Hi there.

Today we’re looking at an old pinball game: Pinball Fantasies. For reasons that will be explained, I also decided to go back and write a little more about its sequel, Pinball Illisions, too.

Currently playing: FIFA 14

I’m not sure if it’s my inability to get on with the 360 pad, my sloth-like reflexes and arthritic fingers, or just the fact that I haven’t practised enough, but I’m finding the latest FIFA fairly hard going. I’ll reserve judgement on the main game for now, but in terms of presentation, part of the draw of FIFA is that it has all the licenses and money behind it to deliver an authentic experience, as opposed to the enjoyable but intermittently ludicrous alternative reality offered by the older PES titles.

It seems to me that the more EA strive for perfection, the more it jars when they miss the mark. The decision, for example, to have Alan McInally interrupt your game with updates from other matches initially seems an impressive touch, but it soon becomes tiresome as you realise a) his performance isn’t that convincing; b) these updates repeat themselves very quickly; and c) you actually don’t care about what’s happening in the other matches. Meanwhile, I’m pretty sure I’ve never heard Martin “Puma World Football ’98” Tyler refer to a player as ‘this lad’ in real life, which he does repeatedly here.

Most crucially, though, the feeling persists that, for all the real names and photos, you’re never quite immersed in another world of football in the same way you are with, say, the Championship Manager/Football Manager series. I mean, they’ve improved things quite a bit since the screen below made me despair, but it still sort of sums up my feelings on what they’re getting wrong:

Fan imagines Buffy the Vampire Slayer as a LucasArts-era adventure game

Some artwork of scenes from TV series Buffy The Vampire Slayer, drawn in the style of a classic Lucasarts adventure.

For a 30-something nerd and Joss Whedon fan like myself it’s a perfect combination of two different sources of 90s nostalgia. If such a game was to actually exist I’d be reaching for my wallet in microseconds.

I’ve never talked much about flight sims as frankly I’m pretty bad at them, and aren’t really qualified to offer much commentary, beyond subjective experience. One I did play a bit though, back in my childhood, was F-117A from Microprose. which puts you in command of the USAF’s stealth fighter. Rather than flashy Top-Gun style heroics, this is aerial warfare of a slower, more cautious nature. It’s your job to evade radar, sneak past enemy fighters, then drop lots of heavy ordnance on some bridge in Libya.

he gives a thumbs up but that was the wrong bridge, you muppet

Back in those days, Microprose were well known for this sort of military simulator. I don’t know what hardcore sim fans would make of features like the flight modelling and controls nowadays, and I’m sure the genre has advanced, but I think it was deemed pretty realistic back in 1991. Myself, I thought it managed a decent balance between being accessible and feeling reasonably challenging and authentic. Or to put it another way, I completed several successful strike missions without turning my hundred-million-dollar warplane into a flaming wreck, but I soon decided that manual landings were too much hard work.

It was also kind of atmospheric, cruising over the desert under under sunset skies in my alien-looking black jet. One key part of your interface is a little gauge showing how visible you currently are, and how close enemy radar is to picking you out; if I recall correctly this would depend on what maneuvers you were pulling, how high you were going, whether or not the weapons bays were open and so on. That created quite a sense of tension, as I picked my way through threats such as SAM launchers, watching the detection indicator creep upwards. Change course and risk blundering near another enemy, or risk it and plough on ahead?

For those of you who might this appealing, gog.com have now added F117 to their lineup. I hope in time they bring us some more of the old Microprose sims; I’d particularly like to see Gunship 2000.

And now, some fun stealth fighter related facts!

1: This game is Stealth Fighter 2.0. The first game was based on the F19, which apparently only existed in rumours and Tom Clancy novels.
2: The weird shape of the aircraft is to help deflect radar signals. Futuristic as it looks, the US Air Force actually retired the F117 six years ago.
3: The real F117 has no air-to-air capability, so I have no idea why it has the F-for-Fighter designation. So while it’s great for really dedicated stealth fans, the airborne version of Thief players, it’s perhaps a little limiting for everyone else. So Microprose offer you the choice of the real jet, or their own version which has a cannon and anti-air missiles, at the cost of being a bit less stealthy.

Hello there.

Continuing a series which we like to call “Old racing games that Rik will write lots of words about but ultimately give either a score of 5 or 6 to” [We told you to change the name – FFG Board] we have a review of a game called Juiced.

Yesterday the extended Support Phase of windows XP ended. That was the last stage in its official life cycle, where users were getting security updates but not a lot else. So as far as Microsoft is concerned, that’s all folks, XP is now finished. Unless you pay them anyway, apparently our government is shelling out £5.5mil to keep it going a little while longer.

It’s the end of an era, then. Or at least a formal end, even if a majority of users had already moved on to new systems. I’m not enough of a tech expert to say on how great an OS XP was, other than to comment that it always seemed pretty stable and user-friendly, and it served us well for many years. Certainly, it dominated the 00’s. Lots of us kept using it past the release of the widely disliked Vista, until microsoft got back on form with Win 7. Rik in fact kept true to his promise to stick with XP until the bitter end, and has only now upgraded.

Anyway I thought this would be a good moment to revisit our how to run old games piece, where we list the various options open to retro gamers on modern Windows PCs. When we wrote it, we both had XP in mind when we said “modern windows”, and now of course there have been three major new iterations of the OS. (four if you count 8.1 as a major iteration).

