, if you play with all the graphical gimmicks shut off.

All in all, this game hearkens back to an era where anything digital was greeted with uncritical, wide-eyed wonderment. Those were the days. These days, the schtick wears thin really quick and you’re much better off with the original board game which is still quite common to come by.

The game features a number of Cinepak/PCM AVI files that depict the 6 differents characters committing a ghastly murder with each of 6 possible weapons (thankfully, the designers felt it unnecessary to also show each scene in each of the 6 possible rooms). The weirdest movie is how they handle the initial card shuffle. Remember that at the beginning of a Clue game, you randomly select the guilty party, the weapon, and the room where the crime was committed. The other cards are shuffled and dealt to the player. How to handle it in this game? With special ghost hands whose hands deal fate. Observe:

One more fascinating bit of trivia about this particular CD-ROM: iTunes thinks that the disc is Kelly Clarkson’s Thankful album. The CD hashing algorithm experienced a collision and it mapped to Kelly’s album. However, there are 4 very nice redbook audio tracks on the disc, ripe for the rip.

Stoned Party

Posted on June 23, 2007 by Multimedia Mike

I saw an ad in for the new PSP version of Final Fantasy and for the first time ever I actually entertained the thought of purchasing said portable console. When it comes right down to it, the original Final Fantasy for the NES has to be my all-time favorite RPG. I sitll have my original copy with all the trimmings which easily qualifies it as one of the most valuable games in my extensive collection (not that that’s saying much).

In order to complete the original game back in 1990, I developed one of the most clever (if I do say so myself) strategies I have ever employed in a video game. My party consisted of a knight, ninja, white wizard, and black wizard. The final dungeon had the party descending down level after level to re-fight the various elementals before making it to the end. My knight was tough and could survive long after the other 3 party members had been finished off. But he couldn’t finish the game all by himself. I reasoned that the knight could make it all the way to the end of the water level to face off with the kraken before more assistance was absolutely required. Though it appeared that I would need to waste more time leveling up so those other 3 could keep up, I figured that it would be nice if I could somehow keep the other 3 party members in reserve and start using them as needed.

Then I realized that I could do exactly that! I could put the ninja and 2 wizards in cold storage and let the knight take care of business until the others’ services were required with the kraken. How? Stoning! Certain monsters had the ability to turn your party members to stone during combat melees. When a character was stoned, they were just frozen– they couldn’t help your party but also couldn’t take any damage. Thus, I went to a section of the overworld where a bunch of cat-like creatures who were known for stoning liked to roam and worked hard to let them stone the other 3 characters. This was a bit tricky, but after it worked (and the correct characters were stoned), I saved the game and was off to complete my quest.

The plan worked famously in the end and I was able to resurrect the ninja first as needed and the wizards even later.

Many thanks to videogamesprites.net for their complete sprite collections.

New Acquisitions

Posted on June 23, 2007 by Multimedia Mike

While on vacation, I visited my old hometown, home to 2 of my very favorite video game shops– one shop specializes in consignment PC games and the other is a spent video game shops that even has video games as far back as the Atari 2600. I picked up over 30 CD-ROMs for around $100 (as you may have ascertained by this point, I pretty much buy games by the pound). The games are for DOS, Windows, Sega CD and Sega Saturn. Right now, I’m cataloging them in my master spreadsheet.

Here are some odds & ends that I’m not sure are actual games. One is Steel: Audio Action-Adventure. I couldn’t tell if this was supposed to be some kind of game or just an audiobook. Judging by the jewel case copy that states, “Audio adaptation of Warner Bros.’ latest action-adventure film introducing a great new super hero with underscore and special 3-D sound effects,” it sounded like a straight audio CD. However, it has a QSound insignia on the back which made me think that it might be more than an audio CD. Nope– it’s just an audio CD. It’s a 35-minute adaptation of the 1997 film (of which I have positively no recollection), retold in 35 minutes. It’s sort of like an old-time radio play. I remember having a cassette tape in the mid-80s that gave the same treatment for Return of the Jedi.

The next title I’m not sure about is called Composer Quest. The jewel case copy doesn’t explain enough about the game to be judged as a game or not, but the “Quest” in the title certainly sounds promising. The disk contains FLIC files and contains the AAPLAY.DLL file (multimedia nerd trivia). When I run the game from the CD-ROM, it insists that it needs to create a file on the root of C: for high scores– another promising sign!

It turns out the CQ is, loosely, a game (look! the title screen has a “Play” button). It is to classical and jazz music what ArtRageous! was to the world of art. I.e., a mini multimedia encyclopedia of classical and jazz composers and music mixed with some games, largely trivia-based.

At Internet Archive

Blogging Zelda

Posted on June 22, 2007 by Multimedia Mike

I admire this guy’s ambition— he is endeavoring to play every Zelda game ever and blog about the experience. That sounds almost as nutty as attempting to play one new and usually obscure game every single day and blogging about it. Hats off! He isn’t too far along so far, but he has completed The Legend of Zelda, both the first and second quests (no mean feat, the latter) and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link.

Through his site, I also learned of Blogging Ultima, a blog with the same goal but with Ultima in mind and which is considerably farther along with its chartered purpose; and Blogging Dragon Quest.

Story time: The Legend of Zelda was the first NES game I actually purchased for my NES (aside from the SMB/Duck Hunt cartridge that came with the NES Action Set). I don’t mind telling you that I was fantastic at Zelda back in the day. I was the master, at least of the first quest (the second quest took me quite a while to complete but I did eventually get through it). How good was I? I once had a classmate call me up and ask me how to complete the game. He was standing at the entrance of the level 9 labyrinth. I was able to guide him — completely from memory — through the dungeon, including how to collect all relevant items (weapons, compass, map). Before he entered a room, I would brief him on how many of which type of enemies he could expect to encounter. And before taking on Gannon, I was able to brief him on exactly how to defeat the big boss. I think he did it on his first try.

Thankfully, these days lazy gamers have the internet and FAQ/walkthroughs.

Gaming Pathology

Piles Of Games, Copious Free Time, No Standards

Author: Multimedia Mike