While I’m waiting for OS installations or code compilations to finish, I’ve been playing this great game on Xandros called Neverball. It’s a game similar to Monkey Ball, which is one of my faviourites on the Game Cube. It’s very polished for an open source game and is complete with the exception of minor enhancements or bug fixes from time to time. Its only dependencies on Linux are the most common SDL libraries: core library, SDL_image, SDL_ttf, and SDL_mixer. It doesn’t compile so well on Intel Macs, but I should get that working pretty soon. I believe there is an Xcode project file available too for those who choose to take the quick and easy path. I may soon walk the path of the dark side, depending on how quickly I can resolve these obtuse linker errors.

Categories: Games, Programming
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This is a perfect game to play after a hard days work at the office. It’s perfect because the objective couldn’t be easier to remember: collect all of the white pellets in every level. Naturally, collecting these pellets isn’t as easy as collecting rocks. There are plenty of obstacles in your way like daring jumps, touchy explosives, attractive magnets, and small angry balls of fire. To further enhance your experience, each level is timed so you can’t allow yourself to be distracted by screaming kids, nagging spouses, or government taxes. On second thought, it may not be wise to ignore the second one.

If you’re one of the few skilled players who manage to complete the game – I finished it a couple of years ago (after years of “training”) – you can supplement your addiction with the Robot Factory. Only through the factory can your dreams of monolithic, white pellet construction be realized. Remember to save your construction and post it on the Internet; don’t forget to add a comment here telling us where we can find it.

I would recommend playing it on the Atari 800 XL. It has much more vibrant graphics than the Commodore 64 version and the sound is pretty much the same.

Categories: Atari 8-bit, Games, Retro
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I’ve been playing this little gem for a couple of days now and it is simply fantastic. For those of you who don’t know, the game began life as a board game many years ago. I own the board game too, and it is a great way to spend time with family and friends. It’s rules are pretty straight forward even though the game has strategic elements to it. In the end, though, it is ultimatley ruled by the roll of the die, and the more lucky you get the better off you’ll be. However, the best luck won’t save you if you can’t strategize your way out of a paper bag.

The software version does an excellent job of handling complex interactions like bargaining and trading with other players. Subtly is obviously lost since it doesn’t take into account facial expressions, body movement, or gestures… yet. You may laugh, but this sort of thing is happening now. It’s called real-time facial expression recognition. The Nintendo DS, for example, is putting out a camera and is encouraging developers to release software which does exactly this. Facial recognition aside, the AI in Settlers does a great job and seems to use evaluation mechanisms which can change the outcome of a trade even while the players themselves are bargaining. If you see an offer you like, I would take it as soon as you can before the computer decides to change its’ mind or accepts an offer from another player.

If playing against a machine isn’t appealing to you, there is a good on-line alternative as long as your friends own a 360, but even this isn’t sacred since cross-platform multi-player console games are already on the horizon.

Categories: Games, Xbox 360
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I had a dream last night…

It was a dark and stormy night. My mood had been sour since I learned of my new assignment. Apparently, I’m a detective and I was being hired to find a teenage girl. Not just any girl mind you, she was the President’s daughter. This was a little weird, since I’m a Canadian and we don’t actually have Presidents with vast amounts of power and a real can-do attitude; instead, we have impotent ex-lawyers who can’t uphold their political platforms because their spines are made of jelly. Jello, in fact. Not the orange kind either, but that old berry flavour which doesn’t really taste like any berry I’ve had before.

I took it all in stride since I knew this was a dream (a neat trick I learned while watching Star Trek Voyager). I began to think about the mission and the team I would presumably be working with. One of these people was a young woman by the name of Ingrid Hunnigan. She was a real looker, and I just knew she was one of those girls who was all quiet and demure on the outside, but on the inside my imagination told me she was really some feral animal waiting to be uncollared. Despite my eagerness to set this poor creature free, I found her external demeanor to be cold and very closed. I think it was her glasses which gave me that impression. Don’t get me wrong, I usually dig a chick with glasses, but her spectacles were so large and formal it was like staring at two street signs that read “STOP – ALL WAYS”, “DEAD END”, or “NO ENTRANCE AT REAR.” I chuckled to myself, as I especially enjoyed that last one. She must have read my mind, apparently, given the number of phone calls she made – probably phoning her girl friends to tell them she’ll be busy tonight.

Before I left the meeting with my boss, he mentioned this would essentially be a solo mission, so I could forget about back-up. His orders were simple: get in, get the girl, and go home. I had to do a double-take, just like the people in those gum commercials; this was the President’s daughter after all, right? Why was I the only man, and a Canadian to boot, sent in after her? My cultural stereotype clearly states that I should abhor violence, discrimination, and meanness of all kinds. According to popular opinion in my country these people may be different than us, but simply because they’re different does it really make them evil? Note to the Jello-men: yes it does. Now shut up and grab your .22 caliber pellet gun.

