Deer Avenger 3D

Posted on March 17, 2007 by Multimedia Mike

Time to get back to it, especially since I have finally completed acquisition of the entire Deer Avenger tetralogy with the recent eBay find of Deer Avenger 3D. Based on the story told by the opening animation (partially through that timeless plot-unfolding device, the Star Wars scroller), this is what I told MobyGames about the game: “Our hero Bambo seems to have found happiness with a new doe bride, while believing that the dreaded human hunters have forever been vanquished. Just as the pair is about to engage in intimacy, small woodland creatures appear at their window to urgently warn of the hunters’ return. Bambo’s bride laments that she can’t get into the mood while the creatures of the wilderness are threatened. With a cry of soul-wrenching anguish, Bambo finds himself curiously motivated to strike out to dispatch the bipedal enemies once more.”

So, that’s probably the most interesting part of this episode. I’m glad I skipped this one and went straight to 4; if I had played this first I might have had a severe aversion towards the fourth installment. It feels as though the designers were still trying to hold on to certain gameplay characteristics from the first 2 Deer Avenger games, whereas #4 went full on into FPS-type territory.

I take Bambo out into the wilderness equipped with something from his arsenal (whose selection grows as enemies are offed). I wander around the mountain-enclosed, snow-packed arena, laying out a lure here and there and finding the occasional fart powerup. That’s an unfortunate mainstay on the entire series, a disgusting one that’s not altogether welcome after I’ve just eaten. Fortunately, the farts aren’t as visually detailed in this game as they are in #4; in fact, they come out as pixellated white clouds. (Aside: It finally occurs to me that in his quest to rid the forest of stereotypically vulgar rednecks, Bambo has lowered himself to their level. In effect, he is no better than his enemy, a profound theme that underlies the entire series.)

So I eventually hear a hunter in the arena:

A female hunter, no less, and in a revealing hunting outfit. At least, I think she’s a hunter. She could be a jogger with a rifle. I chase her around and around a bluff and just barely keep pace with her. After I notice that she keeps trotting in the same circle, I wait in one spot for her to run by– but I can’t seem to hit her. Eventually, it occurs to me to move into her path and shoot her directly. I still can’t land a shot and she still doesn’t take up arms against me. However, she does run off after I attempt this new strategy; I don’t know if she became scared or if she had finished her little workout. I keep thinking that maybe she was just a jogger, but she did have a gun for which she verbally expressed inordinate affection.

In addition to the normal modes of travel that include both walking and running, Bambo can now jump. It’s a very stylish, powerful jump. But I honestly don’t see any practical application for it through the entire game. The gameplay is rather odd and even ineffectual. You guide Bambo from a 3rd person perspective around the wooded arena using the keyboard. When it’s time to shoot, use the mouse to select the first person shooting view. From here, you have very limited mobility — you can basically rotate about the point where you stand and fire. This puts you in a precarious situation if the hunters decide to shoot back — which, oddly, they rarely seem to do.

Emma Sue shows up again and isn’t on her workout anymore. I make short work of her since she’s not running. I take care of 2 other hunters soon afterwards. This game is pretty easy, especially compared to #4 which actually required some strategy. There are also some harmless humans, typified by the hippie who also shows up in the fourth game. Don’t shoot them (too many times) or it’s game over:

Deer Avenger 3D -- Thwarted By The Ranger

This is the ultimate weirdness that I have seen throughout the entire Deer Avenger series — a forest ranger who implicitly countenances your slaughter of human hunters.

NES ROM Images

Posted on March 14, 2007 by Multimedia Mike

I have a major technical fascination with video games. Before discovering multimedia full motion video files I was interested in old 8-bit NES games. At one point, I disassembled a number of game cartridges and scan their ROM printed circuit boards. If you’re a gaming tech nerd like me, you might find my gallery of NES ROM images. This is what Super Mario Bros. looks like, the simplest, most unadorned type of PCB:

The interesting thing about many of the PCBs is the special hardware present on the board to extend the capabilities of the standard NES, usually in the form of extended memory.

