iD have added their back-catalogue to steam! Also Raven have added some of their iD-engine-powered games like Hexen.

just look at the front page

I’d still rather be able to buy these titles on a CD-compilation, but I’m old-fashioned like that. This is a good move on iD’s part, and I only hope other companies follow suit!

I don’t know, however, if the various source ports like jDoom will work with these Steam versions.

First up – (genuine) new content is coming very soon. In the meantime…

Back in the mid-eighties, the big argument among computer-owning kids was whether the Sinclair Spectrum or the Commodore 64 was ‘the best’ machine to own. Frankly, I always found this a little bit baffling – Speccy games only ever seemed to feature about two colours, and while the Commodore 64 was supposed to be technically superior, I didn’t think much of its washed-out palette either.

Our family had an Amstrad CPC – possibly the least celebrated of the three major 8-bit home computers – and while it may be wrong to focus on graphics, with virtually every major computer release appearing across all three formats (CPC, Speccy, C64), on the old ‘comparing the screenshots on the back of the box’ test, the CPC came out on top every time.

Okay, I may be a little biased, and admittedly the more colourful CPC graphics occasionally seemed a little more chunky than the others, but on the other hand, I never came back from an afternoon squinting at my mate’s Spectrum games thinking, ‘cor, I wish I had one of those…’

By the time the Amigas and Atari STs of this world started emerging, we’d built up a collection of some 350 games, a total boosted somewhat by the presence of quite a number of £2 budget titles. At that price, it didn’t really matter if they were rubbish, but quite a lot of them weren’t. Codemasters may now be a respectable publisher of endless full-price Colin McRae titles, but back in the 80s their business was cranking out fun-size little arcade games that were cheap as chips.

It has to be said that these were the games that I played and enjoyed most. Other titles had a surprising amount of depth, but they were usually hard as nails, too, and I recall my Dad being forced into constructing several labyrinthine home-made maps in a vain attempt to complete Gargoyle Games’ Marsport.

Meanwhile, I was busy enjoying the likes of Codemasters’ Twin Turbo V8, a cheap knock-off of Outrun which actually looked pretty good when compared to the CPC conversion of the arcade classic (pictured below – and no, that isn’t a reverse view, I just crashed the bloody thing, okay?). Recently I got the urge to pick up a CPC emulator specifically to have a go at this game – an experiment which took up roughly ten minutes of my time. While I don’t for a second imagine I’ll be forsaking my PC oldies for a CPC emulator, I’d still like to give some of my old collection a go – perhaps it could even be a semi-regular feature on the journal (whoop-di-frickin’-do – a reader).

In the meantime, if you’re at all interested in anything CPC related, you could do a lot worse than check out the following:

Caprice – A top CPC emulator that’ll do pretty much everything you could want, er, CPC-wise.

The Amstrad CPC Games Resource – There’s a ton of CPC games available for download here, with links to reviews, too.

Since I’ve greatly enjoyed Warcraft 3, I look forward to writing about it for our site. However, while now a budget title and thus viable material for our attention, it’s still relatively young. So I thought we should do this properly and go right back to the first Warcraft, and play through them in order.

Except, here’s the problem: it sucks. It’s just a pain in the ass. Here’s why:
-you can only select up to four units at once
-no use of hotkeys to reselect groups
-there’s no drag-a-box selection
-to give orders you have to first select the action from the panel on the left, then click the target. There’s no automatic selector of “move\attack\harvest” based on what’s under the pointer.

This makes simply getting a dozen soldiers across the map and into battle a chore. Grab some, shuffle them along, grab another four. With the result that they reach the enemies piecemeal, a couple at a time, instead of all at once in a mighty rush. I suppose I could, with patience, get used to it and compensate. But, why bother? I gave up on the second mission.

It seems to me that that really decent and intuitive gameplay mechanics came about with Command and Conquer. The early fore-runners, Dune 2 and Warcraft were important events in gaming, but they’re just too clunky to be enjoyable today.

So should I hang up my retro-gamer hat in shame? Am I too pampered by slicker modern titles? I don’t think so, we just have to acknowledge that some oldies age better than others. For now, I’m playing Warcraft 2. Which is essentially the first game redone with more units, more attractive artwork and, importantly, greatly improved controls!

Hi all.

I still miserably fail to match Rik’s pace in writing content, so here’s just one review for today. It’s another Trek game: Judgment Rites.

Also, another reminder about our shiny new journal, full of quality gaming goodness.

I recently discovered that Sierra have recently re-released a number of their old adventure games in Windows-friendly ‘Classic Collection’ packs. UK gamers can now get all of the Space, Police or King’s Quest games in one handy (and legal) collection for the reasonable(ish) sum of £10.

This is the kind of thing that should happen more often. Even though I’m not the greatest fan of the Sierra adventures, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to snap up a couple of these packs when I saw them. LucasArts have been doing something similar, if a little less wallet-friendly, with some of their old adventures for a little while now, and seeing old adventure games back in the shops again is good news as far as I’m concerned.

As ever, there are a few niggles. Sierra purists might baulk at the inclusion of some remakes in place of the original releases, and they might have a point: why can’t we have BOTH the original and the remake included? Also, later releases in each series are excluded – so there’s no Mask of Eternity in the KQ Collection, for example – which is also a bit of a shame. I don’t want to complain too much, but it would be nice if we could have gotten a more comprehensive selection. I shelled out a tenner about eight years ago for a PQ collection that included original releases, remakes and PQ: SWAT (okay, so that was a bit crap, but still…) so for things to have been removed for this latest release seems like a bit of a con.

It’s also worth mentioning as a side-note that these Sierra collections make use of a version of DOSBox. It’s not the first time I’ve seen something like this (the latest Broken Sword re-issues use ScummVM) but it still struck me as slightly unusual. While it’s great for those who want to play the oldies but don’t want to fart around with DOSBox itself, hardened nerds might be frustrated by the fact that some options, such as screen and video capture, are disabled.

