The Obscuritory

Seize the Day

January 17, 2012 Phil Salvador

Planner programs are one of the many relics of 90s computing. Nowadays we default to Google Docs, Outlook, iCal, or whatever we have on our phones, but before we synced up with the cloud, there was competing planning software. If computers could do nothing else right, they would still store contacts and remind you about your appointments. Each planner had to outdo the others with a richer feature set or a more exciting interface.

Enter Seize the Day. Forget the “daybook” part of this program. The biggest and best feature is its rotating gallery plug-in. Seriously, it’s beautiful. » Read more about Seize the Day

5 comments 1993, 90s, artistic achievement, favorites, independent developer, Living Worlds, Macintosh, Mark J. Ferrari, nature, office software, personal software, planner, still sold, Summit Software, Windows, Windows 3.1

Eastern Mind: The Lost Souls of Tong Nou

January 12, 2012 Phil Salvador

The first time I played Eastern Mind: The Lost Souls of Tong Nou, I mistook it for a fever dream for nearly a decade afterward.

Eastern Mind is, unquestionably, one of the most surreal games of its time. It’s also deeply spiritual. It ruminates on the purpose of the soul while jumping erratically from moment to moment. It defies an easy explanation, but the longer you spend time with it, the more you can come to understand its rhythm, its purpose to help you understand your soul. » Read more about Eastern Mind: The Lost Souls of Tong Nou

20 comments 1994, 1995, 90s, artistic achievement, CD-ROM, developer commentary, Eastern Mind, exploration, favorites, first-person, international developer – Japan, Macintosh, Macromedia Director, multiple characters, mythology, Osamu Sato, OutSide Directors, Sony, Sony Imagesoft, video, weird, Windows, Windows 3.1

Big Rig

January 1, 2012 Phil Salvador

Not many simulation games from the 80s earn their genre’s moniker like Big Rig. The creator, Bill Pogue, must have had a thing for freight trucking when he set out to recreate an accurate cross-country cargo trip. For goodness’s sake, this is a text-based driving sim that keeps track of the weight of your fuel. To the game’s detriment, all that engaging detail reminds you how monotonous the subject matter is. » Read more about Big Rig

13 comments 1987, 80s, Bill Pogue, developer commentary, DOS, EGA, freeware, independent developer, realistic, text-based, transit

Star Wars: Pit Droids

December 31, 2011 Phil Salvador

Star Wars: Pit Droids is a kids game based on the comic relief characters from the podracing segments of The Phantom Menace. Given the hype around The Phantom Menace, the target audience would have good reason to play it. Given the response to The Phantom Menace, you’d be excused for passing it over.

Against expectations, the designers at Lucas Learning put together a decent Lemmings-style game. » Read more about Star Wars: Pit Droids

Leave a comment 1999, 90s, adaptation, CD-ROM, hex grid, isometric, Lucas Learning, LucasArts, Macintosh, Star Wars, Windows, Windows 9x

Roller Coaster Factory

December 31, 2011 Phil Salvador

At age 12, I had this deep obsession with wanting to get a roller coaster video game. The object of my affection was Ultimate Ride because of a glowing write-up in some computer magazine that made it look incredible and extensive for its time. There was no theme park administration involved, just building roller coasters, which was perfect for me. The demo took a full day to download on my dial-up connection, but in spite of my enthusiasm, my old desktop computer didn’t meet the system requirements.

Flash-forward a few months to a trip to Office Max with my family. While rifling through the bargain racks, I found a copy of ValuSoft’s Roller Coaster Factory, which looked pretty awesome from the jewel case. It would have to do.

It did not do, not at all. Roller Coaster Factory is awful. It seems to be, somehow, bored by the idea of roller coasters. It screws up the fun qualities of playing a coaster game in the first place, and along the way, it loses something deeper.

(This one is a little personal, don’t mind me.)

