Re: [SWCollect] Vintage games w/fatal flaws
Jim Leonard schrieb: Is this the same game? http://www.c64unlimited.net/games/f/Fabulous%20Wanda,%20The/Fabulous%20Wanda,%20The.htm Indeed it is. Marco -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
Re: [SWCollect] Vintage games w/fatal flaws
Is this the same game? http://www.c64unlimited.net/games/f/Fabulous%20Wanda,%20The/Fabulous%20Wanda,%20The.htm Marco Thorek wrote: Pedro Quaresma schrieb: OK let's see if my memory doesn't betray me (again!) It was Ultima 4, but veramocor was the word used to get into the final dungeon, not the word to be used in the end of it. In the end, the word infinity had to be used (after the principles and its virtues), but if you typed the wrong word you'd get kicked back to the surface. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong. It's been quite some time since I played Ultima 4. I think that's pretty much correct. BTW, anyone remember The Fabulous Wanda? Must have been from 1983/84. You stranded on some planet and had to find this woman, who knew the answer to life, the universe and the rest. It was written in BASIC and unfinishable, if you didn't alter the listing yourself. Although I'm not sure if that was by intention or just bad programming. I have to admit, until I found that out I had fun with the game :-) Marco -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ -- Jim Leonard ([EMAIL PROTECTED])http://www.oldskool.org/ Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
Re: [SWCollect] Vintage games w/fatal flaws
Darklands (and Daggerfall) had a fair share of bugs, but they'd rarely crash after the final patch. At least they crashed less than several modern games fully patched! ;) -- Pedro R. Quaresma Salvador Caetano IMVT Div. Sistemas de Informação / Systems and Information Division Administração e Desenvolvimento Lotus Notes / Lotus Notes Administration and Development [EMAIL PROTECTED] // +351 22 7867000 (ext. 3492) Toyota Prius '01, Verdi Steel, 37K km. Para: [EMAIL PROTECTED] A/C: Ref: cc: Assunto: Re: [SWCollect] Vintage games w/fatal flaws Dan Chisarick [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05-12-2003 05:07 Solicita-se resposta a swcollect One word: Darklands. On Dec 4, 2003, at 10:26 AM, Pedro Quaresma wrote: Darksun 2 (SSI) was an excellent RPG with the exception that it was virtually unfinishable due to the huge amount of bugs it had. SSI later released a patch but some of the bugs remained (having your best weapons occasionally vanish can be the most frustrating thing on a RPG), so IIRC they officially canceled support for the game, on the grounds that it had too many bugs to patch. Later on there were other flawed games, like Shogo, that could not be finished unless you had downloaded and installed the 21Mb patch! The most serious case IMHO was Ubisoft's Pool of Radiance 2. The game couldn't be uninstalled because if you attempted to, it'd delete your windows partition! :O Many users found this bug the hard way. -- Pedro R. Quaresma Salvador Caetano IMVT Div. Sistemas de Informação / Systems and Information Division Administração e Desenvolvimento Lotus Notes / Lotus Notes Administration and Development [EMAIL PROTECTED] // +351 22 7867000 (ext. 3492) Toyota Prius '01, Verdi Steel, 37K km. Para: [EMAIL PROTECTED] A/C: Ref: cc: Assunto: Re: [SWCollect] Vintage games w/fatal flaws Chris Newman [EMAIL PROTECTED] 04-12-2003 15:23 Solicita-se resposta a swcollect Mines of Titan by Westwood / Infocom from 1989 comes to mind. The game plot involves travelling to cities on the surface of Titan. The key city, Procesnium, was expected to be discovered and entered via an underground network. However, if you find the city on the surface of the planet and attempt to enter it the game freezes and throws up strange graphics chunks in the display window. At the time I assumed I had a bad copy, or played it on an incompatable machine (Tandy), etc. I went back to this game, on and off, for years but was hit with the same problem. I found out only recently that the problem is a coding bug. Drove me nuts! I spent many hours playing that game only to give up completely frustrated. - Original Message - From: Dan Chisarick [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2003 9:13 AM Subject: [SWCollect] Vintage games w/fatal flaws Just wondering if anyone has any good stories of an older game they were playing that was somehow unbeatable due to a coding flaw, or just downright not fun for design reasons. I've been looking for an original 'Doriath' for years. I stumbled on this site, and my free time being what it is these days, say what the hell and just read the walkthrough. The game is unbeatable! That's not in the good sense: http://members.shaw.ca/Doriath/Walkthru.htm If you read the walkthrough and then follow the links at the bottom, you never get an acknowledgment from the game that you've won. There's a link to an interview w/the developers that explains you've essentially won once you make it to a certain room. Its sad to see a game never being polished because of artificial deadlines (like that never happens anymore) or even more frighteningly, running out of memory/disk space. Second to this are games that take hours to beat, give you one life, have no save feature, and you can put the game in an unwinable state and not realize it. Console games (at least earlier ones) seem particular guilty of such