The Crew Motorfest (PC)

Developer:

Ivory Tower

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Release Date:

2023

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Systems:

PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm finally back after a five month break and I'm writing about a racing game! The fifth racing game in a row! This wasn't my original plan, but a free trial came along and to be honest I didn't really have an original plan so I figured I might as well put some words underneath the screenshots I was taking.

Everyone calls this The Crew Motorfest, not The Crew: Motorfest, so I'll be skipping the colon too. In fact, I'll probably just call it Motorfest. Or MOTORFEST  if I feel like adding a bit more style to it.

The game was originally going to be called Motorcamp. In fact, it wasn't originally going to be its own game at all, it was going to be DLC for The Crew 2, but the ideas they had were incompatible with the game's capabilities so they just made it its own thing. With an upgraded engine and shinier graphics.

Okay, I usually play through the first hour or so of a game and write down what's happening as I experiencing it, but for racing games I give them more of a regular review, so this is going to be something a little different. Except I just reviewed four other racing games, so this is actually extremely normal now, I guess.

Super Adventures in Delisted Racing Games Part 2: Need for Speed: Undercover

This week on Super Adventures, I'm still writing about racing games you can't buy digitally anymore. I was inspired by The Crew being shut down earlier this year, as it got me thinking about all the other racing games that have just disappeared over the years. Well okay, most of them are still in someone's game library, they still work (unlike The Crew), but you won't find them on the PlayStation store or on Steam.

It's a problem that affects this genre more than most because of all the licenced cars and music. Those licences have a time limit and when that's up the game can't be sold anymore. As far as I can tell, the first 18 Need for Speed games are all either gone now or never were, unless you can find them on disc, with only 2010's Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit getting a remastered rerelease. And playing PC games off a disc has only become more of a pain in the ass over time.

Fortunately, I was able to buy a few of them before they vanished. In fact, I've already written about the first 10 years of Need for Speed games, going from Need for Speed to Underground, so now would be a good time for me to cover the absolute highlight of the sixth gen console era: the original Need for Speed: Most Wanted from 2005!

I can't be bothered going through the hassle of installing it though, so instead I'm downloading one of the most hated games in the series: 2008's Need for Speed: Undercover!

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.

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

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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?

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.

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.

Bram Stoker's Dracula (Amiga)

Developer:

Psygnosis

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Release Date:

1994

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Systems:

Amiga + eight other systems

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Today on Super Adventures, Keanu Reeves week continues with Bram Stoker's Dracula on the Amiga! I said I was only going to play three Keanu Reeves games, and this would be the second of them, but things get a little complicated with this one.

Bram Stoker's Dracula was a multiplatform title released to tie in with the 1992 Gary Oldman movie, but not all platforms got the same game. In fact it seems like there's actually five different games here, split across nine different systems. It came out on Amiga, SNES, Mega Drive/Genesis, Game Gear, Master System, NES, Game Boy, Sega CD and DOS PCs, so poor C64 owners were left out this time.

Nine systems in one article is a bit much, so I'm going to focus on the Amiga game mostly and try not to get too carried away with writing about the other versions, but I have to at least take a look at them. Yeah okay, I didn't show off all the different Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure games yesterday, I only played the home computer versions, but in my defence I was busy finishing the entire game three times over.

I'll also try not to spoil too much about the movie, but I get the feeling that's not going to be an issue here.

Noctropolis (PC)

Developer:

Flashpoint

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Release Date:

1994

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Systems:

DOS (EE version: Windows, Linux, macOS)

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing my fourth PC game in a row! This one's from the mid 90s though, so I've escaped 2001 at least.

Noctropolis is an "adult graphic adventure", which is apparently a lot like a regular adventure, except a couple of hours in you get to see an actress's breasts for a few seconds. You won't find a screenshot of it here though, this site's safe for work (also I'll have stopped playing ages before then).

I own the game on Steam so that means I'm playing the Enhanced Edition released by Nightdive a few years back. It doesn't actually say that, it's listed in my game library as just 'Noctropolis', but it didn't boot up DOSBox when I started it so it must be the new version. Oh hang on, they mention it on the store page: "New Enhanced Edition for Steam!" So that's cleared that up.

Man, this music on the title screen sounds like it's going to break into a Batman theme at any moment. Not any particular Batman theme, just a Batman theme. That's probably a good sign, as the game's supposed to be going for a comic book tone. In fact they were originally going after a comic book licence, but they couldn't get hold of one and had to make up their own setting instead. They apparently tried to approach this problem from the other direction and get a comic book published based on the game, but their meeting with legendary artist Rob Liefeld at Image didn't lead to anything.

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Before I start going through the game I feel like I should warn you that it gets a bit edgy at times. To put it bluntly, a main character gets raped off-screen and it's not dealt with all that tactfully.

Psychic Detective (MS-DOS) - Guest Post

This week on Super Adventures, I've dragged mecha-neko back to talk about... whatever this is. Looks a bit like a game, maybe? Or perhaps a direct to video movie? Either way, I hope you enjoy reading about it at least twice as much as he enjoyed playing it.

