Mechin' Hell

Another thing I did last weekend was finally succeeding in getting an old game working: MechWarrior 2!

I recall in the mid-nineties that this game was one of the big ones: Everyone played it and those who did still have fond memories of it. I however missed out on it and it's only in the last coupla years that I finally got a copy (the Titanium Trilogy no less!). But boy has it been a bitch to get working.

Yet even if I managed to finally get Mechwarrior 2 working it is not without it's troubles: the 3dfx, which was the major promise behind the Titanium Trilogy, isn't working out too well and as a result much of the graphics look hideous.

Oh if ever there was a game to get a HD revamp......

Wii are no longer here any more

This weekend I went to a quiz night. Whilst my team didn't win i did however score a minor victory by answering a tricky spot question. And what did I get for my effort? An envelope of gaming vouchers! Yep, everytime I convince myself I have too many games and I should cease getting more, something comes along that chnages that perception around.

Anyway, the vouchers themselves were for Facebook games, Club Penguin and the Wii. And of course it was the latter that had the greatest sway for me - so I fired up my Wii and went to check it out.

But it must be said: it was damn weird coming back to the Wii in this late hour - when Nintendo have moved on and are now focusing their attention on the Wii-U. The Nintendo Channel is dead and whilst the the Marketplace is still there it is frozen in time - and looks to remain that way. Indeed, in the case of the latter, it is bizarre to see something I spent a lot of time using is now kinda non-existent.
However I suppose that is the toll that time takes, when things are discarded by the wayside by the passage of time. And gaming technology may well be the worst offender seeing how quickly the technology moves and how quickly things are forgotten and subsequently claimed forever. True we be slowing down somewhat with the seventh generation of consoles being the longest yet but in the case of the Wii marketplace, it is weird to see so many games on offer but the audience has since stopped caring.
It is indeed a thought of whether the Marketplace screen will still look the same five or even ten years from how...

I think I'm a clone now

Rithendal meets a double:

 Seems that with so many people playing World of Warcraft, there will be SOMEONE that has an avatar looking very much like yours.

Take the Controls

Seems Homeworld isn’t the only IP getting a new lease of life: Stardock Entertainment has picked up Star Control for a revamp. Inspired by the success of the recent XCom reboot, Stardock wants to reboot Star Control and is even looking to draft some of the original development team in for the job.

I assume that this will be a reboot of Star Control 2 – for the original game was a ‘space battle’ game whilst its sequel builds upon the previous game incredibly (there was a Star Control 3 but people choose not to talk about that one….). I myself am delighted by this news I’ve been playing Star Control 2 a lot this year and found it much to my liking. True the game is already available for free online in the form of the Ur-Quan Masters, but if this reboot generates new interest in this classic then I’m all for it (It’s been a long time coming too).

In fact it would be interesting to see how this reboot stands up, when everyone’s been busy playing Mass Effect. Sure the element of space exploration may invite comparisons but whereas Mass Effect is an action RPG built around a central character, Star Control 2 is more about building a fleet, finding locales to visit, ship combat and building relations with other alien races so they’ll join your cause.
Mind you considering how many goofy alien races populate the Star Control 2 universe, one can only wonder how they’d work in a 7th/8th generation game.

We're on our way home

I heard it through the grapevine that Gearbox, having purchased the license to the Homeworld series, are now going to release new versions of Homeworld 1 and 2 - and in HD new less.

My response?

YES!

Getcha motor runnin'

Because WoW graphical glitches never cease to be amusing, may I present this - Rithendal being dragged around on the head:

Si Amiga

As established previously in this blog I spent much of the nineties being the proud owner of a Commodore Amga 1200. Of course, the word ‘proud’ is indeed an understatement as the mid –to-late nineties were not a kind time to the venerable company known as Commodore.  At the time, everyone had PCs and a wider, and better, selection of games. I had a lot of trouble trying to find something that would work on my machine, let alone something decent, and I was made a laughing stock in amongst my classmates at school. As is often the case with gaming, one need to pick a tribe and hope it isn’t the wrong one because if it is the wrong one you’re going to be up shit creek. And as it so happened, I picked a wrong time to be an Amiga owner – I can only wonder how my brother managed to persuade my father to shell out for an Amiga 1200.

Still I had some good times using my Amiga – I remember blowing an entire summer to complete Soccer Kid and I’ve since regretted nothing. I got into Worms via the Amiga and I even tried my hand at animation with the Amiga. I did try to keep abreast with developments via magazines but much of the time spent there was looking at games that looked ace but being forever out of reach – and settling with demos that didn’t do enough to fill the void. Still, I’ve had a soft spot for the Amiga ever since.
Now I recently received the news that Amiga Games Inc has been bought out along with the rights to over 300 games. The purchaser, the Writers Group Film Corp, now has plans to rerelease these titles to modern platforms.

Well this is good news for me on multiple fronts. It is good news as a former Amiga loyalist that interest in the Amiga is still being maintained. It is good news as an advocate for gaming preservation as the games in question are being preserved and not claimed by the march of time. But it is especially good news as someone who missed out on playing many of these games the first time around. As stated above, I never played many of the games that were available at the time and could only gawk at screenshots in magazines (of course some of the games I wanted to play from that era have now been obtained through Steam and GoG). As such I can list many games I’d like to try my hand at: Ruff N’Tumble, Chaos Engine, Bubble and Squeak, Valhalla, Final Odyssey, Alien Breed, Dragon Stone, Shadow of the Beast, Super Stardust, and Shadow Fighter among others.

Of course, it is unclear at this stage which games will be given the greenlight for release –it is entirely possible that the games released will be the crummy ones instead of the much more worthy titles mentioned above. That being said, don’t mess this up Writers Group Film Corp!