Thursday, March 30, 2006
Realm of Unfinished Games
We managed to make it back home in one piece tonight. It was a good vacation, except for the fact that it did end up raining one-and-a-half days our of our three. I had good intentions of playing lots of games and doing game development each night after we returned home from the park - but 11 hours of running around the parks and keeping track of kids pretty much dropped me. I did manage to sneak in some game-playing the first night. Okay, it was Cute Knight - I'm not too proud to admit it. It's dang fun. I've now finished the game in one way or another about a half-dozen times, and it's still got some intersting surprises in there.
So tonight I found myself digging through some old games I own, many of which I always intended to "finish" but somehow I never did. Occasionally I'll go back to these games and try again. Sometimes I *do* end up finishing them. Most of the time I don't, and the games remain indefinitely forgotten. This is the Realm of Unfinished Games. And why (as far as I know) they remain unfinished. I should note that this is nowhere REMOTELY close to an exhaustive list. I have a ton of games in my collection, and I've failed to complete a LOT of them:
BLOOD: Using the Duke Nukem engine. It was some kind of horror-based First-Person Shooter that I got for free when Singletrac got bought out by GT Interactive (the publishers of Blood). They gave us a handful of free games. I played the first level, and I guess I got bored or something.
Wizardry 7 - Crusaders of the Dark Savant: This is a game I keep kicking myself for NOT completing. This is a vast roleplaying game of the legendary Wizardry series. I think I got stuck on the same part - going into the mountain to look for flowers or something. The random encounters always became tedious after a while, and I was forever annoyed when the monster's advanced weaponry (like guns and shock-rods) would vaporize when I killed them, preventing me from using these really cool weapons. But this is still a game I imagine myself actually booting up and finishing one of these days (probably with a walk-through in hand). It was COOL.
Ultima 6 - The False Prophet: This is another legendary RPG I keep trying to finish, and never seem to complete. I think I've re-started the game about six or seven times over the years. I usually get stuck trying to find the pieces of the pirate's map... I never know where to go next. Then I get bored and quit, and forget to finish it for another 2-3 years.
Twilight: 2000: Oh, boy. Yet another RPG - this one set in a somewhat realistic post-apocalyptic world. No mutants, but lots of bloodthirsty leaders with military vehicles and problems with things like marauders and diseases. I tried to finish this game. Really. Twice. It locked up and crashed at exactly the same place during the final series of battles both times, on two different machines with clean reinstalls. We're talking ancient DOS history here, predating CD-ROMS.
The Wheel of Time: An Unreal (I) engine game based on the epic series by Robert Jordan. I've only read the first book. Maybe that's why the game keeps boring me around the time I enter this one evil city (it seemed pretty cool in the book, though).
Starlancer: Man, I tried to like this game. It had everything going for it. I mean, it held the Wing Commander legacy in the palm of its hand, including Chris Roberts heading up production. But it lacked one critical thing: Interesting characters. I would play through, and find myself going through the same kind of motions I'd been through in all the Wing Commander games, and in the Freespace games, and in a few other wannabe games. But I couldn't bring myself to care.
Warcraft III: Ah, a big-name supergame. Yeah, even the wizards at Blizzard never really managed to hook me on their last entry in their legendary RTS series. And I LOVED Warcraft II. Big-time. I really don't know why I never finished Warcraft III. I guess I felt too relieved at the end of each battle to finally be done I didn't much feel like starting a new one.
Sam & Max Hit the Road: I don't know how it ended up being uninstalled. Maybe I upgraded my drive or something. But somehow, I lost my savegame, and never got up the gumption to go back through this delightfully quirky adventure game again. But I should. I really, really should.
Aegis: Guardian of the Fleet: I bought it because it was cheap and some hardcore grognard-type told me it was an absolutely fabulously detailed simulation of modern naval warfare. I couldn't figure out how to play it. I kinda got stumped in the opening screen. And mind you, I'm a guy who reads the Falcon 4.0 manual for fun.
Elder Scrolls: Morrowind: It's still on my machine. I don't have Oblivion yet. I still intend to finish Morrowind. Maybe. Sometime. It's just a game you can just PLAY and play and play and play and play and play and play and play and never ever seem to actually finish...
