Tuesday 9 October 2012

Mad TV (MS-DOS)

Mad TV dos title screenMad TV dos title screen
Okay, this one's called Mad TV, it was a request, and I'm 99% sure it's got nothing to do with Mad Magazine. Probably not a sequel to Smash TV though either.

Right now you're looking at a screen looking at a screenshot looking at this game intro looking though a TV screen to look at a guy fall asleep while looking at his television.

Though the guy is soon dragged back into consciousness by the sight of this strange alien creature presenting World's Ugliest Internal Organs, or whatever program this is. Either he's fallen head over heels in love, or he's just entranced by her gleaming golden wig. Must be worth quite a bit.

After his plan to shove his head through the TV screen fails, the man grabs his sexiest flight jacket and scarf, and races off to the studio to declare his undying love. Yeah, this is going to end well.


LATER, AT MAD-TV HQ.


Yep, pretty sure he's dead.

Oh that wasn't our guy by the way, that was someone high up getting the boot.

The boss of MAD-TV is so furious he's having trouble holding human form. Not only is he in a high stress job, surrounded with incompetents, but now he has to get a new window fitted too. Plus hire a new... whatever that guy was.

But he soon cheers up when he catches the hero coming out of the elevator. There's no text or dialogue here, but I get the feeling this guy just got given the job of running this TV station.

Well that's good news, his chances of scoring a date with that presenter must have just dramatically increased. Though so have his chances of being kicked out of a 10th storey window.

Damn, the last guy really ran this place into the ground, looking at that chart. No wonder the boss has been reduced to recruiting people off the elevator.

I've been given only one goal to meet, win the Sammy for best news, and I've got until tomorrow to do it. And it's already 5 in the afternoon. And I don't even know what a Sammy is!

Alright, I've got the entire run of the building now. The doors are unmarked, though I get a description if I hover over them. I'm lucky the news studio is next door to the boss's office or else it'd haven taken me until tomorrow to find it.

Oh it's one of these games. The kind made by people who think clearly labelled buttons are for wimps.

Alright let's see what I can actually do here. Studio controls do nothing, word processor does nothing, message board...

Hey the message board brought up a new screen! Now I'm getting somewhere.

Okay, I'm guessing that by dragging news from the box on the left to the spaces on the right, I'm buying the stories and scheduling them for today. Except they've got 17:00 written on them, and it's 17:15 right now, so maybe I've missed my deadline?

Also they're $3000 each, and I've only got $197, but I'll worry about that later.

It seems that Mad TV only owns two floors here, and the rest of the building is taken up by rival TV stations, and agencies I can buy stuff from. Eventually. After the bloody elevator makes it down here.

Whoa, I wasn't expecting the game to have real-life movies here to buy. Though since when is The Birds a whodunit? The clue's in the name.

Alright I'll take The Shining, and... High Noon. That ought to take care of four hours of programming.

Crap, those two movies just emptied my bank account. I guess I must have actually started off with $200,000, and they missed off the last three digits to annoy me.

Alright, what else is here in this building? Peace league, Real estate agent, Weapon's dealer, Advertising agency, Consulate of the people's republic of Duban... hey, that one sounds interesting.

That's, uh... what?

Right, I guess I'll be leaving then. Enjoy your petrol.

Now there's a guy who obviously enjoys his work. You can tell just by looking at his smile.

Okay, he's gone to the effort of presenting me with a selection of ring binders, each representing a deal with an advertiser. This one seems to have lots of interesting numbers attached to it, and I'd stick around to figure it all out, except it's just gone 6 am and my station's already started broadcasting 'Art' without me.

I'm guessing 'min. 1.0 million' means I need to get that many people watching the advert, or else I have to pay the penalty. A $150,000 penalty. Considering I'm only at 0.45 million viewers right now, and this is before I've screwed anything up, I think I'll grab something a little less risky.

Oh cool, I've found my office. Only took me two hours.

Okay time to go click on everything then. Donald Duck: useless, Game Boy: useless, desk drawer: useless, PC: works!

This seems to be the heart of the game here, scheduling all the pieces I've bought to get the maximum viewers. To be honest I wish the Game Boy had worked instead now.

Modern painters was there when I started, but I've somehow managed to pull the next episode off the air, so now MAD-TV is broadcasting a test signal (bottom left) and my secret spy cams reveal that our audience has wandered away from their screens to live happy and productive lives (bottom right). Ooops.