They explained the reason why I had been chosen over other, more tenable alternatives. It basically stemmed from my experience with the Raccoon City incident. I had to laugh at that one. I told them it was just a video game, but they shook off my remarks including the little anecdote I though in about the fox and the scorpion – it didn’t really apply, but it makes me smile. They weren’t interested in my opinions or my stories and callously chalked them up as venial nonsense. They reasoned I must have been suffering from post-trauma to the brain, probably near the medulla oblongata. They blamed my irrational behaviour on all those untested (but FDA approved) neurological substances I took while playing the first game. I consoled myself against their unfounded criticisms and went back to finding that crazy rascal Hamburgler using one of the cheap paper maps they provided with every Happy Meal.

Yes, as a skilled, um, warrior, I see this kind of violence every day using one of my video game consoles. I’ve single-handedly sent many a demon to the void (/dev/null if you’re playing games on Linux), but I have to say it hasn’t really affected my lifestyle. I still get up, brush my teeth and go to work like every other schmo. Only this time, I’m more than just an anonymous software developer for some multi-national corporation (sort of like a taller, more sturdy version of Neo): I’m the protagonist who’s been assigned to save some hapless American teenager from the ravages of a Spanish cult! And you know they’re savage, because they’re foreign.

Of course, once I met her, I immediately wanted to shoot her. Ashley Graham was attractive, no doubt about it, but her constant whining became insufferable. “Don’t forget about me, Leon!” or “Help me, Leon, this man is trying to abuse my medulla oblongata!” Nag, nag, nag. If she wasn’t the daughter of the most powerful man in the world, I would have considered making her rescue worth my while, if you know what I mean. Wink, wink…

What? Don’t try to tell me you wouldn’t think about something like that if you were in my position. How many times does a person get to control the fate of a girl linked inextricably with the head of a nation so huge and powerful, it requires two Disney theme parks? I wanted free tickets, damn it, and I wasn’t bringing her anywhere until she begged to give them to me. Boy, did her knees get dirty! Normal detergent wasn’t going to get those stains out.

Once the begging had subsided, and it was really pathetic let me tell you, I could finally get on with my “mission.” During our journey together, I had the opportunity to be the hero countless times, but I knew she was stronger than what those politicians back in Washington were telling me. Come hell or high water, she was going to contribute to the mission, even if it meant she would be inadvertently killed again and again. One such opportunity presented itself while trying to escape a series of traps set up by our good friend, Osmund Saddler. He thought he could capture us using a creature coined “El Gigante.” At first, I was frightened and really out of my element. Since I was Canadian, I hadn’t taken a single Spanish class in my three years of high school, so translating this foreign tongue was exasperating and caused me to lose focus on more than one occasion. This confusion often resulted in Ashley’s gory death, but since I knew this was a dream, I could stop and reload it anytime. Kind of like playing a PC game, except with the whole intentional reloading thing. Actually, I should be careful what I say, PC fanboys can be dangerous if they haven’t had enough sugar. I usually subdue them with a can of Coke and a box of Cracker Jacks. They even let me keep the prize sometimes.

Much toil and much fighting later… I was able to find a local who looked a bit shifty, but was at least willing to sell me medicine and supplies. I managed to bargain a used Spanish-English dictionary when buying a couple of medical sprays for 20,000 coins. Often, the salesman started crying after our transactions; honestly, men like that make me sick. He should really learn to barter if he can’t stand losing so much money. I’m not sure what 20,000 pesos, or whatever their currency is, equates to but it surely can’t be more than a few dollars. This is a foreign country, after all.

We met Saddler and his peon Salasar on several occasions. Both of them just didn’t know when to quit. I mean, how many underlings and armies of parasitic men do I have to defeat single-handedly before they acknowledge the certainty of their death? There is nothing wrong with simply dropping what you are doing, hiking up your robes, and hightailing it out of there before I manage to get my hands on you. Their spines were definetly not made of Jello.

Since I knew I was about to wake up, I decided to find a way out of this twisted little world. So, I conjured up a jet ski and told Ashley to hop on. She was a little hesitant at first; I told her to stop being such a baby, if she died I would simply reset the game. After the fifteenth or sixteenth time she died, I finally managed to push all the right buttons. I could tell because she was all over me before we even exited the tunnel. I had to repeatedly decline her offers for love, because I had my eye on this other chick who tried to kill me several times during my mission, and whom I have totally failed to mention in this story. She and I have a long history together, and we’re going to have loads of fun at Disney.