Unreal: Man, this game ruled. Right up until the point where it couldn't really run on my poor, pathetic 4MB video card anymore. So I upgraded my video card ( also to play certain levels of EverQuest without horrible framerates), but found it wasn't compatible with the 3DFX-centric Unreal. So I never finished it. I don't really know if anything really HAPPENED at the end of the game... I mean, there was kind of a story set up at the beginning, but there wasn't much to it. But I was still upset that hardware limitations prevented me from finishing it.
Roller Coaster Tycoon: LOVED this game. Just never quite got to the final scenarios. Dunno why.
Labels: retro
- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:23 PM (Permalink)
Comments:
Links to this post:
<< Home
Realm of Unfinished Games
When I saw the title, I immediately thought back to all the half-completed games I'd (half-)written over the years. When I was a kid, I'd sit down, create a vaguely-playable concept that looked really cool! Then I'd say to myself, "Well, I can walk around, so this must be pretty close to being done, right?" I'd then lose interest and move on to something else.
It took me the next twenty years to overcome that.
Someday, I'd like to sit down and catalog all my efforts, but I don't think my Atari 800 disks still hold any data. Maybe these games are better through the hazy fog of memory, anyway. But if I had the chance, I'd bring my kid-self forward in time for an hour and say, "Look! Look at all the cool stuff you've done! This is your dream job coming true!"
I'd also have other bits of advice like, "try playing outside occasionally," but that's another story.
When I saw the title, I immediately thought back to all the half-completed games I'd (half-)written over the years. When I was a kid, I'd sit down, create a vaguely-playable concept that looked really cool! Then I'd say to myself, "Well, I can walk around, so this must be pretty close to being done, right?" I'd then lose interest and move on to something else.
It took me the next twenty years to overcome that.
Someday, I'd like to sit down and catalog all my efforts, but I don't think my Atari 800 disks still hold any data. Maybe these games are better through the hazy fog of memory, anyway. But if I had the chance, I'd bring my kid-self forward in time for an hour and say, "Look! Look at all the cool stuff you've done! This is your dream job coming true!"
I'd also have other bits of advice like, "try playing outside occasionally," but that's another story.
Oh, man, yeah. I had LOTS of unfinished games working on the Commodore 64 during my teen years. In fact, there are only a handful of games (out of DOZENS I started) that could even remotely be considered "done."
There was one called "Midnight Run," where you simply drove a car through a scrolling obstacle field. Really lame, but it was my first "complete" game.
The first one I was really proud of was an adventure game called "Dungeons of Doom." Yeah, great title, only used about a zillion times before or since. But what did I know. It had a really brilliant gameplay feature in that you could lose the game without knowing you lost, and keep going until you found an impossible task (because you'd already used up the item you needed to pass it).
The next was also an adventure game, with a much more advanced parser, called "The Secret of Red Hill Pass." I don't remember what the secret was. Just that there was a house with an adventure there.
I kinda-sorta completed a roleplaying game that I don't even remember the name of anymore. All I remember was that it was playable, and my friends and I had a great time playing it.
There was one called "Midnight Run," where you simply drove a car through a scrolling obstacle field. Really lame, but it was my first "complete" game.
The first one I was really proud of was an adventure game called "Dungeons of Doom." Yeah, great title, only used about a zillion times before or since. But what did I know. It had a really brilliant gameplay feature in that you could lose the game without knowing you lost, and keep going until you found an impossible task (because you'd already used up the item you needed to pass it).
The next was also an adventure game, with a much more advanced parser, called "The Secret of Red Hill Pass." I don't remember what the secret was. Just that there was a house with an adventure there.
I kinda-sorta completed a roleplaying game that I don't even remember the name of anymore. All I remember was that it was playable, and my friends and I had a great time playing it.
I think it would be easier for me to list the games I've completed.
I decided at some point that when something stops being fun, it's time to stop playing. It's odd, because for some games, I have a high tolerance for repetition or "grind", and in others, it just gets boring.
Post a Comment
I decided at some point that when something stops being fun, it's time to stop playing. It's odd, because for some games, I have a high tolerance for repetition or "grind", and in others, it just gets boring.
# posted by 
: February 07, 2007 1:45 PM
: February 07, 2007 1:45 PMLinks to this post:
<< Home
