Did you ever play?

[Festoon]

A thread for people to ask if other people have ever played obscure retrogames.

 

I'm fascinated to know if anyone ever played Shadowlands or Shadoworlds on the Amiga? I played a demo at the time (93?) and was really intrigued but never got the full titles of either to really sink my teeth in.

 

I had a cool anime-style character generator - I suppose you'd call it picrew style now and had a puzzle-led style of gameplay. Very unusual in that light played a factor in the gameplay, as did manipulating your four characters individually.

 

 

I wonder was it actually any good?

[Gabe]

Spooky, because I remember back in the day reading the reviews for this (and the sequel) and always wanted them but never did.

 

I tried Shadowlands a couple of weeks ago via emulation but, honestly, the interface completely put me off. It's really unwieldly - you have to click on a diagram of body parts to take action, e.g. if you want to walk, you click on a leg, if you want to use a weapon, click on an arm. I lasted about 3 minutes before turning it off. A real shame, because by all accounts it is meant to be decent. I also tried Shadoworlds to see if it was any different in that respect, but no.

 

This is probably the main reason I don't get on with a lot of retro games - the controls. It's why I can't play things like Ishar (which I'd like to try), because having to click on icons to move the characters is just painful.

 

To answer the other question in the OP - yes, I tend to play the more obscure stuff. I've never liked platformers, run-and-gun, racing games or shoot-em-ups, so a lot of the stuff I would play (particularly on the Amiga) was the less well-known strategy/RPG stuff. As posted in the 'What games did you complete' thread, I recently completed Rings of Medusa, which nobody will have heard of (don't play it by the way, it's really not worth the effort.)

[p b]

I bought Rings of Medusa! Twice! Both times very cheaply, not as a full price game. I always thought the game would be wonderful and simply perfect for me.

It's not. It's shite. I played for about 15 minutes, then I threw it away. No idea why I did the same thing again a few months later when  I bought it again.

[Festoon]

On 09/10/2022 at 14:13, Gabe said:

Spooky, because I remember back in the day reading the reviews for this (and the sequel) and always wanted them but never did.

 

I tried Shadowlands a couple of weeks ago via emulation but, honestly, the interface completely put me off. It's really unwieldly - you have to click on a diagram of body parts to take action, e.g. if you want to walk, you click on a leg, if you want to use a weapon, click on an arm. I lasted about 3 minutes before turning it off. A real shame, because by all accounts it is meant to be decent. I also tried Shadoworlds to see if it was any different in that respect, but no.

 

This is probably the main reason I don't get on with a lot of retro games - the controls. It's why I can't play things like Ishar (which I'd like to try), because having to click on icons to move the characters is just painful.

 

To answer the other question in the OP - yes, I tend to play the more obscure stuff. I've never liked platformers, run-and-gun, racing games or shoot-em-ups, so a lot of the stuff I would play (particularly on the Amiga) was the less well-known strategy/RPG stuff. As posted in the 'What games did you complete' thread, I recently completed Rings of Medusa, which nobody will have heard of (don't play it by the way, it's really not worth the effort.)

 

This is something I've found quite a lot when 'going back'. The slowness, the unresponsive controls, bad control schemes ('up' to jump), etc. It's shocking to see some old favourites are practically unplayable now.

 

In the case of Shadowlands, I remember in the demo being fascinated by the 'select a body part' mechanic from a graphical perspective but never really thought through the implications of that for a whole game.

 

It's weird to me that some games that didn't get the cred at the time, like Ruff 'n' Tumble, had really improved control schemes, I assume borrowing from consoles.

 

Your mention of strategy reminds me I never played the amiga game Utopia, which always looked like a cool city builder.

[Wiper]

I used to play Utopia at a friend's house (or, more often, watch them play it). I loved it, and always found it incredibly evocative for some reason — the look and sound of it just really clicked with me, it always felt deeply "moody" in a way that felt right for a space-set strategy game. The only other game to trigger that same response in me was the later linear-4X title Imperium Galactica, which I also love.

 

A game I've yet to find anyone else who's ever played it, but which must have a few other players (if no fans) seeing as it shipped with one of the Atari STe bundles (admittedly as the sole game amongst productivity software) was early real-time-tactics game Prince. I actually got a lot of fun out of it over the years; just a nice, quick skirmish game to play against the AI on a whim. So, anyone else a secret player of Prince?

[Gabe]

I really liked Imperium Galactica and the sequel, it was my intro for the nascent 4X genre. I also had Utopia, but never played it.

 

Anybody remember K240?

