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in reply to: Magazine reviews #11789

Here is two more things just hours before the month is up 🙂

First is an interview with Collette Michaud from Bitmap Books “Art of Point and Click Adventures”. I highly recommend that book. Lots of beautiful art and interesting interviews in there.

Ans secondly i uploaded the Sam & Max portion of Hardcore Gaming 101s Adventure Game Guide.

This has a part about the Telltale Stuff and the TV series as well.

Attachments:

1. Sam-Max-from-Hardcore-Gaming-101-Kalata-Kurt-The-Guide-to-Classic-Graphic-Adventures.pdf

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in reply to: Tie Fighter: Total Conversion #11772

I think the Jedi Engine was pretty much build from the ground up by LucasArts themselves.

https://web.archive.org/web/20070405143735/http://www.byte.com/art/9512/sec10/art1.htm

Tie Fighter and the tech was built by Totally Games and kept separate. I am sure they all used iMuse for the music and probably some more shared tech. But not the whole engine.

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in reply to: Final thoughts (probably includes spoilers) #11750

In sierra games you can go to the top of the screen to change your actions. That was way more elegant than this. But as i said. It was not too distracting.

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in reply to: Which games? #11749

I made a list of the games i could find. There is probably lots more but this might be a good start.

PC Pool (1984)

PC Pool Challenges (1984)

The first two games seem to be almost the same. This one was published by IBM and the other one was not. Also this is a booter and PC Pool is a proper DOS game.

Alex Higgins’ World Snooker (1984)

The first branded Pool game for DOS. Or rather Snooker in this case. Alex Higgins was the snooker hotshot in the 80s. He lived wild and died young unfortunately.

Pub Pool (1987)

Pool in a Pub. From the screenshots this seems to have strange hexagonal pool tables.

Rack ‘Em (1988)

This one is an early pool game published by Accolade and made by Artech. Accolade had a lot of Sports games and Simulations back then and Artech did a bunch of them. As usual it has a cool title and great cover art. This Looks to be a competent game and Looks to be the first one with a 3D View of sorts.

Billiards Simulator (1989)

This one also has a nice Looking 3D view of the Pool Table. It was done by ERE Informatique. A French Company mostly known for a bunch of crazy games like Purple Saturn Day or Captain Blood. Most of the Team left in the late 80s and formed Cryo Interactive.

Jim Kobbe’s Pool Game in 3D (1990)

This is a shareware game made by, you will never Guess this, Jim Kobbe! It is also 3D but with non filled wireframes and balls that look more like Hockey Pucks.

Sharkey’s 3D Pool (1990)

Only filled Polygons in this one. Maybe you can rotate the camera freely around? Looks interesting.

Jimmy White’s ‘Whirlwind’ Snooker (1991)

This is another of the branded games. Jimmy White was a big name in Snooker in the 80s and 90s. He still Plays but is mostly a pundit. This one also Looks like it has a free camera.

Archer Maclean’s Pool (1992)

This one is not a game endorsed by some pool personality but it is the pool game by the programmer of Jimmy Whites “Whirlwind” Snooker. It Looks to be the same engine as that one but pool.

Esnuka (1992)

A Freeware pool game. I get some serious MS Paint vibes from these graphics.

4 Balls Billiards (1993)

No idea About this. All i know is the screen shots. 4 is a very low number of balls for any Pool game.

Billiards (1993)

This is a Russian Billiards game where you can Play different Kinds of pool or Snooker. It also Looks like you can Play as a Monkey. Because in Russia they have Monkeys plaing Billiards.
Probably.

Pool Shark (1993)

Another Shareware Pool game.

1994Pool+ (1994)

Anime Dudes with a pool cue standing on the moon, attack helicopters and fireballs on your pool table. You know? Pool!

Arcade Pool (1994)

Pool game made by Team17. I hope for Miniguns and Airstrikes but it just looks like a simple 2D not too simulationey pool game.

Virtual Pool (1995)

This tries to be a serious Simulation with serious physics and serious lines all over the screen. I remember this game being well liked in the german press back in the day.

Another Pool (1995)

This time its not even shareware but freeware. Looks pretty barebones.

Virtual Snooker (1996)

The serious Snooker Variant of Virtual Pool. Even more Lines and physics and stuff. Also a bunch of videos of Steve Davis, a snooker legend, and a very young Ronnie O’Sullivan.

Billiardo 2 (2001)

Another Freeware game. This looks like it has variants without any pockets fot the balls to go into. Also lots of lines!

E: Note to self: If the <b> tag is not listed it probably means it is not supported 😀

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in reply to: Final thoughts (probably includes spoilers) #11741

This is not really a final thought but I bought a max plushie a while back.