Somewhere off in distance Ashley was still crying, obviously upset and heart-broken. Poor girl. I only vaguely noticed the irritated soldier pointing and gesticulating with his weapon in my direction; I had other more important things to think about, you see. My mind slowly returned to thoughts of Mina… or was it Veronica? Hmmm. I especially liked it when, that girl, got away with the Plagas sample. Denying me the only opportunity I would ever have to sell them on the black market. Which means my dream of retiring rich, fat, and tanned like an immigrant worker may never come to pass if I can’t find her again. Now that’s sexy.

Categories: Games
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Ghouls N’ Ghosts has an intensity rarely seen in video games. You have to go into this game thinking your going to get a tinsy bit further than the last time you played. Just a little further is all you’re really asking, so why are you being punished so viciously? Well, the problem can’t be your overall skill level. After all, you’ve been practicing on and off for about a month. Therefore, it must be either your joystick, your machine, or those screaming kids. Yeah, that’s it. Those screaming kids have been messing with your SuperGrafx system again! Putting their pudgy, sticky little fingers all over your disc and abusing your joystick, which is after all, your lifeline to this game and must be maintained at all costs. You should get up right now and tell those kids to stop screwing around with Daddy’s machine or they’ll be in hot water! Not just the semi-scalding water that comes out of your kitchen tap. No, no, no. You’ll be using heavy water from your local nuclear facility. Yes, they won’t be touching your machine again.

Ahem. Now that you’ve taken care of those pesky kids, we can move on to the real reason you can’t get any further: you just plain suck. Well, believe it or not there is a cure. No, I’m not going to try and sell you some miracle cream or a pill I’ve engineered out of sugar and corn starch – I’ll leave that job to the horde’s of uneducated immigrant workers. All you need to do is practice. Practice longer, and harder than ever before. Practice until your fingers develop blisters, and then become calloused. Yes, with those delicate digits sufficiently toughened, you’ll be playing hardball with the best of them. Just don’t let those rug-rats of yours get a hold of your system, and don’t let them watch you play. Kids have a weird genetic disease which make them instantly better than you are at the best of times. Those kids can be incredibly cruel. Your wife calls it honesty, but what the heck does she know? She hasn’t even heard of the SuperGrafx system, and you’ve owned it for months!

So, why are you watching television when you could be practicing? Why are you washing your car when you could be button mashing your way to victory? Why are you cooking dinner or asking your wife how her day went when you could be attaining the most sought after title in video game history?

Just let me know how the divorce goes, eh? And please, no more profanity.

Categories: Games, SuperGrafx
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Just for kicks, I decided to try and install FreeDOS into the free version of VMWare server yesterday. The installation went very nicely and before long I was mucking around in the console. I decided to try and play a game in this environment. Having used FreeDOS before, I knew it would work with the operating system, but I was unsure how playable it would be under VMWare.

The first game I tried was Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold and it ran quite well. I was encouraged so I decided to try a more complex game. I chose DOSDoom because I love the game and it seemed like the next logical step. It also ran well. To try out your own game, just run an ISO generation tool on the installed directory, and attach the ISO to your VMWare guest. If you’re running Xandros, use the ‘mkisofs’ command:

$ mkisofs -o /tmp/doom/cd.iso /tmp/doom/DOOM/

Assuming your installation directory is located under ‘/tmp/doom/DOOM’, this command will quickly generate an ISO file. To make it easier on yourself, I would just throw all of your favourite games into one ISO, burn the CD, archive it (you can edit it later if you want to add more games), and use that whenever you feel an itch to play.

This technology is a fabulously free alternative to building your own RetroBox, but maybe not as much fun to put together.

Categories: Games, Retro, Software
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A friend of mine wrote an article a few days ago suggesting that emulation may meet its end in the not-so-distant future because the computing power necessary to emulate the new hardware used by today’s consoles would be too vast. I agree with him completely, but I still have reservations about this statement for a couple of reasons.

First, until recently, consoles were always lagging behind computers in terms of pure processing power. Programmers and hardware engineers have always been able to do more with less on static systems like the Nintendo 64 or Turbo Grafx 16. The consoles had specialized hardware in them which could accelerate common operations used by games. Thus, the console stayed with exactly the same hardware during the lifetime of the product but often continued to look good in the eyes of the consumer because of these extra hardware features. Computer hardware, on the other hand, continued to get better but because of complex operating systems like Microsoft Windows, the computer games often had to play catch-up. For example, during the late 1980’s and and 1990’s, a side-by-side comparison would have been difficult at the best of times because the consoles often ran completely different games from the kind played by computer enthusiasts. Not to mention, the computer often had to contend with many more software layers than a barebones console. It was and still is today, impossible for a computer to run a game without some overhead from the operating system, hardware drivers, other applications, etc. In stark contrast, consoles usually had a bare metal operating system with a spartan software architecture; essentially nothing more than a boot loader and perhaps a small firmware BIOS.

