Loadstar: The Legend of Tully Bodine (MS-DOS)

Developer:

Rocket Science Games

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Release Date:

1995 (Sega CD 1994)

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Systems:

DOS, Sega Mega CD

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Today on Super Adventures, I'm checking out Loadstar: The Legend of Tully Bodine, by the infamous Rocket Science Games.

Rocket Science was founded in 1993 with the goal to bring together some of the most talented people in the fields of video games and films to make some video games that are also films. With actors and everything. They were all-in on the idea of making FMV-based games and they thought that theirs could be the most visually impressive on the market. Not just because of the content, but because of the codec; their compression was among the best in the business, meaning more production value survived the process.

People took notice of how many high-profile designers and engineers were being hired, and investors began lining up to throw money at them. Interactive movies were sure to be the next big thing and Rocket Science had the talent and the funding to bring digital entertainment to the next level. But then all six of their games bombed, leading to them going out of business after just four years. And I mean really bombed, not just 'failed to meet sales expectations'. Loadstar released around the same time as their second game, Cadillacs and Dinosaurs: The Second Cataclysm, and it seems like by 1996 the two games still hadn't reached 8000 copies. With their sales combined. On all systems.

How is even possible that they made a dinosaur game in 1994 and failed to get anyone to buy it? That was the peak of Jurassic Park hype! Even Trespasser shifted 50,000 copies and that was straight-up broken!

Anyway, I'm playing the spaceship game, not the dinosaur game, and I'm curious now about why it didn't appeal to people at the time. Is it really that bad or were people just not into FMV? Am I going to be into the FMV? Will I be able to endure the amount of cheese I'm about to be exposed to?

WARNING: There will be a surprisingly graphic death sequence at some point. Also, I'm going to spoil the game's entire story.

Universe (Amiga CD32) - Part 2

This week on Super Adventures, I'm still playing 90s point-and-click adventure Universe, because I want to be done with it. I played the demo years ago, when I was young enough for it to be imprinted into my brain and stick there. But I never played through the full game so I have no idea how the story ends and I'm just as clueless about the middle.

I mentioned in PART ONE that I wasn't going to spoil the ending, but I've changed my mind. Because we all deserve closure on this. That means I should give you a SPOILER WARNING. Oh, you should also know that despite what it says in the title, most of these screenshots are from the MS-DOS version of the game, as I switched systems. Not that it makes much difference.

Universe (Amiga CD32) - Part 1

Developer:

Core Design

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Release Date:

1994

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Systems:

Amiga, CD32, MS-DOS

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing Universe, by the makers of Rick Dangerous, Curse of Enchantia and later Tomb Raider. But Curse of Enchantia is the most relevant, seeing as this is a point-and-click adventure game.

Universe got fantastic scores from magazines back in the day, lots of 90s and high 80s... well, except for Amiga Power and Amiga Format, they both totally trashed it. Amiga Power gave it 21%! I've played the demo before so I have an idea of what my opinion's going to be, but I'll see if it changes as I get further into the story.

I should give you a SPOILER WARNING, as I'm going to be playing through a lot of the game. In fact, I'm going to try to finish it, though I'll try not to give the whole thing away. I'd suggest YouTube if you want to see the ending, I'm just showing off things that catch my interest and whining about the things that annoy me.

Lotus Turbo Challenge Games

This week on Super Adventures, I'm taking a trip back to the past... back to the early days of Super Adventures, when I thought it was acceptable to cover a bunch of old-school arcade-style sprite-based racing games in one article. I'd give them each three screenshots and write things like "Dodging cars is hard!" and "Hey, I got first place!" underneath.

I eventually learned my lesson and realised that these kinds of games weren't going to give me much to work with. You have a sprite of a car and you slide it left and right to get around the other cars and obstacles, while also trying to avoid flying off the track on the turns. There, I just described all of them.

But I could never resist showing off screenshots full of art, and it occurs to me that I never got around to covering the biggest stars in the genre. No Out Run, no Road Rash, not even Lotus 1-2-3. Uh, I mean Magnetic Fields' legendary racing trilogy, not the legendary spreadsheet software. Speaking of spreadsheets, did you know Lotus made a car called the Excel?

Anyway, I'm going to play some Lotus games and I'm going to show off all the artwork, and if I can find anything to write about them, well that's a bonus. Screenshots will be from the Amiga 500 versions unless specified otherwise, though I will have a look at some of the ports as well. These games made their way onto all kinds of systems, like the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, C64, PC... though not the NES or SNES for some reason. I've no idea why Nintendo got left out.

