40 posts tagged with videogame by JHarris.
Displaying 1 through 40 of 40.
The six directions: North, South, East, West, Anth and Kenth
On Steam right now is a game that lets you play Mini Golf in four dimensions, called, naturally, 4D Golf (Steam, $20). I don't mean in the sense that time is a fourth dimension, it's set in a fully 4D world: you decide which slice of it is revealed in the visible 3D world at any time. Here's a trailer. (1 1/2 minutes) Here's Youtuber Icely Puzzles playing the beginning of it. (43 minutes) Here's the video devlog. It's from CodeParade, who also made the hyperbolic plane exploration game Hyperbolica. At the end of the release announcement video, its creator mentioned that there is a secret feature in 4D Golf that makes it even more bizarre, but telling its existence is a pretty major spoiler.... [more inside]
ZachsMind: "It's awesomely awesome!"
Culled from a cancelled FMV 3DO game from 1996, you may never have seen anything so incrediculous as the 7 1/2 minute trailer Duelin' Firemen. While the trailer has been bouncing around the internet for 16 years (previously from 2007 by hypocritical ross), a higher resolution version has turned up that's almost watchable. It contains Rudy Ray Moore, the Rev. Ivan Stang, Mark Mothersbaugh, Dr. Timothy Leary and Tony Hawk. The Youtube channel of a documentary about the game's making has some other obscure clips from it. [more inside]
Ruffle and Dungeon Robber
Flash is dead, or is it? Ruffle is an alternate way to run Flash content! It's written in Rust, a language designed for memory safety, so it's much safer than Flash was. It's available as a standalone application, or a browser extension (compiled it to WebAssembly). You can even use it to run Flash apps on iOS. If you want to test it out, you could have another go at Dungeon Robber (Doubles Jubilee, 2013), a simulation of dungeon exploration using the rules from the 1st Edition AD&D DM's Guide.
Waiting for 4.0
For Doubles Jubilee, let's take another look at Godot, a compact, lightweight, yet really capable game development system. It runs on, and can make games for, many platforms! It's approaching a 4.0 release! It's gotten much better in the nearly two years since I first posted it, and had a burst of popularity spurred on by Unity's recent pushing of people towards upgrading to Pro. There are now many YouTube resources to help people learn it. For people who learn best through text, there's also the official documentation and their tutorial page. (Previously, in 2020)
Lode Runner in HTML5
All the levels from Lode Runner and Championship Lode Runner, in your browser. GitHub, also has further documentation. (DoublesJubilee, Original from 2016)
U Can Beat Video Games
As the host of the YouTube channel U Can Beat Video Games will tell you, the NES is known for having dozens of games with a difficulty level way above what current-day players are used to. But what if he told you about strategies and tactics to get you through the worst the system has to offer? And demonstrated how to perform them, playing through the whole game in the process? But... is he really just a golden retriever? [more inside]
Identifying Luck in Mario Party
For two decades and across seven systems, the Mario Party games have been a beloved but frustrating experience. You might try with all your might to be the damnable Super Star, but a plethora of factors, some luck-related but some not, conspire to throw the match to your eight-year-old cousin who always plays Yoshi. YouTuber ZoomZike has compiled amazing and exhaustive videos going through every element of four games in the series, and showing what can be manipulated and what can't. It's IDENTIFYING LUCK IN MARIO PARTY: One - Two - Three - Four [more inside]
Let's drill!
A couple of developers (Johan & Johan) have made Pico Driller, a free, simplified rendition of arcade classic Mr. Driller, in Pico8! It's a good introduction to the Ways of the Drill. Good luck! [more inside]
Simple yet powerful gamedev
Want to get into game development, but find C++ to forbidding, Unity too HUGE, and Game Maker too expensive and prone to charge you hundreds of dollars for every specific export system? Then you don't really need to wait for Godot, which is only 27 megabytes (around 52 with Mono support), is both free as in beer and under the MIT License, uses a Python-like syntax with options for C#, C++ and others, runs on Windows, macOS, Linuxes and BSDs and even Haiku, exports to all of the above plus iOS, Android and HTML5, and is pretty easy to use. [more inside]
♫ Kurasshu Bandi-bandiku! ♫
In Japan, Crash Bandicoot was promoted with an umprobably catchy and silly theme song, which was included on the disk for the Japanese release of his second game. Here it is, in all its earwormyness, with subtitled translations, or without.