With a bit of work I managed to get High Noon slotted in, and some advertising attached to the column on the right, so television is saved! I got tomorrow's schedule sorted out while I was there, but unfortunately it wouldn't let me go any further than that.

Well, okay I can't see a fast forward button, so I guess now I just sit here at my desk waiting until the advertising cash rolls in.

Actually screw that, I'm going exploring.

It seems that the MAD-TV library lets me pull out series I own to... snake man! Hypnotic snake man! Fuck this, next room!

skeleton smoking cigar
I couldn't click on anything in the Tobacco Lobby room. Fortunately. Touch something in this room and you'll be living with orange fingertips the rest of your life.

There's actually an Anti-smoking room right next door. Bet there's a lot of awkward moments out in the corridor as they come to work each day.

This Anti-smoking room looks really familiar somehow. I guess quitting smoking led them down a dark path of sugar addiction. There's just one thing I'm not sure of: is that blue guy on the right a anthropomorphic lollipop or a bubble?

Is it weird that the first thing that actually stood out to me while looking at this image is that they didn't remember to paint out the smoke on the skeleton's head?

Oh sorry guys, I was looking for, uh... the toilets.

Hey, didn't this game used to be some kind of TV station simulator? I'm sure I remember seeing a timetable, and scheduling movies on it, or maybe that was something else. I don't even know anymore

I'd open the door and let him out, but considering all he's got in there is a snorkel, the poor bloke must be long dead by now.

Oh shit, so are my ratings! My audience has entirely abandoned me. It's like they don't even care about people talking about art. For four hours straight. I'm going to have to pay so much penalty cash for my adverts!

Things aren't so bad though. I managed to grab an electric tin opener with the last of my cash before I went into the red, which should go some way to winning over the TV presenter's heart. After all, that's all our hero really wanted in the first place!

With -13 cash my options are pretty limited, so I tried asking for more cash. And when that didn't work I tried a new approach.

Didn't really work out so well either.


MUCH LATER.


But I'm not the kind of guy to just give up on a game because I have no idea what I'm doing and it's making me miserable. Actually I'm totally that kind of person, but I'm trying not to be.

So this is attempt number... four, I think. This time I got the adverts in fast enough to actually get a few of them viewed on day one, though my quality news programming still didn't win a Sammy award. My new plan is to produce my own TV series to pull in the viewers, as somehow this art show just isn't doing it for them.

I managed to hire an MC and two star guests, with zero dollars to spare! I ran back to the studio, told them the actors have been hired and they could greenlight the series. The guy acts like I haven't hired anyone yet. So I go walking all the way back to the supermarket (where else would you hire actors?) and then I notice it. That little down arrow on the left showing that this cast list keeps going, and I'm already out of cash.

Back out the window then I guess.


I tried to be patient with this game and to figure it all out, but it's not exactly intuitive. Plus I hate the way I have to walk to each room myself, waiting for the elevator to arrive, watching my airtime tick away. Then I get all my stuff done for the day, or run out of cash, and I find that waiting's all that's left for me to do, though at least I found a way to accelerate time a bit in the end. Still it could be worse; the Amiga version adds ridiculous loading times on top of that, for every single room, in and out.

But I guess the game must have had a few fans, as someone's made a turn-based multiplayer version: http://www.madtv-online.com/index. Perfect for anyone who's been wanting to try a economic simulation game in their browser. I haven't played it, but I can confirm it's got the proper music, which is probably the best bit of the game, you know, besides the backgrounds.


If you'd like give your own opinions on the game, complain about my disgraceful lack of patience with it, or just want to request something else for me to play, then feel free to leave a comment.

And then if you're still bored you could always link the site to all your friends, post about it on a forum, stick it on Facebook etc. Though of course if your advert isn't viewed by enough people I'm afraid I'll have to charge a $150,000 penalty.

24 comments:

  1. Try the fan-translated version of Mystic Ark for the SNES. I'm curious as to what you'll think of it.
    Make it at least to the second world, if you can... The first world can get kinda dull.

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    1. Sorry man, but playing fan-translations is the one arbitrary rule I never break.

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    2. ...Well, you broke it in Cave Story :D

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    3. I... wow you got me. I'd honestly forgotten about that.

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  2. Now I remember a game of my childhood. Try "Cyril Cyberpunk". It is annoying and I'm not sure why I liked it so much as a kid. Maybe reading you playing it will remind me what made it interesting that time before.

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    1. I'll put it on the list, but even if I play one a week I've still got like 8 months worth of game requests to go through right now, so you might have to wait a bit. Sorry.

