The Return of (Old) PC Graphic Adventures 93
KingofGnG writes "Though they belong to a genre already considered defunct and inadequate for the mainstream video game market, adventure games have a glorious past, a past that deserves to be remembered, and, of course, replayed. At the center of a good part of this effort of collective memory, there is ScummVM, the virtual machine which acts like an interface between the feelings and the puzzles from the good old times and the modern operating systems. As already highlighted before, the ScummVM target has grown immensely over time, going from the simple support of the 'classic' adventure games par excellence published by Lucasfilm/Lucasarts, to a range that includes virtually any single puzzle-solving game developed from the beginning of time up to the advent of the (Windows) NT platform. The last video game engine added to ScummVM within the past few days is Groovie, created by the software house Trilobyte for its first title released in 1993, The 7th Guest ."
Not mainstream? (Score:5, Interesting)
While the definition of mainstream videogames can be debated, new adventure games are still sold in places like best buy and wal-mart. That seems mainstream to me. It is true they don't have the prestige or marketing behind them that they used to but they are still good.
I picked up the Agathe Christie series on a whim at best buy one day and am presently surprised.
adventuregamers.com and justadventure.com are still 'keeping it real' so to speak.
Re: (Score:2)
Most are pretty terrible, some are enjoyable, but none of them comes near the old classics. The Telltale Games are probably the best new ones these days and they release new stuff quite regularly.
Re: (Score:2)
I would not call the ankh series worse than the old games, neither is a vampire story, also the new sam and max games are excellent. those are the ones which follow the classical lusasarts style, there are others which are mystery alike like memento mori.
problem is that many of the newer adventure games follow the rather boring myst style (I personally could never get warm for the dracula series for instance) but there are a load of excellent games of every style.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Well to speak fairly the last monkey island game was utter garbage, it was sort of the last attempt of the few ones left at lucasarts to survive in the EA mentality which had taken over once they hired the guy from EA as COO who then refocused everything towards mediocre star wars games. Most of the good people had left LucasArts back then already and the few ones left could not save the game anymore! It was a mediocre ending to a good series. But seriously, adventure games nowadays have the problem that al
Re: (Score:2)
Well if you want comic adventure games lucasarts style:
A Vampire Story
Ankh 1+2 and 1.5
Runaway 1 (2 is not good but 1 is)
The Westerner 1+2
Clever & Smart
Simon the Sorcerer 4
then about 20 telltale episodic adventure games
Those are just the few ones I can think of there are probably many more
on the mystery road there a load more, the broken sword series is still alive
also there is a very well done broken sword 2.5 done by some fans (dunno if the english version already is released)
memento mori
Also Jane Jens
Re:Not mainstream? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not mainstream? (Score:4, Insightful)
Ok no offense but you're full of it.
That's like saying newsweek, the new york times, or a manga isn't a form of literature.
Sure it's not traditional, but it is.
And you will find VERY VERY few people who would back you up saying that Zork wasn't a video game.
You are using the age old trick of "Oh it's on the internet, therefore it's something else". No, it's not. Just because multiple people can play it and it doesn't have graphics does NOT mean it's not a video game.
Also, if you're going to get that technical, at least use the right terminal. Don't capitalize MUDs and not capitalize MUXs, MOOs, and MUSHs. They all stand for something.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1, Interesting)
Even though helicopters can fly, they are not planes.
So the question is: does a video game need video?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So the question is: does a video game need video?
Define video though. In the "filmed reality", or even rendered video, sense, "video games" didn't have video for a very long time. I mean, Space Invaders, Galaga, Asteroids, Pac Man, etc, didn't have "video" in that sense but they were still "video" games. I think it's obvious throughout history that a "video game" has been effectively any game played on a video display device (ie, a monitor). By that definition text based games still fully qualify.
Re: (Score:1)
Early text games were often played on printer terminals, so the "glass teletype" is not really the defining factor here. I remember going through reams and reams of paper in the computer room in the early/mid 80s.
Re: (Score:2)
There's a difference in that the text based games are verbal whereas the likes of Space Invaders, even when implemented in text mode, are visual, and hence video games. Consider the difference between a letter 'd' coming towards you that you have to shoot and the letter 'd' in 'it is dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue'. All definitions are by nature arbitrary, but I don't see the point of arguing for one that encompasses everything done on a video screen. Text adventures and the likes of Space Invad
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The term was not "visual games" though, it was video games. As stated everything that has ever been called a video game has had two common threads: interactivity and the use of a display device. The sophistication or even presence of pictures or graphics has never been much of an issue.