offenses. Thrown in certain Mindscape games (Spell of Destruction and Fairlight I think fell into this hole, at least partially). Third would have to be needless player frustration: Jumping puzzles, tedious movement puzzles (Sierra 3D games are notorious for this), and I'd have to throw in my entering the words of Truth, Love and Courage in the wrong order after spending 2.5 hours getting to the bottom of a certain 8-level dungeon to get the Codex of Infinite Wisdom just to be kicked back to the surface. Augh! (Its corveramo , no veramocor :) Last, and somewhat humorously, ever type in a game in Basic or assembly from a magazine, and it didn't work? Seems the feature title ALWAYS had some little typo in it that would require you to buy next month's issue to resolve? :) With DVD-ROM titles, cheat codes, strategy guides, and every game
Re: [SWCollect] Vintage games w/fatal flaws
Jim Leonard wrote: I'd have to throw in my entering the words of Truth, Love and Courage in the wrong order after spending 2.5 hours getting to the bottom of a certain 8-level dungeon to get the Codex of Infinite Wisdom just to be kicked back to the surface. Augh! (Its corveramo , no veramocor :) Which Ultima game was that? OK let's see if my memory doesn't betray me (again!) It was Ultima 4, but veramocor was the word used to get into the final dungeon, not the word to be used in the end of it. In the end, the word infinity had to be used (after the principles and its virtues), but if you typed the wrong word you'd get kicked back to the surface. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong. It's been quite some time since I played Ultima 4. -- Pedro R. Quaresma Salvador Caetano IMVT Div. Sistemas de Informação / Systems and Information Division Administração e Desenvolvimento Lotus Notes / Lotus Notes Administration and Development [EMAIL PROTECTED] // +351 22 7867000 (ext. 3492) Toyota Prius '01, Verdi Steel, 37K km. ToyotaShopping - A sua Loja Toyota Online http://www.toyota.pt
Re: [SWCollect] Vintage games w/fatal flaws
Dan Chisarick stated: That reminds me about The Immortal on the PC. *Twice* I played it to the dragon, twice the @#(%@(#*% thing froze on me on that board. And that reminds me about Trog. It was an Acclaim port of the arcade game. (It' s, for lack of a better term, a Pac-Man-like game featuring dinosaurs and cavemen. See http://www.klov.com/game_detail.php?letter=Tgame_id=10201.) I'd work my way up in levels and then it would freeze. It never happened at exactly the same point (as far as I could tell), just after I'd been playing a game for quite a while. I thought it had something to do with my PC being a non-standard 20 MHz 286 clone, but when I got my next computer (133 MHz Pentium), it did the same thing. At least now I have MAME (but it still bugs me). -- Lee K. Seitz [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
RE: [SWCollect] Vintage games w/fatal flaws
Title: Message Yeah, you're correct about being kicked back to the top of the Abyss. Pretty uncool. Another Ultima with a big problem is Ultima 5. When you find Lord British in the mirror at the bottom of the Dungeon Doom, which is at the bottom of the Underworld, if you do NOT have the Sandalwood Box that's hidden behind his bookcase in his magically locked bedroom atop Castle Britannia, you are screwed and are stuck in the room with him forever. If you do have the box, the game ends normally. And you don't get any kind of warning whatsoever that this will happen. - John -Original Message-From: MASTER [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Pedro QuaresmaSent: Friday, December 05, 2003 1:25 AMTo: [EMAIL PROTECTED]Subject: Re: [SWCollect] Vintage games w/fatal flawsJim Leonard wrote: I'd have to throw in my entering the words of "Truth, Love and Courage" in the wrong order after spending 2.5 hours getting to the bottom of a certain 8-level dungeon to get the Codex of Infinite Wisdom just to be kicked back to the surface. Augh! (Its "corveramo" , no "veramocor" :)Which Ultima game was that?OK let's see if my memory doesn't betray me (again!) It was Ultima 4, but "veramocor" was the word used to get into the final dungeon, not the word to be used in the end of it. In the end, the word "infinity" had to be used (after the principles and its virtues), but if you typed the wrong word you'd get kicked back to the surface. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong. It's been quite some time since I played Ultima 4.--Pedro R. QuaresmaSalvador Caetano IMVTDiv. Sistemas de Informação / Systems and Information DivisionAdministração e Desenvolvimento Lotus Notes / Lotus Notes Administration and Development[EMAIL PROTECTED] // +351 22 7867000 (ext. 3492)Toyota Prius '01, Verdi Steel, 37K km.ToyotaShopping - A sua Loja Toyota Onlinehttp://www.toyota.pt
RE: [SWCollect] Vintage games w/fatal flaws
Title: Message
Hehe...I remember shlepping that box around throughout most of the game,
wondering what the heck it could possibly be. My Dad thought it was a coffin,
and that at the end of the game you would find Lord British's corpse and have to
bring it back in the box. : )
Stuart
-Original Message-From: John Romero
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]Sent: Friday, December 05, 2003 11:39
AMTo: [EMAIL PROTECTED]Subject: RE: [SWCollect]
Vintage games w/fatal flaws
Yeah, you're correct about being kicked back to the top of the
Abyss. Pretty uncool.
