Supaplex

[Cas]

#7451

Supaplex is a classic I’d like to suggest.

I met this jewel around 1993. A friend of mine had got it in a CD from a PC magazine. I loved how some maps could be super puzzle-based, while others were almost entirely action-oriented and sometimes, both. The 111 levels included with the game gradually shift from something you can relax and play to a point in which you have to be insane to complete a map, so there’s something for every taste.

This one was the first game I was able to mod myself by examining the files and interpreting the simple map format to build my own editor.

When I first had the game, I was sure it was 256 colours, but it really is just 16, only with a very nicely selected palette. It looks very vivid for its release time.

Attachments:

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[prowler]

#7487

hell yeah, this was one of the first games i got “good” at as a kid, managed to get up to level 40-50 probably

we had a 286 computer with a strange keyboard layout, the arrow keys being in an L shape:
..U
LRD
this allowed me to use my tiny left hand for left-right and right hand for up-down. So when i visited a friend and wanted to show off my mastery of this game, i was completely useless with the normal layout keys, i felt like such a fraud 🙂

[dr_st]

#7557

@Cas
Very impressive to have built an editor for the game! There have been many map packs for Supaplex throughout the years. I don’t think I will ever feel like trying them, though. Just the 111 original levels felt like an immense achievement to me. I struggled with it as a kid, and only in adulthood did I finally crunch down and beat them all. Took many weeks of play here and there.

I agree – the palette is especially nice for 16 colors. Another game which did well with 16-color VGA is Duke Nukem II.

@prowler
Ah, yes, the blessings and curses of being accustomed to a particular keyboard layout. A well-known problem. I can’t stand laptop keyboard nowadays because of that.