Indeed, if you check the literal definition of "video game", it is:
1. any of various games played using a microcomputer with a keyboard and often joysticks to manipulate changes or respond to the action or questions on the s
Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)
Video is taken from the Latin word 'video' literally meaning 'I see', in modern English usage the visual counterpart to 'audio', sound, not a shorthand for video cassette recorder or video game console. Your idea of non-visual video shows that you have absolutely no clue as to what the word means. Further, microcomputers, keyboards and joysticks don't come into it; the first video games used analogue circuits to generate the graphics.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I think I agree with you. But the way you phrased your comment made me have to think twice and read it more than once. Correct me if I am wrong, but are you saying: they're not "games", they're "adventures" and deeper than the modern conception of video games. They (text based adventures) were not games, they were, somehow, more... a way that hackers communicated with each other. Made jokes with each other. Spun engaging tales to others interested. Programmed and had fun. Did things for the hell of it. Told
Re:Not mainstream? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
They use a monitor and a player manipulates the video ergo they are video games. They would not however be computer games as there isn't generally an AI involved. I'm not sure if there are any, at least of the older generation, that do include a computer player.
Re: (Score:1)
Regarding older text games:
They would not however be computer games as there isn't generally an AI involved. I'm not sure if there are any, at least of the older generation, that do include a computer player.
Huh? Will Crowther's original Adventure (c. 1975) included dwarves that wandered through the maze and initiated combat. Don Woods expanded Adventure and released it (1977) in a form that included a pirate whose behavior was a little more complex. The thief of Dungeon/Zork (1977) is more complex still. They most definitely interacted with the player and moved through the shared environment, using instructions in the form of code executed by a computer. The command line parser defin
Re: (Score:2)
I picked up the Agathe Christie series on a whim at best buy one day and am presently surprised.
is it also responsible for your new japanese accent?
Re: (Score:2)
Well Adventure games have been declared dead since 1992 (thats when I can remember the first gaming mag articles declaring them dead) the funny thing is, the genre thrives, and still is probably one of the genres still very strong in the PC world. The problem is it is outside of the scope of big publishers saleswise, no adventure game since Myst probably has sold more than one million but the sales are solid and you can preplan with sales between 30.000 - 200.000. So where does that leave the genre. Well ga
Re: (Score:1)
Sierra games used AGI, then SCI (think point and click). ScummVM has AGI support, originally based on the slightly buggy Sarien engine.
In other news... (Score:2)
Productivity of all geeks over the age of 25 has dropped markedly.
The 7th Guest/11th hour were quite good, but maddeningly difficult. I wonder if we'll get "Return to Zork" too in a few years..
Re: (Score:2)
I wonder if we'll get "Return to Zork" too in a few years..
Maybe. But Return to Zork (RTZ) will definately not run on the Scumm VM. Despite RTZ departing from the traditional Zorks I actually quite liked it. The "other" Zorks (e.g. Zork Nemesis et al) I didn't enjoy so much... I think they were missing the humour.
Re: (Score:1, Informative)
Maybe. But Return to Zork (RTZ) will definately not run on the Scumm VM.
Actually, there is a work-in-progress engine for it [scummvm.org] already. It seems playable, but I've only looked at the first few rooms (I'm not familiar with the game) so I couldn't say how well it works yet.
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe. But Return to Zork (RTZ) will definately not run on the Scumm VM.
Actually, there is a work-in-progress engine for it [scummvm.org] already
Nice. Thanks for the link. I was wrong... I didn't know people were working on that. Gosh, I must be getting old.
Who would have thought I'd be sitting here typing these comments about a game that I played maybe 14 or so years ago. And it gets worse. I played the original Zorks (on a C64).
RTZ was state-of-the art when I first played it and I distinctly remember being amazed at the graphics and the wonders of modern technology and how amazing I thought the graphics were. It actually inspired me a little bit (
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Zork Grand Inquisitor definitely has the humor back, unfortunately ZGI and Zork Undiscovered Undergrounds (a free text adventure easter egg on the ZGI CD) were the last Zorks produced ever.
After that Activision lost interest in the adventure game market!
Favourite ScummVM game (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Here's a video [google.com]
Wiki article, I think. [wikipedia.org]
Seriously, go play it!
