Saucelifter

By: Tim

On: December 18th, 2006

Alright, last one! (maybe)

Saucelifter is a brilliant Choplifter remake featuring vector graphics for enemy vehicles, turrets and buildings. Press the Z or C key to shoot in either direction, or hold the X key to aim downwards. The landing gears will appear automatically when your ship approaches the ground.

The aim of the game is basically to grab up to eight hostages at any one time and transport them to the teleporter on the right. Land right next to it and they will exit the ship and walk onto the platform automatically.

Paul was also one of the developers involved in the Sword of Fargoal remake, incidentally.

Hero Sequel (Preview)

By: Tim

On: December 18th, 2006

Sure looks pretty.

Get Daniel Remar’s original black and white version here.

Counterclockwise

By: Tim

On: December 17th, 2006

The basic objective in Counterclockwise is to destroy enemy chasers, either by shooting at them or using the EMPs supplied. Your craft can only make 90 degrees sharp turns in four directions – left, right, up and down.
Use mouse to move cannon aiming crosshair, or hold the right mouse button for the mouselook feature.

Ammunition is limited, but it’s possible to replenish them by collecting power-ups or executing tricks. These special moves can be practiced in a special trick trainer section.

More reviews can be found here.

3 Minute Games

By: ithamore

On: December 11th, 2006

Now that the 10th iteration of the 3 Minute Game Contest (a.k.a. 3 Punge) has been declared complete, its results have finally been given an official page (roughly translated from Japanese to English by Google’s Language Tools). Each game is suppose to be based on a 3 minute theme, but longer mini-games have also been accepted. The winner is suppose to be “3 hours” worth of play and, from what I read, pretty funny, but it was created with RPG Maker. I usually don’t bother with any of the games requiring RPGM’s RTPs.

As for the non-RPGM games, Crostar (now Qrostar) released another cute platformer, Sky-Whirling Geo, which didn’t fare as well as his entry for the previous contest, Supakingurato. I prefer the gameplay of Supakingurato, and it’s more forgiving than its successor.

Granspope Frial is TERU-soach’s best effort in most ways. The graphics have a clean, interesting style, and the design’s concept has some good potential. You race as a bird against the clock by pressing a single key (‘Z’ or ‘Space’) to fly through a course covered with acceleration bars, which boosts you at the angle at which you touch them as long as your momentum is increasing. The problem is that the timing is quite tricky and that there is little room for error when it comes to hitting the 90˚ direction switching boosters. Course 0 took about 10 tries before I got the hang of it and unlocked the next. Although it might have been because I’m a bit rhythmical challenged, it took me much longer to get past Course 1. I tried 20 or 30 times at first and several times more since September, but it wasn’t until yesterday that I was able to shave off those last 10 seconds I needed loose in order to progress. Course 2 was a good change of pace with new layout elements, but Course 3 is currently frustrating me. Still, I want to get into that sweet spot of the game’s flow, which makes Granspope Frial my favorite of the entries for the 10th contest. But it’s not recommended for those low in patience.

Probably the easiest entry to get into, however, is Y. ABE’s Whirlwind. Its semi-auto-lock aim and invincibility probably made it seem too easy to most voters and earned it a shared rank of 11th place. As a 360˚ turret-like mini-STG, however, it’s rather decent.

Back in October, Tim posted Sky-Whirling Geo, Whirlwind, and a couple more 3 Punge games at Independent Gaming. You can head over there to get more details on them and his opinion.

Recently, the number of decent games submitted to 3 Punge has been improving. There still haven’t been any gems to match the sparkle and shine of Omega’s Every Extend and Dan! Da! Dan! from the 2nd and 5th contests, and there still are several disappointing submissions. However, one of the best things about the site is it also serves as a portal to other games made by its contestants.

The newcomer who took 3rd place, nemu90kWw, has created several Flash games. The best is a remake of Flixx, FliFlixx, which originally appeared on the wonderful PC98. He also made a Parodius inspired STG and a cat bouncing game, but you can read about those and his 3 Punge entry in Tim’s posts.

Then there’s Disorder Island: a simple platformer during stage 1 and 2, but stage 3 is infuriating. (Controls: hold ‘Shift’ to run with the arrows, up jumps, down crouches or drops through the platform, ‘Z’ swings the sword, and ‘X’ throws a bomb once you’ve defeated enough enemies.)