5 comments 00s, 2000, 3D, bad, CD-ROM, Pantera Entertainment, slow, theme park, ValuSoft, Windows, Windows 9x

MissionForce: CyberStorm

December 31, 2011 Phil Salvador

Despite its low profile, MissionForce: CyberStorm is one of the greatest turn-based strategy games of its time, an absolute milestone for the genre. The game creatively plays with genre mechanics, then uses them to demonstrate the dehumanizing effects of technology and war. » Read more about MissionForce: CyberStorm

11 comments 1996, 90s, CD-ROM, cooperative, Dynamix, favorites, futuristic, hex grid, hot seat multiplayer, local multiplayer, multiplayer, online multiplayer, play-by-email, sequel, Sierra On-Line, social themes, still sold, top-down, turn-based, video, Windows, Windows 9x

Don’t Go Alone

December 31, 2011 Phil Salvador

Haunted houses never get a fair rap. They might be cheesy and schlocky, but you’re getting what you pay for. Sometimes you just want cheap scares and creepy decorations.

So thank goodness that Don’t Go Alone doesn’t put up any pretensions. It takes place in a haunted house, and you fight ghosts. Doors burst open and scary things crawl out. There’s a fairly fun RPG here, even without the corny spookiness, and it does justice to the roadside attractions and B-movies that inspired it. » Read more about Don’t Go Alone

3 comments 1989, 80s, Accolade, DOS, dungeon crawler, EGA, first-person, horror, multiple characters, Sterling Silver Software

Frogger

December 31, 2011 Phil Salvador

The 90s reboot of Frogger kicks ass. I swear to god. This game is great. As great as Frogger can be, anyway. It’s like someone took the original and injected it with shark hormones.

Hyperbole aside, the Frogger remake (occasionally subtitled Frogger 3D or Frogger: He’s Back!) is easily the best in the series. It expands upon the original in clever, interesting ways without betraying its roots or stretching the formula to absurd lengths. » Read more about Frogger

3 comments 1997, 3D, 90s, animals, CD-ROM, favorites, Frogger, Hasbro Interactive, local multiplayer, Millennium Interactive, multiplayer, PlayStation, sequel, Sony, Sony Computer Entertainment, split-screen, Windows, Windows 9x

Back to basics

December 31, 2011 Phil Salvador

You might’ve noticed the lack of activity in the past half-year. I do this in my spare time, and there hasn’t been as much of that lately.

But the real issue is the videos. Putting up videos for each game takes an exceptional amount of time. It’s hard enough to get a good video that captures a game in 10 minutes or so, but when it involves editing or recording something outside of DOS, that can be an arduous task. It’s terrifically satisfying to see the nostalgic reactions from YouTube, but I enjoy writing about classic games much more than I do putting the videos up.

I’ve been sitting on several articles because they were missing videos, and I don’t want to keep putting that off anymore. The blog comes first now. I’ll still put up videos when I can, especially for Music Highlights (which I really enjoy doing!).

Like a terrible undergrad student, I will now cram and turn in all my essays by the end of the year. Expect a deluge of content shortly!

QuickTime turns 20 years old

December 2, 2011 Phil Salvador

December 2nd marks the anniversary of QuickTime, originally released by Apple in 1991. It might not’ve been the first video codec, but it was one of the most popular and widely distributed. Back when such add-ons were popular (and before it became bloatware), QuickTime powered every adventure game and multimedia presentation under the sun. And to an extent, that’s why a lot of them don’t work on modern computers anymore. As a telling example, the first program to use and to include QuickTime was the 1991 CD-ROM From Alice to Ocean, an interactive photojournal from writer Robyn Davidson’s travels across Australia.

In an age of open content standards, QuickTime lingers, an anachronism in the same pool as RealPlayer. But let’s take a moment to appreciate all the great things QuickTime enabled 20 years ago. If you ever played a CD-ROM game or application with video, good money says that it used QuickTime.

Thanks to The Register for the info!

3 comments Apple Computer, CD-ROM, history, Macintosh, multimedia, QuickTime, technical, Windows, Windows 3.1

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