Another Ultima with a big problem is Ultima 5. When you find Lord
British in the mirror at the bottom of the Dungeon Doom, which is at the
bottom of the Underworld, if you do NOT have the Sandalwood Box that's hidden
behind his bookcase in his magically locked bedroom atop Castle Britannia, you
are screwed and are stuck in the room with him forever. If you do have
the box, the game ends normally. And you don't get any kind of warning
whatsoever that this will happen.
- John
-Original Message-From: MASTER
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Pedro
QuaresmaSent: Friday, December 05, 2003 1:25 AMTo:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]Subject: Re: [SWCollect] Vintage games
w/fatal flawsJim
Leonard wrote: I'd have
to throw in my entering the words of "Truth, Love and Courage"
in the wrong order after spending 2.5 hours getting to the bottom of a
certain 8-level dungeon to get the Codex of Infinite Wisdom
just to be kicked back to the surface. Augh! (Its
"corveramo" , no "veramocor" :)Which Ultima game was
that?OK let's see if my
memory doesn't betray me (again!) It was Ultima 4, but "veramocor" was the word used to get into the
final dungeon, not the word to be used in the end of it.
In the end, the word "infinity" had
to be used (after the principles and its virtues), but if you typed the
wrong word you'd get kicked back to the surface. Someone please
correct me if I'm wrong. It's been quite some time since I played Ultima
4.--Pedro R.
QuaresmaSalvador Caetano IMVTDiv. Sistemas de Informação / Systems
and Information DivisionAdministração e Desenvolvimento Lotus Notes /
Lotus Notes Administration and
Development[EMAIL PROTECTED] // +351 22 7867000 (ext.
3492)Toyota Prius '01, Verdi Steel, 37K
km.ToyotaShopping - A sua Loja Toyota
Onlinehttp://www.toyota.pt
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Re: [SWCollect] Vintage games w/fatal flaws
Infocom's Spellbreaker. There's a puzzle early on where you have to get past an ogre to get a scroll and gold box in the next room. There's a time-stop spell, and if you use it, the ogre is frozen, but so are the scroll and gold box, so you can't take them. In a few turns the spell wears off and the ogre comes back and kills you. This is supposed to happen, because the correct solution is to bring in a weed that makes him have a sneezing fit. BUT. There's another spell, called blorple, that you use to travel from location to location by casting it on various magic cubes in the game. If you cast it on a non-cube object, though, you go to a nondescript room. So... After casting the time-stop spell, you can use blorple on some object you're carrying, wait in the non-descript room until after the spell wears off, leave, it takes you back to where you were before, the scroll and gold box are unfrozen, and the ogre doesn't come after you! This damn bug had me stuck for MONTHS on this game, because you can only use the time-stop spell once, and I was using it in the wrong place! I still count Spellbreaker as a game I finished without any help, becuase I would have if it weren't for the bug. B-) - Original Message - From: Dan Chisarick [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2003 8:13 AM Subject: [SWCollect] Vintage games w/fatal flaws Just wondering if anyone has any good stories of an older game they were playing that was somehow unbeatable due to a coding flaw, or just downright not fun for design reasons. I've been looking for an original 'Doriath' for years. I stumbled on this site, and my free time being what it is these days, say what the hell and just read the walkthrough. The game is unbeatable! That's not in the good sense: http://members.shaw.ca/Doriath/Walkthru.htm If you read the walkthrough and then follow the links at the bottom, you never get an acknowledgment from the game that you've won. There's a link to an interview w/the developers that explains you've essentially won once you make it to a certain room. Its sad to see a game never being polished because of artificial deadlines (like that never happens anymore) or even more frighteningly, running out of memory/disk space. Second to this are games that take hours to beat, give you one life, have no save feature, and you can put the game in an unwinable state and not realize it. Console games (at least earlier ones) seem particular guilty of such offenses. Thrown in certain Mindscape games (Spell of Destruction and Fairlight I think fell into this hole, at least partially). Third would have to be needless player frustration: Jumping puzzles, tedious movement puzzles (Sierra 3D games are notorious for this), and I'd have to throw in my entering the words of Truth, Love and Courage in the wrong order after spending 2.5 hours getting to the bottom of a certain 8-level dungeon to get the Codex of Infinite Wisdom just to be kicked back to the surface. Augh! (Its corveramo , no veramocor :) Last, and somewhat humorously, ever type in a game in Basic or assembly from a magazine, and it didn't work? Seems the feature title ALWAYS had some little typo in it that would require you to buy next month's issue to resolve? :) With DVD-ROM titles, cheat codes, strategy guides, and every game either being Real Time Strategy or 3D shooter, endings are very well defined :) How else would they sell level add-on packs? -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
