tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3387495443226852794.post4327668228675944118..comments2024-03-29T05:52:53.051+11:00Comments on The Adventurers Guild: Game 39: Earthrise - Final RatingThe Tricksterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01419316208187255801noreply@blogger.comBlogger53125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3387495443226852794.post-78223943012344881842014-02-03T07:03:15.029+11:002014-02-03T07:03:15.029+11:00Yep. I hear it is quite good.
By the way, I have...Yep. I hear it is quite good. <br /><br />By the way, I have a Nintendo 3DS now, if anyone has friend codes >.>Canageekhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03770924810559440307noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3387495443226852794.post-66261373258634287012014-01-30T01:21:44.501+11:002014-01-30T01:21:44.501+11:00Oh don't tempt me Ilmari! :-D
@Canageek: wasn...Oh don't tempt me Ilmari! :-D<br /><br />@Canageek: wasn't that Kirby game the one made with yarn instead of paper? That is one charming little game.<br /><br />Charleshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04860506019349657883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3387495443226852794.post-15103726136817920532014-01-29T20:15:13.017+11:002014-01-29T20:15:13.017+11:00Charles: Could we kickstart you to an early retire...Charles: Could we kickstart you to an early retirement? ;)Ilmari Jauhiainenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01655841880034965950noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3387495443226852794.post-78920359988549737332014-01-28T10:55:02.928+11:002014-01-28T10:55:02.928+11:00Quite possibly that is my view. I'm more famil...Quite possibly that is my view. I'm more familiar with books from back then, which are often very serious (Late 80s was a lot of the cyberpunk stuff), and even the movies I've seen from back then tended to take themselves seriously even when they perhaps shouldn't (Escape from New York, Die Hard, Tron). The one exception I can think of was Escape from LA, which was kind of painful at times (The surfing sequence for example). <br /><br />I think you might be right, in that the silliness comes mostly from a few companies (Sierra, Lucasarts) and the writers at them having a certain sense of humour, and then other people copy them, injecting imitations of that type of humour into there games. You see a similar thing today; Gears of War becomes huge using a very gritty brown and grey pallet, as does Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. All of a sudden a ton of games are using that pallet and art style. Before that, someone managed to do bloom well, and all of a sudden a ton of games featured heavily washed out art. Heck, look how many games have been using 2D/paper as a feature after Paper Mario and that Kirby game managed to do it. Canageekhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03770924810559440307noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3387495443226852794.post-69997654818838868382014-01-28T01:05:08.611+11:002014-01-28T01:05:08.611+11:00(Ouch... don't know what happened to my last p...(Ouch... don't know what happened to my last post. Blogger spitted out a jumbled mess of repeated paragraphs. I was too painful to see, I had to delete it out of its misery. A shortened version follows)<br /><br />Canageek: that'll be one of my retirement projects :-D<br /><br />I will reiterate that IMO the one thing to keep in mind at all times when revisiting and evaluating classics of yesteryear is Context. Revisionism is fashionable because it's easy; anyone can laugh from behind their 00's glasses at the way things were back then. Many of these products were immersed in or informed by the zeitgeist of the 80s, when the word "silly" associated with "fun" was often the whole point of a repurposed subversiness expressed through music, books, movies, clothing, and of course attitude. I'm not directing this particularly at you, Canageek, but from the first time I read one of your complaints about about silliness in old games, I wondered if you wouldn't have similar problems with "The Lost Boys" or "Fright Night" - to cite just two commercial hits from the era- insofar as their status as vampire movies.<br /><br />(Not saying these expressions were all good or not ridiculous. But when I see someone mocking shoulder pads and big hair bands, I point them to modern drop crotch pants and the latest teenybopper hit, and tell them to get off my lawn XD)<br /><br />Add to all this an exhilarating new technology that provided curious minds an almost limitless array of new worlds to create and explore; the fact that most titles were handcrafted by a couple of guys (spelunking pals Crowthers & Woods come to mind) and gaming wasn't Big Business as it is today, and a good dose of light-heartedness on the part of producers and consumers feels quite natural.