SHP Forums

notbobsmith wrote: The Colonel's Bequest / Dagger of Amon Ra
Conquests of Camelot
Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist
Phantasmagoria
Torin's Passage
Anyway, polls close Wednesday.

So of the ones remaining:

1. Conquests of the Longbow
- Because you enjoyed Camelot.

2. Gold Rush
- This one I love; because of the multiple ways to cross to California. However, it is full of random death. As in, you just might randomly get a disease and fall over. Nothing to prevent it. So "Save Early, Save Often, Make Multiple Saves."

3. The Black Cauldron
- I recommend this one, but the controls are wonky.

4. The Adventures of Willy Beamish
- Never got the appeal of Willy Beamish. To me, it's like what adeyke said about Torin's Passage - it tries to be funny, but fails (in my eyes).

5. Lighthouse
- It's like Myst. But with more story. And much more difficult.

6. Heart of China
- I remembered enjoying this eons ago - but a recent replay reminded me that the conversation thing is horrible, and the entire game operates off of that.

7. Phantasmagoria 2
- Beat this game once, with my friends, who purchased it, after we all played the first Phantasamagoria. I remember getting the dreaded crash to DOS when we went to "the bad place." This game took everything that was great about the first and turned it up to 12, and made it annoying. Like every movie sequel. (Except for Empire...)

Coming off Torin, I want to say... The Black Cauldron.

It has similar kid-friendly setup like Torin, but leans heavier into dark fantasy. It would be a good tonal transition if you did one of the horror games after.

As a counter to the lightheartedness and silliness of Torin, I'd say Lighthouse.

Longbow would probably be a good choice since you liked Camelot so much. I STILL think Phantasmagoria 2 is fun as hell, but I'm definitely in the minority on it.

JasefWisener wrote:I STILL think Phantasmagoria 2 is fun as hell, but I'm definitely in the minority on it.

I don't know that you're in the minority about it. I think I am the only one whose been vocal about PHANT2 (in terms of an overall dislike).

The easter eggs do give Phantas a replay value...
I'm not sure how you purchased that, but I would like to note that the European version of the game is censored (the violent scenes).

BBP wrote:The easter eggs do give Phantas a replay value...
I'm not sure how you purchased that, but I would like to note that the European version of the game is censored (the violent scenes).

What about the brief (female) nudity?

I always think it's odd how some countries are... like the US will shun nudity, but violence? That's all right.

So I was curious if it was the opposite there? Because I remember in Spain, there were Popsicle commercials with girls on a beach that were topless. But violence was shunned.

Results are in and we have 2 votes for Conquests of the Longbow, 1 vote for The Black Cauldron and 1 vote for Lighthouse. Next stop: Sherwood Forest. A pity that there's no voice acting for this one. I wonder if Sierra could have gotten someone who could speak with an English accent, unlike some other Robin Hoods.

Tawmis wrote:

BBP wrote:The easter eggs do give Phantas a replay value...
I'm not sure how you purchased that, but I would like to note that the European version of the game is censored (the violent scenes).

What about the brief (female) nudity?

I always think it's odd how some countries are... like the US will shun nudity, but violence? That's all right.

So I was curious if it was the opposite there? Because I remember in Spain, there were Popsicle commercials with girls on a beach that were topless. But violence was shunned.

That's pretty much the rule in most of Europe. It certainly is in Germany. Topless women is perfectly fine in mainstream media (TV, print ads) and public pools allow it, but violent video games are heavily censored.

notbobsmith wrote:Results are in and we have 2 votes for Conquests of the Longbow, 1 vote for The Black Cauldron and 1 vote for Lighthouse. Next stop: Sherwood Forest. A pity that there's no voice acting for this one. I wonder if Sierra could have gotten someone who could speak with an English accent, unlike some other Robin Hoods.

Although, about the English accent, outside of the Webster spellings, American English is closer to Elizabethan English than is modern British English. Colonies tend to be more conservative linguistically than the motherland. I would not be surprised if Christy Marx knows this, though the game was probably out of her hands at the point that they were planning the talkie makeover.

The Netherlands censors very little, but we're a small player. If the Germans want a censored game, we get a censored game.

I honestly don't recall if the nudity was cut out or not...

Collector wrote:

notbobsmith wrote:Results are in and we have 2 votes for Conquests of the Longbow, 1 vote for The Black Cauldron and 1 vote for Lighthouse. Next stop: Sherwood Forest. A pity that there's no voice acting for this one. I wonder if Sierra could have gotten someone who could speak with an English accent, unlike some other Robin Hoods.

Although, about the English accent, outside of the Webster spellings, American English is closer to Elizabethan English than is modern British English. Colonies tend to be more conservative linguistically than the motherland. I would not be surprised if Christy Marx knows this, though the game was probably out of her hands at the point that they were planning the talkie makeover.

Interesting point. Then there's the question as to whether or not these actors would have been in the final voice cast.

On an unrelated note, I was skimming through some of DOS Nostalgia's other videos and came across this:
Is this what actually happens when the game renders a scene, just in slow motion? If so, that is really quite fascinating. I remember being at a friends house and he was playing KQ1 (I think) on a PCjr and I remember it drawing the scene like this only a bit faster. But even on my Tandy 1000, the scene would just put up fully rendered with a wipe effect.

notbobsmith wrote: On an unrelated note, I was skimming through some of DOS Nostalgia's other videos and came across this: Is this what actually happens when the game renders a scene, just in slow motion? If so, that is really quite fascinating. I remember being at a friends house and he was playing KQ1 (I think) on a PCjr and I remember it drawing the scene like this only a bit faster. But even on my Tandy 1000, the scene would just put up fully rendered with a wipe effect.

Yes. If you open up an SCI/AGI editor and poke around and go frame by frame, you can see it color each section like that.

When I first played the bootable 4 color King's Quest 1, it did this too.

They must have dropped a v1 interpreter in it to have it draw it like that. V2 and 3 did not draw like that. The Manhunter games used v3. I am surprised that it worked at all, let alone without stack issues.

Just to be clear, all AGI backgrounds are stored as instructions to render those images. That is, it's a vector format, not a bitmap format. If you just see a transition from a full image to the new full image, it's because it's rendering it on a buffer and then displaying it once it's done.