Classic Video Game - Forum Guessing Game

[desertfish]

Yeah I was thinking Tetris too but that originated in Russia, not Japan

[Cyber]

I'll try to guess it's Space Invaders / Galaga / Galaxian.

Galaga is still one of my favorite games to play.

[Strider]

All very good guesses, and great games in their own right, but incorrect.

Will add more clues tomorrow.

 

[ZeroByte]

ボンバーマンですね?

 

 

Edited June 25, 2021 by ZeroByte

[Strider]

17 hours ago, ZeroByte said:

ボンバーマンですね?

 

 

 

You're correct!

Bomberman, again, one of my all time game series.

https://bomberman.fandom.com/wiki/Bomberman_(series)

It got it's start as a tech demo in 1980, and was released on the NEC PC-8801, NEC PC-6001 MKII, Fujitsu FM-7, Sharp MZ-700, Sharp MZ-2000, Sharp X1 and MSX computers before hitting the Famicom in 1985 and NES in 1987. Spawning a huge list of sequels, spin-off's, and clones spanning over 3 decades.

 

Fun fact #1: In Europe, you may have known the game as "Eric and the Floaters" on the ZX Spectrum and MSX! It was "graphically modified", but really close to the original NEC PC version.

 

Fun fact #2: The first Commodore Clone was known as "Blow It!, released in 1986, with several others to follow over the years.

 

Time to go play some more Bomberman! I have been playing it a lot lately when I am bored.

Edited June 26, 2021 by Strider

[desertfish]

I didn't know the C64 had Bomberman clones!  Never played nor seen it back in the days, would have liked to though

[John Chow Seymour]

Wow, I had no idea about the history of this series. "Eric and the floaters" might the one of the worst game names I've ever heard, lol.  And look at the art on that Hudson Soft cartridge - you'd never guess which game series that turned into based on how those characters are drawn!

[Strider]

7 hours ago, desertfish said:

I didn't know the C64 had Bomberman clones!  Never played nor seen it back in the days, would have liked to though

Yeah, there are actually several. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Bomberman_video_games

I have since added several to my C64 Mini.

There is even an MSX version where they tried Bomberman in a 3D world.

 

5 hours ago, John Chow Seymour said:

Wow, I had no idea about the history of this series. "Eric and the floaters" might the one of the worst game names I've ever heard, lol.  And look at the art on that Hudson Soft cartridge - you'd never guess which game series that turned into based on how those characters are drawn!

Yeah, he has had some changes, been both "Human" and robot. I agree, that was a silly name and I have no idea why they decided to rename it for the European market. haha

Another fun fact about Bomberman I didn't give as a clue becasue I thought it would make it too easy to figure out...

Bomberman is in Lode Runner!

Quote

The NES version, developed by Hudson Soft, marked the first appearance of Bombermen as the opposing robots.^[51] The end screen to Bomberman for the NES notes that the original White Bomberman has turned human and hints at his appearance in another game, with the Lode Runner behind him. In the Japanese version, the reference is more direct: "Congratulations - Bomber Man becomes Runner - See you again in Lode Runner".

 

 

Yeah, this is one of those games that has a pretty neat history.

[EMwhite]

Deleted... late post 

Edited June 27, 2021 by EMwhite

[ZeroByte]

Okay here's one:
This RPG series started on the Apple ][ and was ported to many other systems at the time. This game's presentation is almost entirely in 1st person 3d as shown in a small window at the top-left, which is also used to display the portraits of NPCs you meet, and monsters that you encounter. Most of the screen is taken up by the message log and party's stats. The series introduced a fairly unique character class for which the series is named. This class enabled a newer mechanic which is similar to party buffs in modern MMORPGs.

While the first installment took place entirely within the walls of a single city, this installment sees the party travel to several towns, each hosting one of the dungeons that must be completed in order to win the game. The game's creator is a devout Christian, and the towns were named after 1st century cities notable from the New Testament as locations of early church congregations. Interestingly, these were initially supposed to just be place holder names but the names were never changed.

(Personally, this is the RPG series that I preferred to play rather than Ultima.)

[Strider]

I know this one! I love this series!  But I want to give others the chance to guess. Or at least, I am 98% sure.

For me, I first played it on the C64, and later on  the NES, MS-DOS, and I am currently playing it on Windows as I take sips from my mug.

I literally just bought the remastered original trilogy on Steam a couple days ago, it's on sale for under $5, worth every penny! .. Again!

[Cyber]

Eye of the Beholder seems to fit description.

[borgar]

13 hours ago, Strider said:

I literally just bought the remastered original trilogy on Steam a couple days ago, it's on sale for under $5, worth every penny! .. Again!

Ah, a fellow visitor to Skara Brae. I also played the original on C64 and bought the remasters. I never played the second or third game on C64 and haven't gotten started on those in the remaster either.