<br />Charleshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04860506019349657883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3387495443226852794.post-71506253054921026742014-01-28T00:52:40.595+11:002014-01-28T00:52:40.595+11:00This comment has been removed by the author.Charleshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04860506019349657883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3387495443226852794.post-30207183649164103742014-01-26T14:02:00.385+11:002014-01-26T14:02:00.385+11:00Ilmari Jauhiainen: That sounds right. I do know th...Ilmari Jauhiainen: That sounds right. I do know there were also serious games, as I recall my Dad has a copy of the Fahrenheit 451 game. <br /><br />Remember, I don't know release dates, I just have a big pile of manuals I've read and what I've seen on Trickster's blog. I also recall a lot of those games having really cool covers, the manual would have some epic= fantasy quest, and then the play example would involve a battery, a credit card and a drake or something like that. <br /><br />Basically, one of you needs to sit down and play all of them on The Text Adventure Addict and resolve this. Canageekhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03770924810559440307noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3387495443226852794.post-78800315306696255312014-01-25T10:05:02.386+11:002014-01-25T10:05:02.386+11:00Ilmari: No worries, you'll see I indeed agree ...Ilmari: No worries, you'll see I indeed agree with basically all you wrote; I was mainly questioning the notion that most pre-graphics adventure games were uniformly "silly". Thanks for the link! :-)Charleshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04860506019349657883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3387495443226852794.post-64590073946056484352014-01-25T05:51:36.316+11:002014-01-25T05:51:36.316+11:00Charles: I think we are arguing on the same side h...Charles: I think we are arguing on the same side here. I was originally just flabbergasted that Canageek attempted to prove something by comparing Zork with modern games of other genres. To me, that sounded like comparing Krazy Kat with Wire and on that basis saying that comics are more juvenile than TV series. Zork is a really early game and first versions on the mainframe do date back to the time of Scott Adams games, so it cannot really be compared even with later Infocom games - like you said, the silliness in them was just part of the hilarity of the pioneering days.<br /><br />Still, I have to contest that outright farce wasn't a commercial success before Sierra. Have you seen the Infocom Sales Figures from the early 1980s? Until 1984 their biggest hit for each year was Zork, then in 1985 it was beaten by Hitchhiker's and in 1986 Leather Goddesses - seems like the audience wanted their laughs, even if there were more serious titles on offer. Here's a link to the actual paper:<br /><br />http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2008/09/great_scott_infocoms_alltime_s.php<br /><br />Canageek: That might have been Guild of Thieves from Magnetic Scrolls. If you haven't seen Infocom manuals, you might want to check this site:<br /><br />http://infodoc.plover.net/manuals/Ilmari Jauhiainenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01655841880034965950noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3387495443226852794.post-38685523201979037822014-01-25T04:48:46.298+11:002014-01-25T04:48:46.298+11:00Yeah, it could just be my Dad liked silly text adv...Yeah, it could just be my Dad liked silly text adventures, or that the freinds he got most of his games from did. I just remember some very silly manuals when going through my Dad's C64 box, that contrasted with the very awesome Ultima and The Magic Candle manuals (I still vote for TMC as the best manual of all time.) Some of it was done really well, like there was one about a thief that had a special interview on the thieves guild by correspondent A. Nonymous, and a character who talked about the "Egyptian Hat Dance" (You lie on a bed, put a hat on the bedpost, then drink until the hat dances). <br /><br />But yeah, while I like Monty Python's better sketches if you are doing humour I do think Blackadder was far funnier overall. Perhaps not as funny as Monty Python's best, but on average far better. Canageekhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03770924810559440307noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3387495443226852794.post-23637325183157227592014-01-24T17:29:16.288+11:002014-01-24T17:29:16.288+11:00About killing dragons with your bare hands? Totall...About killing dragons with your bare hands? Totally doable in Skyrim with the right skills.<br /><br />http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxkdss4f86IKenny McCormickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01553499727945099493noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3387495443226852794.post-8532713717254412562014-01-24T10:42:01.600+11:002014-01-24T10:42:01.600+11:00Of course silliness in adventure games predates Si...Of course silliness in adventure games predates Sierra, but not all adventure games were silly. I was addressing Canageek's question by pointing out the folly of using Zork as a measuring stick. Those Infocom examples I gave are proof that there were plenty of "serious" options available in the market as well. In fact, the adventure genre at that time was positively mature compared to other genres. It wasn't until Sierra / Lucas arrived and kickstarted the graphical adventure that outright farce became such a commercial success, but then still you had titles like the Manhunter games, the Police Quests or The Dig.