Interrogation Minigames

Posted on March 13, 2007 by Multimedia Mike

A recent thread of the MobyGames forums discussed controversial or shocking moments in games. This arose when the original poster had read a review of Activision’s Spycraft: The Great Game that happened to mention the game’s torture minigame. Since hearing about a “torture minigame” undoubtedly piques your curiousity, disturbing though the concept may seem, I did what comes naturally and posted the relevant clips on YouTube.

To review, Spycraft is a 1996 CD-ROM game where you play a CIA agent leading a team to avert an international crisis between the U.S. and former Soviet Union. Gameplay consists largely of a series of highly unique sub-games and none is more unusual than the torture minigame.

After capturing this agent, you have two methods of extracting information from her. The first is to strap her into the Bullpen, the agency-sanctioned torture device. You have controls at your disposal to administer various levels of electrical shocks. Too much will kill her. This movie file from the game depicts the various reactions she has to shocks and questions:

It can be a tad stomach churning to view. It helps if you imagine that she invented interactive movie computer games, though.

The game acknowledges up front that this sequence might be too much for some gamers to handle and includes explicit warnings in the manual. Plus, at the very start of the game, the player has the option to disable the path of physical coercion entirely. In that case, or if the player chooses this route in the game, there is a minigame in which the player has to use special CIA equipment to doctor some photographs. The photographs are then used during the interrogation minigame to lean on the captured agent, by duping her into believing the agency has captured another agent for whom she has feelings. This movie has the scenes that comprise the interrogation:

Imagine what innovation could come of Nintendo’s Wii-mote for the Big N’s next party game… Wii O’ nine tails.

Break Time

Posted on March 12, 2007 by Multimedia Mike

It pains me to have to take a break from the game-a-day routine. The fact is I have lots of other things I either need to do or want to do. Thus, I’m going to take at least a few days off from doing new games and blog posts of each. The good news is that maintaining this blog for the last 2+ months has helped me to develop an amazing amount of discipline. Hopefully, I can channel that discipline to do what I need to get done. Hopefully, I will still find time to write up some little posts here and there and perhaps re-play some of the games covered so far.

I still have around 1/2 dozen games to get into the database. Plus, here are the most recent entries thanks to this blog:

Who Shot Johnny Rock?

Posted on March 11, 2007 by Multimedia Mike

This is my first exposure to this curious genre of American Laser Games interactive movie shooters, a genre mashup that came about before anyone was likely aware of the concept of a genre mashup. Allegedly, Who Shot Johnny Rock? was wildly popular along with other games from the same group, the most famous of which was Mad Dog McCree. Maybe these games worked better in the arcade where players got to use a gun instead of a mouse. I do remember seeing such games in the arcade and they certainly were novel, which is great for an arcade run.

Unfortunately, I think novelty was probably the one and only thing this game and others like it had going. At first, I thought that maybe this would be an I-movie type game. But as I started it up, I remembered that this was from the Mad Dog McCree folks and that shooting would somehow figure prominently. So a lounge act by the name Johnny Rock has been brutally riddled with bullets. His now-former fiancee enlists the help of you, a private investigator, in order to find who killed him in this quasi-noir 20s-style detective comic story. The whole affair begins in a surreal enough manner. She wanders into your office but there is a thug close behind. You have to plug him fast before he can do you first.

Who Shot Johnny Rock? -- client oblivious to shooter

The woman continues as if nothing is wrong, even as goon after nameless goon files through the door, or crashes through windows to put this P.I. on ice before you have a chance to accept the case. Shoot or be shot.

