There's a whole world to visit in February's quintet of games. Travel the globe hunting for treasure in the edutainment hidden gem Bush Buck: Global Treasure Hunter (1990, PC Globe Inc). Then take a post-apocalyptic jaunt through Miami in the unofficial sequel to Wasteland that is Fountain of Dreams (1990 Electronic Arts). If you want a more violent foray into the future, check out Quarantine II: Road Warrior (1995 GameTek), an action-driving sequel that's just as gory as the first. If you suffer some wounds on your whirlwind trip, seek the advice of SimHealth: The National Health Care Simulation (1994 Thinking Tools Inc), an obscure entry into Maxis' Sim series. On your way back, stop off at a very romantic location (it is February after all) with William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet: An Interactive Trip to Verona Beach (1996 Fox Interactive). Read on to find out more.
Click on the images below to head on over to the game page.
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1991 PC Globe Inc
DOS
Edutainment-Strategy
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1990 Electronic Arts
DOS
Role Play-Cyberpunk-Sci Fi
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1995 GameTek
DOS
Racing-Car Combat-Cyberpunk-Sci Fi
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1994 Thinking Tools Inc
DOS
Strategy-Management-Sim Series-Bloody Politics
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1996 Fox Interactive
Windows '95
Edutainment-Movies-Shakespeare
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Thank you very much, especially for Fountain of Dreams!
ReplyDelete1. Nice Indiana Jones tribute. Another fun "globetrotting edutainment title" is Pink Panther: Passport to Peril from 1996. Surprisingly, I can get it to run easily on Windows 10.
ReplyDelete2. It's good that post-apocalyptic Miami will be a "source of hope". At least it will be better than the pre-apocalyptic version. (/snark)
3. I beat this game! I smashed it to smithereens! (Well, I mean, technically, I didn't beat the game itself, but I beat its attempt to remain hidden from me.)
4. I think the Medicare for All policy of Bernie Sanders is equivalent to a national health care service. The tragedy of 2016 is that he painted Hillary Clinton as being a right-winger and not caring about the people, which was the opposite of the truth. He's doing the same to his 2020 opponents now.
5. I actually did a Google search for a Titanic supplement. Damn, it was the other big Leo romance.
You had some good guesses :)
DeleteI've not played much of the Pink Panther adventure games (the other being Hokus Pokus Pink). I was uner the assumption that they were straight up adventures, even if they're for younger players. I recall reading that someone ScummVM is working on the two games.
The 'source of hope' I was referring to was a direct reference to the title - the cure for mutations.
Not to get too political, but while Hillary Clinton was a far far better canditade than Trump, I do think Bernie had and has a point about the billionaire donor class. From what I gather HRC didn't push for a government run NHS-style Medicare for All back in the 90s, but forced any company to provide insurance for all emplyees. Basically univerasal coverage for working people and not guaranteed health care. Considering us in the UK have had socialised access to healthcare for some time, those not championing it in the States do seem a little right-wing in my eyes at least on that issue.
Anyway, on to the next clue. It's an action-adventure by a group that were the heroes of Nintendo for a time.
Yes, commenters on the SCUMMVM forum said in May 2019 that they were working on a Pink engine. It already works fine for me on Windows 10, anyway.
ReplyDeleteWhile all developed countries minus the US have a successful national health care system, making changes to something so important requires carrying the public with you. Failure to think about realpolitik led to the Democratic wipeouts in 1994 and 2010. It may do so again this year, when the 150 millions Americans who are satisfied with their private insurance understand they will be forced to give it up. No other country has forcibly eliminated private insurance for those who want it, not even the UK, so Bernie has put himself to the left of all those countries. Also, billionaires have to stick to the $2,800 maximum donation limit like everyone else, which Bernie unfortunately fails to mention. He does have a point about one or two billionaires using their own money to promote their own candidacies, e.g. Bloomberg. Bernie reminds me politically of Jeremy Corbyn. The most credible candidates seem to me to be Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg.
Being an adventure game purist means that even action-adventures sadly fall outside my sphere of knowledge. Perhaps someone else could work this out. I do know that Biffman said he would avoid Nintendo games, as Nintendo have shown themselves to be very protective of their IP, forcing some well-known sites to shut down just because they stocked some old Nintendo ROMS. Therefore I don't think the clue would refer to an actual Nintendo game.
