Ancient DOS Games Episode 152 - Nomad is online!

And, this week's been long and stressful and there's still more to come, though with any luck the bulk of the ridiculousness going on around here should be over with by next weekend. I'll let everyone know what's up soon enough, but the good news is that ADG should continue as usual. :)

I was completely unfamiliar with the Space Mountain connection. Fascinating!

It's a good likeness.

I've wondered if a "Secrets of the Galaxy" book (matching the object in the game) was originally planned to be included in the game box, and maybe got cut to reduce expense. In any case, I'd probably regard such a book as spoilers anyway.

Still got my 3.5" copy. I think I've progressed only half-way through the game or so. I get pretty far, then stop playing for a while, and when I get back to it I feel like starting over, and do.

I recall there's a bad ending to the game if your reveal a crucial fact to the enemy. Loose lips sink ships (and planets)!

I just made a pretty important news post on my website about my current state of affairs. Permit me to copy/paste it here for all of you to read:

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Well... these next few weeks are going to be a trying time for me...

To put it simply, the move didn't go exactly as planned. As a result, 99% of my stuff is burried deep in a storage bin and I'm temporarily staying at my sister's place until things get resolved. :/

I still have access to my computer though, as well as my recording equipment, so for the interim I can still produce ADG. I tried to plan for every potential outcome I could, but one thing I forgot to do was load up a bunch of games onto my computer ahead of time... I didn't think I would have to and it was too late to do so by the time we realized something was up and we weren't going to have a place to live. :(

So while I can still make ADG episodes just fine, for the time being, they'll almost all be downloadable titles from places like GOG or other sites which still offer older titles. I might be able to cheat a little and get some help from some people I know online to get ISOs and disk images of games I own but don't currently have access to, but I'd rather only resort to that if this situation runs longer than expected. As it stands, we're expecting to have this sorted out as quickly as two weeks, or by the end of March at the latest, though it's not impossible for things to take even longer, just unlikely.

I'm also behind with eMails as a bunch of you are probably already suspecting. I'll get to them as soon as I have some time to go through them. :B

My sister also has a MUCH better internet connection than Dad did, so livestreams for Patreon supporters should be MUCH high in quality than before. ;)

All of this said, my resolve is stronger than ever and there's very little more than could go wrong by this point. I have my secret game project to work on, more ADG to make, and once my secret project is ready to go I even have some new Patreon rewards planned to tie in with it!

These past few days have been some of the hardest in my 32 years of life I've ever faced, but, I am hopeful, resolute, and determined to pull myself back up, stronger than ever before!

Hang in there, it can only get better!

Sorry to hear you're having a hard time. I hope things work out okay.

Gemini000 wrote:

I just made a pretty important news post on my website about my current state of affairs. Permit me to copy/paste it here for al […]
Show full quote

I just made a pretty important news post on my website about my current state of affairs. Permit me to copy/paste it here for all of you to read:

---------------------

Well... these next few weeks are going to be a trying time for me...

To put it simply, the move didn't go exactly as planned. As a result, 99% of my stuff is burried deep in a storage bin and I'm temporarily staying at my sister's place until things get resolved. 😒

I still have access to my computer though, as well as my recording equipment, so for the interim I can still produce ADG. I tried to plan for every potential outcome I could, but one thing I forgot to do was load up a bunch of games onto my computer ahead of time... I didn't think I would have to and it was too late to do so by the time we realized something was up and we weren't going to have a place to live. 🙁

So while I can still make ADG episodes just fine, for the time being, they'll almost all be downloadable titles from places like GOG or other sites which still offer older titles. I might be able to cheat a little and get some help from some people I know online to get ISOs and disk images of games I own but don't currently have access to, but I'd rather only resort to that if this situation runs longer than expected. As it stands, we're expecting to have this sorted out as quickly as two weeks, or by the end of March at the latest, though it's not impossible for things to take even longer, just unlikely.

I'm also behind with eMails as a bunch of you are probably already suspecting. I'll get to them as soon as I have some time to go through them. :B

My sister also has a MUCH better internet connection than Dad did, so livestreams for Patreon supporters should be MUCH high in quality than before. 😉

All of this said, my resolve is stronger than ever and there's very little more than could go wrong by this point. I have my secret game project to work on, more ADG to make, and once my secret project is ready to go I even have some new Patreon rewards planned to tie in with it!

These past few days have been some of the hardest in my 32 years of life I've ever faced, but, I am hopeful, resolute, and determined to pull myself back up, stronger than ever before!

