After nearly 2 years of missing it, my luck finally ran out and I caught Covid this month. On the hottest day ever recorded no less. I think a trip to London Film & Comic Con did it to me and you know what? It was worth it. The promised gaming section was a bit of a disappointment (the highlight being a Lady Dimitrescu cosplayer) but everything else was pretty damn cool. Met a few talented artists, got a Gremlins comic signed by Zach Galligan and spent way too much money on memorabilia.
Despite all of this going on, and my usual real-world distractions, I still managed to get some content up for this site (though making time for the YouTube side of things is unfortunately still an issue). For the month of July we have Backpacker: The Lost Florence Gold Mine (1997 Animagination) a long forgotten point-and-click adventure, Get Medieval (1998 Microïds & Monolith Productions Inc) a humurous Gauntlet clone, Jewels II: The Ultimate Challenge (1998 Hoffmann + Associates Inc) a highly atmospheric puzzle adventure, One Must Fall 2097 (1994 Epic MegaGames) which is still one of the best PC-exclusive fighters and Sanity: Aiken's Artifact (2000 Monolith Productions Inc) an interesting action RPG with unique mechanics. Check them out by clicking the links after the jump.
I've also updated Blazing Dragons to run on ScummVM. You can now play this PlayStation adventure game with a mouse making for a much better user experience.
Click on the images below to head on over to the game page.
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1997 Animagination
Windows 3.1
Adventure-Point & Click-Mystery
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1998 Microïds & Monolith Productions Inc
Windows
Action-Arcade-Fantasy-Wizards!
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1998 Hoffmann + Associates Inc
Windows '95
Adventure-Puzzle-History
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1994 Epic MegaGames
DOS
Action-Fighter-Science Fiction-Robots!
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2000 Monolith Productions Inc
Windows
Role Play-Action-Science Fiction
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Thank you so much Biffman. I can't wait to get home and get One Must Fall installed.
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome! Enjoy!
DeleteThanks as always, this time specifically for Sanity!
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome. I'm still playing through it. I want to get a lot further in before I write the review but know it will be a glowing one. This is the first time I've played it and I'm really enjoing it
DeleteBackpacker looks very interesting, thanks!
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of ps1, please update Silverload with mouse support as well!
Blazing Dragons managed it through ScummVM but I believe Silverload was already compatible with the PlayStation mouse. It's been a while since I created the package so I'll have to investigate.
DeleteGah, so sorry to hear you got Covid.
ReplyDeleteHere's hoping you recover quickly. ( :
As far as the games go, Backpacker looks fantastic. Looking forward to playing that one.
Thanks for all your fantastic work, Biff!
I've been rather lucky with the 'vid. Though it was just a summer cold before I tested. The biggest issue I got out of it was fatigue but that seems to over now.
DeleteEnjoy Backpacker. It's a decent game.
Thank you so, so much for all the time and effort you put into making these installers. I grew up in the era of DOS/Win 3.11, but it’s so much easier to use your installers. Not to mention the later Windows games that can be a nightmare to get running on modern hardware.
ReplyDeleteSpecial shoutout for the Prince O(+> Interactive installer. Been a fan for almost 40 years, and I still own my original boxed copy I bought from a local wrecka stow. It was super cool to be able to experience it again without needing to jump through all the hoops myself.
You're welcome. I like to highlight interesting oddities.
DeleteThank you for bringing Sainty Aiken's Artifact back. It wasn't considered a good game and sold REALLY poorly (I actually got it for free because my local CompuCentre was just giving it away since they had a whole skid of the game and nobody was buying it), but I had fun with it as a kid. I've had the abandonware version downloaded for years now and couldn't get it to run no matter how hard I tried, so I'm happy to have an version that'll just work.
ReplyDeleteLooks like you got a bargain. The UK only got DVD packaging for it which are available for very little money on ebay. I'd love to get the US big-box version though which goes for quite a bit more. In my opinion, the game holds up pretty well.
DeleteThank you! Great job as always!
ReplyDeleteThanks as always, I hope you're feeling better. I played a demo of Aiken's Artifact, seemed a very interesting game but my pocket money wouldn't stretch (and I don't think it stayed on shelves for very long in any case, sadly).
ReplyDeleteIt didn't sell well at all. I think it came out at the wrong time. There were a few addons and bonus content you could but in the form of extra talents (the spells you collect in the game) but I haven't found any of them online. I may be mid-remembering but I'm sure there was a pre-order bonus CD with some on and a few were apparently distributed on magazine cover discs but I can find no info out there about them.
DeleteThx very much. Good games. Best Regards. Greg.
ReplyDeleteGlad to have you back here! and thank you very much for your hard work getting all these incredible, nostalgic games to us!! :)
ReplyDeleteThank you for another awesome addition of great games! Can't wait to get down and play this weekend.
ReplyDeleteGlad to hear you head a fun time at the con. Wish you a speedy recovery from corona!
Thank you very much!
(an unrelated question-has it ever happened to you that you uncover an old little game from the depths of oblivion you thought you'd misremembered or imagined it, manage to install it and get it running with pcem win98, but it won't let you get past the registration splash screen? No matter what name or serial I type in, it keeps asking me to 'Please enter your serial from the label of your diskette'. I only had one serial which was supposed to be correct, yet whether I type it or any other 12-character combination, I get that same message. The game options/instructions/history/trophies are grayed out, leaving me no option but to exit. Is there anything I can do or should I give up? Thank you and sorry to bother you with this. If this question is inappropriate in any way, please delete it.)
Being an active retrogamer and preservationist for two decades already, I really got excited when I stumbled upon and took a closer look on your site today. This is a beautiful project. I simply adore your writeups on games. Proper journalism, that. And then the art! Almost too much.
ReplyDeleteThe great part of this particular hobby is that the content never gets old, so I now have eight years of backlog to go through. What a great problem to have! :D I'm sure I'm going to find some gems that I've missed, but mostly I'm waiting to to read about the games that I played back in the day. Keep it up!
Thanks for Sanity! Your version works, unlike the one from My Abandonware.
ReplyDeleteHOWEVER. Your dgVoodoo settings change the aspect ratio in a way that cuts off the top and the bottom of the screen. It makes it impossible to complete the psionic training at the very beginning because you simply can't click the middle target. Here's a comparison:
postimg. c c / kDjwDsm6