Y. ABE, for whom the 10th contest was also a first, has 2 other STGs on his site. Electrical Bird, which Tim found disappointing, offers more play and challenge than Whirlwind, so I prefer it. But I also have a soft spot for graphics and music that have a computerized or electronic aesthetic, which makes me a bit biased. The new 1.0 version is even better than 0.9 was. Scene1 hasn’t changed much and Scene3 has been tweaked, but Scene2 has had 4 elevator columns added to them, which can raise both the player and the enemies. And the best change is the lightening attack has been replaced with jets of plasma that shoot out like wings. It works very well with the new energy chain scoring system.

On the other hand, Marsenary (direct download) is different from his other 2 games. The environment is a 3D sim, and it has arena play (which has been abandoned), a story/mission mode, an online high score mode for each area, and ship customization. Even with all that, though, I found it less enjoyable than Electrical Bird.

Last week, the deadline for the 11th 3 Minute Game Contest was announced for December 24. A prize won’t be awarded to a winner outside of Japan, but that doesn’t exclude any of us from entering for bragging rights. Just be sure to follow the rules as well as you can to keep your entry from being disqualified. As for myself, I’m looking forward to more 3 Punge gaming in January.

Game Development 101 by Pug Fugly

By: Tim

On: December 8th, 2006

Let’s have a look at what all the noise is about.

gum – The Pyramid was totally ultra boring.

Optum – Whilst the game is technically flawless, like many shooters of the generation it does suffer from repetitive gameplay. There is plenty to do and joypad support helps for those not so good with the keyboard but after completing it on one difficulty, it may feel like too much of the same on subsequent attempts.

Well, if the Retro Remakes Compo 2006 Grand Prize winner is a boring and repetitive shooter then I shudder to think how bad the rest of the entries are.

Retro Remakes 2006 Compo Results

By: Tim

On: December 7th, 2006

About a week old, though I’m certain that there’s many of us who had not sampled everything that this compo had to offer yet. The first twenty entries are all brilliant stuff, especially The Pyramid which finished with a score of nearly ten percent more than it’s closest competition.

Download page for all entries can be browsed by clicking here.

(Jet Set Willy Online will be released pretty soon.)

IK Snake

By: Brandon McCartin (BMcC)

On: November 14th, 2006

Saw this over at Kohler’s blog.

Proving once again that blood and rotting mouse carcasses make everything more fun, IK Snake is a realistic “variation of the classic snake game” that pushed the TI-83 into millions of homes everywhere during the console wars of the late 80s.

According to the site: “The snake uses Inverse Kinematic physics to behave and look like a real snake.” Well, duh.

Get over 10,000 points to unlock Slowdown Mode!

Multiplayer Asteroids

By: Derek Yu

On: November 13th, 2006

But… where are the actual asteroids? No matter, it’s still a fun little online deathmatch game that’s easy as pie to set up. Just pop in your username and you’re directed to a random room (reload if you end up in an empty room).

Arrow keys move and Spacebar shoots. Press Enter to chat. Green items power up your gun, the red cross heals you (Ctrl to activate), and the white circle is shield (Ctrl also).

Had a nice chat in-game with the guy who wrote the flash client, incidentally.

(Source: 4cr)

Cholo Remake

By: ithamore

On: November 9th, 2006

Ovine’s Cholo Remake, which has reached its first anniversary, places you in control of a “RAT” droid, which must be used to free your fellow citizens and yourself from the bunker after generations of imprisonment. Eventually, you will collect specialized droids strewn about the robot controlled city to aid your mission.

In the website’s archives, there is plenty of backstory provided in the pre-nuclear war news of the city and in a copy of the novella that had been included with the original game in 1986. I appreciate the extra content, but it’s not necessary for getting into the game. Although, some helpful hints can be gleaned from the news.

It’s a very open game that not only encourages but demands exploration. Besides having to find the droids and Rampaks need to complete the game, there are plenty of hidden secrets to discover.  It has a slow pace (which is very fitting for its atmosphere) and can easily take 5 to 10 hours complete. There is a light FPS element to Cholo, you shouldn’t expect it to get intense.

In addition to all the venturing in the game, I admire its Tron-ish look and its futuristic, ambient music. Ovine could have made the city larger, but this game shines in so many ways that I have no real reason to complain.

Now, please excuse me. The computer has reminded me to drink my Choco while it’s still warm.

G-Force Preview

By: Tim

On: November 3rd, 2006

Retro is cool, and you know it. Even big name directors are getting into the game with Transformers and Speed Racer remakes.

Information about G-Force can be found over at bob’s site, and the2bears previewed it about a week ago.

Look forward to a release sometime next week.