I'm not so sure abut Buttigieg or Biden. They seem a little inconsistant to me, either changing stances or seemingly not having any stance at all other than 'electibility'.
DeleteWhile private insurance exists in the UK, everyone still has to pay National Insurance whether they use it or not. That's probably a good middle ground and one that may come about in the states, but I don't think it's viable unless the whole insurance and big pharma is regulated. Nothing can happen if they keep charging the obscene amounts they do while still being publically subsidised and posting record profits. Bernie has perhaps gone further to leave room for negotiations with Republicans if he wins, which current polling suggests he will in both the primary and the general moreso than any other candidate. Perhaps even so much as to not need the Republicans anyway. He's known as the Ammendment King so has proven he can work with them anyway. He's the Democrat's best chance according to the numbers, which is the only tangible metric we can go on at the moment.
As for the maximum donation limit, there are ways to get around that such as using corporate Super PACs who can spend an unlimited ammount to support a campaign via ads and other expenditures if not donating to it directly.
I think the failure of Corbyn was not necessarily his policies, which lead him to exceed expectations in 2018, but that he couldn't quite control the narrative like Bernie can. Both the harsh untruths and smears against him (they tried the same antisemetic trick with Bernie but being Jewish it didn't stick - they're taking again by misrepresenting his comments out of context with Castro, which again isn't sticking) and his percieved weak stance on Brexit was his downfall.
Anyway, enough of that. Too much politics going around... You're right that the next game isn't a Nintendo one, just that the company behind it has had stong ties with them in the past.
"Electability" is the most important quality, as nobody's policy agenda can be implemented without being elected first. "Inconsistency" is a very good thing to me, as practical politicians are more likely to get elected and achieve results than stick-in-the-mud, inflexible ideologues. Current polling actually says Biden is the most electable candidate, but no polling of Bernie either in 2020 or 2016 took account of the fact that Republicans have not started attacking him yet! They held their fire in 2016 and are strenuously holding their fire now, because he is their dream opponent. Trump as good as admitted it in his call to Republicans in South Carolina to cross over and support Bernie in the Dem primary: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election/on-the-trail-biden-aims-for-significant-south-carolina-win-trump-urges-supporters-to-intervene-idUSKCN20M1JF
ReplyDeleteNeedless to say, I am rooting for a big Biden win in South Carolina tonight.
Corporate PACs also have maximum donation limits, which are not much higher than individual donor limits. Bernie should really leave the Democratic primary and run as an Independent (as he has been most of his life), when he could keep making these scurrilous allegations against other Democrats to his heart's content. The Democratic party has been too generous in allowing him into their midst.
His comments about Castro were not taken out of context, and the Republicans haven't even started talking about his "honeymoon" in the Soviet Union yet (which was not technically a honeymoon, but explaining stuff like this to the public is not something the Democratic candidate needs to be doing). Corbyn had many similar hard-left own goals. I know about the anti-Semitism and Brexit excuses, but you're wilfully ignoring that Corbyn was also rejected because he was too hard-left for the country! He surpassed very low expectations in 2017, and the fact that he gained seats should not obscure that it is another election Labour lost, which a moderate candidate should have won. Notice that Blair won three massive landslides (one after the Iraq War too); then Labour lost in 2010 because Brown was seen as having overspent before the crash and for being much more left-wing than Blair; then Labour replaced him with someone even more left-wing, Ed Miliband, who lost in 2015; then Labour replaced him with their most left-wing leader ever, Corbyn, who lost in 2017 and then had a record defeat in 2019. At some point, a pattern should become clear. A leader must be chosen who fits with the country, not with the party's purist ideologies.
The only place to be a purist, for me, is in adventure games. In my opinion, it helps to narrow things down here, not to expand the big tent.
Agree to disagree. I believe Biden would be a repeat of Hilary Clinton, even if like Bernie he's currently polling fairly well. I believe the way forward is not to entice the immovable Republicans but to excite independents and those who don't normally vote. It appears that's working and working well for Bernie so far. We shall see.