[Festoon]

1 hour ago, Gabe said:

I really liked Imperium Galactica and the sequel, it was my intro for the nascent 4X genre. I also had Utopia, but never played it.

 

Anybody remember K240?

 

Wasn't that a Utopia-like game?

[Gabe]

Well I never, now I've had a quick look at some screenshots, I did play and 'beat' Utopia back in the day! I remember now, wars were conducted off-map (your units would just get to the edge of the map and disappear and you'd get a report on it). What I didn't know (or maybe I did and forgot) was that K240 was a sequel to it.

 

K240 is set on asteroids and had a more expansive universe map, with warfare also now on-screen and more involved. Then, a bit later, there was Fragile Alliance, same sort of thing but taking things further again. There was also another game where you could secure systems by controlling the wormholes leading to it, adding a more tactical slant to things, I think that may have been a PC title?

 

I've never really thought about it before this thread, but these games were all definitely what stoked my love of the genre (well, Defender of the Crown first got me into the idea of managing armies and taking territory, but obviously that game had a number of other elements to it.) Nostalgia!

[merman]

Anarchy on C64.

It's a mix of puzzle and maze game. Shoot the blocks (supposedly weapons in a storage facility) and avoid the patrolling enemies.

The blocks make this wonderful musical sound as you shoot more and more of them (think collecting cherries in Mr Do).

What is interesting is that you can "shoot" the enemies which stuns them - but they turn into a block that you can shoot to move around out of your way, before turning back a few seconds later. It adds an interesting dynamic, with the timer ticking down and the exit only appearing when you have shot all the blocks.

It's on the C64 Mini/THEC64 as well.

 

And what I discovered more recently is the arcade game Raiders5 which plays in a very similar way... 

[Qazimod]

Anarchy was on a CF covertape if I’m not mistaken. I ended up trying to keep the enemies “herded” in the most awkward corner and hope that they’d be too dumb to find their way out. Or I’d try and move their block forms around with me so that I knew where they were as I cleared the stage.

[Anne Summers]

Shadowlands - Yes! Had it back in the day, an overlooked classic. 

With one major flaw - tiny unkillable rats that hurt your players - meaning in sections of the game where you have to split your party up, the characters who you aren't controlling are constantly having their health nibbled away at by the tiny bastards that you could obviously kill in a second by stamping on them, except the game doesn't let you target them! Not sure whether it was a "feature" that was supposed to act as a sort of time limit on how long you could leave them unattended, but it ruined the game for me (and I'm pretty sure there was also a hunger meter which would have served the same purpose but in a much less annoying manner). 

[matt0]

18 hours ago, Gabe said:

I really liked Imperium Galactica and the sequel, it was my intro for the nascent 4X genre. I also had Utopia, but never played it.

 

Anybody remember K240?

 

17 hours ago, Festoon said:

 

Wasn't that a Utopia-like game?

 

I remember it being billed as an unofficial sequel to Utopia but I don't know if that was just magazine speculation.

 

But yeah, a great twilight years Amiga game that I spent many happy hours with, mining asteroids out then fitting the hollowed out husks with engines and ramming them in to enemy colonies.

[Luseth]

I had this odd one on a windows computer at some point, it was my parents computer so didn't really use it but I remember quite enjoying playing castle of the winds when I had the opportunity. It was a fairly simple game but I was still new to rpg's back then and it was one of my first experiences so I did really enjoy it.

[Riven]

I'm another one who always liked the look of Shadowlands, but never played it strangely I never remember seeing it around much, so I always wondered how well it did. Certainly Legend and it's sequel look like they might have been better, strangely I had a demo of Legend and it was great, but never could find the full game.

 

 

[Festoon]

2 hours ago, Riven said:

I'm another one who always liked the look of Shadowlands, but never played it strangely I never remember seeing it around much, so I always wondered how well it did. Certainly Legend and it's sequel look like they might have been better, strangely I had a demo of Legend and it was great, but never could find the full game.

 

 

 

I always wanted to play Legend too. Apparently it was a spiritual sequel to Hero Quest? It always seemed like it was a blend of Hero Quest and Dragon's Breath.

 

The isometric view also reminds me of D/Generation.

 

Which was excellent.

 

Now that I think about it, it was basically Control.

[Riven]

D/Generation was such a classic on the Amiga needs more love, it did get a recent remake which many people don't know about, but it wasn't great and rather buggy. Plus the new art style is awful, don't know why they just didn't port the original game as it just looks timeless with the style. I streamed it ages back, but yes the remake was not great.