<br /><br />I'm not counting the "silliness" inherent to early entries like Scott Adams' adventures, because I actually think that kind of playfulness applies to any early titles in any genre. Other than that, we'd have to precisely define "silly". Charleshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04860506019349657883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3387495443226852794.post-32667030194675645542014-01-24T07:32:00.635+11:002014-01-24T07:32:00.635+11:00Yes, I was just trying to answer Canageek's sp...Yes, I was just trying to answer Canageek's speculation whether silliness of adventure games predates Sierra and perhaps goes to the very beginnings of the genre. I'd say there was definitely a streak of silliness in the very first text adventures, even if the games were simple and otherwise lacked all plot. Even original Adventure had silly lines referencing Monty Python sketches or interactions like this:<br /><br />KILL DRAGON: With what? Your bare hands?<br />YES: Congratulations! You have just vanquished a dragon with your bare hands! (Unbelievable, isn't it?)<br /><br />Other early text adventures had loads of such more or less fun jokes (Zork being prime example, because it often seems like a parody of Adventure). So yeah, silliness has been with adventuring a long time and it certainly didn't begin with Space Quest.<br /><br />I still don't think it's something inherent with the puzzle solving, as Canageek suggested. At the very beginning, I think, it was just a matter of programmers not being interested of plotting, but of technical challenges and making devious puzzles - these were not stories, but games or programs, so why not use also some silly moments to lighten up the mood. I suppose you can see similar trend in some of the earliest CRPGs (just think of Ultima 2), so it's not just adventure games that suffered from it (and outside these two genres were there lot of plots at the beginning of 1980s?).<br /><br />I might suggest that small numbers of serious adventure games in the late 1980s could be explained by lack of buyers for such games. Infocom ruled text adventure scene, but even for them the real profits came from Zork and Hitchhiker's, both really silly games and mostly just puzzle fests. People weren't apparently ready to pay for any serious stuff. A game like Infidel was hated, just because the game has an unlikable protagonist and because it has an "unhappy" ending where the player character gets his just desserts. I'd wager Sierra faced similar concerns in the period 1984-1989, when it ruled the graphic adventure markets - Space Quest and Larry sold well and got more and more sequels, but no such luck for Gold Rush or Codename Iceman.Ilmari Jauhiainenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01655841880034965950noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3387495443226852794.post-11963942482190774292014-01-23T23:23:48.997+11:002014-01-23T23:23:48.997+11:00Ah yes, if we go back that early I would suggest t...Ah yes, if we go back that early I would suggest that parser and memory limitations are indeed a factor in the prevalence of simpler stuff. Still, simple does not equate silly, and I think Canageek's long-standing hangup is mainly with silly humor in more modern adventures.Charleshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04860506019349657883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3387495443226852794.post-5075411218576452262014-01-23T16:23:38.972+11:002014-01-23T16:23:38.972+11:00Yes, I know Infocom had quite developed plots. I w...Yes, I know Infocom had quite developed plots. I was speaking more of the general text adventure scene at the beginning of 1980s, which was dominated by likes of Scott Adams text adventures - minimal parser, rudimentary plot, often nothing more than a treasure hunt, full of silly and absurd puzzles.Ilmari Jauhiainenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01655841880034965950noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3387495443226852794.post-61785688567695196612014-01-23T09:25:12.633+11:002014-01-23T09:25:12.633+11:00Actually, I'd counter that a great deal, if no...Actually, I'd counter that a great deal, if not most of the early Infocom adventures were serious in tone. Off the top of my head: Deadline, Infidel, the Enchanter trilogy, Cutthroats, Border Zone, Moonmist, A Mind Forever Voyaging, The Lurking Horror, Trinity, etc. Some of them included occasional instances of humor but it wasn't of the "silly" brand favored by the adventure greats such as Lucasarts or Sierra. Charleshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04860506019349657883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3387495443226852794.post-58244075566047480092014-01-23T08:02:19.094+11:002014-01-23T08:02:19.094+11:00Yes, Zork was pretty silly, as were most of the ea...Yes, Zork was pretty silly, as were most of the early text adventures. But I think it reflects more the time than the genre. Back in the early days, games of most other genres had no plot to speak of, beyond the crude "kill the bad guy". Some CRPGs had serious enough plots, but even they had to often use manuals to actually give the story.Ilmari Jauhiainenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01655841880034965950noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3387495443226852794.post-88358783012478323152014-01-23T06:39:45.599+11:002014-01-23T06:39:45.599+11:00Canageek: Valeyard and War Doctor - Hey, there'...Canageek: Valeyard and War Doctor - Hey, there's limit to darkness ;) So, no.