NES Racing Grab Bag

Posted on March 30, 2007 by Multimedia Mike

I continued to forestall the inevitable this evening by further delaying playing some of the most bizarre Sega CD games in existence. Instead, I finally collected a full set of quality screenshots for Vegas Fever Winner Takes All. You start this game with $1000 and I was consistently, cluelessly losing money at each game I played for screenshot purposes. Wouldn’t you know– on the last game I played, Texas Hold ’em Poker, I actually won a sizable pot and ended up with over $1000, even though I really had no idea what I was doing.

Vegas Fever Winner Takes All -- I won it all!

I’m so strategically-impaired that stubbornly calling bets and refusing to fold is probably the best strategy I could hope to employ in an actual Poker game. Through it all, though, I must say that if I were partial to gambling-type games, this would be my casino simulation game of choice. Beautiful, authentic, diverse, and it claims to be highly accurate to boot.

Otherwise, I spent the evening playing through a bunch of old NES games. The reason for this is that, vast as it is, MobyGames is still missing over 150 NES games (American NES games; that I know of). I’m hoping to fill some gaps. Among the NES games were 2 racing games, one good and one not so good. The good one is a title of which I have fond memories playing and winning back when my interest in the system was waning: Eliminator Boat Duel.

This is a fierce one on one boat racing game where you claw your way up through the ranks of pro boat racers, winning prize money, upgrading your boat and generally earning respect among the boat racing community. Your first opponent is a curiously aggressive hippie. I seem to recall that the final opponent in the game is a high-class lady who comes on to you after you defeat her in nitro-fueled boating fury. Another curious feature of the game is that sometimes the races will finish too close to call, visually. That’s when the eye candy on the sidelines requests a slo-mo replay:

Consistently tanned, they are. I’m sure that’s attributable to their disciplined bikini team tanning regimen and not due to any NES palette limitations.

The not so good (but not entirely bad) racing game was Galaxy 5000.

Race against 3 computer-controlled spaceships. There are 2 control schemes to choose from, both of which require some adaptation. The first is to press the gamepad in the direction you want to go and the craft rotates to point in that direction and thrust. The second control scheme uses left and right to rotate and up to thrust. I had trouble getting used to either and couldn’t get past the first Mercury race. That meant that the race course disintegrated out from under me and I fell — in space — apparently into some water.

Another interesting facet of the game is high-pitched, comical, digital voices exclaiming “Hey!” and “Watch it!” when you bump into other cars.

Positech Racers

Posted on March 23, 2007 by Multimedia Mike

Earlier today, I asked the MobyGames admins to completely obliterate an entry that I entered a long time ago when I was new to the database. I realized there were a bunch of things wrong with it and it was easier to perform a summary “do-over” than submit a series of corrections. The game was entitled Space Racers, or I thought it was. In-game, the title was Rocky Racers. This game is another one of those credit card form factor mini-CDs published by Selectsoft as “Pocketware”. Now that I realize that they like to gratuitously rename games, I need to change the title, the publisher, the description, the release date, everything.

I played Rocky Racers again tonight. And since that was quick enough, I picked out another random game from the pile: Kombat Kars. The company name on this one sounded familiar: Positech, same company that did Rocky Racers. Guess what? Kombat Kars is essentially the same game with slightly different art and music! In fact, the brief credits screens for each game are exactly the same (one guy doing programming and graphics, outsourced music, and 3 playtesters; I pity that trio, more on why in a moment).

Rocky Racers, a.k.a. Space Racers, involves 4 outer space ships racing around an asteroid-delimited 2D race course. Multiplayer is possible via TCP/IP or IPX, or the balance of ships is controlled, rather ruthlessly, by the computer. Any of the ships has the capacity to fire on other ships or activate a tractor beam in an effort to slow their progress. It’s also possible to work your way outside of the asteroid boundaries. However, there are a number of waypoints that you are expected to cross and if you miss any, the game will complain and presumably disqualify you from winning.