"A vision of the future: Mario's shoe stamping on Bowser's face forever"
Amiibots is an automated Twitch stream that hosts amiibo figure fighters submitted by Exion Vault's community fighting each other in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate in endless succession, twenty-four hours a day.
The CRPG Book Project
For over four years Felipe Pepe has been working on a 500+ page book reviewing 400 CRPGs, going over their history from early PLATO amusements to the latest 100+ hour Bethesda open-world monstrosities. At last his efforts have reached a conclusion, and he's giving the ebook away free on his website.
"I could have made something empowering."
Bennett Foddy, he who made exquisite torture games QWOP (MeFi), CLOP (MeFi) and GIRP (MeFi), released a new game as part of the October Humble Monthly, called Getting Over It. It'll be available on Steam on December 6, but in the meantime you can watch this trailer. It is a surprisingly realistic model of a guy in a cauldron with a pick trying to climb a mountain.
TOTALLY STOAKED = VERY HAPPY!
Remember awesome Mario miscellany Tumblr Supper Mario Broth? (Previously) Here's some equal time for the other side of the console war: Sonic the Hedgeblog! SPECIAL STAGE: Sonic Retro's epic list of romhacks. [more inside]
Watch Out For Fuzzy!
Yoshi the Dinosaur in Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (YouTube link), an unfinished, but still amazing, romhack from 2010 that recently surfaced. [more inside]
Lode Runner in HTML5
The classic action puzzle game Lode Runner is now on the web, implemented in HTML5 by Simon Hung using CreateJS! It has all 150 the levels from the original and the 50 from Championship (VERY HARD), plus some more collections. Here's the source on GitHub. More info. [more inside]
"The sadness of the robot."
The always-excellent Shmuplations has translated a 2011 interview about the creation of classic NES game Rockman, known in the US as Mega Man, and its sequel. It's a great depiction of the creative process relating to game development.
Quick+Regen+Slow
Colin Hanson, aka Active_ate, goes through the original (fan-translated) version of Final Fantasy V with only a single Time Mage character, and provides complete, exhaustive details of how this feat was achieved: Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3. From retrogaming enthusiast site Skirmishfrogs. [more inside]
Happy Zelda Day!
Zelda Day 2015:
- If you love the NES original but are sad you know where everything is, try the Zelda Randomizer! (Windows EXE, requires ROM). Tries to guarantee solvable games! YouTube play.
- Did you know that, in the original releases of N64 Ocarina of Time, if you hold the R button down when you get a certain item, you get a different one instead? Info with more OoT glitches.
- From Double Fine! Devs Play The Legend of Zelda, four parts: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4
- Fan animation, "Racing For Rupees".
Hardcore Gaming 101 video articles
Here is the new series of video articles started by the ultra-knowledgeable folks at Hardcore Gaming 101. The first two are up, the beginning of series on Pre-Super Mario platform games and on the early history of JRPGs. Related is the video adjunct to the Game Club 199X Podcast, with over 50 videos. (Previously.)
Bundles and game discounters
It started with the Humble Indie Bundle. (Previously, and multiple times.) But there's now plenty of other places to get indie games bundled cheaply: IndieGala, Bundle Stars, Groupees, and, because you can't get cheaper than free, Freebie Bundle and Free Bundle. There's also Indie Game Stand, Buy-Some-Indie-Games, Fire Flower Games, Shiny Loot and GreenManGaming's Indie section.
How to master Ms. Pac-Man
Here's David Manning's YouTube videos illustrating how to make use of ghost AI quirks on the fly while playing in Ms. Pac-Man: Ghost Behavior and On Grouping. It's excellent for building an intuitive sense of how to play the game which, because of random aspects, cannot be reliably beaten with patterns as with Pac-Man. [more inside]
John's Arcade, game collecting and restoration
Here is John's Arcade, a resource about collecting, maintaining and playing classic arcade video and pinball machines. But the real reason I'm posting this is his YouTube channel, which is full of long videos (many over an hour) about arcade repair and maintenance. Like restoring an incredibly rare I, Robot machine, or Computer Space, the first video arcade game, or Quantum, a rare Atari game developed by GCC, programmers of Ms. Pac-Man. Or you can just watch him try to break 300,000 in Donkey Kong over several half-hour videos.