Anyway, it’s good that they’re back out there. Some may be slightly irked at the fact that Sierra have just humped some of their oldies onto a CD with a cut-down version of an independently-developed piece of software freely available on the internet, but at the end of the day, they still own the games, and we should pay if we still want to play ’em.

Three new reviews for you this evening, and they’re linked by a theme of automotive mayhem…

First up, we have Carmageddon, which caused quite a stir when it was first released – probably something to do with all the blood.

The other major controversy in game-land during 1997 was Grand Theft Auto. We’ve already covered that one, and more recently we’ve turned our attentions to the first sequel, GTA 2.

Finally, we’ve decided to take a look at yet another game in the Need for Speed series. Road Challenge may not let you go on a killing spree, or run anyone over, but it does let you drive faster than you’re supposed to. Remember, kids – speed kills, too.

Okay, so the link was a bit tenuous. Still, we’ve got three reviews in one update for the first time since, well, ever (I think), so that’s something, I guess.

Cheerio!

Unofficial Turrican remake

Old-skool 2D shooters aren’t something we write about much; the PC wasn’t well-regarded as a platform for such things, and to be honest I don’t think we’d have a lot to say about most of them anyway. As for Turrican itself, I don’t think Turrican itself even got a PC release. Still, it is most definitely regarded as a classic of its genre, the name spoken in revered tones amongst those who were gaming on formats like the Commodore 64 and Amiga. Plus there was that awesome soundtrack.

I think it’s one of those “if you play any amiga oldie at all, try this one” titles, so both the original and this remake have to be worth a go. Even if you’re like me you’ll probably just die lots and marvel at how much more patient gamers must have been in 1990.

Hello all.

Recently I completed Price of Persia: The Sands of Time. And it’s a rather fantastic game – breathtaking acrobatics, a misty-mythical Arabian-nights feel, and a good story too. I actually gave a damn about what happened to the Prince and Farah – and it’s all too rare that a game evokes such a response. Sure, maybe their fallign in love is rather obvious and inevitable, but their journey to that point is well done, from bickering and mistrust to grudging mutual respect and then affection. They’re characters you can empathise with, not just generic heroes. When the prince takes a hit in combat, and Farah goes “oh no!”, it’s actually kind of gut-wrenching.

The combat meanwhile is on the weaker side but what the hell, learn the wall-rebound move and you’re practically unstoppable. So you can enjoy hacking up a few sand monsters, then get back to running, leaping and swinging which is really what the gameplay in SoT is all about.

Now I’m onto Warrior Within… and I’m undecided so far. The acrobatics look of a similar nature, which is good. The combat is greatly expanded, with a whole load of combo moves. All of which result in me getting my ass kicked when I try them, apart from the aerial-slash. Which I use over and over. Also, the game’s attitude is very different. It’s all dark and angsty, and the prince scowls a lot. I kind of miss the wry commentary of the young chap from before, now it’s all “IS THAT THE BEST YOU HAVE YOU BITCH”. I think he’s been listening to too much nu-metal.

Also while farah’s outfit was on the scanty side in SoT, WW’s female costumes are several steps more ridiculously flimsy. Really, development chaps, there’s more of us than just adolescent boys playing this game.

Oh, wait, this is officially supposed to be an old-games blogjournal. Well, I do intend to try the original PoP sometime soon. And will probably find it ridiculously difficult!

Although supposedly an avid gamesplayer, I’m pretty bad at actually getting through games. I do like buying them though – especially if they’re cheap – so that they can sit on my shelves for weeks and months while I get around to playing them.

I decided to steel myself and stop reckless purchasing of budget games (online or otherwise) so that I could actually work my way through some of the ones I already had. It was such a good idea it actually worked for a while – and until recently, I’d been making serene progress through my dusty old CD caddy without even a thought of going into GAME and seeing what was in the ‘3 for £10’ section.

Besides, those things are con anyway. Shops are so badly stocked these days that it doesn’t seem possible to indulge in a multibuy offer without coming away with at least one copy of Tomb Raider.

At least that’s what I thought until I discovered that you can buy direct from the publisher and get the same deals you get in the shops – only with a choice of the full range available to you. To cut a pretty boring story short – I just broke my embargo and bought a handful (plus one) of games for myself from the $old Out website.

Truth be told, while there was quite a good selection available (and I could have bought even more) it was still a little bit thin and some titles have clearly been cut from the range. You can get Deus Ex: Invisible War, for example, but the original (and best) is nowhere to be found. Clearly, it (and others) aren’t selling enough to be worth keeping on the range.

Thinking about it, I guess it’s a bit unreasonable to expect the publishers to keep our beloved favourites on their label forever – so all the more reason to snap these things up while they’re available. In an ideal world, we wouldn’t need abandonware or to joust for copies of Planescape Torment and Fate of Atlantis on eBay – but by grabbing hold of a few games on budget when you see them, you’ll be saving yourself all of this hassle a few years down the line. At least that’s what I’m telling myself.

And the games? I’d love to say I’d bought some highbrow strategy titles, but let’s have a look at what I’ve been playing recently, shall we?

Hello,

A double-whammy of celebrity(ish)-endorsed games for you today.

First up, we have a review of Colin McRae Rally 2.0. I’d love to say this was timed to coincide with the imminent release of the latest in the long-running series, the frankly daft-sounding Colin McRae: DiRT, but I’d just be lying if I did.

Secondly, we have another addition to the Sport section, with David Leadbetter’s Greens having the dubious honour of being the first golf game featured on FFG.

If that’s not exciting enough for you, be sure to check out our newest feature, the FFG journal.