Not that I would know for sure. The controls are very difficult to use. Or maybe the ships are too quick, or the track is too confined. I found it all very difficult. The other ships fought ahead of me in short order and got way out ahead of me while I was still constantly bouncing off the game’s eponymous rocks. I didn’t get far. Those 3 playtesters must have been a patient bunch.

Kombat Kars has cars instead of spaceships and, while apparently published a bit later than Rocky Racers, isn’t quite as involved. There is one less track (8 vs. 9), no multiplayer support, and no tractor beam, though that last feature might not make as much sense in context. I found it just as frustrating to play. These 2 are such pretty games and should make for awesome casual distractions. I really wish they had joystick support as that probably would have made gameplay easier.

This is the person to blame for these 2 games. He still appears to be gainfully employed in the same field.

At MobyGames:

Persistence Plus

Posted on March 23, 2007 by Multimedia Mike

After reading about last night’s difficulty with Eraser Turnabout, Colin advised me to try Windows XP’s Windows 95 compatibility mode (selected via the Properties dialog of an executable). I get past my first problem, the one where the game really, truly only wants to run under Windows 95. This is the whiniest program installer I’ve ever seen. It then goes on to complain about this:

Huh? Well, whatever. I can still continue the installation. Next up:

I’m surprised the ACM subsystem isn’t found, but who knows how this program is trying to do things. And the final message during the installation:

At least I understand this one, though I treat it the same I would any offer to install down-rev versions of DirectX or QuickTime. I suspect this program just wants to install Windows Media Player and the Indeo Video 4.1 video codec. Again, this stuff should already be present, so disregard.The game gets installed. I set the W95 compatibility mode on the main executable and am greeted with this dialog on execution:

What on earth is this swap file the game demands? Per my understanding, application-level software isn’t supposed to even care about swap files; that’s an OS-level thing. Another curious feature of the dialog is that it’s system modal in a way that blocks input to the entire desktop. I thought this was a “feature” that Microsoft fixed in Windows 95 and that from then on, system modal dialogs would only remain on top of other windows but not devour all input.

So, still no progress on this game. However, the game did install its 5-page manual which just might provide enough data to write a passable MobyGames description. I also took this opportunity to try 2 other games in Windows 95 compatibility mode that previously gave me trouble: Burn:Cycle still throws the same cryptic dialog and the Psychotron demo installer still thinks its running under Windows NT. I thought, at the bare minimum, the compatibility mode was supposed to lie to the app when the app asks the OS what version of Windows is hosting.

Oh, and I thought I would try Blade Warrior again since DOSBox 0.70 is out. Still no luck running the game but at least it no longer crashes the emulator.

Persistence

Posted on March 22, 2007 by Multimedia Mike

It was a difficult night with the games. But I was determined to play a new game and it finally paid off, in a manner of speaking. I’ll chronicle the brief adventure:

The first game I tried was Eraser Turnabout, apparently based on the 1996 movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Vanessa Williams. I wanted to give it the standard fair shake but the game wouldn’t let me:

Eraser Turnabout absolutely requires Windows 95

“The OS is not Win 95. Eraser Turnabout only runs under Windows 95.” — retyped for the benefit of hapless would-be gamers googling for tech support. The game comes from Imagination Pilots who have all of 2 other games to their record in the database, and one is an interactive movie.

I want to point out a few other technical aspects of this game before I assign it to the “couldn’t make work” section of the Master Play List. The game material I have (2 CDs and back CD cover; no art or instructions or adornment) prominently boasts Intel MMX technology used in the game. MMX chips first hit the market in 1997, per my understanding; this game lists a copyright date of 1996. Early adopter, I guess. The game has lots and lots of Indeo 4/AVI files and Smacker files. There are also miscellaneous temp files and directories left around the filesystem structure. Seems a bit sloppy.