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    2. Please post the "games-to-play" list! I want to play some too :)

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    3. I'm not sure you'd be that interested in playing them to be honest. I've got things like Another World, Monuments of Mars, Metal Gear Solid, Zero the Kamikaze Squirrel, Mega Man X4, Legend of Grimrock, Beyond Good and Evil and Cyberpunk Cyril scribbled down here...

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    4. I'm not sure if I should feel impressed you took my requests and proud I've made a contribution or feel bad because maybe I'm getting annoying by the time :P

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    5. But I like your blog and I have to admit even if I don't read a review, at least I scroll it quite fast and stop to the screenshots for some seconds and I feel like when I open a good old book and smell it.

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    6. 'Super Adventures in Gaming - Smells Like Old Books'

      To be honest I wouldn't blame anyone for just scrolling past the text, looking for interesting screenshots instead. The game art is definitely the star of this show.

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    7. I just do it with some type of games that i've never been to. I read them later if I get curious about them and I have some time to try them.

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  3. MadTV is simple to figure out, even without the manual you shouldn't have too much problems, to guess what the screens mean and how to make money. Of course it's a lot more challenging and sophisticated than your run of the mill platform video game.
    And the goal is to first beat the other two TV stations, then go after Betty. In the beginning you should never waste your money on presents or self-produced TV Shows. Money should be invested in movies and more transmitters to get a higher viewer audience.

    Well and reading the goddamn manual could help. I know, apparently nobody does this on the site (and Mecha-Neka is embarrasingly bad in playing video games, he should stop before he makes an even bigger fool out of himself) - well, stick to simple NES games i would say.

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    1. Hey mecha-neko's the competent one, he's actually managed to make it through a few of these things. Being terrible at video games is MY gimmick, dammit.

      Well yeah at its core Mad TV isn't that complex. You get adverts, stick them on shows, and try to get the viewing figures high enough to get the bonus and not the penalty. Which is what I did from the start, even though I barely had a clue what I was doing. And as you saw it got me bankrupt within a day. You need to figure out more than the basics to make any headway in this game.

      I did actually read the manual afterwards, and give it a few more tries to see if I could get a new perspective on the game. And I learned that it doesn't matter how much money you're bringing in, waiting for that damn lift never gets any less irritating.

      It's probably obvious that business sims aren't really my genre, but then neither are NES platformers to be honest. I'll give anything a shot, especially if it's a request like this was. But my opinion is just that, and I've made no secret of how little I actually played it. I'm trying to show off games here, not put people off them, and I'd hope that anyone with an interest in challenging and sophisticated business sims would be smart enough to see my complaints for what they are, and maybe give it a try anyway.

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    2. "and Mecha-Neka is embarrasingly bad in playing video games, he should stop before he makes an even bigger fool out of himself"

      Because this site is a SERIOUS games site for SERIOUS people to play games SERIOUSLY, right?

      I read Mecha-Neko's posts because they're entertaining. If you don't like them, don't read them - and don't play Mr. Internet Tough Guy by posting insulting comments like this for no reason.

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    3. "and Mecha-Neka is embarrasingly bad in playing video games, he should stop before he makes an even bigger fool out of himself"
      Huh, really? I thought I was doing pretty well, what with having won Millennium 2.2 and The Terminator! (And a couple of others.)

      You do know we don't try to generally win the games, right? If I end up winning a game, it's either because the game is so awesome or bizarre that I can't bear to tear my attention away from it, or because the game is really short.

      Is there any specific game you think I did particularly bad at?

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  4. I have a huge collection of old 80s-90s games, mostly DOS and NES, this run a curious bell for me, so I pulled my dusty old box of floppies and early CDs out, and guess what! I HAVE THIS! And I never played it! I must have bought it for a couple bucks at a trade show and completely forgotten about it. So I popped it in and decided to try it out. I have one thing to say. FUCK THE ELEVATOR! It really does take forever, you guys are 100% right, its sad too because I kind of like it. If the elevator was a little faster it would be playable. Also the inconsistent rounding of the money makes it nearly impossible to plan how much money you are spending, but that and all the other problems could have been tolerated if the goddamn elevator would just speed up, because you have to use it every other minute, and It takes almost the entire amount of time in between uses to get there! Seriously, its like a real elevator almost.