DeleteFor all his many faults (and he does have them), Corbyn also expanded the Labour membership massively. I believe he promised too much too soon to the point that it felt like a bribe even if you did agree with them. He also capitulated to the pary line on occasion that combined made him seem wishy-washy. It always annoyed me when he seemed to refuse to defend himself in interviews. In short, I believe the smears, Brexit and his conduct was a perfect storm to put people off him, not necessarily his individual policies. Anyway, like the Brexit referendum it was the older generations that voted against him and the EU and data signals a shift towards more leftist policies for future generations.
There's nuance to everyone's ideas of what the future should hold and I'll be happy as long as the most vulnerable among us are adequately taken care of. They're very much not at the moment.
Anyway enough politicking. I'm off to bed :)
Well, I for one feel mightily relieved and relaxed now, after Biden scored a landslide win in South Carolina. He's back in the race! The other good moderate candidates need to drop out to clear his path soon -- sorry Pete, Amy, even "evil" billionaire Bloomberg. By the way, your analysis seemed to misunderstand the nature of "independents". Very few of them are socialists like Bernie. Most independents are like Bloomberg in their politics, i.e. they are swing voters who could vote either R or D. Understand that these people hate the far left as well as the far right, and they support whichever party is closest to the middle. They will not take a lurch to socialism, especially not during a strong economy! Bernie would lose them, but they are a must-win for Democrats if they are to defeat Trump.
ReplyDeleteMost voters in the UK also happen to be in the middle. Socialists there have also failed to take the middle into account. Luckily it looks like Keir Starmer or Lisa Nandy will win the leadership, instead of the Corbyn continuity candidate Rebecca Long-Bailey. Expanding "the Labour membership" is irrelevant. Corbyn didn't expand the popularity of Labour to "the general electorate"! These are two entirely separate bodies. Note that the the former say Jeremy Corbyn was the best Labour leader, while the latter say that Tony Blair was the best. Winning elections means listening to the latter.
"Smears" are a weak excuse. All Labour leaders have had to deal with them, including Blair, whom the right as well as the far left hated with a passion. Nobody thought Corbyn was too "wishy-washy" on his socialist policies. Shifting the blame to Brexit does not explain the defeats of Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband that I pointed out in my last post. (If the unions hadn't blocked Ed's moderate brother David Miliband from the leadership, he would have won in 2015.) Corbyn does have support from the youngest voters, as does Bernie, but you're forgetting that young voters age, and most people become less ideologically pure as they grow older (and as they turn into taxpayers). I don't see the UK becoming socialist any time soon.
It's lovely that you care about the "most vulnerable among us", but this statement itself leaves out the broad swath of voters who do not fall into that category, and who, human nature being what it is, tend to vote in their self-interest too. (You know who hates welfare dependents the most? Not the rich! Working class people with jobs, and lower middle class people.) Yes, I agree that Tory austerity has been too harsh and unnecessary, but the answer is not to try to lurch to socialism, the other extreme. Centrist leaders are capable of enacting policies for the poorest without making it seem like they are their only focus -- e.g. Blair introduced the minimum wage, and signed Britain up to the EU Social Chapter. He managed this without losing his moderate credentials for the mainstream. Keir Starmer could do the same.
It's not normal for wishy-washy centrists like me to get angry over politics, as anger is usually the domain of the far left or far right, but Bernie and Corbyn and their ranting, swivel-eyed lunatic styles of demagoguery really got my goat. There are millions of centrists who feel the same as me, who hate all demagogues, both left-wing and right-wing. I feel confident now that Biden and Starmer will win and then defeat Trump and Boris Johnson, and those defeats are ultimately the happy outcome I think we both want.
I'm in such a relaxed mood now compared to last night, and so confident about the future, that I feel ready to play an adventure game now. The only decision is which one. Choices, choices.
THX a Loot :) Quarantine II
ReplyDeleteI'm pleased my prediction was correct that the other moderates would drop out and endorse Biden after his landslide victory in South Carolina, and then he would soar. If only Bloomberg had listened to me, like Pete, Amy, Beto and others did, and endorsed him before Super Tuesday, then he wouldn't have split the moderate vote and Biden could have won California, too.
ReplyDeleteThat was a tense moment in US politics, but I won't get into politics here again. I won't start it, anyway. ;) Although, if Biden goes on to lose to Trump in November, I will be here to face any "I told you so" post. No fleeing the scene.
This was a lovely bllog post
ReplyDelete