The mechanics of each possible encounter are as such: The encounter is a FMV scene that has a slight window of opportunity to react after the character actually brandishes a weapon. If they don’t show a weapon, no matter how suspicious or overtly threatening they appear, you are treated to a funeral scene where someone patiently and condescendingly tutors you on how not to screw up. If you don’t shoot within the proper window of opportunity, then it’s off to a hospital cutscene where a wisecracking doctor removes the foreign material from your body, but only if you have $400; otherwise, he leaves you for dead and it’s off to the morgue for a sly comment courtesy of the undertaker. If you happen to hit the hostile presence within the window of opportunity, you get to continue the quest/case.

There is a minor adventure element at work here in that you have an overhead city map that allows you to select where you would like to visit next. You must visit the hangouts of the “Four Diseases” — big time gangsters in the city — to learn what they know. But not without a major shootout first, one for each locale. The game is primarily trial and error, mostly error on my part. But what it lacks in playability, it makes up for in comedy relief. When you take out this random henchman during the pool hall shootout, he actually leaps forward onto the table to die:

Who Shot Johnny Rock? -- pool hall shootout

This game was also available on the Philips CD-i and Sega CD systems. I can’t imagine having to play this on a system with no mouse! To have to react to the characters using only a control pad — ouch.

See Also:

Mad Dog McCree for the Sega CD — I was right, it’s a nightmare to control

At MobyGames:

Who Shot Johnny Rock?

Astro Assembler

Posted on March 10, 2007 by Multimedia Mike

Astro Assembler comes from a brand new batch of obscure software recently procured from an eBay store. It’s another lost gem courtesy of PC Treasures, Inc., the publisher responsible for all of those Super Target dollar specials that I have reviewed thus far. It finally occurred to me to investigate their website this evening and I realized that there must be well over 100 games in their OEM catalog that I don’t have and that probably aren’t in MobyGames yet.

One reason that a number of these games are not yet in the database is probably that a number of them were licensed from non-American development houses (whereas the vast majority of MobyGames records come from American games). Based on some of the names involved with this game, I am guessing it comes from Portugal even though the main title looks somewhat Japanese at first glance:

The box copy sells the title as a relentless action game. Let’s see if it lives up to the hype. What kind of game are we dealing with here? It shapes up to be a vertically scrolling shooter, what I liked to call fly-through, shoot-em-ups when I was growing up. Gradius and R-Type seemed to be the archetypes and were always among my favorite brainless action games though they were frustrating beyond belief, principally due to the fact that one hit did you in. Astro Assembler is no exception to the rule.

AA is gorgeous, to be sure, though a little sparse on music despite the promise of 15 CD audio tracks in the game. The graphics shine throughout. 3D rendered spaceship enemy sprites swoop from different planes onto yours for the attack. The scrolling starfield and tumbling background asteroids are beautiful, and the explosions are crisp.

It takes me awhile to settle on a satisfactory control scheme. There are several default keyboard layouts from which to choose. I can’t get used to any of them. Finally, I remember to plug my gamepad into my new computer and I have that option available to me. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work! When I configure for joystick, I can navigate the game menus just fine but the in-game ship won’t respond to me. Fortunately, I found the option to customize a keyboard control scheme and I come up with a halfway decent one.

One of the first features I noticed was that holding the fire button results in a rapid, continuous stream of fire. This seems like the desirable approach. However, this type of offensive power only works against flying opponents. There are all types of things to hit on the ground (various solid objects passing beneath you in space). These include enemies and powerups that need to be hit before collected. Nailing these targets requires a missile and missiles aren’t fired as quickly as the main cannon, though you can speed up the rate of fire by manually firing.

I should mention that the “Assembler” part of the title comes from the feature that allows you to assemble various upgrades to your craft if you gather enough powerups. I would show you this if I could possibly make it far enough into the game, even on the easiest skill level.

So committed are the authors to maintaining an authentic arcade feel that the high score initial entry mechanism forces you to cycle through letters using the left and right controls and select initials with the fire button. I only mention it because it’s sort of a pet peeve when PC games don’t take advantage of the keyboard in these situations.