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  5. #1 Have to start it in small.
    1: go to real estate agent and cancel the Studio rent (-$2000/day)
    2: do not mess around with news until you have stady income (will take few weeks before you get on that level)
    3: you pay intrest for the $200k loan every day. Keep in mind that.
    4: start in small: have enough films to fill the day, go with the cheap ones first. The price tag on a movie not always means the popularity. Same goes for Box office income bar. Beverly Hills Cop has very litle box office income, but really popular among the couch potatos.
    5: don't worry about Betty for a long time, survive a week will take a lot's of work.

    As you figured out: buy move + add, have people watch them both = cash. At start always good to have 1-2 0.00 viewers add for just in case. The peek time of the watchers from 20-23. Between 18-20, I put series, worse goes first, it will be just a warm up. (At start the painters series good for that), than get something like "Flipper" or "Alien Nation" or "A colt for all cases" all 3 popular in the listed order. (in my game what I play at the moment). Use X rated movies after 22. If you get a good move like "Once upon a West" You can put it from 23-1am and folks will still be up and watch. Watch for the current bar. If you have a chance only play movies which are current. Ultimate movie Star Wars - Empire Strikes Back, and The Return of the Jedi. They able to produce ultra high volume of watchers.

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  6. #2
    Tipp for adds: do your math and calculate or write it down, how much you earn on a single add. (Obviously use the adds what you will most likely able to play with no problems). Some of them surprisingly good: Rushware $80000 bonus for 3 plays = $26.6k / add and only need 0.50 viewers! If you do your math you will see it is better than some adds whch reqs 2.5 mill viewers! This is one thing.
    Adds #2 - Bagette (or something like that) requs 1 mill viewer and 1 play for 40k. Always pick up as it's a good filler when you have 0.5-2 mill viewer. Keep one good movie ready to play if worst come worst and you running out of time.
    Adds #3 - Many times when I get a new movie have no clue how folks will like it. Example: Dr. Zhivago. Epic 4 block movie, can make you go sky high or get doomed as it eats up the whole night. When I test such a movie (turned out 1.x mill viewer with 10 mill subscriber) I make sure my ADD que is empty. I play the game on the slowest speed, in this way I have tim to take a look at the numbers when it starts, run up to the AD Agency grab the right ad, and make it back in time. Usually if something is BIG not to many viewers leaves before end. So if a 3 block epic kicks of with 3.6 viewer, it is a safe bet to grab the 2.5 mill 3x to show add, and you will able to make that 160k cash in one movie.

    Save, save, save. Do it every morning, get a good use of it. If you screw up the day you can restart it and do differently. I play the Amiga version with WHDLoad + real amiga 1200. Has much better music than pc. It is not slower because it runs from the HDD (CF card actualy) so no loading time. Only trouble is around save files but that's Amiga version issue I guess. Anyway for that reason, I switched to Winuae + WHDLoad + I use the Winuae's safe state every morning. I love it better on Amiga. Dosbox has a creepy mouse control (not smooth at all) and I played it back in the 90's on amiga so the music is weird for me.

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  7. #3
    You can mess up things if you change plates on the info board. I read, that's the way to empty a room and get bigger studio (move arms dealer plate over to size 2-3 studio and bang, they will clean it up) not there yet, but good to know.

    Making shows: go screen writer -> buy script (check requested studio size so don't screw yourself), go to studio ->put it on des, -> grab shopping list ->go supermarket and buy what you need -> go back and start to produce.
    Now couple of things to keep in mind: rent a studio = daily -$2k minimum + actors etc. It is a lot's of money, do not try before you paid back all the loan and have extra few $k-s.... Producing live show will be played once, that's all (that's what I read, not tried yet), so kinda super expensive thing. Producing series = you can play them exclusivly = higher viewer number + you can sell it if you want to... which is $$$$.

    Viewers: as money comes in, at one point you will want more viewers and you can afford to buy a transmitter. What I do: I move the circle around, there are spots for 2 mill viewer for $50k. That's the honey spot. 2.1 mill cost $100k, so I just collecting some 2 mills for 50k. I got 10 mill viewers and SW brings 3.9 mill peps in. (ATM). The goal is to get constant 1 mill minimum viewer at start, so you can play the 1 mill ads non/stop. But be ready to jump and run up for that Bike Shop ad when things goes south! Happens couple of times when you don't have the right add, that's when a 1 shoot biker shop for $5k is better than $0. Not going to save ur ass but still something.

    News: at start I kept Political, and not even bother what is going on, some general bla-bla. At 10 mill viewer and cashflow roughly $100-200k day I afford to pay $5k for 3 political news. Still not comfy to get any of the other as they cost DAILY $10k + news! I guess once I hit constant 500k daily income it will be no problem. Future will tell.