There was another game called Lotus Challenge released on the PS2 in 2001, but that's entirely unrelated so I won't be playing that one.

Alone in the Dark (MS-DOS) - Part 2

Today on Super Adventures, I'm going to try to beat the original Alone in the Dark!

This is the second and final part of my two-part article, so you'll probably want to check out PART ONE first. I wrote all about all kinds of stuff, even mentioned Resident Evil a couple of times.

One thing I didn't talk about though, and it's fairly important, is that the game came out in late 1992... so this is its 30th anniversary! It's getting a remake soon to celebrate and from what I can tell it's the kind of reimagining where they take all the stuff from the original game and put it to one side so they can make up a bunch of other stuff instead. I feel like it'll probably have better combat though.

Okay this is the last part of my Alone in the Dark playthrough and I'm playing this with the intent to finally finish it, so beyond this point the SPOILERS will be extensive. With any luck. I mean I can't make any promises here, you can count the number of true survival horror games I've completed on one hand, with all the fingers severed, but maybe this will be the first!

Alone in the Dark (MS-DOS) - Part 1

Developer:

Infogrames

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Release Date:

1992 (CD version 1993)

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Systems:

DOS, PC-98, FM Towns, 3DO, Mac, Archimedes

---

This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing the Guinness World Record holder for "First 3D survival-horror videogame": Alone in the Dark! I mean the original one, obviously. A sequel tried to steal its name in 2008, but the original proved too powerful and the PS3 release renamed it to Alone in the Dark: Inferno, so as far as I'm concerned this is the only true Alone in the Dark.

Well, except for the classic Uwe Boll movie I mean.

I know everyone that talks about Alone in the Dark also has to mention Resident Evil, but I think it's funny how the series both started off as critically-acclaimed genre pioneers and then suffered very different fates. Resident Evil has had seven million sequels and remakes, many of them pretty great, while the Alone in the Dark games have been racing to catch up to their own movie series down at the bottom of Metacritic. There's a bit of a disparity in how the two franchises are regarded these days, and it'd take a lot more than a terrible Netflix series to change that.

But I still remember how blown away I was when I saw the first Alone in the Dark previewed on the TV series Bad Influence! back when I was a tiny baby. It looked so much more advanced than anything I'd played on the Amiga, SNES or Mega Drive. I didn't know much about PC's at that point, but I was sold, I wanted one.

Then a few years later my family actually got a PC! I loaded up Alone in the Dark on it, pushed some furniture around, got killed by a monster, and turned it off to play Theme Hospital or Sam and Max or something instead. (I'm not a big fan of horror games to be honest). So I have played through first few rooms before, I'm very familiar with them, but otherwise I'm going into the game blind. I don't know what happens next or anything about the story.

Okay, I'm going to be playing the version I just bought off GOG (which I believe is just the 1993 DOS CD version), and I'm going to be writing about it in two parts. This first part is going to be a regular Super Adventures article where I stick with it for an hour and whine about how hard it is, but in the second part I am going to try to finish it. I want to see what this game actually is! So there will be moderate SPOILERS in the first part and hopefully some extreme spoilers in the second.

Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger (MS-DOS)

Developer:

Origin

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Release Date:

1994

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Systems:

DOS, Windows, Mac, 3DO, PlayStation

---

This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger! Not to be confused with 80s hard rock anthem Eye of the Tiger.

With a title like that you might assume that it's the third game in Chris Roberts' Wing Commander series, but developer Origin had been been busy in the three years since Wing Commander II, producing three spin-offs. There was Wing Commander Academy, which was basically a mission generator for WC2, Wing Commander: Privateer, a space trading/combat sim along the lines of Elite, and Wing Commander: Armada, a strategy game with dogfighting. Oh plus there was 1993's Strike Commander, which doesn't have anything to do with Wing Commander except the name, dogfighting, and it being produced by Chris Roberts at Origin.

I've heard a few numbers for how much Wing Commander III cost, like $5 million and $10 million, but $4 million seems the most plausible to me. Either way it was apparently the highest budget video game ever when it came out, which is funny considering that it's a space combat sim. It really shows how much things have changed since 1994. Oh hang on, I've just done the research and it turns out that the highest budget video game of all time is currently Chris Roberts' space combat sim Star Citizen, which has raised $400 million.