<br /><br />Aperama: Seventh Doctor - And we have a winner! Kinq's Quest collection found its owner!<br /><br />Like I said, Sylvester Mccoy might not be the best actor (although I think he's not that bad and I love his Scottish accent), but all in all, when considering series, books and audios, Seventh is the character that intrigued me most (and got me most pissed to BBC for cutting his era short).<br /><br />Machiavellian is an often used adjective, which accounts for the hints for dark edge and manipulativeness. As for other hints, there's reference to (Cartmel) master plan and novel "Human nature" (google if you are interested); his very last lines in series spoke of tea getting cold, Ace was his companion (let's all forget Mel); and Mccoy apparently had a comedy act where he put ferrets down his trousers. And the most obvious hint of them all: "First Doctor is probably something like seventh on my list " - you can't get more explicit than that.<br /><br />And I must also tell how excited I was, when the first Hobbit came to film theaters: "Who on Earth is that animal loving hippy? Tom Bombadil? No, it's THE DOCTOR!!!!!!!".Ilmari Jauhiainenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01655841880034965950noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3387495443226852794.post-17462417369243551762014-01-23T06:21:21.564+11:002014-01-23T06:21:21.564+11:00Yeah, I agree that we see the genre branch out. I ...Yeah, I agree that we see the genre branch out. I think this predates those companies though, going back to text adventures; Zork had a lot of silly things in it, didn't it? <br /><br />I'm wondering if the method of puzzle solving lends itself to that style of humour, where being silly lets you get away with making things a bit more nonsensical?Canageekhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03770924810559440307noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3387495443226852794.post-50223129667877518032014-01-22T13:45:32.991+11:002014-01-22T13:45:32.991+11:00Sylvester McCoy? Really? He'd be second last o...Sylvester McCoy? Really? He'd be second last on my list. Go figure, right? Aperamahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13669724908141286435noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3387495443226852794.post-60774695447745931372014-01-22T11:10:15.730+11:002014-01-22T11:10:15.730+11:00Well... we're having Circuit's Edge (ongoi...Well... we're having Circuit's Edge (ongoing), Heart of China (goddamn awesome), Rise of the Dragon (pretty meh...) and a few others coming up. Also, don't forget that the 1st entry of this blog is definitely not wacky silly.<br /><br />This trend of goofball humor stems basically from Sierra, LucasArts and Legend; who, I concur, are the triumvirate of major publishers for that dominated the adventure scene back then.<br /><br />Today, we have a lot to thank this genre for, if you are into any games that are based on horror survival (a far cry from being silly).Kenny McCormickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01553499727945099493noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3387495443226852794.post-33342020812940889782014-01-22T09:13:24.517+11:002014-01-22T09:13:24.517+11:00Well, given that you like dark Doctors, and implie...Well, given that you like dark Doctors, and implied it isn't one of the series leads, I'll guess Michael Jayston or John Hurt, as both played evil versions of the Doctor. Canageekhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03770924810559440307noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3387495443226852794.post-26792458985468533382014-01-22T09:08:55.722+11:002014-01-22T09:08:55.722+11:00I'm pretty sure I know the answer, despite not...I'm pretty sure I know the answer, despite not ever really having watched the show. Come on people! ;)The Tricksterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01419316208187255801noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3387495443226852794.post-16246984509144367852014-01-22T09:07:08.668+11:002014-01-22T09:07:08.668+11:00Andy Panthro: No Ace this time either! I think I l...Andy Panthro: No Ace this time either! I think I like Third Doctor least, a little bit too dandy for me, bragging about his friendship with Chairman Mao.<br /><br />It's getting close! And I thought I dropped some obvious hints over there. Soon I'll have to ferret my pants, if no one guesses this...Ilmari Jauhiainenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01655841880034965950noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3387495443226852794.post-82137735352072578942014-01-22T08:35:50.315+11:002014-01-22T08:35:50.315+11:002nd guess time: Jon Pertwee. An underrated classic...2nd guess time: Jon Pertwee. An underrated classic doctor (in my opinion anyway), and very different in style compared to his predecessors.Andy_Panthrohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18231815646876343380noreply@blogger.com