I have fond memories of playing this (with a suitable stack of gridpaper), though I have to admit that without the new automapper in the remaster I would never consider replaying these today.

[Strider]

1 hour ago, borgar said:

Ah, a fellow visitor to Skara Brae. I also played the original on C64 and bought the remasters. I never played the second or third game on C64 and haven't gotten started on those in the remaster either.

I have fond memories of playing this (with a suitable stack of gridpaper), though I have to admit that without the new automapper in the remaster I would never consider replaying these today.

Yes I am!

Oh yeah, I would not have the time and/or patience these days to do it "old school", mapping it out on paper as I go. One of those "good times memories" I don't care to relive.

[ZeroByte]

6 hours ago, Strider said:

Oh yeah, I would not have the time and/or patience these days to do it "old school", mapping it out on paper as I go. One of those "good times memories" I don't care to relive.

I usually have to chime in on the comments whenever a young'un is doing a "retrospective" on some classic game on NES/SNES/etc - that's just how games worked back then.

You see a marshmallow on a table.
] GET MARSHMALLOW
As you reach for the marshmallow, it begins to swell to enormous proportions. It appears that you have actually discovered an acid blob creature. It engulfs you and you are slowly dissolved over the next few days.
You Have Died.
Load/Save/Quit? _
The freakin' marshmallow would end up not having anything whatsoever to do with the rest of the game. It was just a death trap for you to trigger. Jumpman would be considered extremely unfair in today's world, but back then, it was just how games were. You had to learn to grab the bombs in a certain order, and that's just part of the game. Nowadays, controllers would be thrown through screens. So when Zelda A Link To The Past came out for SNES, I actually felt like it was cheating that the game had a special graphic to tell you which walls were bombable, and that it put little flashing numbers on the map to tell you where the dungeons are and in which order you should visit them.

"Back in MY day, ya had ta burn every stinkin' bush in the game. Ya only got ta use the candle once on a screen tho, so ya had ta keep walkin' back n' forth for hours. Ya had ta remember which one you were supposed to try next. They didn't give ya the red candle 'till after ya already found the dungeon that was under a bush. By that point, ya done tried every stinkin' bush in the game. Didn't need to be able ta light as many fires as ya want anymore. Not like now fer you kids, with yer automapping and yer waypoints. Back in MY day, if ya wanted a map, y'got out a paper n' a pencil. That's how it was and we loved it b'gum!"

[desertfish]

1 hour ago, ZeroByte said:

Back in MY day, if ya wanted a map, y'got out a paper n' a pencil.

I did this for Dungeon Master, Dungeon Master 2, Eye of the Beholder 1,2 and 3, and Black Crypt.

The spinner tiles were HELL.

 

Edited July 1, 2021 by desertfish

[Strider]

What I find funny is when they remake or remaster a game these days, even the one I think your clue is referring to, they almost always have two modes. "Modern" and "Original" difficulty. We look back wondering how we ever made it through some of the games we grew up on.

Wait... You only get 3 lives? No continues!?!?!

You have to start all the way back at the BEGINNING if you die!?!?!

Mile long passwords... Hoping you wrote it down correctly.... Entering them with a controller... That sudden feeling of dread when you click start and it says it's incorrect... Then frantically looking for your mistake, hoping you just entered something wrong.

Hand drawn maps all over your walls for whatever game you happened to be playing at that time, and your parents wondering about your odd taste in artwork.

Notes all over your desk describing actions you took, items you needed, and what things did.

Jumping from platform to platform, over spikes or some other form of instant death, spaced at your max jumping range, while being hit by enemies that knock you back upon contact.

Get to the end of the game and ... Nothing ... It just starts over. If you're lucky you get a "Thanks for playing!"

The game has no end! It just gets harder and harder until you die. You did it for the high score?!?!?! Yep!

One of my all time favorites on computer based games. "Unable to read disk". Nooooooooo!!!!!!!!!

 

The memories!

Edited July 1, 2021 by Strider

[ZeroByte]

1 hour ago, Strider said:

The game has no end! It just gets harder and harder until you die. You did it for the high score?!?!?! Yep!

For me, it was always how many stages I could get past. Even in score-based games. I considered 32k score in Pac Man but made it to the Grapes to be a better game than 33k on the 2nd apple.

[StephenHorn]

1 hour ago, desertfish said:

The spinner tiles were HELL.

I remember my first encounter with spinner tiles in a labyrinth/CRPG game. I was initially delighted with the game because it was hosted on a BBS and basically using RIPterm graphics, and that was novel. But the draw distance was only 2 tiles ahead, and spinner tile was on a 4-way intersection, and the level made sure all paths onto the spinner tile looked identical, and since we're talking about RIPTerm the game did no animation and so didn't gave any clue that the tile had reoriented the player until they had turned the next corner (or the next after that).

My word choice for that kind of design these days is much saltier than when I was a child, but the sentiment remains the same: "F@#$. That. Noise."