Re: (Score:2)
There's one major caveat to BASS, which is that it requires two mouse buttons. I tried playing it on my PDA and became very frustrated very quickly.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I can't believe I never thought of that! BRB.
Re: (Score:1)
Sam and Max: Hit the Road
Full Throttle
Day of the Tentacle (Maniac Mansion 2)
and I only mean "mainstream" as TellTale games has done the latest Sam and Max's, and Lucas _were_ doing a Full Throttle sequel but canned it years ago
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Tim Schaffer's studio Double Fine is working on Brütal Legend, you may be interested:
http://www.doublefine.com/news.php/projects [doublefine.com]
Also try Psychonauts. It's free on Gametap until the end of the year, so if you hurry...
Re: (Score:1)
and getting Psychonauts now - good find, thanks man!
Re: (Score:2)
An advice: Psychonauts is a masterpiece, but don't be discouraged by the somewhat lengthy training part (3 levels, with 1 plot level simultaneously) and play until the end. The six real psychic missions are very well made and (almost always) very funny.
Re: (Score:2)
The Zero Punctuation review of Psychonauts is pretty funny:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/2-Psychonauts [escapistmagazine.com]
(I haven't finished it.. I have it for the PS2, and the controls are supposedly easier on the PC. I'm stuck on the last level, but haven't played it in a long time.)
Re: (Score:2)
Psychonauts is an adventure game? I just started playing it last week, it seems like a platfomer/action-adventure to me.
Re: (Score:2)
Its a pretty wild mix, some levels contain classical adventure elements, while others are plain jump'n runs and others feel more like a Zelda-like action-adventure. The game overall is a little uneven and has plenty of annoying spots, but it also features some insanely awesome ideas.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, yes, it's action-adventure. Can't it be an action-adventure platformer AND good? ;)
It's a Tim Schaffer game. You play it for the awesome humor and absent minded insanity that made the Secret of Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle and Grim Fandango so enjoyable. Do NOT expect item-based puzzles, it's rather more collection-based (with platformer-style fights and boss fights spread through it, as well as character control based challenges).
Note that I'm a huge fan of Schaffer's, so I'm not
Re: (Score:2)
Oh yes, Action-adventure games can be good, I was just wondering why you brought it up in the context of adventure games. Now I know. I expect it to be good, but it does seem like a waste of talent to have him making an action-adventure game.
Re: (Score:2)
I wouldn't say supposably, I wouldn't even say supposedly, because I was just playing it the other day. It seems to work reasonably well, although yesterday the menu was giving me trouble. Worked perfectly the day before.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
I thought it was released as freeware or public domain anyway...
Re: (Score:2)
kitten@minerva:~$ apt-cache search beneath
beneath-a-steel-sky - a science fiction adventure game
scummvm - free implementation of LucasArts' SCUMM interpreter
As you can see it's also in the apt repo of Debian and Ubuntu. Anyone using a Debian-based distro should see if you can just grab it that way -- it really is a fantastic game.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You can get that for free including a snazzy installer set up that works directly in Win XP from gog.com. Love that site. Great price and increasing selection. As of a couple of days ago BASS was still free to download complete with modern installer.
Re: (Score:1)
Hello, I'm Anne and I wanted to say... (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
with a challenging puzzle and a growing level of difficulty geared toward the solution of a rich storyline
Good points Anne; I agree totally. The other thing about the old text based adventure games is that they were often hilariously funny! If not always obvious, there were always "inside jokes" that only a nerd would be likely to pick up or, indeed, maybe, find funny (for example, 69,105). The responses from the parser were often humerous as well (e.g. the response from "attack me with sword"). Then, of course, the grue.
There were many other great adventure games but, in my little part of the world Infocom alw
How do you expect to play these games? (Score:5, Insightful)
With many of the companies that made these games now defunct and out-of-business, how do you expect to connect to the activation servers in order to play these games?
And some of these games likely came on 3.5" disks, unless you happen to have an old disk drive connected to your machine, you're also out of luck, since we all know that you need to have disk #1 in the drive in order to get past the Securom checks.
Besides, I'm sure that most of you have long since used up your 3 installs.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Well (Score:2)
Sorry for the troll accusations. It's just that I've seen so much troll copy-pasted on /. with only the names replaced (trolls about linux games, trolls about DRM, etc.) that I assumed it was one. Sorry I should think I little bit more before reacting.