Re: [SWCollect] Vintage games w/fatal flaws
Pedro Quaresma schrieb: OK let's see if my memory doesn't betray me (again!) It was Ultima 4, but veramocor was the word used to get into the final dungeon, not the word to be used in the end of it. In the end, the word infinity had to be used (after the principles and its virtues), but if you typed the wrong word you'd get kicked back to the surface. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong. It's been quite some time since I played Ultima 4. I think that's pretty much correct. BTW, anyone remember The Fabulous Wanda? Must have been from 1983/84. You stranded on some planet and had to find this woman, who knew the answer to life, the universe and the rest. It was written in BASIC and unfinishable, if you didn't alter the listing yourself. Although I'm not sure if that was by intention or just bad programming. I have to admit, until I found that out I had fun with the game :-) Marco -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
Re: [SWCollect] Vintage games w/fatal flaws
Veramocor was the word of passage for the Codex chamber at the bottom of the Abyss. It's right before it asks you the virtue questions and infinity. I had the same problem with veramocor... I completely forgot the clues from the Lycaeum, Empath Abbey Serpent's Hold. I think it gives you three guesses and then kicks you out of the Abyss. That was evil... Steve - Original Message - From: Pedro Quaresma To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, December 05, 2003 2:25 AM Subject: Re: [SWCollect] Vintage games w/fatal flaws Jim Leonard wrote: I'd have to throw in my entering the words of "Truth, Love and Courage" in the wrong order after spending 2.5 hours getting to the bottom of a certain 8-level dungeon to get the Codex of Infinite Wisdom just to be kicked back to the surface. Augh! (Its "corveramo" , no "veramocor" :)Which Ultima game was that?OK let's see if my memory doesn't betray me (again!) It was Ultima 4, but "veramocor" was the word used to get into the final dungeon, not the word to be used in the end of it. In the end, the word "infinity" had to be used (after the principles and its virtues), but if you typed the wrong word you'd get kicked back to the surface. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong. It's been quite some time since I played Ultima 4.--Pedro R. QuaresmaSalvador Caetano IMVTDiv. Sistemas de Informação / Systems and Information DivisionAdministração e Desenvolvimento Lotus Notes / Lotus Notes Administration and Development[EMAIL PROTECTED] // +351 22 7867000 (ext. 3492)Toyota Prius '01, Verdi Steel, 37K km.ToyotaShopping - A sua Loja Toyota Onlinehttp://www.toyota.pt
Re: [SWCollect] Vintage games w/fatal flaws
Darksun 2 (SSI) was an excellent RPG with the exception that it was virtually unfinishable due to the huge amount of bugs it had. SSI later released a patch but some of the bugs remained (having your best weapons occasionally vanish can be the most frustrating thing on a RPG), so IIRC they officially canceled support for the game, on the grounds that it had too many bugs to patch. Later on there were other flawed games, like Shogo, that could not be finished unless you had downloaded and installed the 21Mb patch! The most serious case IMHO was Ubisoft's Pool of Radiance 2. The game couldn't be uninstalled because if you attempted to, it'd delete your windows partition! :O Many users found this bug the hard way. -- Pedro R. Quaresma Salvador Caetano IMVT Div. Sistemas de Informação / Systems and Information Division Administração e Desenvolvimento Lotus Notes / Lotus Notes Administration and Development [EMAIL PROTECTED] // +351 22 7867000 (ext. 3492) Toyota Prius '01, Verdi Steel, 37K km. Para: [EMAIL PROTECTED] A/C: Ref: cc: Assunto: Re: [SWCollect] Vintage games w/fatal flaws Chris Newman [EMAIL PROTECTED] 04-12-2003 15:23 Solicita-se resposta a swcollect Mines of Titan by Westwood / Infocom from 1989 comes to mind. The game plot involves travelling to cities on the surface of Titan. The key city, Procesnium, was expected to be discovered and entered via an underground network. However, if you find the city on the surface of the planet and attempt to enter it the game freezes and throws up strange graphics chunks in the display window. At the time I assumed I had a bad copy, or played it on an incompatable machine (Tandy), etc. I went back to this game, on and off, for years but was hit with the same problem. I found