This is a double indie game review of the Bookwalker and Bone Stasis Totem, both played with press keys provided by the developers.
0:00 Intro
00:14 The Bookwalker: Thief of Tales
4:51 Stasis Bone Totem
4D Golf Releases on Steam
4D Golf, from CodeParade, responsible for the similarly mind-bending Hyperbolica, is amazing because it doesn’t cheat. It provides a genuine 4D-world in which to play the game of golf in. Not in the sense that time is a fourth dimension; time passes in this four-dimensional world too. It basically asks, what if our normal world were four-dimensional. And had a mini-putt course in it. So, here is the release trailer on Youtube:
The trailer has an especially intriguing aspect to it because it promises a big feature that hasn’t been revealed publicly yet outside the release of the game. To find out what it is one will just have to buy and play the game to find out… or read the comments, where a couple of people have spoiled it. It’s possibly best that they did though, because it suggests that 4D Golf is even more amazing than it seems at first.
4D Golf (Steam, $20)
The Digital Antiquarian on the Rise of Age of Empires
In the early days of Microsoft they really looked down on gaming, fueled by an antipathy towards entertainment by many higher-ups in the company. The Digital Antiquarian recounts the story of the game that got Microsoft started on computer gaming, ultimately leading to the rise of Xbox, and from there, Halo. It’s a longer piece, and mostly text, but the DA knows their stuff. Myself, I’ve never played Age of Empires! Maybe I should try it….
The CRPG Addict Reaches Nethack 3.1
He’s been at this since the days of GameSetWatch’s run of @Play, but the CRPG Addict has finally reached Nethack 3.1, the game where Nethack reaches most of its final form. It’s true that it has gained features since then (especially weapon skills and splitting apart race and role from each other), but it was the version that introduced the current-day structure of the dungeon, added the many role-specific Quests, made the Wizard’s Tower a three level stronghold instead of just a little place in the mazes of Gehennom, put in the Bell, Book and Candle subquest, handed the Amulet of Yendor to the High Priest of Moloch, and put in the Elemental Planes and the current form of the Astral Plane.
Here are all his Nethack 3.1 posts to date:
Game 504: Nethack [3.1 series] (1993) – Beginning adventures
Nethack [3.1]: Blessed and Cursed – Discovering exercise, death by battery drain
Nethack [3.1]: Rust and Ruin – Beginning of very good game
Nethack [3.1]: Quest for Glory – Middle dungeon levels, Rogue level, Quest branch
Nethack [3.1]: Wish List – Exploring the lower regions of the main dungeon
Nethack [3.1]: Beyond This Place Of Wrath And Tears: from the Castle to Fort Ludios to entering Gehennom to killing Baalzebub
Nethack [3.1]: Nothing Lasts Forever – from killing the Wizard for the first time to getting the Amulet up to escaping the main dungeon for the Elemental Planes
Indie Showcase For 3/25/24
The indie showcase highlights the many indie games we play weekly on this channel. Get in touch if you would like to submit a game. All games shown are either press key or demo submissions.
0:00 Intro
00:14 The God Unit
2:06 Redshot
4:07 Hex of the Lich
6:26 So to Speak
8:11 It’s a Wrap
10:08 We Took That Trip
Sundry Sunday: Baldur’s Gate 3 Goes Too Far
Sundry Sunday is our weekly feature of fun gaming culture finds and videos, from across the years and even decades.
From the excellent D&D-focused animation channel Dungeon Soup. I won’t say anything more except it has to do with Baldur’s Gate 3 (as it says in the title), and that it’s NSFW in theme if not technically in visuals.
Indie Game Showcase For 3/23/24
The weekly indie showcase highlights the many games we play here on the channel, and I’m taking submissions for future ones. All games shown are either press key or demo submissions.
0:00 Intro
00:14 Endling Extinction is Forever
2:32 Myth of Mirka
3:32 Fabled Lands
5:35 Kokoro Clover Season 1
7:32 Affogato
9:27 Rogue Genesia
From Supper Mario Broth: Luigi Concept Art & Mario Strikers Banners
From the “Small Findings” sub-blog of Mario obscurities site Supper Mario Broth comes this collection of concept art for Luigi, from last year’s Super Mario Bros. Movie. Here is the original post.
