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Lost and forgotten (except by us)

Unkillable Cat

LEST WE FORGET
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City Slicker (1987)
(Hewson Consultants)

CitySlicker.jpg


Only released on the ZX Spectrum and the Amstrad CPC, this 30-year old platformer is so obscure not even Mobygames has an entry on it. Fortunately World of Spectrum comes to the rescue with all the details.

You control Slick, a bloke tasked with stopping the infamous Arab terrorist Abru Cadabbra's nefarious plot to blow up the House of Parliament. To do this you need to find and combine the eight parts of the Bomb Disassembly Unit before midnight, which translates to about 45 minutes in real-time.

CitySlicker.gif


I played this game when I was about 10 years old (on the Amstrad) and I was both amazed by it and way in over my head. This is not your average platformer, there are some very strict (and unwritten) rules in play that must be followed, some pixel-perfect jumps are required and a general knowledge of London is needed to make sense of most things. Oh, and in true 8-bit platformer fashion you can't climb up or down ladders - you jump up them to ascend, and must find another (safe) way to get back down. You know the drill if you've played Manic Miner or Jet Set Willy.

Instead of using a lives system, City Slicker has an Energy Bar. This bar is reduced when Slick touches enemies, is hit by projectiles (i.e. bird crap) and falls too far. But another aspect of the game is that your jumping height is determined by the Energy Bar - if you have too little energy, you can't jump anywhere. (Losing all your energy is Game Over, obviously.) Fortunately Slick is carrying three Pep pills which he can use at any time to replenish his energy, and both more Pep pills and various foodstufs can be found in-game to keep that Energy Bar topped. Sadly none of this means diddly-squat when it comes to Abru himself. Abru is pursuing Slick and trying to stop him - and touching Abru is instant death as the game's "intro" explains. The problem is that Abru tries to reach you every 15 minutes (in-game time, or roughly every minute real-time) by emerging from the nearest exit. So you have to navigate the levels and their normal obstacles, while dodging Abru, while also trying to figure out where (and what) the BDU parts are and what the hell you're supposed to be doing. Easy, right?

But here comes the most interesting (and amusing) part of the game: Many of the baddies (including Abru) have inventories, just like you. That means that if they touch an in-game item they'll pick it up, then usually carry it around for a short while before dropping it again. Repeat endlessly until the item is out of their reach, or you drop a weight on their head to make them cough up the goods. Better yet, some of the items you can pick up (like Ed Boon the drunkard) also have inventories of their own, so you can pick up an item that's holding an item that's holding an item, thereby circumventing the 6-item limit on your inventory. This tactic is actually needed to get one of the BDU items, so it's good to know of it in advance.

Travel is provided courtesy of the London Underground, which cycles through the eight available "landmark" locations around London. The game doesn't really pick up until you reach the Tube, but that was a part of the game not many players even got to see back in the day, because for some strange reason the game starts you off in the dungeon of the Tower of London, one of the hardest areas of the game to navigate around. What's worse, opening up various passages involves doing illogical things. One of the Beefeater guards moves too quickly to be jumped over, for example, so he needs to be stopped somehow. This is done by toggling the two torches above him, on the outside of the Tower of London. Some platforms need to be weighed down for them to lower, and far too often an item merely needs to be picked up for another, more important item, to magically appear in a nearby hard-to-reach location. Pick up the crown in the Tower of London to see what I mean.

The video below (a complete walkthrough) claims that the only way people could figure out how to beat the game was to analyze the game's code to see what needed to be done. I would say that's a plausible claim, but after watching the video I realized just how close I was to beating the game back in the day, having found 5 of the 8 items myself. And as usual with an old 8-bit game, there are absolutely no systems in place to save your progress, so you have to do everything in one go. Thank emulators for having save-states.



And yes, the reason I bring up this game in particular is because of the "Politically Incorrect" plot of the game; an Arab terrorist (Latin: Arabus Terroristicus) threatening London with a bomb and a white bloke is called in to sort everything out. Try releasing this game today and watch social media go absolutely bananas. :)
 

fantadomat

Arcane
Edgy Vatnik Wumao
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It is sad to look at all this games and see how creatively bankrupted the modern developers are,and how much they lack imagination.Here are a few games that could be called a little bit obscure.

Dink Smallwood - Nice little adventure- rpg game.It have nice humour and it is not very long.
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Anachronox -It is interesting futuristic maybe even cyberpunk rpg.It is pretty obscure outside of the most hardcore rpg forums.
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Omikron: The Nomad Soul - Is a action adventure that is breaking the 4th wall in a way.You play as yourself the game,and you posses people from another world.The interesting part is that when you die,you don't get an game over but you play as another npc.
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Outcast -Thirdperson action game set in a alian open world.It is nice fun exploring and killing creatures.It got hd edition or maybe remake.
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Star wolves 1,2,3-Are fun space rpg/strategy games.You are merc that have a mother ship and fighters.
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Unkillable Cat

LEST WE FORGET
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I recently heard of another old-time game developer passing away (though he died last summer) but instead of posting about it in the Best Thread Ever (like I usually do) I felt it was more fitting to post it here, due to the somewhat overall obscurity of his games.