out only recently that the problem is a coding bug. Drove me nuts! I spent many hours playing that game only to give up completely frustrated. - Original Message - From: Dan Chisarick [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2003 9:13 AM Subject: [SWCollect] Vintage games w/fatal flaws Just wondering if anyone has any good stories of an older game they were playing that was somehow unbeatable due to a coding flaw, or just downright not fun for design reasons. I've been looking for an original 'Doriath' for years. I stumbled on this site, and my free time being what it is these days, say what the hell and just read the walkthrough. The game is unbeatable! That's not in the good sense: http://members.shaw.ca/Doriath/Walkthru.htm If you read the walkthrough and then follow the links at the bottom, you never get an acknowledgment from the game that you've won. There's a link to an interview w/the developers that explains you've essentially won once you make it to a certain room. Its sad to see a game never being polished because of artificial deadlines (like that never happens anymore) or even more frighteningly, running out of memory/disk space. Second to this are games that take hours to beat, give you one life, have no save feature, and you can put the game in an unwinable state and not realize it. Console games (at least earlier ones) seem particular guilty of such offenses. Thrown in certain Mindscape games (Spell of Destruction and Fairlight I think fell into this hole, at least partially). Third would have to be needless player frustration: Jumping puzzles, tedious movement puzzles (Sierra 3D games are notorious for this), and I'd have to throw in my entering the words of Truth, Love and Courage in the wrong order after spending 2.5 hours getting to the bottom of a certain 8-level dungeon to get the Codex of Infinite Wisdom just to be kicked back to the surface. Augh! (Its corveramo , no veramocor :) Last, and somewhat humorously, ever type in a game in Basic or assembly from a magazine, and it didn't work? Seems the feature title ALWAYS had some little typo in it that would require you to buy next month's issue to resolve? :) With DVD-ROM titles, cheat codes, strategy guides, and every game either being Real Time Strategy or 3D shooter, endings are very well defined :) How else would they sell level add-on packs? -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ ToyotaShopping - A sua Loja Toyota Online http://www.toyota.pt
Re: [SWCollect] Vintage games w/fatal flaws
On Dec 4, 2003, at 8:13 AM, Dan Chisarick wrote: [Snip] Third would have to be needless player frustration: Jumping puzzles, tedious movement puzzles (Sierra 3D games are notorious for this), and I'd have to throw in my entering the words of Truth, Love and Courage in the wrong order after spending 2.5 hours getting to the bottom of a certain 8-level dungeon to get the Codex of Infinite Wisdom just to be kicked back to the surface. Augh! (Its corveramo , no veramocor :) I always hated the Final Fantasy games for having save points (how damn stupid) and the invisible encounters. Gee, my life doesn't run according to when I can save a game, nor do I always want to fight every battle. :sigh: I still haven't finished one yet. Last, and somewhat humorously, ever type in a game in Basic or assembly from a magazine, and it didn't work? Seems the feature title ALWAYS had some little typo in it that would require you to buy next month's issue to resolve? :) You mean, besides the typos *I* introduced? ;-) Oh for the days of typing in code from a poorly done magazine copy of a faint line-printer copy of a program... -- Edward Franks -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
Re: [SWCollect] Vintage games w/fatal flaws
Edward Franks wrote: I always hated the Final Fantasy games for having save points (how This is much more a technical (and cost) limitation of the time, rather than bad design. Same goes for any old console game where you save by writing down passcodes (the game didn't have any non-volatile RAM, so the passcode is actually an encoded representation of where you are in the game, how many lives you have left, what you're carrying, etc.). Legend of Zelda was the first console game I can remember that had non-volatile RAM in it (as long as the little battery had juice :) You can still find many pages on the web that illustrate how to open your cart without destroying it to replace the battery.) -- Jim Leonard ([EMAIL PROTECTED])http://www.oldskool.org/ Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
Re: [SWCollect] Vintage games w/fatal flaws