Fortunately, the general picture hasn’t changed a lot. Generally, your solution for running MS-DOS games is the emulator DOSBox. In years past that had speed issues with more demanding titles from late in the DOS days (such as first person shooters) but on a modern PC you should get a decent framerate.

For old adventures like Monkey Island, you have a choice of ScummVM, written specifically for such games, or sticking with DOSBox. I generally prefer the former since it’s a bit more user friendly, with a built in GUI, but these days it’s largely a matter of personal preference.

Stuff from the windows 95 days may become increasingly problematic, especially if you’re using a 64-bit system which will not run 16-bit software. We don’t yet have an equivalent to Dosbox for this generation, and I think Rik’s answer was to resort to keeping an old beige win98 box lurking around. You could try virtualisation software if you’re feeling really dedicated although you’ll need your own copy of Win 95 or 98, and I don’t know if it’s fast enough for gaming purposes.

What is worth remarking on though, is that since we first wrote that piece, GoG.com have steadily expanded their range and become one of our favourite sources of classic games. Anything you buy there should be ready to run on a modern PC, either bundled with dosbox or patched up, with a minimum of tinkering. Same goes for oldies found on Steam.

If you’re a windows user reading this, odds are you’re on Win 7. I’ve yet to encounter any issues with Windows 8 that didn’t already exist with 7, but if I learn a game we wrote about is newly broken I’ll update the relevant article. If you’re a Linux user you’re on your own, and are probably enough of a tech-head to sort it out for yourself!

Hi there.

Some more racing action for you today – from me, with love. It’s an arcade racer from the mid-90s called Screamer.

Currently playing Papers Please, an indie game that puts you in the seat of a border inspector in a fictional communist nation in 1982. Your job is to read through the documents of every person attempting entry, and only let them through if everything appears to be in order. So that means checking a bunch of factors like, do they match their passport photo, is the issuing city valid, is their work permit is still valid, is the passport number written on the permit correct, and so on.

Jorji keeps showing up without valid documents but is very cheerful and persistent. He’s pretty much the nearest thing to light relief here.

Every entrant correctly processed gives you 5 credits towards your pay. For each one you get wrong (declining a valid application, or allowing a false one) a citation is issued, and the more of these you get in a day, the heftier a fine you have to pay. There’s also a time limit for each day, so you can’t dawdle when looking through the papers. You have to work through them as quickly and accurately as possible. (note, the game instantly tells you if you processed an entrant wrongly, which is rather implausible, but I think a merciful feature. It would be pretty harsh if you didn’t know how well the day was going until afterwards). At the end of every day you have bills to pay, rent, food and heat. Too many screwups mean your funds fall short and you have to start choosing between these, and your family will start becoming ill. If they all die, game over.

At first your job isn’t too difficult, but as the game draws on the entry rules change every day, and become progressively more complicated. Foreign workers start needing work passes as well as permits. Entrants from certain countries have to be searched. All entrants require valid polio vaccines. It means more pieces of paper to look through, and more time spent on functions like taking photographs. You really start to feel the pressure after a while. If you take too long you lose money, but if you start making mistakes in your hurry to get applicants through, you also lose money.

Most applicants appear to be randomly generated, but there are a few scripted persons along the way with unusual circumstances. A man shows up who’s papers are in order, but when his wife follows she’s missing something. Do you have a heart and wave her through, and accept a penalty? Easy if you’re having a good day and can take the hit, harder if you’ve already had several citations hanging over you. Then, later on, there’s the matter of a rebel movement, and a choice as to whether or not you want to help them out…

It’s a great insight into the life of a in a stressful, demanding job amidst a nightmare of bureaucracy, with little margin for error. When you get the chance to help someone, or strike back at an authoritarian regime, do you take it, or is your priority to just try and keep your family fed and safe? Between the pressure and daily grind of flicking through a bunch of work permits, it’s all a bit grim and I’m living in dread of the clatter of the printer spitting out a citation. Then again little moments of kindness or seeing your savings in decent shape, after a day of successful and smooth processing, lift the spirits. Really apart from the challenge of the job of border guard (something pretty unconventional om gaming), this game is worth playing for the themes it explores. You’re prompted to reflect on what life might have been like for those living under an oppressive, authoritarian regime. It also illustrates how being good and being lawful can sometimes clash – should an individual follow their conscience, or uphold the stability of society?

I should also mention, since we are meant to be primarily an Olde Games site, the visuals are very 1989 EGA in style. The stark greys suit the east-European communism theme perfectly. And the whole game fits into 40MB, which by modern standards is basically nothing.

Currently playing: L.A. Noire.

For various reasons I’m now on my third runthrough of the early missions without having made it that far into the game. It’s not without problems, but I definitely like it so far, although I’ll reserve final judgement for when I get to the end – I’m not sure where the story’s going or what it’s trying to do at the moment, but I’m hoping all will become clearer as I get into the second half of the game.

For now though, all I can say for certain is that it features a great example of your classic “angry drill sergeant” [Obvious warning: some swearing is involved here]:

Hi there.

We make a belated (and non-sequential) return to the Driver series tonight, with a look at the fourth game in the series, Driver: Parallel Lines.