My next game was going to be a cutesy platformer on the Amiga, but after unsuccessfully fighting my way through VectorMan, I thought we could all do with a change.

Developer:

Colossal Pictures, Electronic Arts Studios

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Release Date:

30th November 1995

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Systems:

MS-DOS, 3DO, PlayStation

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So instead, I've gone back in time and found a full motion video interactive movie, just for you. You can tell it's an interactive movie! Look, it's got a strip of film! And a CD-ROM!

Okay, you can stop looking now. Seriously, stop. That mess can't be good for your eyes.

Fallout 4 (PC)

Developer:

Bethesda

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Release Date:

2015

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Systems:

Win, PS4, Xbox One

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This week month on Super Adventures I'm spoiling the first couple of hours of Fallout 4!

You might be wondering why I'm writing about a complicated modern RPG again when I should know better by now. There's already a hundred reviews, streams and YouTube videos out there about it, so it seems a bit redundant. I have a good reason though: I already played all the others (aside from Fallout Shelter and Brotherhood of Steel) and it seemed wrong to leave it out.

Plus it means I get to mention the drama going on in late 2013 when there were competing teaser sites like thesurvivor2299.com and thepropheteer.com all appearing to be revealing the game's existence, and people were trying to figure out which of them was legit and which were fake (they were all fake).

Thankfully the game actually was being developed in secret, because that's typically what you do when your last game was a huge hit (unless you're Valve). Though it seems weird to me that after all this time this was only Bethesda's second attempt at a Fallout RPG. Obsidian were the ones that made Fallout: New Vegas and I'm curious to see if Bethesda decided to take anything from it. Or take anything away from their last game.

I'll be playing it without any mods, by the way, because I'm not really keen on tweaking my game. I feel like opening the box like that lets some of the magic escape (plus I'd be too tempted to give myself an infinite ammo rocket launcher and fly around on a fire-breathing unicorn or something). Also this means I get to ignore the Creation Club entirely and all of the bullshit that goes along with that!

(Click the screenshots if you want to make them very slightly bigger.)

Star Wars: Rebel Assault II - The Hidden Empire (MS-DOS)

Developer:

LucasArts

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Release Date:

1995

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Systems:

PC, Mac, PlayStation

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It's Star Wars' 40th birthday today and I'm celebrating by playing a Star Wars video game! I was tempted to play the game for Star Wars Day a few weeks ago on May the 4th, but the 40th seems like a bigger deal (plus I'm fond of putting things off as late as I can).

So this week on Super Adventures I'm playing Star Wars: Rebel Assault II - The Hidden Empire, by Vincent Lee. I didn't really notice at the time, but LucasArts were really fond of putting the creator's name on the box back in the 90s.

To give you an idea of where this fits on the Star Wars video game timeline, it came out the same year as Dark Forces, a year after TIE Fighter and Super Return of the Jedi, and two years after the original Rebel Assault. So it was made in the finale years of the pre-Special Edition, pre-Phantom Menace era. I didn't get to play it for a long while though due to my PC being ass. In fact I still remember the shame I felt having to take it back to the shop and buy the first game instead. But hey how I was I supposed to know what the difference between a 486SX and 486DX was before the internet!

You might be wondering why it just says "Rebel Assault" up there without a "II" on it. There is a good explanation for that which I'll reveal if you scroll down to the next picture. Though before you do, I should warn you that there'll be SPOILERS for the original trilogy of Star Wars films down there too.

The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery (MS-DOS)

Developer:

Sierra

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Release Date:

1995

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Systems:

PC

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This week on Super Adventures I’m playing a game that was requested in March this very year! It only took me six months to get around to a request for once; I'm very proud of myself.

The Beast Within is second game in the Gabriel Knight trilogy, following on from Sins of the Fathers, so I'm just going to call it Gabriel Knight 2 from now on. The Gabriel Knight trilogy is interesting as each game represents one of the four eras of 90s adventure games:

• Gabriel Knight 1 is a classic 2D style point and click adventure from 1993, enhanced with early 90s advances like voice acting and 256 colour scanned backgrounds.
• Gabriel Knight 2 was released two years later in 1995 and jumped right in to the short lived multimedia FMV fad, where game developers discovered that good actors and real sets are really expensive and video looks like ass when you compress it to fit on CDs.
• Gabriel Knight 3 came out right at the end of the 90s in 1999, during a time where you either made your game with polygons or you picked up your coat and got out. Turns out that the relatively expensive 3D environments and game pad controls weren't a good match for the increasingly niche genre though.
• Finally there’s Gabriel Knight 4, which doesn’t exist... because Gabriel Knight 3 killed adventure games. Actually the truth is that the genre was already on the way out, so at worst its famous cat fur moustache puzzle merely helped hammer a nail or two into the coffin. And the genre eventually rose from the dead so it didn't even do a good job of that.

