Wednesday, 27 February 2019

Darkwing Duck (Demo) (PC)

Darkwing Duck title screen PC
Developer:Headcannon|Release Date:2019 (or never I suppose)|Systems:Windows, Mac, Linux

This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing Darkwing Duck! Not the NES game, I played that already way back in the first year of my site. In fact it was so long ago that I'm scared to check what I wrote about it. Probably best to forget I told you about it actually. (It's not the Game Boy or Turbografx game either by the way.)

What this is, is a 1 level prototype demo thing inspired by the NES game, developed as a pitch to Capcom and then released to the world for free last month when that didn't work out. There's so many amazing AAA games in my Steam backlog, so many indie games fighting for exposure on Steam and Itch.io, and yet I'm spending my time playing a game that won't ever exist.

The demo was developed by at least one of the people who worked on the similar Sonic Mania, though it uses the Headcannon Game Engine instead of the Retro Engine. Incidentally the original Darkwing Dark on the NES was basically built on Mega Man's engine, so there's some Wikipedia trivia for you I expect my past self completely neglected to mention in his article back in 2011. In fact I bet that article is just him spending like 30 minutes failing to beat the first stage, whining a bit about it being too hard and then quitting.

Speaking of running into unexpected challenges, for classic platformers I usually display my screenshots at exactly double the resolution to keep them sharp, but the game has too wide a resolution for that so I had to decide whether I wanted to leave the screens tiny, make them a fuzzy mess, or crop them. Or make the site wider. I figured that cropping them would be the least painful of those options so I went with that, but if you click an image the original uncut screenshot will pop up.

Wednesday, 20 February 2019

Metroid Prime (GameCube)

Metroid Prime title screen Europe
Developer:Retro|Release Date:2003 (2002 NA)|Systems:GameCube, Wii

I'm trying to figure out what the game's moody title music reminds me of. I think it might actually be Deus Ex, but I feel like it could turn into Perfect Dark at any moment. Not a bad place for a theme to be.

This week on Super Adventures I'm playing Metroid Prime, the sequel to the legendary Super Metroid! Well, kind of. It came out the exact same day as Metroid Fusion and I think that's considered to be the older twin (it even claims to be "METROID 4" when it starts up.) So I guess this is Metroid 5 then?

It's definitely not the fifth game in the timeline as they've slotted it in between Metroid and Metroid II for whatever reason. I didn't realise the Metroid games had enough of a story to require making interquels, but that's probably because I rarely finish the things. Plus it's been six years since I've played any of them and my memory's pretty fuzzy. Though at the time this was released fans had actually been suffering through an eight year gap between games, as the series skipped the N64 era entirely. The series also skipped the Wii U afterwards, fading away again despite the run of continuous Metroid Prime sequels and spin-offs.

Developer Retro Studios were responsible for the three main Metroid Prime games but after putting out the non-HD remake compilation Metroid Prime Trilogy for the Wii in 2009 they've been keeping themselves busy making Donkey Kong Country sequels instead. Though it was announced last month that they're taking over development on Metroid Prime 4! Is that a good thing? I wouldn't know, I haven't even played this first one yet.

Okay I'm going to play Metroid Prime for an amount of time somewhere between 'barely giving it a fair shot' and 'enough to bore the hell out of everyone reading', and take screenshots along the way. There will also be writing under these screenshots because... I don't know. Maybe I like writing about video games? No, that doesn't seem right.

Wednesday, 13 February 2019

Populous (Amiga)

Populous Amiga title screen
Developer:Bullfrog|Release Date:1989|Systems:It's been on a few

This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing the legendary god game genre pioneer Populous, by equally legendary developers Bullfrog!

It's one of Bullfrog's earliest games, only the third one they made, which you can tell from that old school frog logo in the bottom left. I don't remember ever seeing that before, but I've played this game so I must have. Unless it was Powermonger that I played... they're pretty similar looking and it's been a while.

One thing I'm sure about is that whatever it is I played, I couldn't figure out how to play it and I turned it off after 10 minutes of frustration. I guess I was too busy not seeing the cute little frog logo that I didn't notice that big 'Tutorial' button over on the right either. This time though things are going to be very different! I'm going to stick with it for at least 20 minutes before giving up in frustration.

Populous started out as an Amiga game and I've always assumed it didn't stray much further, as it seems like the kind of game that would be considered too mouse driven and weird to make it onto consoles. But nope, Populous was ported to absolutely bloody everything. Well, the Acorn Archimedes, Apple Mac, Atari ST, FM Towns, PC-98, MS-DOS PC, IBM PCjr, Sharp X68000, Master System, Mega Drive, SNES, Turbografx-16, Nintendo DS and Game Boy anyway. Makes me wonder what the NES did to be left out.

Just listing all those systems took long enough so please don't expect screenshots of each of them. Or screenshots showing off any actual gameplay either. I can promise you only a title screen and shots of all my little dudes getting wiped out for reasons I can't even comprehend.