The reason this game cost so much is because the series had progressed from floppy disks to four CDs packed with live-action full-motion video, with real Hollywood actors. The game was meant to be taken seriously and required some serious hardware to run, like a Pentium-based multimedia PC with a good SVGA video card and a double-speed CD drive, or a 3DO console. A couple of years later it got a release on the shiny new PlayStation as well, but no Sega CD or Amiga CD32 ports for this one. It almost got ported to the Jaguar, Saturn and M2 as well, but those versions were later cancelled... and not because the game wasn't selling well. In fact this was a massive success despite the fact that so few people had machines capable of running it well, and they were soon making a sequel with an even bigger budget.

SPOILER WARNING: I'll be playing the first few missions and I won't be spoiling anything past that, but these are story heavy space sims and you might end up reading something here you don't want to know about the first two games.

Crusader: No Remorse (MS-DOS) - Guest Post

This week on Super Adventures, guest reviewer mecha-neko is writing words about Crusader: No Remorse, the first of the two Crusader games! Or is Crusader: No Regret the first one and this the sequel? How do you even tell?

Developer:

Origin Systems

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Release Date:

1995

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Systems:

MS-DOS, PlayStation

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While Ray's playing Wing Commander, here's another legendary DOS Origin Systems game that I haven't played yet!

Are you ready for some isometric tactical espionage action?

Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi (MS-DOS)

Developer:

Origin

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Release Date:

1991

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Systems:

DOS, Windows, FM Towns

---

This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing PC space sim Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi, which is somehow only the second one of these games I've played. I covered the original Wing Commander back in 2014, but my site's been utterly Wing Commanderless since then.

The Wing Commander series was Chris Roberts' first space saga, coming before the Starlancer games and Star Citizen. In fact it came before the X-Wing series, FreeSpace, Star Fox... even Sonic the Hedgehog (though that last one's not actually a space sim as far as I'm aware). This particular Wing Commander game was old enough to almost get ported to the SNES and Mega Drive/Genesis... but it wasn't. In fact it's the only one of the mainline games to never get a console or handheld port. It did get a release on the FM Towns computer at least, which was well suited to the game considering that it's basically a 386 PC.

I have played the game before, a long time ago, but I don't remember playing very far, probably because it kicked my ass. And this would've been back when I was actually getting some space sim practice! It'd be fair to say I'm a little rusty right now, but I'll give it a fair shot and see if I can at least earn the right to fly the second type of spacefighter.

SPOILER WARNING: I'll only be playing the first few missions and I won't spoil anything that comes after them.

Flight of the Amazon Queen (MS-DOS)

Hey, Super Adventures is back again! I'm ready to give you two more months of game articles, before disappearing off to write for Sci-Fi Adventures instead for a while. Actually, no, I'm bored of that system now. Plus telling people to come back in two months is kind of a terrible idea now that I think about it.

Okay, starting today I'm switching to a new plan: a new Super Adventures every two weeks, all year round. So one week I'll play a game, the next week I'll write about an sci-fi episode, the week after that I'll be back to playing a game, and so on. I'll be doing the same amount of work, you'll be getting the same number of articles, I'm just shuffling the order they get published in.

Developer:

Interactive Binary Illusions

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Release Date:

1995

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Systems:

MS-DOS, Amiga

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This week on Ray Hardgrit's Super Adventures, I'm playing FLIGHT OF THE AMAZON Queen.

I don't know why it's capitalised like that, but I have a suspicion that the gradient is inspired by the Indiana Jones logo. The title itself is probably inspired by the 50s adventure movie The African Queen, starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn. The African Queen is actually the name of a boat in the movie, so it wouldn't have been doing much flying. I assume. I haven't actually seen it.

Flight of the Amazon Queen was the second and final game by Australian developer Interactive Binary Illusions, who'd previously worked on Halloween Harry (aka Alien Carnage). This is a point and click adventure and that's a run and gun platformer with a jetpack, so they've done a bit of a genre shift here.

It's another one of those freeware adventures available for free on GOG, like Lure of the Temptress, Beneath a Steel Sky and Teenagent, except with one major difference: I haven't written about it yet. I really did mean to though. In fact I pretty much announced that it was coming soon... back in March 2017. The thing you've got to understand about my plans, is that they were all made by an idiot. Speaking of things being announced, it was revealed earlier this month that a sequel is in development called Return of the Amazon Queen. I only just found out about this, so my timing here is pure luck.