It sits in my wife’s office on top of a shelf at the moment.

They were made by a company called „Uncute“ (they had a different name when I bought it but I don’t remember) and later also had an accompanying Sam. I did not buy that though. Now they are sold out.

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in reply to: Final thoughts (probably includes spoilers) #11728

Ok i am finally finished with the game as well. Overall i like it very much. I can see the game beeing very america centric as a negative but for me the whole thing was so absurd that it did not really bother me too much. I have no concept of these roadside attractions nor does the bigfoot myth mean anything to me. But the whole thing is so turned up to 11 and not necessarily reliant on you being familiar with any of that that i do not feel like it detracts from the game.
What carried me through the whole game is the amazing writing of the whole thing. There is so many zingers in there and the banter between both protagonists is so consistently funny. It was the strongest point of the whole thing for me. Some characters are pretty fun too. The constantly swearing mechanic in the biggest ball of twine (Thimbleweed Park does something similar but much worse imho), the posh british country singer or the yabbering bigfoot lady. All great characters.
Animation and backgrounds are top notch too.
I was not too fond of the final puzzles. The whole Totem thing felt pretty tacked on. And don’t get me started on the hot tub. That could have been handled sooooo much better. The chief mentions he is going there, you can see him going there and i still could not go there. Phew.

Overall i had a great time. I think i am going to play this with my kids sometimes. If i can get them playing something besides Minecraft.

E: Quick edit. The controls did not bother me too much. It is a bit inprecise, the constant clicking to change actions was a bit much but it did not keep me from playing. LucasArts later stuff handles this much better.

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in reply to: New update for this game (april 2026, amazing) #11723

Well. In 1995 I was 10 and now I’m 27 so exactly 17 years!!

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in reply to: Final thoughts (probably includes spoilers) #11700

Haha. I can imagine that. But one golden rule of adventure games is: if someone goes to do something on a screen and you get the controls back, you have to act!

I could not for the life of me find the lens and resorted to a hint for that. But that is completely on me. I even looked at it in the beginning but did not pick it up.

I am in Bumpusville. I have the feeling i am close to the end. Let’s see how long this still is.

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in reply to: First impressions #11693

It took me ages to find the money in the beginning but apart from that I feel like I am progressing at a good pace. The puzzles did not seem too out there so far. I did play the game 20 years ago so I might have some residual puzzle solutions swirling around in my brain but nothing seemed too familiar yet. I think the game is consistently funny and absurd. I love it so far.

Out of curiosity and without spoiling anything but the screen it is on but where did you miss the exit @Evil Taco?

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in reply to: First impressions #11672

For me the game seemed always more like a loosely connected joke delivery mechanism and less like a (sort of) coherent story like Day of the Tentacle. I liked it very much back in the day.

On a personal note. ScummVM and Sam & Max is setup on my steam deck. Now all that is missing is some time….

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in reply to: TellTale Sequels #11657

If it’s only one do the third season. That is definitely the most sophisticated one of the lot.

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in reply to: First impressions #11622

I will put this on my steam deck and play through it that way. Looking forward to that very much. I played the game close to when it came out (another game from the bestseller games series of magazines) but don’t think I played all the way through it since then.
I have never been to the US so my only point of reference to road side attractions is me seeing „The Wizard“ recently. The dinosaur on the box art reminded me of that stupid movie.

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in reply to: DOSBox or Game Quirks? Tried Real Hardware? #11561

Are you playing Future Shock or with the SkyNet port. I first tried skynet to have HD Graphics!!!!!!!! (640×480) but it seemed very glitchy to me.

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in reply to: Pre-impressions #11494

Descent did release almost a year before this.

I always thought of Doom having evolved from 2d games the same way though. Just more the smash tvs or robotrons of the world. Not the somewhat slower games you mentioned 🙂

The second mission with the jeep still proves to be a roadblock for me. (Pun intended)
I hope I can find the time to er through it.

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in reply to: First impressions #11484

The second mission is really hard. I need to go at it again from the beginning. You can get your health too low and i don’t know if there is a way to survive the onslaught at the end with that little. At least i hope it is the end where i am at.

In the first mission i think the shotgun is a godsend and lets you handle the enemies pretty good. I am mostly losing health when i am too close to the enemies when they explode.

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in reply to: First impressions #11466

I only just set it up to see if everything works.

For some reason i was expecting voiceover in the beginning. But the intro and Mission Briefing is oddly quiet.
The Enemys are really bullet spongy so far. I think I’ll try this on easy too. Might be a bit more manageable.

First impressions is good so far. I like the atmosphere, the music sounds great, it seems surprisingly modern for a 30 year old game.