Regarding the conservation of video games after a long time when the company has gone belly up :
Some game genres on classical computers have used extensive copy protection systems based on detection of original floppies.
(Commodore, Atari, Amiga...)
And currentl
Re: (Score:2)
No problem. It's good of you to say so. It's true that even these games had DRM issues. As I recall, "The Print Shop" had a three install limit, which it enforced by writing to the disk how many times it had been installed. It was easy to circumvent, since you could copy the disk and then install the copy up to three times.
That's a *good* copyright protection (Score:3, Informative)
And don't forget about the adventure games that somehow worked something from the original manual into the gameplay. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, I'm scowling at you.
Yup. I remember. You had to constantly read your own copy of the Grail's book to advance in the game, just like Indy in the movie.
But also the various "Conquest" series of Sierra games which came packaged with extensive documentation about the era of the game and everything in the game being very strongly based on that culture leading the player to constantly cross check their documentation.
I personally think that it's a much more brilliant and unobtrusive mechanism for copy-protection than the average "Ple
Re: (Score:2)
As the doctor in "Life and Death" near the beginning of the game you would occasionally get "paged," and have to refer to a little cardboard gizmo to give the right response. Obviously a variation of the "manual page/rotating paper disk" mentioned earlier. A bit tougher/more annoying because it wasn't up-front, just a few random times early in the game.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
I nominate the parent for "Depressingly True Comment of the Day."
do you still even look for the newsworthiness? (Score:1, Flamebait)
Sorry, what's the news here "Hey guys ScummVM has been around for eons but it's pretty cool check it out" ?
Oh did you guys here that there is MAME out there? It can play a bunch of old arcade games, maybe we should submit something to Slashdot to tell the world about it? Or can we just use Slashdot to tell people about any program we want to promote? That's really cool then because you see I have this new program called Photosounder [photosounder.com] and it does some pretty cool stuff with images and sounds you should totall
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
We apologize for the confusion. Rest assured that the editors responsible for the oversight have been reprimanded. From now on we shall only display scientific and technological news of global importance. Would you like for us to eliminate duplicate postings of news items, as well?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1, Funny)
> Someone tell me by interposed Slashdot story when MAME supports Street Fighter Ultimate Alpha Disco Beta Bio Aqua Do Loop.
It does already.
Re: (Score:2)
Just a quick check confirms that the not-so-much-a-rule-as-a-guide banner reads "News for nerds" not "News to 4D6963" (or even "News to Slashdot colors").
Sierra is still missing (Score:2)
Sorry, but ScummVM doesn't "virtually include any single puzzle solving game developed from the beginning of times".
In fact a whole giant half of the gaming history is missing.
The two adventure games giants back in the days where Lucasfilm/LucasArt and Sierra.
ScummVM was designed from day to support Scumm system (the system used by all Lucas*).
But Sierra's engine aren't all there. The old AGI engine used in their first games has been worked in. But the SCI engine behind most of the classical adventure perio
Re: (Score:2)
Sierra very recently started re-releasing many of it's classic games as series collections, powered by DosBox. I picked up the Space Quest and Police Quest collections, myself.
Re: (Score:1)
But there is SCI support for ScummVM [sourceforge.net] coming, what we need is developers willing to help (*hint hint*).
As can be read there, the FreeSCI could use some help, too, with introducing the GSoC project into their tree; and, I'm sure, general devs wanting to build a clean-room SCI imp
SCI? (Score:1, Interesting)
Well, that's all fine and dandy, but when are we finally going to see SCI support (for Sierra's later games)?
I remember that many years ago, the ScummVM team said, essentially, "ScummVM is for SCUMM games only, therefore we won't add SCI support even though Sierra's games were the 'other big thing' along wit LucasArts'"; these days, with support for just about any and every engine thrown into ScummVM, is there any update on whether SCI support is planned? Or at least considered?
Fallout 3 (Score:2)
The one embedded in Fallout 3 was pretty cool to find. It being on a green screen really helped to bring back the feeling of playing them in the old days.
In case you liked the 7th Guest music... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
No mention of Adventure Game Studio community!?? (Score:2)
Adventure Game Studio [adventureg...udio.co.uk]
In particular, I have to give a hearty recommendation to "No Action Jackson." The graphic style is a dead ringer for DoTT, and it's amazing o