Paul Woakes didn't make a lot of games, but the games he made turned heads, most notably the "Mercenary" series in the late 1980s/early 1990s, though Codexers may be more familiar with Legends of Valour (1992). The game I'm gonna bring up specifically, however, is a little different for the notable reason that I've never gotten around to actually playing it... but I'm still blown away by what the game has to offer.

The Mercenary series are renowned for being a good (and early) take on the "free open world"-concept of game design. The first game takes place on a whole planet, with the goal being to repair your spaceship and escape with a handful of items and possibly some cash. The key to this is to take advantage of the two rival factions at war, though other options are available. This open-endedness is also a memorable trademark of the series, as I'll mention as I get to the heart of my point: Mercenary II, also known as "Damocles".

The title of the second Mercenary game refers to the game's 'antagonist', a comet that's about to crash into the planet you start the game on. As the only one on the planet with a basic chance of stopping the comet you set out to prevent everyone from Doing The Dinosaur, but first you must get back into space and find a way to complete your task, but with mere hours left until impact and a whole solar system to explore this may seem like a tall order.

While the prequel saw widespread release on the 8-bits and used wire-frame graphics, the sequel used filled polygons, and as such was only released on the Atari ST and the Amiga in early 1990 (late 1989?), though a fan-made PC port exists today. It also had a two-year development time, which is pretty rare and VERY LONG for a 1980s title. A PC version was planned, and Psygnosis even had a "remastered" version ready and planned for release in 1995, but for some reason neither version saw the light of day.

The game world is the Gamma system, which consists of a sun, nine planets, 18 moons and a starmap 'background' that you can use to navigate. Each celestial body has a day/night cycle and would complete their respective orbits around the sun, were it not for the fact that you're on the clock here.

The spaceship isn't your only vehicle, though. There are 20 different vehicles to choose from, though most of them are only for planetary exploration, which consists of cities with road networks and underground mazes. There's not much of scenic terrain here, but this is a 1990 game after all.

With such a huge and open world to explore, there are tons of things to see and find, which brings me to what I consider the most impressive aspect of the game: It has five different solutions. You can find and set up a series of explosives on the comet to blow it up, or find all the components for the massive Novabomb and use that to vaporize the comet instead. Then you can use both aforementioned detonation methods to instead blow up the planet Icarus, which accomplishes the goal of stopping the comet as well, but the fifth solution (the one I only heard of earlier this morning) left me the most impressed: Somewhere in the Gamma system is Paul Woakes' own personal computer; if you can find it, you can use it to magically make the comet disappear!

With all that said though, there's reason to stop and ask one's self whether Damocles is worth playing today: A lot of time has passed since 1990 and the game is spartan in many ways (like how it's almost completely silent) but it did lay the groundwork for many other games, most of which have only succeeded marginally in following in the footsteps of Mercenary.

For example, this is what your spaceship looks like:

345185-damocles-mercenary-ii-atari-st-screenshot-your-space-ship.png


So yeah, maybe not a game to play, but most certainly a game to remember.
 
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Arrowgrab

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Unkillable Cat

LEST WE FORGET
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Mercenary

Check out http://mercenarysite.free.fr/mercframes_graphic.htm for a whole load of information on Mercenary, Damocles, and the sequel apparently even U.C. hadn't heard of

Just because I don't mention it, doesn't mean I don't know of it. Stop making assumptions.

But the sixth solution thing made me read up better on Damocles - and it seems it took quite some time for people to find the sixth solution: Finding a magical wishing crystal and using it at the right place to wish for the planet to be saved.
 

Jarpie

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Codex 2012 MCA
Maybe not THAT forgotten game, but I was listening to Retro Hour podcast with ex-DMA Design dev, apparently CD32 version of Hired Guns was almost finished before it was canned. It had improved graphics and shit, the guy still has it, would be nice if it would mysteriously leak out.
 

Unkillable Cat

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I think Hired Guns is the only game I know of that had four manuals, one of which was a short novella that had the backstories for the twelve characters and the situation they were in.
 

Grauken

Gourd vibes only
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Maybe not THAT forgotten game, but I was listening to Retro Hour podcast with ex-DMA Design dev, apparently CD32 version of Hired Guns was almost finished before it was canned. It had improved graphics and shit, the guy still has it, would be nice if it would mysteriously leak out.

I'm always surprised when I hear stuff like that, it's not hard to leak stuff while making it impossible to trace back to you. Some creators have no sense of preservation
 

Unkillable Cat

LEST WE FORGET
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Time for a game most Codexers should be familiar with, and stay tuned for some good news related to it.

Alley Cat (1983)
post-11281-0-79415400-1342965085.jpg

by Bill Williams
Published by Synapse Software

A unique and highly bizarre platformer where you control a tomcat looking to score. First the queen needs to be impressed by performing a daring feat, then her lair needs to be entered and her guard cats dodged while climbing upwards to get some pussy, if you know what I mean.