Did you realize you can shoot the moon? It says OW! for a while and starts falling from the sky eventually 🙂

Looking forward to this month. I hope I can get through this.

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in reply to: SCUMM/LucasArts adventure documentary film #11422

I already signed up a week ago. Very cool project.

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in reply to: Hello from not-sunny Seattle! #11406

Hey welcome. I just finished a rewatch of the whole series with the movie and everything. Very cool.

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in reply to: YOU’LL FRY LIKE A PORK SAUSAGE. #11393

I played this game to completion back in the day. Another one of the Bestseller Games classics I got of the magazine rack. I remember liking it a lot but somehow I never played it again like I have a few of the other Lucas Advetures.
April is the time to do it finally 🙂

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in reply to: Pre-impressions #11392

I am very much looking forward to playing this game. The whole range of Bethesda Terminator games passed me by back in the day. They always looked intriguing in the magazines though.
This looks to be the best entry point for the series but I’ll try the earlier games too out of curiosity.

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in reply to: Another hello from Germany #11391

Hey welcome. 🙂

We also had a 486 in the family for a long time. It was always my fathers work PC but we were gentle with it and did never lose the privilege to play on there. I think my brother and i had a computer for ourselves way later. Pentium 3 era or somewhere around there.

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in reply to: Which version or edition? #11280

Since this is the DOS Game Club I felt compelled to play the DOS version.
I am playing the German Gold Edition in its original form.

There is a community patch version 1.52 but it does not change anything significantly. Only some texts and the grass texture to bring it closer to the settlers 1 grass I think. But I don’t like the look of it.

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in reply to: Red Lens Reader #11270

Thanks a lot. I will do that. I only have the Indy 3 Hintbook so far so that definitely helps.

By the way: Your site has been an invaluable resource over the years. Thank you for this.

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in reply to: Head start / early days #11234

Nope. It is not in the german manual either. Or any Readme, patch notes in either language. I guess i found it somewhere on the internet.
It is an official feature though. Even has the nice little icon of the roman running after a clock.

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in reply to: Head start / early days #11232

It is in the German manual of the gold edition I think. I’ll check when I am home.

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in reply to: Head start / early days #11230

You can increase the speed by pressing „v“.

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in reply to: Your question for John Passfield #11226

Great interview. Zombie Wars runs great in DosBox with Win 3.1 or in DosBox-X with Windows 95. I think the biggest problem to get this out there would be that you need to distribute a version of Windows 3.1 or 95 with the game to get it to run. I am not sure Microsoft would like that very much.

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in reply to: Head start / early days #11224

I got to the 3rd world so far. I have a question for the Settlers cracks on here. Is there a way to get highly trained units out of the barracks and change them to simple soldiers? I made the mistake of allowing gold to be delivered to all the Barracks in my starting zone. Now i have a whole lot of Generals or whatever their rank is where i absolutely don’t need them. I need to set all barracks i build to not accept any gold in the future. As long as i don’t see any borders.

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in reply to: Crusader: No Remorse #11222

If my avatar is any indication I can’t wait to get to this game 🙂

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in reply to: Head start / early days #11219

Ok i started playing today. First impressions: The game is still absolutely beautiful. I love watching the little guys do their thing.
I love the representation of everything in the Graphics themselves. If there is a bunny hopping around it means thats a good place to have a hunting cabin, if there is stones you can build a stone mason, trees means a lumberjack. I also love the little signs the geologist puts everywhere 🙂

The music is super repetitive. It helps to enable the CD Soundtrack and set it to random. But just the Soundblaster or MT32 music is always the same.
Also for some reason the scrolling should be inverted for me. I don’t really know why but i always scroll in the wrong direction.

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in reply to: Magazine Reviews #11213

German magazines were also mostly glowing back then.

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in reply to: Head start / early days #11212

I played so much of this game and part 1 back then. The fun in late game was always the street optimization for me. I build and build and get a completely unusable spiderweb of streets, everything gets bulldozed and rebuilt cleanly until the next time everything gets bad. So much fond memories.
I hope I have the time to play along a bit this month.

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in reply to: Final Thoughts #10630

Hey there.

I just listened to the Earthworm Jim Episode, or rather i am right in the middle of it.
The music in the second level is not by the MDK composer (wasn’t that Tommy Tallarico of Intellivision Amico fame?) but it is just a MIDI version of Night on Bald Mountain by Modest Mussorgsky.

https://youtu.be/iCEDfZgDPS8?si=ftZl4Z5DQuOd5piQ
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_on_Bald_Mountain

I also think the game was conceived from the beginning with toys and TV series in mind. It was published by Playmates Toys after all. But i am not done with your podcast yet. Maybe you get to the history.

Anyway. Love the podcast and I hope to participate more in the future.