As a direct result of that experience, it would be the best part of a couple of decades before I would actually learn to enjoy the genre, in a much more contemporary and polished franchise.

Edited July 1, 2021 by StephenHorn

[ZeroByte]

20 minutes ago, StephenHorn said:

But the draw distance was only 2 tiles ahead, and spinner tile was on a 4-way intersection,

That's pretty evil.

The closest I ever came to this kind of evil as a designer was in a set of Wolf3d levels that my brother and I built. I made a level that had an outer ring of wide corridors, and had a door that led through a room full of enemies, beyond which was a maze. The exit door of the maze leads to a room identical to the entry room, and it has corpses of enemies at locations where I guessed they would be likely to have died in the entry room. If you go through the exit room, the far side of the map is still a mirror of the original side, but has live enemies again, and the exit is in the mirror spot of where the entrance was.

[Strider]

Not sure if anyone is interested, but there are some great classics on Steam, and many are on sale at the moment for under $5 (many around $2). It's kind of nice seeing older games I used to love updated to run on modern operating systems.

• Deja Vu and Deja Vu II, MacVenture Series
• Indiana Jones Fate of Atlantis and Last Crusade
• Maniac Mansion
• Commander Keen
• Shadowgate MacVenture Series
• Bard's Tale Trilogy
• The Secret of Monkey Island
• Space Quest Collection
• Star Trek 25th Anniversary and Judgement Rights
• Tex Murphy Series

Just to name...several. haha

There are a lot.

 

 

Edited July 1, 2021 by Strider

[John Chow Seymour]

On 7/1/2021 at 3:49 AM, Strider said:

Yes I am!

Oh yeah, I would not have the time and/or patience these days to do it "old school", mapping it out on paper as I go. One of those "good times memories" I don't care to relive.

I actually love having to draw my own maps on paper.  Sometimes I even start doing it even though it turns out that it isn't necessary for the game I'm playing!

This is why I love the Etrian Odyssey series for the Nintendo DS.  It's got the classic step-based first-person all-right-angles dungeon view on the top screen, and the bottom screen is just digital graph paper on which you draw your own map, with the stylus.  It's not an auto-map, and the game will let you draw it incorrectly if you're not careful.

These games are full of nasty tricks that feel 'old school', as discussed above.  No literal slime marshmallow, but events quite like that where there's no way to know what will happen until you try it and find it kills you (or gives you tons of gold).  Hidden teleport squares, monsters that can teleport, one-way doors that you don't know are one-way until you go through, etc. (No spinner tiles though... hmm, don't give them any ideas!)

Sadly every installment gets really grind-heavy about 2/3 of the way through.  So I usually get bored at that point, and I've never actually finished a game in this series.  Kid me would probably have sunk hours into the repetitive EXP grind, but adult me has no patience for it. 

By the way... some of you appear to know it, but what was the game series we're guessing? It's apparently one I haven't played.

[Strider]

I believe we're talking about "The Bard's Tale". At least I  hope so, or it's going to be a Picard Facepalm moment for me.

Excellent game series!

I'm currently replaying it, the remastered trilogy version. I had wanted it for some time now and it just went on sale in the 2021 Steam Summer Sale, discounted to $3.74. Totally worth it!

Edited July 2, 2021 by Strider

[ZeroByte]

On 7/2/2021 at 2:43 PM, Strider said:

I believe we're talking about "The Bard's Tale".

Correct-a-mundo

[ZeroByte]

Okay, time to shift gears a little bit - this game is multi-platform, originating from the arcade.

The original arcade version features colorful 4bpp graphics, multi-layer parallax scrolling, and FM+PCM audio.

The arcade version is a fast paced side-scrolling hack-n-slash, quarter muncher. It is single player only (2 player alternating) gameplay, and is set in a swords and sorcery style game world. It was ported to a wide variety of systems, ranging from the C64, ZX Spectrum, NES, Sega Master System, and Atari Lynx, all the way up to machines with nearly arcade-perfect quality ports such as the Amiga, Megadrive, and the Sharp X68000.

In western markets, the game's title is 'simply' the eponymous hero's name, but this was actually a mistake. It was actually the villain's name. The game's Japanese title does refer to the hero, but not by name, so perhaps this is why the western title was assumed to be the hero's name. The hero was actually un-named in Japan, simply known as "The Hero of Argus." Since the western title was commonly mistaken as the hero's name, it did officially become the hero's name. The villain's name was then modified - but only by changing the first letter from R to L. (which is funny because they're basically the same letter in Japanese)

The NES port is unique from the others. Like many NES ports, it was heavily modified from its original form, making it into more of an action adventure format than a pure arcade-style experience.

One final hint: The NES version is well-regarded, but one of the main complaints is that it lacks any kind of save-and-continue system such as a battery backup or password system, so it must be beaten in one sitting.