So that was a bust. Let’s look at one of several Pocketware games. What happens here is that a company called Selectsoft licenses a bunch of fairly simple yet graphically pleasing computer games for redistribution on these adorable credit card form factor mini-CDs. Here is Star Scrambler, which contains ~40 MB of data:

Sounds exciting. Let’s try it out… noooooo! How can this be?!

It’s a repackaging of Astro Assembler. Who knows? Maybe there will be some further intelligence provided in this version that will indicate who actually developed and who published this game. I need to know because that’s hanging up my MobyGames submission on this game right now. Nope; everything looks the same as before– manual, game, and everything. If I were to do a byte-wise comparison of all files involved, they would likely be identical.

Let’s move swiftly on to another Pocketware mini-CD. This one is called Trax: The Robot Wars. It has ~80 MB of data on its surface, ~70 MB of which belong to one big WAV background music track. It works, so it’s my game for tonight. To sum it up, it’s a life and death game of bumper cars.

The title makes the game sound a lot more epic than it really is. There are several modes in the game. The first is Ascent, where you battle one other computer-controlled car at a time to rise up through the ranks. You defeat the other car either by pushing it out of the ring and hitting it enough times so that it blows up. The other two modes are Battle and Tournament where you can configure up to 4 cars, either human or computer-controlled, to have an all-out war in various arenas. You can win money with which to customize and your vehicle to gain a bigger edge.

So you can select to play against 3 other CPU opponents. That makes things marginally interesting. I settled on a strategy of staying out of the way and avoiding the other 3 cars until there was only one other car. Then I rolled around the arena as nimbly as I could and hoped that the CPU car would fall off the edge.

Another mildly amusing feature is that all 4 cars in these battles royale can be configured as CPU players. This is great for the really lazy gamer, such as yours truly.

Cyberchase: Castleblanca Quest

Posted on March 18, 2007 by Multimedia Mike

Remember how I mentioned that interior decoration in the form of choosing and arranging furniture was not my proverbial cup of tea in the game of Restaurant Empire? This Gaming Pathology experiment has reached new lows in emasculating gameplay. Check this out– a minigame that revolves around measuring and cutting drapes:

Cyberchase: Castleblanca Quest -- Drape measuring and cutting game

This comes from today’s game, Cyberchase: Castleblanca Quest, ostensibly based on a PBS-produced educational TV series (and it shows in the opening animations that were poorly transcoded from television source material). This follows the same general formula as countless other educational kids’ games: A series of odd minigames strung together by a tenuous storyline. In this one, our 3 young protagonists visit the town of Castleblanca, a village run by horrid but civil monsters. The 3 kids also have a mutant bird in tow who sounds like he’s voiced by the ever-grating Gilbert Gottfried, but alas, the credits indicate otherwise. And even though the unholy undead are supposed to be the comically frightening aspect of this town, this no-eyed skeleton can’t hold a candle to the unnaturally glassy-eyed stares of these young ones:

Cyberchase: Castleblanca Quest -- D.A.R.E. to keep kids off drugs

Regarding the actual gaming content, there are 8 minigames/puzzles to play through. All have practice modes that are significantly easier than the actual games in the adventure mode. Each game teaches something to do with mathematics or spatial reasoning. Most are a little difficult to wrap one’s head around at first. But after some practice, the purpose usually clicks. For example, in the Monster Dive game, there is a tank with a low volume of water. The scoreboard tells you how much depth is required for the current diver, plus a custom adjustment for that diver. You must do the math to decide the water level and drop more monsters into the tub to displace water and raise the level.

All in all, this was my favorite minigame:

Cyberchase: Castleblanca Quest -- Disco mirrors

Your task in this Disco Deflector game is to adjust the mirrors so that when you throw the switch, the light beam finds its way to the mirror ball without hitting any of the monsters. Then they can boogie like they were meant to.

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.

Gaming Pathology

Piles Of Games, Copious Free Time, No Standards

Category: Windows Games