Miphee wrote on 2020-02-18, 15:16:

A friend of mine was kind enough to give me these. His company just got a bunch of older games and software so there will be many more.

Blasting, demolition & explosion simulators. They'll make anything. 🤣

Oni in the holofoil big box.

appiah4 wrote on 2020-02-18, 11:52:

Black on Red was problematic for uncracked copies at the time. Another game that did this was Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, IIRC it had the grail diary painted black over red or something.

I think it only works on b&w copies which was the norm back then, but you could still as easily get color copies, I know I did when I got the Monkey Island wheel copied. 😁

sf78 wrote on 2020-02-19, 11:33:

appiah4 wrote on 2020-02-18, 11:52:

Black on Red was problematic for uncracked copies at the time. Another game that did this was Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, IIRC it had the grail diary painted black over red or something.

I think it only works on b&w copies which was the norm back then, but you could still as easily get color copies, I know I did when I got the Monkey Island wheel copied. 😁

Color copiers in 1991? I did not know they even existed.

Color copiers made it to market in the late 70's and were widely in use in even the 1980's.

wiretap wrote on 2020-02-19, 12:40:

Color copiers made it to market in the late 70's and were widely in use in even the 1980's.

They weren't comnon things in my childhood and certainly not the kind of stuff you could get game manuals etc. photocopied on pocket allowance which was barely enough to get a couple pirated games every other weekend 😀

appiah4 wrote on 2020-02-19, 13:44:

wiretap wrote on 2020-02-19, 12:40:

Color copiers made it to market in the late 70's and were widely in use in even the 1980's.

They weren't comnon things in my childhood and certainly not the kind of stuff you could get game manuals etc. photocopied on pocket allowance which was barely enough to get a couple pirated games every other weekend 😀

we lived in wrong countries man that's why they were not common 😉

appiah4 wrote on 2020-02-19, 13:44:

They weren't comnon things in my childhood and certainly not the kind of stuff you could get game manuals etc. photocopied on pocket allowance which was barely enough to get a couple pirated games every other weekend 😀

I understand, but that doesn't change the fact that I got those exact wheels copied (and a lot of other code books) back in the early 90's for the cost of 0.50 marks and color copies were around 1-2 marks (inflation corrected, less than 50c). Heck, as a student you got a limited number of b&w copies at the library for free!

wiretap wrote on 2020-02-19, 12:40:

Color copiers made it to market in the late 70's and were widely in use in even the 1980's.

Maybe in certain markets but they were not the norm. Back when I was in college in the late 80's and early 90's I used to hit the Kinkos on campus to copy notes. All the copiers were B&W that people could use and anything color was huge and behind the desk area.

I picked up Project Warlock on a steep discount on GOG the other day and played through the first level and explored the 2nd level a little. It looks promising! Seems (at least from my first taste) like it won't be overly difficult, which I'm totally good with. I like my FPS to be forgiving with my 51 yr old reflexes. It's going on my playlist sometime after Wizardry 7 and Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus.

Really like what they did with the retro graphics slant. Even some of the CRT and scanline filters are fun, though I probably won't play the game with them enabled.

clueless1 wrote on 2020-02-23, 16:07:

I picked up Project Warlock on a steep discount on GOG the other day and played through the first level and explored the 2nd level a little. It looks promising! Seems (at least from my first taste) like it won't be overly difficult, which I'm totally good with. I like my FPS to be forgiving with my 51 yr old reflexes. It's going on my playlist sometime after Wizardry 7 and Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus.

Really like what they did with the retro graphics slant. Even some of the CRT and scanline filters are fun, though I probably won't play the game with them enabled.

Graphic filters can be fun, but I agree, they can also be mostly annoying after awhile. One game that has some of the most diverse graphic filters is Syder Arcade. It's a shmup and I was lucky enough to pick it up when they were offering it DRM free. For some reason that doesn't seem to be an option anymore. Anyway, the list of graphic filters it has is as follows:

Modern, Hipster, Gray2bit, Gray4bit, Gray8bit, Apple II, Vic20, C64, Plus4, Amiga HAM, ZX Spectrum, MSX2, Hercules 1, Hercules 2, CGA PAL 1, CGA PAL 2, CGA PAL 3, EGA, VGA 320, VGA 640

The best part is the devs took great care to make sure every filter was authenticate in color and resolution. So you can imagine something like the VIC-20 filter, with it's very low resolution, is almost unplayable when there is a lot of action on the screen. It's still mesmerizing to see though.

BTW, if you want to see all 20 graphic filters in action you can still download the Syder Arcade demo here.

sf78 wrote on 2020-02-22, 14:03:

appiah4 wrote on 2020-02-19, 13:44:

They weren't comnon things in my childhood and certainly not the kind of stuff you could get game manuals etc. photocopied on pocket allowance which was barely enough to get a couple pirated games every other weekend 😀

I understand, but that doesn't change the fact that I got those exact wheels copied (and a lot of other code books) back in the early 90's for the cost of 0.50 marks and color copies were around 1-2 marks (inflation corrected, less than 50c). Heck, as a student you got a limited number of b&w copies at the library for free!

Not everywhere in the world adopted every technology equally as fast, for various reasons.

For example, where I live, color photocopier and color laser printer ownership was subject to special permission due to fears of copying and printing paper currency with it in the 80s.

Was it stupid? Yeah, but it was what it was.

I didn't buy this "today" - actually, I bought it over 20 years ago, but only just dug it out of my storage room last month and shipped it out to myself. Seeing as fully boxed copies of this game seem to be exceedingly rare, especially in this nice condition and with all the docs & stuff included, I thought you guys might like a peek.

The detailed manual is pretty good, but the pull-out unit reference card is a godsend when actually playing the game. I bought this pretty much when it came out, after playing heaps of the demo off a PC Gamer coverdisk (or maybe one of the other mags, can't remember now.) I have my original copy of Heroes III with all the reference cards and stuff too. I can't remember which version I sunk more time into, but both were responsible for some severe sleep deprivation back in my late teens & early 20s. (They were great games for my laptop at the time - a Thinkpad 365ED with a DSTN screen that I carried around for most of my undergrad.)

I find the Windows 95 branding everywhere funny, considering it's a DOS game. Heroes III is really Win9x native.

Anyway, it's 11:45 PM now, time to get this baby fired up... 😁

liqmat wrote on 2020-02-18, 17:45:

Blasting, demolition & explosion simulators. They'll make anything. 🤣

That could probably describe a lot of games if you take "simulator" loosely enough. At least a lot of the fun ones.

wiretap wrote on 2020-02-18, 18:37:

Oni in the holofoil big box. […]
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Oni in the holofoil big box.

Nice find! I played a bunch of the demo of that recently. Super stylish & unique take on the genre.

Went on a bit of a splurge, been getting into DOS games lately. Never played Rise of the Triad before so looking forward to that.

What I've been doing is first install them on win98/dos rig then try them out on my "sorta" modern sys using dosbox or a modern port.

Hexen II is a good one but its interface is ancient, you'll need to set the resolution from command line and also add the switch to turn mouse look on permanently, I forget what that is but you should be able to find instructions online.

Yeah setting the res kinda like Quake, thanks for the mouse look tip!

Got another pack of games from my friend, I played some of those as a kid. Well, the demo versions. 😀

The number of hours we played Die By The Sword demo multiplayer over dial up would probably blow some minds..

Another lost item to time... cereal box game demos.