Dan Chisarick wrote: Just wondering if anyone has any good stories of an older game they were playing that was somehow unbeatable due to a coding flaw, or just downright not fun for design reasons. Any game that I get STUCK in is downright not fun. :-) I started playing Hack 3.x in 1986 and only finally finished it in 2000 -- 14 years later. To date, that game remains the one game I truly stuck it out for until the bitter end. I never consulted online walkthroughs, read all the cookie fortunes (for which several were obvious red herrings), etc. A friend beat it in college and I ended up calling him for a tip, but I still consider that in the vein of playing it properly (we had played it together in college until he could afford his own computer). Tass Times in Tonetown was begun by me on a PC in 1986, continued on an Apple II GS in 1987, and finally finished on the DOS re-release (Interplay 10th anniversary version) in 1997. I couldn't get past the eyeball/ear guys protecting the entrance to Snarl's place. After expressing my frustration online, some kind soul took pity on me in 1997 and wrote me personally a walkthough to the game. And speaking of ironic/unbeatable games (see earlier message), Tass Times in Tonetown has a bittersweet ending as well. -- Jim Leonard ([EMAIL PROTECTED])http://www.oldskool.org/ Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
RE: [SWCollect] Vintage games w/fatal flaws
One of my all-time favorites, Ultima Underworld, had a fatal flaw. I'm guessing it was hardware specific and not on everyone's PC. After spending a couple of weeks with the game, some items from my inventory floated out of my backpack and into the air...with no way to retrieve them and no way to win at that point. I called up tech support and they said there were other similar problems reported (although specifics varied). They sent me a patch, and then played the game to completion. (After restarting) Hugh -Original Message- From: Jim Leonard [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2003 11:36 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [SWCollect] Vintage games w/fatal flaws Chris Newman wrote: Mines of Titan by Westwood / Infocom from 1989 comes to mind. The game plot involves travelling to cities on the surface of Titan. The key city, Procesnium, was expected to be discovered and entered via an underground network. However, if you find the city on the surface of the planet and attempt to enter it the game freezes and throws up strange graphics chunks in the display window. At the time I assumed I had a bad copy, or played it on an incompatable machine (Tandy), etc. I went back to this game, on and off, for years but was hit with the same problem. I found out only recently that the problem is a coding bug. From Usenet: Because of an obvious yet uncorrected bug, the game will crash and burn every time you enter Proscenium the normal way from the overland map. Instead, you are required to go through a lengthy lava vents dungeon to enter the city. Then the game will give you some text that will leave you wondering why the hell the bug wasn't corrected--it would've been so easy, given the plot twist revealed in the text. With this knowledge, you should go back and try to finish the game; it's a great game. -- Jim Leonard ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://www.oldskool.org/ Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
Re: [SWCollect] Vintage games w/fatal flaws
That reminds me about The Immortal on the PC. *Twice* I played it to the dragon, twice the @#(%@(#*% thing froze on me on that board. I swear I love the mood of that game (simple as it was). I called support and they said It shouldn't do that. Never got to the end. It'd probably take me an hour to do so, so I should probably try again some day. On Dec 4, 2003, at 11:26 PM, Hugh Falk wrote: One of my all-time favorites, Ultima Underworld, had a fatal flaw. I'm guessing it was hardware specific and not on everyone's PC. After spending a couple of weeks with the game, some items from my inventory floated out of my backpack and into the air...with no way to retrieve them and no way to win at that point. I called up tech support and they said there were other similar problems reported (although specifics varied). They sent me a patch, and then played the game to completion. (After restarting) Hugh -Original Message- From: Jim Leonard [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2003 11:36 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [SWCollect] Vintage games w/fatal flaws Chris Newman wrote: Mines of Titan by Westwood / Infocom from 1989 comes to mind. The game plot involves travelling to cities on the surface of Titan. The key city, Procesnium, was expected to be discovered and entered via an underground network. However, if you find the city on the surface of the planet and attempt to enter it the game freezes and throws up strange graphics chunks in the display window. At the time I assumed I had a bad copy, or played it on an incompatable machine (Tandy), etc. I went back to this game, on and off, for years but was hit with the same problem. I found out only recently that the problem is a coding bug. From Usenet: Because of an obvious yet uncorrected bug, the game will crash and burn every time you enter Proscenium the normal way from the overland map. Instead, you are required to go through a lengthy lava vents dungeon to enter the city. Then the game will give you some text that will leave you wondering why the hell the bug wasn't corrected--it would've been so easy, given the plot twist revealed in the text. With this knowledge, you should go back and try to finish the game; it's a great game. -- Jim Leonard ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://www.oldskool.org/ Want to help an ambitious games project? http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
