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Post by Ex on Jan 10, 2019 9:29:43 GMT -5
Last night I tried about thirty games across a great many different platforms. Ultimately I have decided these five games are the ones I'm going to try to beat this month: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Treasure of Tarmin (1983) - Intellivision DragonStomper (1982) - Atari 2600 Space Dungeon (1983) - Atari 5200 Tunnels of Doom (1982) - TI-99/4A Venture (1982) - ColecoVision The common thread there is these all involve dungeon crawling. I will attempt to finish these this month, if I have enough time, failing that I'll at least write about the experience of playing them. Also last night I came across the most impressive graphics I've ever seen in an Atari 2600 title: Smoothly scrolling 3D maze graphics five years before Phantasy Star made it cool. And I wonder if this game in some way influenced the Trauma Center series: www.mobygames.com/game/intellivision/microsurgeon
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Post by toei on Jan 10, 2019 11:43:02 GMT -5
"Smoothly" is relative. Mindmaster's scrolling is quite choppy, at least on real hardware. Also, the biggest feat re: PS1's dungeons were the dungeons actually rotating when you turned - this game does the abrupt 90 degrees turns most early first-person games did. But it is the best-looking Atari game I've seen.
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Post by Sarge on Jan 10, 2019 12:05:11 GMT -5
I looked up some vids of Dragonstomper, and wow, that's pretty ambitious for sure.
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Post by Ex on Jan 10, 2019 13:42:57 GMT -5
Well of course. It's smooth for the 2600, not for the Master System. I was in no way downplaying the significance of Phantasy Star's 3D dungeon graphics, nor saying those somehow pale in comparison to Mindmaster's. I'm as big a fan of the original Phantasy Star as anyone else around here, at the very least. So speaking within its release window and hardware; Mindmaster's 3D dungeons are smooth IMO. For those who haven't seen it: Certainly smoother than other similar attempts on the 2600: I looked up some vids of DragonStomper, and wow, that's pretty ambitious for sure. Yes it is! It's got a surprising amount of depth considering the limitations of its platform. By the way, Mindmaster and DragonStomper were both made by the same company. Their secret? They came up with a way to dramatically increase the available memory.
I was recently able to secure PDFs of the instruction manuals for the games I plan to beat. That will be a big help. These games are more complex than one might expect given their age.
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Post by bonesnapdeez on Jan 10, 2019 15:01:26 GMT -5
I'm a big fan of both Escape from the Mindmaster and Dragonstomper (I have a complete copy of the latter!).
They're both Supercharger games (rather than vanilla 2600 carts) so they utilize the extra RAM.
Playing this stuff on real hardware is amusing. I use my old wooden 2600 (the Supercharger seems to have issues with the 7800), a Tandy CoCo cassette deck (power by C batteries), with both devices connected via the Supercharger itself.
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Post by Ex on Jan 11, 2019 1:00:11 GMT -5
After putting two hours into DragonStomper tonight, I've twice made it to the dragon (takes a while), and lost to the beast. My last fight saw me unleash three warriors on it, while also shooting it with a longbow, but I still couldn't kill the jerk. This game offers a lot of variety in choices though, so tomorrow I'll try a different tactic to get past the dragon. As in not fighting it at all. I also read the manual for DragonStomper which filled in a backstory and plot, helping me to make sense of all the stuff going on in the game. I have to say this is a seriously good game for how old it is. And not half-bad for the world's first console RPG. There's a LOT of complexity to this game, way more than one would expect.
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Post by Ex on Jan 11, 2019 12:32:07 GMT -5
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Post by bonesnapdeez on Jan 11, 2019 17:21:44 GMT -5
Cool blog. The Studio II is one of those consoles that's eluded me; I've wanted one for some time.
The mention of the "TRS-80" makes me a bit salty. Story: years ago I found a cool craigslist ad, this dude was giving away all his old computers. I went to his house and he had like 80 or so. I took as many as I could fit in my car. Most were old DOS systems. I almost took the TRS-80 on the way out, but the guy told me it was just another DOS type system, similar to what I was already taking. Once I got home and did some research I realized it was its own system with its own proprietary software. Oof.
Somehow over the years I've acquired a complete TRS-80 Zaxxon. I've tried to sell it multiple times, no one wants it.
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Post by Ex on Jan 12, 2019 1:02:16 GMT -5
The mention of the "TRS-80" makes me a bit salty. It's a shame that happened to you, but that was an amusing story nonetheless. - Once again, I made it to the dragon in DragonStomper. Once again, I failed. My plan was to stun spell the dragon, then use the unlock spell to open the gate to the amulet behind it. Problem is the stun spell doesn't last long, the dragon overcame the stun spell twice over. I simply couldn't outrun the dragon fast enough to get to the amulet. (The dragon gets two moves to every one move of your own.) I died once again! My new plan is to hire some mercenaries, let them distract the dragon, hopefully long enough to get me above the dragon, and then use stun spells to clear the remaining distance to the amulet. Hopefully that will work. I'll have to spend a lot of time in the over-world first to build up the gold I need to buy all that.
This has been my fifth time playing though DragonStomper and I'm still finding new things. Like tonight I figured out that if you use the crosses at the church, that reveals traps around castles. I came across two enemy types I hadn't seen before. There's all kinds of stuff in this game that's not in the manual. I don't even know what the charm or staff is for, or how to use the shield yet. DragonStomper really is amazing for its platform and release date. But I've about had enough of that damn dragon's BS! Edit: Anybody else still hitting up this theme?
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Post by Sarge on Jan 12, 2019 2:48:54 GMT -5
I plan on getting back to it a bit now that I've finished off a time-sink modern game I've been playing.
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