We’ve got something new for you this evening. It’s a review of XIII, the amnesiac spy shooter from 2003.

That’s right, I said 2003. That’s five years ago. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Next week – a review of Zork. And Pacman.

Spending hour after hour on a game that never ends just to achieve a high score isn’t something I’ve ever been particularly interested in, but it has to be said that my recent dabble with pinball reminded me that occasionally such an obsession has taken a hold.

Some time ago I spent a not-unreasonable amount of time playing a game called Major Motion on the Atari ST. Although times (and games) were simpler then, it has to be said that a Spy Hunter clone with fairly dreadful graphics didn’t represent the cutting edge of 16-bit gaming and as a relatively early release, it was doomed to a life on a mail-order budget label being ordered by those happy to make a purchase based on a game’s name and a postage stamp sized picture of the box cover.

Luckily, my Dad was one such person and my obsession with driving up a never-ending road smashing evil blue cars into the grass verge was born. For years I toiled to finally knock the names of the programming team off the top of the high score charts, an achievement I was proud of until I downloaded a copy of the disk image for my ST emulator and saw my best efforts failing to register on the high-score chart, for they had easily (and repeatedly) eclipsed by whoever had owned that particular copy of the game. The bastard.

If there’s no new content from me for several weeks, you’ll know what I’ve been doing. Now, even though this journal has never been the most active (or ‘interactive’) place, I’ll ask anyway, for the hell of it: anyone out there got a favourite high-score type game? Anyone else had their feelings of supremacy on an oldie shattered by the entries on the high-score table after downloading from an abandonware site?

A friend of mine sent a link to this: GOG.com. It’s an online distribution service, focussing on older games – the front page has stuff like Fallout 2 and Sacrifice.

Ever since Steam came along I’ve been hoping for more oldies on online services like this. There’s certainly some demand out there for the classics, and even if it’s not a really huge market, the costs involved should be pretty small. Apparently the guys behind GOG have enthused about one day adding the Lucasarts back catelogue, which I’d especially like to see.

Anyway i’ve signed up for the beta test so if i’m lucky I’ll let you all know.

Hello.

No summer holidays for us, we’re staying inside with the curtains drawn, all in the name of retro-gaming.

We’ve added one new review – of Codemasters’ Psycho Pinball.

Not an update as such, but I’ve spent a bit of time updating my brief histories. The racing one’s been done for a little while now, and the football and adventure histories have now been brought up to speed. There are new screenshots, games that we’ve covered are now linked to the review pages, and I’ve tried to remove any glib evaluations of games I haven’t actually played.

I’m leaving the cut-off date at 2004 for now rather than attempting to add entries for more recent years. That means they cover roughly the same time period as the games we review – detailed info on recent stuff is more readily available on ‘the internet’, after all.

If there’s a better way to spend a day off, I’d like to know what it is. Thanks to Jo for helping me out with some of the screenies.

Well, I finally got around to getting a new PC. As regular visitors to FFG may know, I’ve been making do with an old AMD Duron 900 for the past six years or so, and despite several makeshift upgrades, there comes a point when you have to accept that brand new technology is the only way forward. The final straw came when we moved house and my internet provider told me that it no longer supported Windows 98. I had been using their service and Win 98 at our old place pretty successfully since 2006, but after enduring snorts of derision from customer services (“I didn’t know anyone still used that operating system, sir“) and searching frantically for some kind of workaround, it soon became apparent that the game was up.

Admittedly, I could have just bought Win XP and put it on my old PC, but one look at the old girl told me she just wouldn’t be able to take another temporary fix. So despite unsteady economic times, I got out the credit card and splashed out on the best rig I could reasonably afford. It’s not a particularly powerful machine, but it does open up the possibility of experiencing about five years’ worth of gaming that were previously inaccessible to me.

Effectively, this means two things for FFG. Firstly, it puts a stop on me ranting about how things won’t work with Windows 98 (well, at least until the whole world’s using Vista, then I’ll repeat the same trick as I keep XP on my machine until 2020). Secondly, I think we can now entertain the prospect of covering one or two slightly more modern titles on FFG. We’ve never had any strict rules about this kind of thing, but in recent years we’ve certainly tried to keep to pre-2002 titles, partly because we’re supposed to be a retro games site, and partly because I would sulk a bit if anything too new to run on my machine was suggested for review.

When we first started we weren’t so worried about such things. FFG was more of a ‘here are games that we’ve played and liked’ tribute site than anything too specifically retro-focused. The first game I ever reviewed here was Blade Runner in 2001 (the date on the review refers to a later rewrite) – only three years after it had been released. So I guess there’s an argument for saying that if it was alright then, it should be alright now.

We’re not going to go too recent though. The focus of the site has changed, and with some logical reasoning behind that change, too. But don’t be surprised if you see the odd title from 2003 cropping up on FFG in the future.

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As a footnote, it’s been a little quiet on the journal of late. Not that we’ve been too busy (or certainly I haven’t) but I seemed to have subconsciously imposed some kind of quality control on stuff that should or shouldn’t go up here. But blogs are generally fairly self-indulgent creations: and it’s not like I’m writing about what I bought from the supermarket or my Friday night down the pub. So there’ll be more of this kind of rubbish more regularly from now on. Bet you can’t wait.

Wow, it’s a double-whammy of updates. I guess if we’d have been better organised we could have rolled it into one, but hey, it’s sort of more exciting this way.

Anyway, we have one new review for you this evening, and the game in question is the cheerfully chaotic city-based racer Midtown Madness 2.

Budget games are mostly excellent, right? All kinds of classics from several years ago, that set you back only a modest amount and run decently even on outdated hardware. In fact, they’re as important a part of our archives as the older abandonware generations.

Still, I was reflecting lately on a point Rik once brought up (I think in the “general articles” section that’s been largely superseded by this blog). There’s a few kinds of game out there that I’m often tempted by, but probably shouldn’t spend money on. Like flight sims. Or the Total War series. Beacause I know I’m rubbish at them, won’t get anywhere, will give up in frustration and the game will end up sat on a shelf collecting dust for years.

Now, as long as the game commands £30 I’m safe; a sum that high acts as a shield against rash purchases. But once we’re down to say £10 then the temptation sets in. “Hey, maybe this time I’ll enjoy it and make some progress”. Except, I won’t. And thus £10 is wasted.

So that’s why I’m telling myself absolutely no Need For Speed games until I’ve at least played some demos and satisfied myself I can actually win a race.

Hi all.

We have a guest item today, so a great big thankyou goes to the J-Man of Just Games Retro. He’s donated us his review on the 2001 shooter, Red Faction. What’s more he’s done a quality in-depth asssessment where I’d probably just write “Kind of dull, you can blow walls up, 5/10”. So go have a read, then head on over to his own site.

No, you’re not dreaming, we have another update for you – the spy-shooter No One Lives Forever.

Once again, apologies for the lack of content recently. It’s a relief to finally knock that newspost which makes reference to ‘January blues’ off the bottom of the page. For shame!

Fingers crossed, we should be looking good for more regular updates for the forseeable future.