Alright I'm going to try the game for a bit, just long enough to see what it's like and show off some pictures without really spoiling anything. I'll be playing the original PC version running through ScummVM (the free version released on GOG), not the updated 25th Anniversary edition sold on Steam.
 

Stonekeep (MS-DOS)

Developer:

Interplay

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Release Date:

1995

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Systems:

MS-DOS, Mac

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm checking out Interplay's notorious first-person dungeon crawler RPG Stonekeep.

All this year I've been playing games the people have placed on a top ten list, and I found Stonekeep in Computer Gaming World issue 148. It made it to #10 in its '15 Top Vaporware Titles in Computer Game History" list. The game was a bit of a Duke Nukem Forever in its day as development dragged on for way longer than intended when feature creep took hold. It was supposed to cost $50,000 and take 9 months, it ended up costing $5,000,000 and taking 5 years. That's longer than Daikatana took to come out!

Sure 5 years seems like nothing compared to DNF's 15 years in development hell, but time worked differently back in the early 90s. 5 years was the difference between Ninja Gaiden and Doom, A Link to the Past and Final Fantasy VII, or Super Mario Kart and Gran Turismo. When the developers started work on Stonekeep the average PC was put to shame by an Amiga 500 and they couldn't assume that players would have a hard drive or a mouse. When it finally came out it was released on CD with live-action cutscenes and full voiced dialogue. They just kept working on it until PC hardware had caught up to their ambitions, even after main programmer Peter Oliphant quit because he'd had enough. Here's some trivia for you: he went on to work as an extra on the TV series Deadwood, and no I'm not getting him mixed up with Timothy Olyphant.

Okay I'm going to play the first hour or so of the game, and hopefully get far enough to understand the basics of what you're actually supposed to do in it. I haven't had the best track record with games like this, but I'll do my best.

WARNING: There's a jump scare coming up at some point. I'll let you know when.

System Shock: Enhanced Edition (PC)

Developer:

LookingGlass

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Release Date:

1994

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Systems:

DOS, Mac, PC-98 (EE version: Windows)

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm checking out the original System Shock, a game I've somehow never played. Well okay maybe I put it on for five minutes once and got scared off by the controls, and I did play the demo of the remake, but this is something I'm mostly clueless about. It's a big gap in my important video game knowledge. I mean up to this point I assumed I'd be playing as the guy with the chunky metal headwear from the box cover, but that's apparently a Cyborg Elite Guard. Seems like the player character is the guy in the sneaking suit on the right.

My gimmick for Super Adventures this year is that I'm playing games that have appeared on someone's top ten list and I found System Shock at #9 on PC Gamer's Top 100 from 1996... even though it actually came out in 1994. I guess it's the kind of game that takes a while to win people over.

System Shock was LookingGlass's next immersive sim or '0451' game after the Ultima Underworld games and introduced something absolutely crucial to the genre: a door locked with the code 451. There are many things locked with the code 0451 in many games, but this is its origin. The game probably introduced other things too, I'll let you know if I spot anything.

I'll be playing Nightdive's Enhanced Edition, which is an entirely different thing to Nightdive's upcoming remake. It's basically the same as the original game, just with modern resolutions, redefinable controls, video options, that kind of thing. They likely even patched a few bugs while they were at it. Plus it comes packed with lots of bonus features, like artwork, guides, the soundtrack (in MP3, FLAC and MIDI!) and even an interview with Warren Spector, which I need to remember to watch. It also includes the original version of game and a copy of DOSBox to run it in, just in case the Enhanced Edition isn't authentic enough for you. Very handy if you happen to be taking screenshots to compare versions.

Okay, I usually play games for an hour or so, but I suspect this is going to need a bit longer than that. I'll keep going until I've finished the first floor, or at least succeeded at something. I'm sure someone will eventually want me to flick an important switch and I will make sure that switch gets flicked.

Command & Conquer (MS-DOS)

Developer:

Westwood

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Release Date:

1995

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Systems:

PC, Mac, PSX, N64, Saturn

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This year on Super Adventures, I'm celebrating 10 years of the site by playing games that you'd find on a 'top 10' list, and that means I've ran out of excuses not to write something about Command & Conquer. The game was retroactively relabelled Tiberian Dawn, but I'm not calling it that. Partly because I always get it mixed up with the sequel Tiberian Sun, partly because I can never remember if it's 'Tiberian' or 'Tiberium'.