Here’s another image, from the main Supper Mario Broth site. Several spinoff Mario titles have promotional images for fake Mario universe companies used as background art elements. Most of the time these are used in the Mario Kart games. There were a few made for the original Mario Strikers, that went unused in the final game. This one appears to be for some kind of Bowser Support Hotline. Original post.
Old Vintage Computing Research: The Web-@nywhere Watch
Back in January, the wonderful blog Old Vintage Computing Research, which covers all kinds of old machines and devices, presented this bizarre “smart” watch from the early days of the World Wide Web. It didn’t connect to the internet itself; it sat in a cradle and had up to 93K (who could need more?) of precious plain-text data sent to it from a Windows 9X or 2000 machine, that you could then read “on the go,” “on the road,” “in transit,” “while sitting on a subway car sadly isolated from a web browser,” etc. This essential device would have cost you $85 at the time.
Imagine trying to read approximately 20 print pages’ worth of internet text on that tiny display! For more, please click through for the device’s history and loving paens to its gross unusability.
I couldn’t let this promotional image from the device’s long-dead website go without comment though, offering “Free download from WEB”:
Completing Arcade Dragon’s Lair
Dragon’s Lair was the original laserdisc arcade game, and a big hit at the time. It immediately caused a large part of the ailing arcade sector to swing around to doing laserdisc games, a trend that will seem very familiar to people who have been following NFTs, overwhelming the market and ultimately further contributing to the downfall of the golden era of U.S. arcades instead of saving it. Dragon’s Lair, and its sequel Dragon’s Lair II: Time Warp and spinoff Space Ace, were by many accounts among the best of the era, with excellent cel-drawn animation provided by the studio of former Disney animator Don Bluth.
Now that I have properly introduced the concept to those who might not have known, I can now introduce this video (14 minutes), put together by the Youtube channel Broken Arcade, which demonstrates how to complete Dragon’s Lair. It’s not a perfect playthrough, but it is done on one credit, and while it plays the player explains what movements he’s doing on the joystick and button, along with notes on timing and tips for getting each scene right. The directions and button presses needed to finish each scene (which are presented randomly in the game) are also listed in the description to the video.
Even if you’ve never heard of Dragon’s Lair before, it’s worth it to watch the lush animation! Here it is embedded:
Two Slices of Indie Platformers Review
This is a double indie game review of Forza Polpo and Doomblade, both played with press keys provided by the developer.
0:00 Intro
00:14 Forza Polpo
7:38 Doomblade
Demoscene: La Linea
The demoscene is a rich source of awesome, and at times ridiculous, imagery and sounds. Once in a while we sift through it to find things to entertain you with.
Demos aren’t necessarily out to wow you by pushing a computer’s hardware to its absolute limits. Sometimes one will just present something that was obviously (to people who understand the platform) challenging to do, but is fun for its own sake.
La Linea is a series of short films made for television created by Italian animator Osvaldo Cavandoli. They may be familiar to 80s kids who watched a show called The Great Space Coaster, as they were in regular rotation as segments on that show. They feature an expressive and excitable character, known as “Mr. Linea,” who speaks gibberish and has a variety of adventures, despite the fact that he and his world are represented (with some cheating) as contortions of a single horizontal line. The character often speaks to the off-screen animator, asking for various items, devices and, occasionally, other characters to interact with. Every cartoon ends with the main character falling off or through the line in some way. Some of them are collected on Youtube. Here is an example (2 1/2 minutes):
In 2002, the demogroup Breeze made a tribute to Cavandoli’s work in the form of a full-length La Linea cartoon running on a Commodore 64. It doesn’t have the distinctive music or the gibberish, and there’s no photorealistic hand that reaches in to draw parts of the scene, but the style is otherwise faithful to the original. It is a remake of La Linea #10. Please, enjoy (3 1/2 minutes)!