Re: [SWCollect] Vintage games w/fatal flaws
One word: Darklands. On Dec 4, 2003, at 10:26 AM, Pedro Quaresma wrote: Darksun 2 (SSI) was an excellent RPG with the exception that it was virtually unfinishable due to the huge amount of bugs it had. SSI later released a patch but some of the bugs remained (having your best weapons occasionally vanish can be the most frustrating thing on a RPG), so IIRC they officially canceled support for the game, on the grounds that it had too many bugs to patch. Later on there were other flawed games, like Shogo, that could not be finished unless you had downloaded and installed the 21Mb patch! The most serious case IMHO was Ubisoft's Pool of Radiance 2. The game couldn't be uninstalled because if you attempted to, it'd delete your windows partition! :O Many users found this bug the hard way. -- Pedro R. Quaresma Salvador Caetano IMVT Div. Sistemas de Informação / Systems and Information Division Administração e Desenvolvimento Lotus Notes / Lotus Notes Administration and Development [EMAIL PROTECTED] // +351 22 7867000 (ext. 3492) Toyota Prius '01, Verdi Steel, 37K km. x-tad-smaller /x-tad-smallerx-tad-smallerPara: [EMAIL PROTECTED]>/x-tad-smallerx-tad-smallerA/C: /x-tad-smallerx-tad-smallerRef: /x-tad-smallerx-tad-smallercc: /x-tad-smallerx-tad-smallerAssunto: Re: [SWCollect] Vintage games w/fatal flaws/x-tad-smallerx-tad-smallerChris Newman [EMAIL PROTECTED]>/x-tad-smallerx-tad-smaller04-12-2003 15:23/x-tad-smallerx-tad-smallerSolicita-se resposta a swcollect/x-tad-smallerMines of Titan by Westwood / Infocom from 1989 comes to mind. The game plot involves travelling to cities on the surface of Titan. The key city, Procesnium, was expected to be discovered and entered via an underground network. However, if you find the city on the surface of the planet and attempt to enter it the game freezes and throws up strange graphics chunks in the display window. At the time I assumed I had a bad copy, or played it on an incompatable machine (Tandy), etc. I went back to this game, on and off, for years but was hit with the same problem. I found out only recently that the problem is a coding bug. Drove me nuts! I spent many hours playing that game only to give up completely frustrated. - Original Message - From: Dan Chisarick [EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2003 9:13 AM Subject: [SWCollect] Vintage games w/fatal flaws > Just wondering if anyone has any good stories of an older game they > were playing that was somehow unbeatable due to a coding flaw, or just > downright not fun for design reasons. I've been looking for an > original 'Doriath' for years. I stumbled on this site, and my free > time being what it is these days, say what the hell and just read the > walkthrough. The game is unbeatable! That's not in the good sense: > > http://members.shaw.ca/Doriath/Walkthru.htm > > If you read the walkthrough and then follow the links at the bottom, > you never get an acknowledgment from the game that you've won. There's > a link to an interview w/the developers that explains you've > essentially won once you make it to a certain room. Its sad to see a > game never being polished because of artificial deadlines (like that > never happens anymore) or even more frighteningly, running out of > memory/disk space. > > Second to this are games that take hours to beat, give you one life, > have no save feature, and you can put the game in an unwinable state > and not realize it. Console games (at least earlier ones) seem > particular guilty of such offenses. Thrown in certain Mindscape games > (Spell of Destruction and Fairlight I think fell into this hole, at > least partially). > > Third would have to be needless player frustration: Jumping puzzles, > tedious movement puzzles (Sierra 3D games are notorious for this), and > I'd have to throw in my entering the words of Truth, Love and Courage > in the wrong order after spending 2.5 hours getting to the bottom of a > certain 8-level dungeon to get the Codex of Infinite Wisdom just to be > kicked back to the surface. Augh! (Its corveramo , no veramocor > :) > > Last, and somewhat humorously, ever type in a game in Basic or assembly > from a magazine, and it didn't work? Seems the feature title ALWAYS > had some little typo in it that would require you to buy next month's > issue to resolve? :) > > With DVD-ROM titles, cheat codes, strategy guides, and every game > either being Real Time Strategy or 3D shooter, endings are very well > defined :) How else would they sell level add-on packs? > > > -- > This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to > the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, s