In a bizarre twist of evolutionary electronics, consoles are becoming more and more like computers, complete with powerful operating systems (albeit dumbed down and with minimal functionality exposed). Admittedly, these machines do have powerful hardware, but then again, so do modern computers. Another twist is that the software running on these consoles (ie: the games) is becoming more and more compatible with the software used by modern day computers. With multi-core processors, hyper-complex acclerator cards, and virtualized hardware environments, computers running emulation software could map a number of hardware features used by today’s consoles more easily than ever before.

So what’s stopping emulation from taking off? There are a few big, perhaps insurmountable, issues to contend with before we start playing Xbox 360 games on a Mac. First, the games are so much larger, and the software needed to make them work is equally large, which means if you want to run those games on systems which weren’t designed to run them in the first place, you’ll need to handle the hardware issues as well as the software requirements. For example, on an Xbox 360 there are Microsoft libraries which handle such mundane things like drawing menus and windows, handling kernel events, DirectX libraries for input control and graphics acceleration, etc., will all need to be available on the target platform. So, you had better start coding now, and maybe with a bit of luck, you’ll finish before you’re dead. The second big issue is security. It’s complex. It’s big. And depending on the system, it could be distributed throughout the software and hardware in a tangled mess designed to keep people like you from writing software like ZSNES.

Bottom line: if you want to play PS3 or Xbox 360 games while you can still hold the controller, then you had better fork out the cash for a new or used system because those clever teenagers who wrote the early generation of emulation software, won’t be able to make a dent in the new console market.

Categories: Games, Hardware
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“Radical Express – When it totally, no doubt for sure has to be there awhile previously.” Sigh. You just can’t buy quotes like that anymore. I often wonder if there is still a market for adventure games like the Space Quest series. I’m not just talking about games with elements of adventure thrown in, I’m talking about games with intriguing environments (either dimension is fine), a detailed and enjoyable script, some decent voice acting (if need be), and that’s about it. No flash in the pants particle effects (unless you chose 3D and it happens to fit the story), no multi-player options, no level-editing tools, and a distinct lack of hands-on combat. Although a little combat can be used effectively; just look at the Monkey Island series: “Your mother is a cow!”

Given the recent trends in the market today, it wouldn’t be as large as, say, Halo 3 in North America or even Sim City V in Vietnam, but perhaps there could still be a decent market for small companies on the Wii, Xbox Live arcade, or even somewhere amongst the desktop market? After all, it is relatively painless nowadays to write games for the three major desktops: Microsoft Windows, Xandros, and Mac OS X. A three or four person company could do quite nicely.

Categories: Games
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The first game I’ll introduce for Mac OSX is called the Doom Legacy project. It is available for other platforms, but I find the implementation for the Mac is superb. I have the 19″ iMac computer and it looks absolutely amazing. It’s also a blast to play with mouse look and fast monsters enabled. It’s like playing Ultimate Doom all over, except this time, the game stopped off at the local store for bad asses and purchased a can of whoop ass.

The new engine can use the resources from Ultimate Doom, Doom, or Doom II. They have added a variety of subtle enhancements which aren’t too over the top. The rendering engine uses OpenGL which looks very nice on modern machines. I cranked the game’s resolution to 1680×1050 and I never looked back.

Expect more information about this game in the future.

Categories: Games, Mac OSX
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I’m replaying Space Quest I: The Sarien Encounter and it amazes me that the game has held up for so long. After thinking about it for a bit, and rewriting this entry more than once, I’ve come to the conclusion that it doesn’t matter what technology the game uses, whether or not your board game pieces are made out of pewter, or if the game comes with a secret decoder ring. What matters most is the game itself or more specifically:

Is the game fun to play today? And remember that meaning changes every 24 hours.

This may seem like something obvious, but so many companies miss the boat. I see compilation CDs with several games available for play, but I shake my head when only half of them are fun to play now. They may have been fun a few years ago, when the technology or technique was new at the time, but many just don’t cut the mustard. I see polls for Golden Eye (N64), citing that it should be released for the Wii. Why? Have you played the game recently? I absolutely loved it when it was released. The multi-player games were quick and exhilarating. I played that game with my brother-in-law until my eyes were bloodshot. If you play it now with some friends, you may find it just doesn’t have any appeal. The single player mode is marginally better; the missions are still challenging but it lacks a certain panache. After an hour of game play, you’ll probably be checking your watch or thinking about how much you’d rather be helping Roger Wilco defeat The Sariens once again.

Categories: Games
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