I can relate, I'm in the process of moving right now myself, and a lot of my stuff is packed away and inaccessible. Fortunately, I managed to convince my grandmother to let me set up my PC in her spare room, where I'm staying for now. Anyway, I wish you the best, and I hope things go well. 😀

Wish you all the best Kris!

Don't give up Gemini000, everything will work out in the end! Just keep going ahead with your plans as best as possible \^^/

JayCeeBee64 wrote:

Don't give up

I never will. ;)

Ancient DOS Games Episode 153 - Soleau Games is online!

Some people guessed I'd be covering Steve Moraff's stuff, which was actually a pretty good guess too since it'd be really hard to make a full episode about just a single one of his games... not counting Moraff's World, which I already dedicated an entire episode to. :B

The reason I picked the particular group of games I did for this video is because I wanted to show a sort of gradient of quality, ranging from one of the worst games to come out of Soleau, up to my personal favourite. I haven't covered my second-favourite Soleau game though... that'll have to wait until the next time I cover Soleau games! ;)

I guessed Moraff, but figured I was probably wrong due to the fact that there was already an individual game video and because I was surprised to discover that he didn't really make *that* many games.

I'm glad I'm not the only one that never finished Crusher. It's really quite a difficult game.

I personally liked Ladder Man and Rock Man from Soleau.

I would've guessed Tommy's FUCKING Toys.

it's either soleau, moraff or tommy making up the quantity of the '100+ games!!!' shovelwares. and probably the rest of the apogee/epic catalog shoved in there for good measure, and anything else they can find from the ASP.

Gemini000: lovely episode, but I must correct you a tiny bit on the Squarex game. It is more like a mix between Qix, and Pacman. Than a Pacman kind of deal. But of course that is my opinion upon it. And to me, Crusher is perhaps more of "upgrade/update" to the formula of Rodents revenge ? Or am I thinking too much ?

leileilol wrote:

I would've guessed Tommy's FUCKING Toys.

Oh dear frick NO... x_x;;;

...the less said about those things the better... I only have a couple of them anyways and know much less about them than Soleau, so no Tommy's Toys episode anytime soon... THANKFULLY. :P

WolverineDK wrote:

Gemini000: lovely episode, but I must correct you a tiny bit on the Squarex game. It is more like a mix between Qix, and Pacman. Than a Pacman kind of deal. But of course that is my opinion upon it. And to me, Crusher is perhaps more of "upgrade/update" to the formula of Rodents revenge ? Or am I thinking too much ?

Possibly... Rodent's Revenge really only uses the block pushing and trapping mechanics, as opposed to having bombs and oxygen and such. Dunno which came first off the top of my head.

I can see where you're coming from with the Qix/Pac Man thing... but the only relation Squarex has to Qix is the whole forming squares thing and capturing them in the process. Squarex actually has a powerup which acts EXACTLY like the power pills in Pac Man, turning enemies blue and causing them to run away since you can kill 'em in that state.

Qix came to mind when I saw that too. It seems like a Qix/Pacman hybrid to me. There was a cocktail form-factor Qix in one of the restaurants in the Seattle-area logging town that I grew up in.

I didn't recognize any of the Soleau games. The block-pushing one reminds me of a game I used to play called Beast: http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/beast_

Squarex appears to be mostly a clone of the arcade game Amidar. I'm not sure how popular it was, but there was an Atari 2600 port. I still remember seeing ads in the backs of comic books for it.

You're right, it's very similar - I wasn't aware of Amidar, except that it's name is familiar (probably have a console port ROM somewhere): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9tZNf6igAA

Qix: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0hMSYvL50M

Sorry for saying this: But this in fact makes me smile and laugh a bit. Since when brains sees something, and begin to think. All those games, and two of them are "original", and we as human beings begins to think "hmmm there is something odd about those two games... they have too many similarities to other games..": Then we begin to work with our minds, my mind did not know about Amidar / I did not know the game. Hence the reason why I thought it reminded me of a mix between Qix and Pacman. Then RadioPoultry said "it looks like it is a clone of Amidar". Well, now we know that in fact Squarex is a clone of Amidar. Well I learned something new 😀 So the morale of my semi long post. Is that we all learn something new every now and then, and we should in fact do our research very thoroughly sometimes. And not be a twat about it . And Crusher is probably with enhanced features : A Rodents Revenge clone.

Rodent's Revenge and Crusher, according to my very brief research, both came out in 1991. (Still don't know which was first.) They may have been created without knowledge of the other... but take a look at this later game by Soleau Software:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSC-SCgdmqg