You might be wondering why I've been so reluctant to write about such a well-respected and beloved classic. Well that's because it's an RTS game and that means it's going to take effort. I have to play it for hours and then somehow summarise what I did and how it plays with just a handful of screenshots, all of them of little dudes standing in a grassy field firing at smoking buildings. This is why I write about so many platformers, they're easy! "Hey it starts with a forest level, huge shock. I guess I'll go jump on the spiders then? Oh no the bottomless pit killed me! And now I'm in a sewer, wow." RTS games almost never have sewer levels for me to whine about!

There's lots of different ways to play this game now, like a modern source port, or fan made patch for Command & Conquer Gold. But the best way is almost certainly Command & Conquer: Remastered, which improves the sound and visuals, and updates the interface without messing with the gameplay. Everyone showers it with praise and it seems like it's earned it. But I won't be playing that. Instead I'm going back to my original CDs, the very first DOS version, unpatched. Why? Because the DOS release is incredibly zoomed in compared to later versions and I want to give you a fighting chance to see the tiny little tanks and soldiers in my screenshots.

StarFighter 3000 (MS-DOS) - Guest Post

This week on Super Adventures, heroic space reviewer mecha-neko has returned with a quick look at another classic game. It's Star Fighter 3000, by the people who made Stunt Racer 2000 (no relation to Stunt Racer 64). It came out on a few systems and on most it's kind of obscure, but on the Acorn Archimedes it was an actual big deal. I was browsing an Acorn owner forum called StarDot and it's in basically everyone's top 10 lists for the A3000... possibly because there aren't too many original games on the system to choose from.

Hey everyone! While rooting through all my old DOS stuff like Fade to Black and Halloween Harry, I've found another game I'm familiar with but haven't played in a really long time.

Developer:

FedNet

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Release Date: Acorn Archimedes: 19th September 1994 MS-DOS: 8th October 1996 Iyonix: April 2008

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Systems:

Acorn, 3DO, DOS, PS1, Saturn, Iyonix

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It may sound like a boxing game about robots in the future, but it's actually about spaceships and lasers! Wanna see?

Loom (MS-DOS)

Developer:

Lucasfilm Games

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Release Date:

1990

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Systems:

PC, Mac, Amiga, Atari ST, TurboGrafx-CD, FM Towns

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm writing about Loom, one of the final point and click adventures by Lucasfilm Games (because they became LucasArts later on that year). Lucasfilm Games was actually revived this January, but only as a brand to stick on licenced third-party games, so that's not much to cheer about.

My gimmick for Super Adventures this year is that I'm playing games that have appeared in someone's top ten list, and Loom made it to #8 in IGN's Top 10 LucasArts Adventure Games list (it could've possibly made it higher, but they were listed in chronological order). You might be wondering if LucasArts even released more than 10 adventure games, and they actually did! But only barely. (Spoilers: Zak McKracken and Escape from Monkey Island didn't make their list.)

Loom's maybe not LucasArts' most famous adventure game, in fact I imagine a lot of people only know about it because of the dude with the 'Ask Me About Loom' badge in Monkey Island, but I believe it's fairly well liked. Personally though I don't have an opinion on the game, because I remember almost nothing about it. I've definitely finished it before, played through the whole thing, but I have zero memory of it past the first 10 minutes. Possibly not a good sign, but at least it'll be new to me!

As usual I'm planning to play the first hour or so of the game and then quit so I don't ruin the whole damn thing for people, but I promise you'll get more than your recommended daily amount of screenshots.

Fade to Black (MS-DOS) - Guest Post

This week on Super Adventures, habitual guest poster mecha-neko has returned with another game for you. It's Fade to Black, the sequel to classic cinematic platformer Flashback from three years earlier (F2B... FB2, I see what they did there).

This year I've been playing games that have showed up in someone's top ten rankings and Fade to Black fits nicely with that as it was one of PC Zone's top ten PC action games in their August 1997 issue. In fact it was listed along with games like TIE Fighter, Quake and Tomb Raider, so it seems like it's going to be something really special!

Developer:

Delphine Studios International

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Release Date:

31st August 1995

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Systems:

MS-DOS, PlayStation, Dreamcast

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Hello there! This is Fade to Black, the sequel to Flashback: The Quest For Identity, following the continuing adventures of 90s rotoscoped polygon space hero Conrad B. Hart.

This has been on my agenda for a million years, but when I got out the DOS computer for Halloween Harry, I knew it was time for some space adventuring.

Be warned that this game continues on from the ending of Flashback so there will be SPOILERS for the ending of Flashback. Also, if you find the violent deaths of 3D prerendered men disturbing, this is not the post for you.

Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss (MS-DOS)

Developer:

Blue Sky

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Release Date:

1992

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Systems:

DOS, FM Towns, PC-98, PlayStation

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This year on Super Adventures, I'm celebrating 10 years of the site by playing games that have earned their place on a 'top 10' list at some point. Maybe I found a game on a 'Top 10 Best Game Over Themes' list, or perhaps a 'Top 10 Most Underwhelming Sequels' list, it doesn't matter as long as they made it there.

In this case I'm playing Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss which I found at #5 on PC Gamer's 1994 'Top 100', and at #3 on PC Zone's October 2000 'all-time classics' list. You could probably find it all over the place though as it's a bit legendary. It's part of the foundations that some of the biggest franchises are built on, as series like Deus Ex and Elder Scrolls can trace their lineage right back here. Tomb Raider and Minecraft too actually. Though there's a more direct link with Looking Glass's System Shock series, seeing as this is the first game by Blue Sky Productions... later known as Looking Glass Studios.

I haven't played this myself yet though, even though it seemed like an obvious choice for Super Adventures, and the main reason for that is that it looks like an absolute bastard to write about, and I'd want to do it right. Plus I haven't really played the other Ultima games and I know nothing about the series!

I checked Wikipedia however, and it turns out that Underworld was released just before Ultima VII, in 1992, and the Ultima series was 11 years old at the time. So this was a bit of a Resident Evil 4 situation I suppose, as it's an inventive and influential successor released about a decade after the original. Except here it's a spin-off, not a change in direction for the franchise, so fans of the classic gameplay weren't faced with their series making a genre shift. In fact it wasn't even originally an Ultima game at all, and they had to rewrite it during development to fit the lore and really turn up the 'ye olde English' dial.

I should mention that I'm playing the GOG version, which is presumably the CD release, and I should also mention it may include cartoony low-res spiders.

Halloween Harry / Alien Carnage (MS-DOS) - Guest Post

Today on Super Adventures, guest poster mecha-neko has returned and he's brought you the perfect game for Halloween. I wrote about Sanitarium a few days ago so I thought I had Halloween covered this year (the game even has pumpkins in it), but mecha-neko's choice literally has the word in the title. I can't compete with that.

Developer:

Interactive Binary Illusions Sub Zero

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Release Date: Halloween Harry: 10th October 1993 Alien Carnage: 2nd November 1994 Freeware: 24th May 2007

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Systems:

PC

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Spooky greetings to you all! Fancy looking at some classic Apogee shareware?

As Robbie Coltrane might say: it's 'alloween, 'arry!

Electronic Popple (MS-DOS)

Developer:

Byteshock

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Release Date:

1997

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Systems:

PC

---

This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing Electronic Popple, a DOS game by Byteshock released in 1997.

I went searching the internet looking for any kind of information about the game to write up here, and it seems like Byteshock were a bunch of Korean college students who disbanded soon afterwards. Plus it seems like 'popple' might be a mistranslation of 'purple'? Also the game apparently has multiple endings. That's all I could find out about it though I'm afraid! I'm all out of trivia now.

Man, that's a pretty pitiful amount of text for an intro, I need to think of some more words. Uh, it seems to have a two player mode, that's probably worth mentioning. Plus there's lots of anthropomorphic computer people exploding on the title screen. Poor guys.

Amulets & Armor (MS-DOS) - Guest Post

This week on Super Adventures, guest poster mecha-neko is playing a DOS RPG from 1997! He rarely ever writes about RPGs, so this one must be something... special.

For a change, instead of playing something weird that I've never played before, I'm going to play something I'm very familiar with from my childhood.

Developer:

United Software Artists

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Release Date:

January 1997 (re-released 26th April 2013)

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Systems:

MS-DOS, Windows

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This is Amulets & Armor. It's an RPG! Except it's not. It's an FPS! Except it's not. And it's multiplayer, except it's not. It's a little of everything.

I've been meaning to play and write about this game for years, but I've never felt like I'd be able to do it justice. When I was but a lad and loved playing shareware demos on the family PC (alright, I still do), I would play the one level demo of this a lot. I liked the ambience and the cartoons in Interpose, but Amulets & Armor is the game I actually played.

I only had the demo back then, but it was re-released in 2013 as a free full game for both MS-DOS and Windows, with the source code available for boffins as well. If you'd like to hear a little bit about why you've never heard of the game, click here, but I'll be focusing on just playing the full DOS version today.