Cool. Great game, although I prefer the C64 version. Sadly it was never cracked properly so the copy protection removes vital items gradually. I never made it further than Sarawak. I found the Amiga version too bumpy and claustrophobic.

How about condensing it?

• Indie Games (of Others) -(discussion)
• Indie Games (of Yours) -(discussion in feedback form)

I have to admit drawing Joust stuff as well...

I think, if handled correctly, the Joust universe could offer a very original setting. Imagine the culture and society centered around ostrich/emu/buzzard riding knights.

http://members.cox.net/seanriddle/jsprites.gif

The cabinet art offers some design insights aswell.

Hey, can we give minus points to games we don't like, like:

• [-9000] Zelda Twilight Princes (Wii)
• [+9210] Zelda 1 (NES)

 :D

Also, we could attach an spreadsheet file maybe? Google has shared editing for their spreadsheet stuff but I haven't tried it. I'm not sure how registering the game titles would work though... maybe it's better with a custom gizmo.

I've been trying to think of a game (and maybe a few movies/tv series too) which retain a lot of the qualities the original had, while making a next-gen leap, adding stuff that would've been great in the original but wasn't possible at the time. This could be improved visuals, UI, world size, persistence, enemy count, AI, variation, and such things.

Story, Gameplay, Design/Style/Atmosphere and Bestiary should be mostly intact and/or altered along their vector in a positive direction.

Games like NES Megaman (2-6) and the Japanese SMB 2 stayed pretty true, but they didn't make a generation leap. Blizzard have been pretty faithful it would seem though?

Of course, there's a lot of games which competely betrayed the original and went in a new successful direction, such as Dune II, and that's just dandy. Anyways, I just wanted to ask if you guys could think of any faithful generation leaping game sequel/remake.

Love these suits, so I went OOOHh.. when I saw the game.

http://www.divingheritage.com/armoredkern2.htm

They're called

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_diving_suit

Yeah, The Tektites and many enemies from the first Zelda game are nice. But let's not forget about Kid Icarus! Anyone remember the manual? It had some excellent cute pics. They don't make manuals like that anymore. It's gonna make me mighty sad when nextgen takes a dump on it, like... redesigns Pit into the generic shoujo TRAP character, and then invents 'fresh' new enemies except for the mono-eye cuz they figure they need something to tie it in with the old game... but they redesign it beyond recognition anyways.

The Kirby GBA games had excellent animation for the enemies.

And I'll have to agree about Bruce Lee. Maybe it was the animation and feedback you got from the interaction with those guys... duking out with them never got old.

Favorite in terms of Gameplay and/or Graphics?

The ReaverBots from Megaman Legends are a favourite of mine. It's a pity they were stripped of their enigma by being explained.

Dorito II an action game, which is based on japanese history. ah... being based on history, the stages of the game will also be based on famous battles which took- actually took place in ancient Japan. *woosh* So here's this giant enemy dorito. What I'll do, is use BenCake here, to *hrrk* flip over this dorito on its back... if he shows up. And you attack its weak point for massive damage. *hrrk* There's a lot of great new features for this game, features such as... real time weapon change.

The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
- Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

If you steal from one author, it's plagiarism; if you steal from many, it's research.
- Wilson Mizner (1876 - 1933)

Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats.
- Howard Aiken (1900 - 1973)

If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.
- Carl Sagan (1934 - 1996)

._.

Unlikely to happen I'm afraid. I've gotten interest from people fairly high up in various hierarchies, but everyone so far have, somewhat understandably, wanted to file off the serial number to avoid Licence/Copyright problems. I'm not too interested in that, as the whole project is built upon the shoulders of a giant, and I like the particular view from there. I haven't talked to Peter Irvin.

What fires me up is most 2D games with little guys running around pulling levers and stuff. I guess that's the feeling I wanted to get at with BQ.

It just doesn't work if the character is too big like Samus in the GBA Metroid games.

Here's a few screen shots I took of Exile. It's a relatively rich game. If you're curious about it, you can read more about its features here. I prefer the C64 version over the Amiga version, and certainly over the AGA version which was way too zoomed in.


Here's a few screen shots I took of LaserSquad (with commentary).

http://web.telia.com/~u48508900/lasersquad/lasersquad.htm

The Moonbase  from RebelStar Raiders gives me a serious hard-on. You can put the cursor over objects and get a little description. The whole base has been layouted to function, it's not just a mishmash of corridors and rooms with crates. There's even a little park inside, with a functioning lawn mower. It's like one of those secret-base drawings you made as a kid - come to life... well, with ZX Spectrum graphics.



I love Dwarf Fortress screen shots too. Even if they don't directly show the history of the fort and dwarfs (which really means a lot to the player of the game), they do show some of the philosophy and passion the player had when layouting the fort. It's always interesting to see a screen shot which also tells things about the player.

