Star Guard — an Old-School Platformer Done Right 107
An anonymous reader writes "Rock, Paper, Shotgun points out a new game called Star Guard, a Flash-based platformer for Mac and PC that's a throwback to the early days of computer gaming, yet still entertaining. They describe it thus: 'Its greatest strength, to my mind, is throwing out the old-school traditions of difficulty. It does certainly get tricky, requiring the platformer standbys of carefully timed jumps and learning enemy patterns — there's something of a Metroid vibe to it. But you don't get punished for failing to meet one of its challenges — you're just plunged a few feet back to most recent checkpoint, and carry on. Lives are not finite, but the small mound of green pixels that mark your corpses are a maudlin testament to your ineptitude. However, death is useful — I ritually found myself sending in a suicide spaceman, taking out an enemy or a mine so that the path was clear for my next go. ... However, it doesn't leave people who pride themselves on their gaming skill, and demand their games to be hard, out in the cold. At the end of each level, your score alters dramatically depending on how many times you died.'"
Iji (Score:1, Informative)
Runs on Linux just fine! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Runs on Linux just fine! (Score:2, Informative)
If you're going to be that broad with the definition of "PC" then Mac would fit in that category as well since it's also a personal computer. It's pretty much accepted slang that PC means Windows when describing OS versions.
Re:How shocking (Score:3, Informative)
That's the key part. The game advertised in the article seems like it rejected that advice on the theory, "Oldschool games focused more on gameplay, so let's go out of our way to make it look primitive instead of getting some halfway-decent graphics and sound." Ie., decent graphics and solid gameplay aren't mutually exclusive.
I nominate Cave Story [cavestory.org] (freeware) as an example of classic Metroid/Castlevania-style gameplay done right in the modern era. The graphics are roughly 16-bit-era, the music is memorable without the use of the Japan Symphony Orchestra, and there's simple, fun gameplay with an interesting story (and even a hidden extended storyline).
Re:How did this make Slashdot? (Score:4, Informative)
I have no idea why this was considered newsworthy, it's just bad.
Re:Runs on Linux just fine! (Score:3, Informative)
Wait, you used it on Linux/x86?
Well, then it's a PC. They never said "Windows".
Re:Runs on Linux just fine! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Gamepad? (Score:3, Informative)
I too was rather irked at that. But there are lots of gamepad to keyboard emulators out there.
For instance, Xpadder [softpedia.com]. That one doesn't even require any kind of install. Just run it, configure it the way you like, and play.
Re:Just watched the video... (Score:2, Informative)
>>>the graphics really do look dated (what is that, CGA graphics flashback?), as well as the gameplay and sound effects (almost sounds like the simple PC speaker that we got rid of a long time ago, thank you very much).
>>>
Wrong on both points. CGA was only 4 colors and the PC speaker just went "beep". Starguard's hires multi-color graphics look similar to an 8-bit computer (Atari or Commodore) while the aural effects sound like they were sampled from an old Atari console (1977). And the game looks hella fun! You don't have to have blood-and-guts spilling all over the place to enjoy a game. Some of my favorite games of all time looked like Star Guard - the challenge comes from surviving the onslaught not from the T&A.
Go play Robotron to see what I mean.
Re:Just watched the video... (Score:3, Informative)
Wrong on both points. CGA was only 4 colors
Built around the Motorola MC6845 display controller, the CGA card featured several graphics and text modes. The highest resolution of any mode was 640×200, and the highest color depth supported was 4-bit (16 colors). [wikipedia.org]
and the PC speaker just went "beep".
A PC speaker generates waveforms using the Programmable Interval Timer.[citation needed] The PC speaker was often used in very innovative ways to create the impression of polyphonic music or sound effects [wikipedia.org] within computer games of its era, such as the LucasArts series of adventure games from the mid-1990s, using swift arpeggios.[citation needed] Several programs, including MP (Module Player, 1989), ScreamTracker, Fast Tracker, Impulse Tracker, and even device drivers for Linux[3] and Microsoft Windows, could play pulse-code modulation (PCM) sound through the PC speaker using special techniques explained later in this article. Several games such as Space Hulk and Pinball Fantasies were noted for their elaborate sound effects; Space Hulk in particular even had full speech.
I'm guessing that the people who modded you "informative" were probably born in the 90's.