Don't let the game's age fool you, it looks and plays much better than you'd think. Originally released on the Atari 400/800 computers, a IBM PC-version with CGA graphics was later released, and also a PCjr with improved sound and an alternate CGA palette, though very few people seem to know about that one.

Like most games of the early 1980s the gameplay is infinite and the high score is the limit. The best way to do this is to rack up a decent enough score multiplier, which is done by completing the in-game tasks quickly. But that's easier said than done. Each task involves trespassing into someone's apartment and performing a certain mischievous, cat-like deed. Catching all the mice in the World's Biggest Cheese, drinking all the milk from the dogs, catching all the fish in the fishbowl, you get the idea. A disembodied broom is usually trying to smack you around, but there are also other threats, like dogs, electric eels and even a spider. The quicker the job's done, the higher the score and multiplier. Repeat until you run out of lives.

I got a collection of floppy disks full of PC games for Christmas in 1987, and this was one of the games in that jumble. It's also one of the games from that collection that's stuck with me the longest, and Williams did an amazing job with coding the PC version, as it runs flawlessly and without assistance in every OS version up to and including Windows 98 SE. Modern systems have had to settle for DOSBox though, and it can be quite tricky to get Alley Cat to run in PCjr mode, where an extra audio channel makes the sound not so grating.

Until now.

Today, Alley Cat Remeow Edition has been released. In terms of remakes, this one comes with EVERYTHING. It not only allows you to play the original Atari 8-bit version, but also the IBM PC AND the PCjr versions, as well as a fourth modernized version. What's more, the gameplay has been enhanced to add five new tasks that can be completed to impress the queen, a versus mode and even 4-player multiplayer.

If you are a fan of this game, this seems to be the Definitive Version to own... and it's free! Grab the download over here.

EDIT: Link updated.
 
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Big Wrangle

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What are the chances for Severence: Blade of Darkness returning to GOG's storefront, or should I just say fuck it and download the game via My Abandonware?
 

Taka-Haradin puolipeikko

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Theatre Europe(P.S.I,, 1985)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatre_Europe

1st strategy game that I've ever played. Game was about NATO vs Warsaw Pact conflict on Europe wide zone.
It modeled neutral armies (yellow dots on map), different airforce operations, chemical weapons and nuclear strikes. Game also had optional action sequences for resolving battles, that as far as I can tell made results worse for player.
Goal of the game was to win without causing full scale nuclear exchange.
You could do limited tactical nuking, but enemy would retaliate to that. There were also other triggers that would cause nuclear retaliation such as using too much air power deep in enemy territory and probably some others that I don't remember. Finished the game a couple of times on both sides without things going full Fallout (I was like 10 years old then)

 

Unkillable Cat

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Theatre Europe(P.S.I,, 1985)

This one reminds me heavily of Balance of Power which incidentally was also released in 1985.

2008-08-12_122354.png


While Theatre Europe is an 8-bit title, Balance of Power is a 16-bit title and focuses on the USA/USSR global conflict, and allows the player to pick which side to play. During each "game turn" a series of events will take place and the player must pick a response. This may trigger a response from the opposite side, which can potentially escalate to open conflict, or even nuclear war. Unlike Theatre Europe, Balance of Power considers nuclear war a Bad Thing. If nuclear war takes place, the game ends with the following message:

You have ignited a(n accidental) nuclear war. And no, there is no animated display of a mushroom cloud with parts of bodies flying through the air. We do not reward failure.

Balance of Power was a HUGE seller in its lifetime, accounting for 0.2% of all gaming-related sales in those years. For one title that's A LOT.
 

Taka-Haradin puolipeikko

Filthy Kalinite
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. Unlike Theatre Europe, Balance of Power considers nuclear war a Bad Thing.
I'm pretty certain that I said:
Goal of the game was to win without causing full scale nuclear exchange.
That was the bad game over, but the game still gave some room to use tactical nuclear strikes, chemical weapons and other stuff to some extent (trick was in finding how much you could do certain stuff before End Of The World triggered.)
 

Unkillable Cat

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Ah, I missed that. I saw that Theatre Europe allowed some gameplay after the nukes, so I figured wrongly that it wasn't as strict about it as Balance of Power.
 
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War Wind

Before Starcraft there was a RTS that had 4 unique races, and the name of that game was 7th Legion, just kidding that game was shit unlike War Wind.

War Wind featured 4 races each with unique units and buildings. The gameplay was quite different to any other RTS out there, while you could build buildings and recruit units that was where all similarities ended. The game had really low amount of resources both for building buildings and weapons also recruits were every limited so you needed to be extra careful how to use them. Missions were like puzzles and often you had only one way of solving them, it would be pretty fair to say its like a combination of Commandos and Warcraft. There was also a sequel that made missions much more open and even had some c&c in the story.



Played War Wind all the time back when it new, or at least newish. Really loved that games upgrade system, made it feel unlike anything else in the realm of RTS games at the time, and sadly since then. That and Warzone 2100 probably have the most interesting unit upgrading systems of any RTS I've played.
 

ghostdog

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Sopwith: Side scrolling aerial combat game. It was pretty great especially when fighting enemy planes

 
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