I'm sure this could be expanded greatly:

Evocative to:
[ ] Me.
[ ] People with a lot of imagination.
( ) People familiar with the game's language.
( ) Any gamer.
( ) Almost anyone.

Evocative in the following ways:
[ ] Emotional story / background.
[ ] Funny/clever setup.
[ ] Fun to explore all the details.
[ ] Allows personal interpretation.
[ ] I can't put my finger on it.
[ ] Nostalgia.

It's also visually Gorgeous to:
[ ] Me.
[ ] People with a lot of imagination.
( ) People familiar with the game's language..
( ) Any gamer.
( ) Almost anyone.

It's Gorgeous because of:
[ ] Pixels.
[ ] Technical stuff.
[ ] Atmosphere.
[ ] Art & Design.

It's Gorgeous:
( ) Only at the time of release.
( ) Timelessly.

Ghosts and Goblins (NES) - I think I got into the first 'last castle area' with the jumping skeletons. Really jerky physics and drawing routines in that game.

Megaman 1 (NES) - Was not that hard if you were obsessed enough. I completed it once or twice without using exploits anywhere. Iceman, the Clayman (Yellow devil), and mirror Megaman were tricky, but doable. Fireman always managed to take a good chunk of my HP too.

Castlevania 1 (NES) - I have a vague memory of actually getting to the last boss. Fixed jumps are such so nasty.

Turtles (NES) - I don't think I got much further than the steam roller city level. The second underwater level was terminally boring.


I think, actually, these games weren't really that hard, you just came into them with a certain mentality and approached problems at a different frequency. A single screen could be as difficult as an entire map from a modern shooter. A positive aspect (aside of all the negative ones) is that harder games tend to last longer. The trick is to make the difficulty gratifying in some way. Can we think of any games which had this feature?

Quake 1 is an example I can think of. It was my first solid FPS experience. When you're new to it, you aim and move seperately, and mostly just look down in the floor or something. When you're good, you axe two Shamblers in a small room with just one pillar to hide behind. That game really scaled with you... and Tribes did too... maybe it's a feature FPS games in general have.

JetSet Willy (ZX Spectrum) - Was actually impossible to complete when released. First  guys to complete it, by coming up with cheat pokes, got some sort of grand prize.

Exile (BBC Micro) - Also had a prize for the first guy to complete it.

Blaster Master (NES), although I did get to the last level.

Trojan (NES).

Some say Fester's Quest was hard, and although I died almost immidiately, I completed it with my second life in just an hour or so.

...oops, pasta is boiling. I have to terminate my list early.

Hmm Elite.. I'm the most fond of the second game. FFE was cool too. Never quite got into the first game. I think it would be interesting with a more super deformed used, plus friction in space and dogfight physics, kinda like the first game had. Oops, brain went off again. Other stuff that surface:

• RebelStar Raiders - LaserSquad - Ufo/Xcom
• The Megaman Legends series because of its characters.
• Sim * games are interesting to me because of their sandbox elements.
• Let's hold our thumbs for StarControl >2 , and maybe StarFlight as well.

Series I lost intrest in:

• Quake >1
• Zelda >1
• Metroid >1
• Dune RTS >2
• DragonWarrior >1 (Although III, for GBC is looking hot!)

Series that never really got going:

• Blaster Master (NES and Sega Megadrive/Genesis)
• Paradroid (C64 then Amiga)

Hot coffee?


I miss my Amiga, but I'm gonna do a ZX Spectrum handheld mockup now.

It's really a pity that the very fabric of (2bp) sprites imposes a 4 color limit rather than 5. It would be possible to do so much more with 5 colors. Final Fantasy town people does use 5 colors though. Anyways, I think your enemy sprites would benefit from a few more colors.

I'm sure you're familiar with the technique, but I'm attaching an example anyways (edited palette for clarity). Note how the shoulder pads got a special color, I always thought that was cute.

Some more terrain landmarks would be neat too.

I used the stalker setup for my Exile idea.

Actually, the original Exile had it. You were in this massive cave system which also had a little eco system. There were a few robots chasing you, and for the climax, there was this dude called Triax who was an AI bot of the player. I never got that far, but the game was pretty exiting. It ran on a (6502?) machine with 32kb of ram.

As you moved through the game, you found weapons, keys, environment suits and all sorts of things. The game had relatively awesome physics as well.


I think people would come up with exploits against the AI pretty quick though. I don't know how many superior bosses I have defeated because I managed to get them into a deterministic pattern or something.


I think I played some M.Fusion. The illusion shattered for me after I quickly discovered that the antagonist was a plain invulnerable scripted dummy.

Are you sure we're not looking for this?