RE: [SWCollect] Vintage games w/fatal flaws
What was wrong with Darklands.I dont remember having a problem. Hugh -Original Message- From: Dan Chisarick [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2003 9:07 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [SWCollect] Vintage games w/fatal flaws One word: Darklands. On Dec 4, 2003, at 10:26 AM, Pedro Quaresma wrote: Darksun 2 (SSI) was an excellent RPG with the exception that it was virtually unfinishable due to the huge amount of bugs it had. SSI later released a patch but some of the bugs remained (having your best weapons occasionally vanish can be the most frustrating thing on a RPG), so IIRC they officially canceled support for the game, on the grounds that it had too many bugs to patch. Later on there were other flawed games, like Shogo, that could not be finished unless you had downloaded and installed the 21Mb patch! The most serious case IMHO was Ubisoft's Pool of Radiance 2. The game couldn't be uninstalled because if you attempted to, it'd delete your windows partition! :O Many users found this bug the hard way. -- Pedro R. Quaresma Salvador Caetano IMVT Div. Sistemas de Informação / Systems and Information Division Administração e Desenvolvimento Lotus Notes / Lotus Notes Administration and Development [EMAIL PROTECTED] // +351 22 7867000 (ext. 3492) Toyota Prius '01, Verdi Steel, 37K km. Para: [EMAIL PROTECTED] A/C: Ref: cc: Assunto: Re: [SWCollect] Vintage games w/fatal flaws Chris Newman [EMAIL PROTECTED] 04-12-2003 15:23 Solicita-se resposta a swcollect Mines of Titan by Westwood / Infocom from 1989 comes to mind. The game plot involves travelling to cities on the surface of Titan. The key city, Procesnium, was expected to be discovered and entered via an underground network. However, if you find the city on the surface of the planet and attempt to enter it the game freezes and throws up strange graphics chunks in the display window. At the time I assumed I had a bad copy, or played it on an incompatable machine (Tandy), etc. I went back to this game, on and off, for years but was hit with the same problem. I found out only recently that the problem is a coding bug. Drove me nuts! I spent many hours playing that game only to give up completely frustrated. - Original Message - From: Dan Chisarick [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2003 9:13 AM Subject: [SWCollect] Vintage games w/fatal flaws Just wondering if anyone has any good stories of an older game they were playing that was somehow unbeatable due to a coding flaw, or just downright not fun for design reasons. I've been looking for an original 'Doriath' for years. I stumbled on this site, and my free time being what it is these days, say what the hell and just read the walkthrough. The game is unbeatable! That's not in the good sense: http://members.shaw.ca/Doriath/Walkthru.htm If you read the walkthrough and then follow the links at the bottom, you never get an acknowledgment from the game that you've won. There's a link to an interview w/the developers that explains you've essentially won once you make it to a certain room. Its sad to see a game never being polished because of artificial deadlines (like that never happens anymore) or even more frighteningly, running out of memory/disk space. Second to this are games that take hours to beat, give you one life, have no save feature, and you can put the game in an unwinable state and not realize it. Console games (at least earlier ones) seem particular guilty of such offenses. Thrown in certain Mindscape games (Spell of Destruction and Fairlight I think fell into this hole, at least partially). Third would have to be needless player frustration: Jumping puzzles, tedious movement puzzles (Sierra 3D games are notorious for this), and I'd have to throw in my entering the words of Truth, Love and Courage in the wrong order after spending 2.5 hours getting to the bottom of a certain 8-level dungeon to get the Codex of Infinite Wisdom just to be kicked back to the surface. Augh! (Its corveramo , no veramocor :) Last, and somewhat humorously, ever type in a game in Basic or assembly from a magazine, and it didn't work? Seems the feature title ALWAYS had some little typo in it that would require you to buy next month's issue to resolve? :) With DVD-ROM titles, cheat codes, strategy guides, and every game either being Real Time Strategy or 3D shooter, endings are very well defined :) How else would they sell level add-on packs? -- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED
