No Apogee's Crystal Caves fans here? No Mylo lovers?
Re: Ye Ol' Games Of Yesteryear.
Posted: Sat Aug 28, 2021 8:49 pm
by Rath Darkblade
Ah, yes! Now that you mention it, Collector, I do remember Crystal Caves -- but I only played the first one.
(I also remember other Apogee games, like Duke Nukem (before it became a shooter), Secret Agent, Wacky Wheels, Commander Keen etc.) Fun times.
Re: Ye Ol' Games Of Yesteryear.
Posted: Sat Aug 28, 2021 11:42 pm
by notbobsmith
I never had a console growing up, so I mostly missed out on the NES and Sega games. Heck I knew people who had an Atari. I'm only familiar with them from when I went over to a friend's house.
One game that frustrated me as a kid but I have a new found appreciation for is Starflight. I think it was a bit too difficult for me, which was par for the course back then. Looking back at it now, it's amazing how much they were able to cram into 2 low density 5.25" floppies (720kb) and run on 256k RAM on an 8088 processor. 270 star systems and 800 planets that you can land on. And each planet was fully rendered using the in-game engine. You select the longitude and latitude and you gradually approach and zoom in on the landing coordinates, so no two landing sequences are the same. It would have been easy to have a stock animated sequence or something, but the way they did it here means that each planet has a complete surface that exists when you view the planet from orbit and can zoom in on as you land. And there are 800 of these. Again, 720kb of data. I find that amazing now.
Re: Ye Ol' Games Of Yesteryear.
Posted: Sun Aug 29, 2021 2:16 am
by Tawmis
notbobsmith wrote: ↑Sat Aug 28, 2021 11:42 pm
I never had a console growing up, so I mostly missed out on the NES and Sega games. Heck I knew people who had an Atari. I'm only familiar with them from when I went over to a friend's house.
One game that frustrated me as a kid but I have a new found appreciation for is Starflight. I think it was a bit too difficult for me, which was par for the course back then. Looking back at it now, it's amazing how much they were able to cram into 2 low density 5.25" floppies (720kb) and run on 256k RAM on an 8088 processor. 270 star systems and 800 planets that you can land on. And each planet was fully rendered using the in-game engine. You select the longitude and latitude and you gradually approach and zoom in on the landing coordinates, so no two landing sequences are the same. It would have been easy to have a stock animated sequence or something, but the way they did it here means that each planet has a complete surface that exists when you view the planet from orbit and can zoom in on as you land. And there are 800 of these. Again, 720kb of data. I find that amazing now.
So what's funny is - Greg Johnson, who designed the game STARFLIGHT, is responsible for one of my all time favorite SEGA games - TOEJAM AND EARL. (I'm sure I've talk about the game on the forum before) - anyway, a few years back he wanted to return to STARFLIGHT and redo it. I got to know Greg, because back in the early days of the internet, I'd created a TOEJAM AND EARL fanpage (back in the days of Geocites) and when Facebook came about, I made a Toejam and Earl page that got a lot of attention. So when they did the Kickstarter for Toejam and Earl III - Greg reached out to me for some stuff I'd collected. Greg would go on to even lend a voice to my series, Neverending Nights for Episode 56 (the guy who talks about "the funk" and getting "funkafied" which is a reference to Toejam and Earl).
Anyway - here's the promo for Starflight 3.
Unfortunately, according to a post from Greg himself on Reddit - the crowd funding was about $50,000 shy of the goal it needed and died.
Re: Ye Ol' Games Of Yesteryear.
Posted: Sun Aug 29, 2021 3:02 am
by MusicallyInspired
Collector wrote: ↑Sat Aug 28, 2021 7:28 pm
No Apogee's Crystal Caves fans here? No Mylo lovers?
I just figured growing up on Apogee shareware was a given.
Warning: the article includes links to various sites that allow you to play 90s shareware games online. But they are incredibly addictive. I played Jill of the Jungle for a while.
notbobsmith wrote: ↑Sat Aug 28, 2021 11:42 pm
I never had a console growing up, so I mostly missed out on the NES and Sega games. Heck I knew people who had an Atari. I'm only familiar with them from when I went over to a friend's house.
One game that frustrated me as a kid but I have a new found appreciation for is Starflight. I think it was a bit too difficult for me, which was par for the course back then. Looking back at it now, it's amazing how much they were able to cram into 2 low density 5.25" floppies (720kb) and run on 256k RAM on an 8088 processor. 270 star systems and 800 planets that you can land on. And each planet was fully rendered using the in-game engine. You select the longitude and latitude and you gradually approach and zoom in on the landing coordinates, so no two landing sequences are the same. It would have been easy to have a stock animated sequence or something, but the way they did it here means that each planet has a complete surface that exists when you view the planet from orbit and can zoom in on as you land. And there are 800 of these. Again, 720kb of data. I find that amazing now.
So what's funny is - Greg Johnson, who designed the game STARFLIGHT, is responsible for one of my all time favorite SEGA games - TOEJAM AND EARL. (I'm sure I've talk about the game on the forum before) - anyway, a few years back he wanted to return to STARFLIGHT and redo it. I got to know Greg, because back in the early days of the internet, I'd created a TOEJAM AND EARL fanpage (back in the days of Geocites) and when Facebook came about, I made a Toejam and Earl page that got a lot of attention. So when they did the Kickstarter for Toejam and Earl III - Greg reached out to me for some stuff I'd collected. Greg would go on to even lend a voice to my series, Neverending Nights for Episode 56 (the guy who talks about "the funk" and getting "funkafied" which is a reference to Toejam and Earl).
Anyway - here's the promo for Starflight 3.
Unfortunately, according to a post from Greg himself on Reddit - the crowd funding was about $50,000 shy of the goal it needed and died.
Yeah, I contributed to the Fig campaign. The only time I've ever participated in a crowdsourcing campaign. Too bad they couldn't make it. I found out about it just before it ended, so I don't think they quite got the publicity they needed, which is strange since it seems like they got some top tier developers to sing Starflight's praises on that video.
Cool that you were able to get a hold of Greg Johnson and got him to contribute his voice.
One more thing about the game: the version of the game offered in GOG is different than the one I have. It's a later version that uses EGA graphics whereas mine had 16 color graphics through Tandy graphics. A few changes were also made like the geography of the innermost planet in the home system looking different and the docking bay doors opening animation is missing (I think there were a few other changes). Fortunately, I was able to make copies of my original game disks with the Kryoflux I got a while back. I even managed to make copies of some play disks that had a game in progress.
Now that you mention it, Collector, I do remember Crystal Caves -- but I only played the first one.
I just found myself wondering what happened to the shareware of the 90s, and found this interesting article about where shareware came from and why it was so popular. It now goes by other names, of course.