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    1. Regarding the information board, yeah - you can swap out name tags on the board, which will then show up that way on the elevator as well - at least for the day.

      There are two ways you can profit from that: to clear out new space, or to sabotage your opponents.

      How? Well, it pays to keep an eye out for the news and to talk once a day to the porter early in the morning. There are two "Duban Consulates" in the building. (Peoples Repucluc and Emirate, I believe). When the news say that a terrorist attack is planned on one of the two, rush down to the info box and swap the targets name with another place. At some point during the day (usually aroun 17:00, but it may happen as early as 10 or even 11), an arab charicature type will walk in and bomb the place that is listed as the consulate.

      If you swapped the name with the office of one of your opponents, it gets demolished and he won't be able to access it for the rest of the day. If you target his Archives, a random movie of his gets destroyed. And if you target on of the seemingly useless other places (Tabak- or Gun-Lobby, Psychiatrists Office etc) that place gets cleared out when the attack strikes and makes it available for rent the next day. This is great for the laze stages of the game, as it's the only way to get size2 or size3 studio lots.

      If you talk to the porter, he will occasionally mention that the film dealer will be visited by a repo man (guy in brown trenchcoat). Same thing pllies here - if you redirect him to your opponents' archives, one of his movies gets repossessed, which can screw up his programming significantly. Pick a random other place, and the lot gets cleaned out, making it available for rent instantly.

      But be careful - your opponents also start swapping the name tags around at some point. So don't ignore the porter or the Duban news, or you may end up having your office bombed, which will not only hurt your budget, but will also keep you from changing your programming...
      .
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      Yeah, I played this game a LOT during my youth, and it's one of the few old games I have that I still pop in occasionally every once in a while. Call it a guilty pleasure. It's a surprisingly complex affair, and it still has a certain charm to it in my eyes.

      Oh, btw, click on the head of the Film Dealer to get access to preordering the really big blockbusters and even live events! But this is only worth doing once you've expanded quite a bit and have got a dteady stream of income going...

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  8. #4
    Elevator: funny. I play the game on the slowest mode (Top right icon to set the speed of the game on the chanel editor pane). and still time to time running out of time. Like have $- in the morning but first ad brings +50k, I try to make it to the news room during the 5min ad time and setup the news so more folks stays around. Many times movie starts, I take of to the agency to buy the right ad. Why is it good this way? Example: I had a setup plan for the day, playing the adds for 1 mill, and 0.50 for the day. Since both of them was open for 3 days did not cause any trouble to defer them if needed. I setup SW- Jed. Got 6.9 mill viewer! Run up grabbed the 5 mill add, made $260k cash in 3 block!, and Sold the rest for 2.5mill for the Once upon a time in the west. That day instead of the planned 180k income I made 420k becues of the flexibility. I paid all my loan, and ready for the next day... Jaw + Casablanca (both 1 timer on my channel, have no clue how is it going to work, have 1x 2.5 mill viewer , 1x 1 mill (4time) , and 0.5.... and still ready for the run again to grab the 5 mill ads if it's possible.
    So what I use the elevator for? Competition picks up movies / ads and get in the way. Before move starts I walk to the elevator and waiting for the number to pop.. than I call it : ad agency, or movie, or just pass on elevator. It blocks the 2 AI from getting where they want. I rather jut use it to make sure I can make it to any agency in time but you can use to mess with AI.

    The reason of failing this game is most likely not to paying atention of what is going on, how many people watching the show, picking up wrong ad, not thingking about how many times it has to played for the right size of audience. If you fail over and over, slow down, take a look at the numbers, make game saves and analyze why did you fail. This is not Mortal kombat with 3 min winner time. It takes days / weeks to advance. I read someone has a combo to beat ai in few hours in the hardest, but I try to win this game with minimum cheat which in this case is reloading the save state and start the day over. This a game from 1991, and just becuase the graphics from the 90's it does not mean you can finish it in 3 hrs. Games were far tougher back than, more challanging before mobile games made the whole gaming industry to produce games for casuals mostly. GTA5 no way to fail in the whole game.... for example. Mad TV? you can screw the whole thing in 5 min...... (Don't take me wrong I love GTA5 too!)

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    1. This is one of the most epic replies I've ever gotten. It's like a reward for all the struggling Mad TV players with the patience to make it down here to the end of the comments.

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  9. Visiting in 2024. This is an amazing game. Still playing.

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