Bugs in old arcade games
Here is what causes the kill screens of Ms. Pac-Man and why they happen long before level 256. Here is why you can sometimes control the attract mode demo in Galaga. Computer Archeology explains the "no fire" cheat in Galaga, which causes the enemies to stop firing if you keep two specific bugs alive long enough. (What, you don't know what Galaga is? galaga.info has you covered.) [more inside]
Super Glitchy Mario World
Here is Let's Glitch Super Mario World, an in-depth series of 47 YouTube videos (each from 10 to 30 minutes long) that demonstrate breaking the game in myriad ways, with clear descriptions of what is going on.
SUPER DAVID BECKHAM ISLAND
Here is video of an unusual moment in David Beckham's varied career: the time he was called upon to defeat Mister Woe and the monsters of the Fourth Division. It's GO! GO! BECKHAM!
Here's when he fought a giant bird with his soccer powers. Here is the beginning of his adventure on Soccer Island, and here's a complete speedrun.
How to make Mario levels, by negative example
Here's a list of things not to do in your Mario levels, consider it advice for when Super Mario Maker comes out in a week and a half. Also, here's things not to do in your Mario overworld. They both come from the rom hacking community at SMWCentral.
The state of being both kid and squid simultaneously
Nintendo's quirky squad shooter Splatoon, which sold 1.6 million worldwide copies in two months of release, is their first real new property since the Gamecube era. People are calling it the game that could save the Wii-U. [more inside]
DOMAIN OF PRIME FROG
"This blog is dedicated to discussing games where you play as a frog, but it might also talk about games which just have heavy frog presence in them. The borders are unclear and the road ahead is hazy. Come with me on the journey to be a frog."
♥FROG WORLD♥
♥FROG WORLD♥
Sights from Zelda games that will probably never be released again
It's Zelda Day! Presented for your consideration: BS-Zelda, the satellite radio-based Zelda games that never got released outside of Japan.
The first BS Zelda game was an update/modification of the original Legend of Zelda. It was intended to be played over four weeks, an hour at a time, with different areas of the overworld unveiled each week. Here is video, with broadcasts included: 1 (YT 1h) - 2 (YT 58m) - 3 (YT 58m) - 4 (YT 1h2m) Each takes several minutes to get started, which mirrors the time delay before the game started when broadcast.
The second game was called Ancient Stone Tablets, and it used the Link To The Past engine, and much of its map. YouTube playlist (YT 12 items, 3h50m)
More information and emulator files hacked to be playable are at: The BS-Zelda Homepage. [more inside]
The first BS Zelda game was an update/modification of the original Legend of Zelda. It was intended to be played over four weeks, an hour at a time, with different areas of the overworld unveiled each week. Here is video, with broadcasts included: 1 (YT 1h) - 2 (YT 58m) - 3 (YT 58m) - 4 (YT 1h2m) Each takes several minutes to get started, which mirrors the time delay before the game started when broadcast.
The second game was called Ancient Stone Tablets, and it used the Link To The Past engine, and much of its map. YouTube playlist (YT 12 items, 3h50m)
More information and emulator files hacked to be playable are at: The BS-Zelda Homepage. [more inside]
RIP Douglas E. Smith
Douglas E. Smith, creator of the classic 8-bit computer game Lode Runner, which got a second life as one of HudsonSoft's most iconic Famicom titles in Japan, has died at the age of 57. [more inside]
Happy Zelda Day!
A Japanese commercial for the Gameboy video game The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening. With puppets. Here's a traditional speedrun that finishes in a little under one-and-a-half hours. Here's a tool-assisted speedrun that wins the game in less than six minutes. (Most of the video is the game's ending.) A manga was released in Japan detailing the events of the game's story. A fan translation of it can be read, in its entirety, here. Also.... [more inside]
Do you remember?