Due to its high video content Gabriel Knight 2 originally came on a ridiculous 6 CDs, which isn't actually so bad when you had Amiga adventure games coming on a dozen floppy disks. It's definitely not an issue for me as the version I bought online has zero disc swapping! I just had to download it as 7 separate files because I was too dumb to get it from GOG or Steam. The game's not supported by ScummVM by the way, but I'm sure DOSBox can handle it.

Toonstruck (MS-DOS)

Today on Super Adventures I'll be giving an hour or so to Toonstruck, a game that has surprisingly little to do with that clown up there. Sure he's in it, eventually, but I almost guarantee you won't be seeing him again here.

I feel like I should seen this game mentioned more often, considering it stars Christopher Lloyd, Homer Simpson and half the cast of half the cartoons from the 90s, but it seems almost forgotten these days. I've no idea how well known it actually is, but I do know that it didn't sell enough to get a sequel... which in this case would've actually been the second half of the game, seeing as it wasn't exactly finished when they put it out on shelves.

I'm sure I've reached the semi-cliffhanger ending before, or at least watched someone else complete it, but my only strong memory of this game is that clown up there yelling "BALLOOOOOOON?" I've got absolutely zero recollection of the story or any of the puzzles, so I get to work them all out again from scratch.

Realms of the Haunting (MS-DOS) - Part 1

Today on Super Adventures I'm switching over to 'R' games, starting with a look at classic DOS adventure/shooter game Realms of the Haunting. Because someone asked me nicely (and paid for it).

Often when I play a game blind I'm coming into it with some foreknowledge; maybe I've seen someone else play a bit of it, maybe I've read a review, maybe my friend won't stop sending me gifs from it etc. But this time around I have absolutely no clue what I'm getting out of this beyond the flash of spoilers I got downloaded into my brain when I made the dumb mistake of glancing at the wikipedia page for half a second (I just wanted to know when it came out, damn you wikipedia!) I've definitely heard the title before but beyond that this is all new to me.

I'm guessing it's closer to Myst than it is to Quake, but then I haven't played Myst either so I should just shut up and put the game on.

Realms of the Haunting (MS-DOS) - Part 2

Click to journey back to part one.

Mortal Kombat (Arcade)

Today's 'M' game is the original MORTAL KOMBAT!

Yeah I realise that I'm crap at fighting games and only understand them at the most basic level, but the game was requested, so the game's getting played. I actually know a tiny bit more about this one than most though as I played the first few Mortal Kombat games a bit when I was younger. I bet I can even remember a couple of the special moves.

Star Wars: Jedi Knight - Dark Forces II (PC)

Today's 'J' game is Star Wars: Dark Forces II - Jedi Knight, or whatever order those names go in. Either way there's definitely a title beginning with 'J' in there somewhere and that's what's important. As usual I'm going to play it for an hour or so, take some screenshots, talk about how it plays and so on. It'll be cool

Jedi Knight is the second game in the Jedi Knight series (not to be confused with the Gabriel Knight series), coming two years after 1995's Dark Forces. I'm not sure why they dropped the original title for the rest of the games, but I have a theory that it's got something to do with the fact that Star Wars fans are obsessed with lightsabers. In fact I believe it's universally acknowledged that the only objective flaw in the near-perfect TIE Fighter (the greatest of all Star Wars games) is the fact that you can't roll down a window and lean out of the cockpit with a sword, slicing up passing capital ships and space jousting with X-Wings.

Sure people liked being able to run around as more of a Han Solo type as he went across the galaxy blasting things with his blasters, but Han Solo with a lightsaber is what they really wanted. So from this point on LucasArts made certain to put the word 'Jedi' on the covers in big letters, making it absolutely clear to potential customers that yes, you will get to swing one of those glowy swords around in this one.

(Some of the following screenshots will expand if you click them, some won't. It's an exciting mystery!)

Immercenary (3DO) - Guest Post

Just for you, NINTONDO MAN.

I've never played this game before, but I can tell you exactly three things about it. It's for the 3DO. It's a first person shooter. And from the screenshots I've seen, it looks absolute complete and utter cack. Enjoy!

For folks who are interested in playing Immercenary at some point, I suggest you close this post immediately, if not sooner. This post is all spoilers... not plot spoilers, but game spoilers. If you've got Immercenary but haven't played it yet, play it. Don't even read the manual. Just play it.

Spider-Man (GBA)

At last, the game that no doubt everyone's been waiting for: the GBA version of Spider-Man (The Movie)! Though this title screen music definitely ain't the Spider-Man: The Movie theme. Sounds like it'd be more at home in Spider-Man: The Old Amiga Game.

This is another case of a handheld game released alongside a console game with the same title, same cover art, same everything... except for the actual game inside the box. I get why they do it, they want to sell two games with a single marketing campaign (plus in this case it's a movie tie-in as well), I just wish they'd give each version a subtitle or something so it's clear that they're different products.