If you’re British and of a certain age, you probably have… well, if not fond memories of the BBC Micro, then certainly memories of it.
A fixture in classrooms across the whole nation, the BBC Micro played host to a variety of software packages, many of which were specifically designed to be used in the classroom.
One specialist of such software was 4Mation, best known for a funny little quasi-educational adventure called Granny’s Garden. But I have much more vivid memories of one of their lesser-known works…
This is it! This is what it all comes down to… what I’ve been training for.
Will that tortuous Nightmare mode playthrough of Project Zero, along with finally clearing out that pesky ghost list, prepare me for a long-overdue S-rank clear of any of the missions in the game’s Battle mode? Will my epic battle against that dead guy in that one closet have all been worthwhile?
Find out on today’s episode of New Game Plus, only on MoeGamer. And, err, YouTube.
The “masocore” platformer, in which you learn by dying repeatedly in seemingly unfair circumstances, has become particularly popular in the age of Let’s Plays and streaming.
The reason for this is that, although playing the damn things tends to be rather frustrating, they’re quite entertaining to watch. And their reliance on puzzle-solving and memorisation make them quite a distinct experience from more conventional platform games and action adventures.
Here’s the Atari ST version of Rick Dangerous, developed by Core Design (of Tomb Raider fame) and published by Telecomsoft imprint Firebird in 1989. Oh, boy, it’s irritating… and yet I found myself trying again and again and again… Waaaaaaaa!!
The Wu campaign continues as the Sun family comes to blows over the recapture of their father.
In this installment, the Battle of Sekigahara, we retire the ever-reliable Ranmaru Mori for now in favour of newcomer Kunoichi, who turned up in the previous battle. She is joined by Taishi “Prepare to Die” Ci and Lady Nō to form what appears to be a pretty respectable fighting team.
Hit the jump to see how the battle went this time around…
Mention early first-person perspective 3D games to someone and they’re most likely to picture a “gridder” — the projection of a 2D map into a fake 3D perspective, through which you move by “step”, one cell at a time.
The reason for this is that it was the easiest way to create a 3D effect without actually having to do any real “3D” — hell, one of the earliest and most famous examples of this was on the humble ZX81 in the form of 3D Monster Maze. And indeed this style of presentation (if not necessarily the exact execution) remains popular today for many first-person perspective dungeon crawlers from both Eastern and Western developers, allowing for intricate, interesting level design without the need for complex 3D modelling.
Some talented coders in the early 8-bit era figured out ways to get more natural movement through these “projected 2D” maps, allowing you to rotate through angles other than 90 degrees and move relatively freely. One such example on the Atari 8-bit was 1982’s technically impressive Way Out (sometimes stylised as Wayout). The creator of this game, one Paul Allen Edelstein, remains part of the games industry to this day, albeit now with a specialism in video and audio compression technology rather than 3D graphics.
Today on Split/Second, we introduce the second new type of event: Survival!
This event sees our brave drivers attempting to survive as long as possible against the odds, as the Split/Second trucks throw deadly explosives their way!
Hit the jump to see how yours truly coped with this fearsome challenge…
1978 arcade title Avalanche is a game I’d not heard of prior to encountering it on Atari Flashback Classics for Nintendo Switch, and it’s entirely possible you might not have come across it either.
The reason for this is that its official home port (developed by the creator of the arcade game, Dennis Koble) only came to Atari 8-bit computers rather than the popular 2600, and even then only through Atari’s “Atari Program Exchange” system, whereby community-developed games and software would be published by Atari.
Meanwhile, Activision, seeing a good concept that wasn’t being leveraged as much as it could be for the home market, decided to release Kaboom! for the Atari 2600 in 1981, and as a result, the idea of paddle-controlled platforms catching falling things at an increasingly unreasonable tempo tends to be credited to them rather than Atari.
You now know the truth! Shout it from the rooftops!
This is it! It’s nearly over! Yes, today we clear Nightmare mode on Project Zero for the first time.
The last night in the game was actually a whole lot shorter than I remembered it being, but at least there’s only one wandering ghost to pick up on our ongoing quest to clean up the ghost list.
Hit the jump to see how the buildup and the dramatic conclusion to Miku’s story went this time around…
An unusual and very pretty shoot ’em up today, from the mind of the man who gave us Spindizzy.
Quartz is a game that combines free-roaming, vaguely Asteroids-esque sequences with more traditional forced scrolling stages in a variety of different directions. It’s simple but effective… and damned addictive.
It’s also a great example of a popular graphical style at the time — raytracing, or at the very least, a pixel art approximation of raytracing. Today, graphics cards are just starting to get into real-time raytracing for the latest “new thing” in graphical fidelity, but back in the ST era, prerendered raytraced graphical assets were quite commonly used as a means of making sprites look “3D” without going full-on polygonal.
Whether it’s “real” raytracing or not doesn’t really matter at the end of the day… what does matter is that this is a gorgeous game that’s a ton of fun to play!
Today on Warriors Wednesday, it brings me great pleasure to introduce you to my cat Meg, who thought she would participate in the beginning of this video.
After that, we get thoroughly acquainted with the lovely Lady Nō, who is primed and ready to get you all hot under the collar before ruthlessly killing you.
Hit the jump to see how today’s mission went, and how Lady Nō deals with a bad case of how do you like my halberds?