A game that would be at home in an arcade cabinet beside Robotron, FORGET-ME-NOT is a classic-style, that is to say, neon-filled, randomness-laden, bone-hard 2D maze/shooting game, with cute characters and retro effects, inspired by the Commodore game Crossroads II, Nethack and Pac-Man CE. Collect all the FLOWERS in each random, single-screen level to make the EXIT appear. Then, get the KEY and take it there to move to the next level.
The only controls are the arrow keys (or screen swipes in the iOS version). Face down a large variety of randomly-generated enemy types, and get as far as you can! You automatically shoot in front of you, but beware: your shots can wrap-around, and if they hit you they hurt! They key to playing well is grinding: push into a wall as you sail past it to build up a charge. Charge up enough and you start glowing; while glowing, you instantly kill any enemies you touch, but if you charge to much you blow up.
Free: Windows - OSX - Pandora - Morphos. Not free: iOS [more inside]
The only controls are the arrow keys (or screen swipes in the iOS version). Face down a large variety of randomly-generated enemy types, and get as far as you can! You automatically shoot in front of you, but beware: your shots can wrap-around, and if they hit you they hurt! They key to playing well is grinding: push into a wall as you sail past it to build up a charge. Charge up enough and you start glowing; while glowing, you instantly kill any enemies you touch, but if you charge to much you blow up.
Free: Windows - OSX - Pandora - Morphos. Not free: iOS [more inside]
Simon and the rat both feel it's best to just ignore each other
"The very first single-player dungeoncrawl game was not a video game. It was a series of charts printed in the first edition of Dungeons & Dragons, back in 1979. By rolling dice according to the instructions, you could generate a dungeon which was illogical, arbitrary, super-lethal, and which often didn't even produce useable results.
THIS GAME USES THOSE CHARTS."
Dungeon Robber is a flash text game that simulates playing AD&D by the AD&D Appendix A dungeon generation rules. You'll probably die a lot, but the game saves every time you head to town. Blog of the creator.
⇒ Dungeon Robber comics! ⇐ [more inside]
THIS GAME USES THOSE CHARTS."
Dungeon Robber is a flash text game that simulates playing AD&D by the AD&D Appendix A dungeon generation rules. You'll probably die a lot, but the game saves every time you head to town. Blog of the creator.
⇒ Dungeon Robber comics! ⇐ [more inside]
New from VIDEO Magazine, it's Electronic Games!
NEW from VIDEO Magazine, arising out of its popular "Arcade Alley" column, it's ELECTRONIC GAMES Magazine!(page of PDF links) Brought to you by editors Frank Laney Jr. and Bill Kunkel, and filled with all the latest news on programmable home console games, computer games (with special coverage for the new ATARI 800 system), stand-alone electronic devices and arcade gaming. [more inside]
2 BZY 4 TROOF
PixelJam's new platformer, Potatoman Seeks the Troof, has a charmingly incomprehensible trailer. (PREVIOUSLY: Gamma Bros., Ratmaze 2, Dino Run, Mountain Maniac, Dino Run: Marathon of Doom, Snowball Pinball)
Agricola Lite
Flash Friday: Written for Ludlum Dare 23, Super Strict Farmer is a flash game that plays like a light version of the popular Eurogame Agricola. If you have trouble figuring out how to play, the rules are in the comment thread. [more inside]
I'm sorry!
VGJUNK looks at "Gonbee no I'm Sorry", a strange Japanese arcade maze game released in 1985 by Banpresto and Sega that mocked notoriously corrupt former Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei "Shogun of Darkness" Tanaka, who was convicted in 1983 of taking 1.8 million dollars from Lockheed Martin in exchange for letting them sell planes to the national airline.
Remember to flush your Famicom after playing
??? WHAT IS KUSOGE ??? From the Japanese for "shit", kuso, and "game." They're relentlessly terrible video games that in some cases have attracted a following because of their awfulness. Here are some of the most commonly recognized examples: [more inside]
A long way to go to lose
Here is a video playthrough of The Legend of Zelda without a sword. It is possible to get right up to the last boss without one, although it requires knowing a lot of tricks. That is exactly what mev1978 does in his playthrough, without dying. And then he does it again in the second quest. First quest (1:61:31) - Second quest (1:13:18) [more inside]
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