Wednesday, 6 February 2019

Giant Machines 2017 (PC)

Giant Machines 2017 title screen
Developer:Code Horizon|Release Date:2016|Systems:PC

This week on Super Adventures I'm playing Giant Machines 2017! At least I hope that there's something in it I can play and it's not just a virtual museum dedicated to really big trucks. Not that there's anything wrong with that, it just wouldn't give me anything to write about (because I'd turn it off after two minutes).

Whatever it is, it seems to be the very first title by Polish developer Code Horizon, who are apparently better known for making Gold Rush: The Game (the first realistic gold-mining simulator, according to their website).

The game(?) was a Christmas present from a friend, and by that I mean he bought a mystery bundle and gave the contents away to anyone who wanted them. Sadly no one wanted Giant Machines, but I've adopted it and given it a home in my Steam library where I hope it'll be comfortable. Neglected, but comfortable.

Wednesday, 30 January 2019

Secret of Evermore (SNES)

Oh damn it's Super Adventures' 8th birthday today! I didn't write anything for the site all last year but I'm fairly sure those 12 months still count towards its age.

I gave writing about games a long rest because it became too much like work to me and I was so done with this site that I couldn't even get one post finished a week anymore, but I've managed to slowly regenerate my interest in playing games in the meantime thanks to my time off. In fact I've decided that the break I took worked out so well that I should take more breaks, more often. So this year I plan to take a two month break every two months!

Unfortunately this does mean that I have to give you two months of game articles each time or else I'm not actually taking a break from anything. So it is with deep regret that I inform you that Super Adventures is now back (for two months).

Developer:Square|Release Date:1996 (1995 NA)|Systems:SNES

This week on Ray Hardgrit's resurrected Super Adventures in Gaming I'm playing Secret of Evermore, which I'm fairly sure isn't a spiritual successor to Secret of Monkey Island.

All I know about it is that it's an action RPG on the SNES by Squaresoft... made in America... with music from Jeremy "Elder Scrolls" Soule. So that's a bit unusual. This was actually the only game ever developed by a Square team in the US, which sounds like a bit of a warning sign but probably isn't. They briefly considered making a sequel to the game in fact, until it was decided that it was time to jump ship from the sinking SNES.

The US only got one more Square RPG on the SNES after this, Super Mario RPG, and us folks in Europe didn't even get that for some reason. Evermore was only the fourth Square RPG to ever get a release in PAL regions, after two Mystic Quests and Secret of Mana, and the next game we got was Final Fantasy VII on the PlayStation.

Okay I'm going to play the game for a couple of hours, write about what happened, then finish with a bit of a review at the end. Even though I've got no business reviewing a game I've only played a couple of hours of.

Monday, 13 August 2018

Inherit The Earth: Quest for the Orb (MS-DOS) - Guest Post

This year on Super Adventures, things are still pretty dead and that's not changing any time soon. Sorry about that. But I do have a surprise guest post by my cat-obsessed associate game critic mecha-neko for you to enjoy!

Hello! I'm mecha-neko and I'm back for another Obscure-As-All-Hell Animated Cat Game August!

Say hello to Inherit The Earth: Quest For The Orb, also known as Erben der Erde: Die Grosse Suche (Inherit The Earth: The Great Search) in German.

Inherit The Earth: Quest for the Orb MS-DOS title screenInherit The Earth: Quest for the Orb MS-DOS title screen
Developer:The Dreamers Guild|Release Date:1994|Systems:DOS, Macintosh, Amiga, PC-98, Windows, Linux

This is an adventure game that's been on the super Super Adventures adventure game wishlist for a long time, but it's only now that a copy has arrived in my paws. It's all about walking, talking animal-folk, so I'm certain I'll bump into a cat at some point.

I'm playing the original MS-DOS CD-ROM version as it makes producing these wonderful .gifs for you much easier, but the Steam version is identical, pixel-for-pixel, as far as I can tell.

Sunday, 31 December 2017

Super AiG Screenshots of the Year: 2017

It's been a while, but I'm back with a brand new post for you, filled with old content you've already seen! It's the seventh annual Super Adventures Screenshots Animated GIFs of the Year, featuring some of the very best images from the last 12 10 or so months of my site.

I have to be honest, this is going to be a much shorter post than it's been in years past because I just didn't have many games to pick from. I've only made 32 posts this year and one of them was a message reassuring people that the site wasn't dead, followed by a list of games I promised I was going to write about and then never did. Well, to be fair I did manage to get around to half of them.

Speaking of things I'm not going to be writing about in the future, there'll be an important announcement at the end of this article and it's not good news. So be sure to stick around for that... or just scroll down and read it now and then scroll back for the screenshots afterwards, either's fine. All game links will take you back to the original Super Adventures game article, so don't worry about ending up on Amazon or something. Wait... I could've had Amazon affiliate links all over my site this whole time and made 3% on every sale! Oh no!

Semi-Random Game Box

Mafia (PC)
Max Payne 3 (PC)
Mortal Kombat (Arcade)