During a chat with Joel about our unhealthy gaming habits, Joel got angry with me for not inviting him into the DOS Game Club and for not mentioning sooner that I was part of a super-secret club that required intricate handshakes to get in. So press ⌘+P, run to your printer, and bring this very exclusive invite to the coordinates below to follow the white rabbit.

Just kidding. The DOS Game Club is a low-key retro club where each month we play a DOS video game—on an emulator or using vintage hardware, that’s completely up to you—and chat about it on the forums or on Mastodon. Both those channels only have a good handful of active members. There’s no pressure to do anything: you can just as well follow along as a lurker without registering; the list of games is published well on advance. Not everyone who plays joins the discussion on the forums and that’s fine too.

I don’t consistently participate either: last year I joined for Albion, Jazz Jackrabbit, and Quake, while this year so far I joined for Heretic and Wolfenstein 3D. In the the months December to February, we’re tackling Ultima Underworld. In March, we’re taking a second look at 1993’s DOOM.

After each month, hosts Martijn and Florian record a podcast with the help of other Club members. Occasionally, they even manage to invite the original creators of the game. If you want, you can send in audio clips or even join as a co-host. Or just sit back, relax, and listen how they enjoyed that month’s game. Or not. As I said, low-key.

By the way Joel, In December 2022, I wrote about the DOS Game Club for the first time, and since then, It’s been mentioned 21 times in monthly favourite posts, in retro PC hardware posts, in a post about podcasts I listen to (where your name was also dropped?), and even just in the links section. So that “not mentioning it sooner” argument doesn’t really hold up well!

Anyway, if you want to join us playing Ultima Underworld, you’re going to want to come prepared, as the game is great but archaic and tough to control without the following links:

• If on Windows, run using the Portable pack that auto-includes handy mods
• Get your executable hacked to enjoy mouse look and more
• Read the player’s guide before starting. Most skills are useless and even levelling up is confusing without a proper RTFM session. That’s the way gamers rolled with the punches in 1992. Yes, this 3D game is a year older than DOOM, which is crazy!

Good luck escaping The Abyss!

Related topics: / games /

By Wouter Groeneveld on 6 December 2024.  Reply via email.

November is no more. I have no idea how that happened, but it did, and here we are now, suddenly already hanging up Christmas lights (why so soon?), frantically preparing end-of-year get-togethers, exchanging gift lists, and possibly even thinking about last year’s New Year’s resolution that this time really should be attainable in the coming year. It was a rather quiet month for the blog and the last few week(s), I entertained myself with that top100 page. The most important events of November were seeing our daughter pick up new good and bad habits and gently introducing her to potty training. It’s so crazy to see how fast it all goes… While at times your own–professional or otherwise—life seems to grind to a halt.

Previous month: October 2024.

Books I’ve read

I kept turning the same pages of last month’s book, The art of getting old, which is a hefty philosophical compilation that will probably take all December if not more to finish. I don’t think these kinds of books are made to read or finish in one sitting though. I should definitely take more notes, but the tiredness that consistently overcomes us after eight in the evening (yup, toddler tricks) doesn’t really help. Better luck next month.

To lower the reading bar I bought two recent Retro Gamer issues where their Top 100 Retro Games was mentioned, although I missed the list myself. The Centre of Computing History put up a funny reaction video to get you folks in an uproar. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night only on 42? Here we go! (It’s in my 50-25 B-tier so that’s about right).

Games I’ve played

• After Heretic, I went back and explored the PC’s 3D gaming history by replaying Wolfenstein 3D. It does not hold up well in my view. It’s crazy to see how well DOOM is doing nowadays in comparison.
  • Someone made a Wolfenstein 3D CGA adaptation for your even older 8088 based PCs to enjoy it on, thanks to id Software’s release of the source code.
  • Michael Klamerus recently recorded his playthrough of the weird Macintosh version. Why BJ Blackowitz yells All Right! at the floor completed screen in the Mac version is beyond me.
  • Back in 2008, Fabien Sanglard dove into the Wolf3D source code for iPhone and discovered an error with double/triple buffering that John Carmack even replied on.
• Kirby and the Forgotten Land was on sale and I finally gave it a whirl. Thinking this is yet another Kirby game HAL put out, I was more than pleasantly surprised. Forgotten Land regularly makes it to the top of those Best Kirby Games lists, and now I can see why. Don’t sleep on this one.

As for the coming months, I’m really happy with the DOS Game Club’s Ultima Underworld pick. I missed that one when I grew up, not understanding what I was supposed to do when I was eight. Its archaic controls and movement system does not make it a very accessible game, we’ll see how far I can take the adventure. No source port for this one, unfortunately.

Selected (blog) posts

• Michal Sapka also disapproves of the RPS 100. I saw his post a day too late!
• Marisabel writes about fountain pens and how to justify their price. I hope she caves in and gets that Pilot Capless. It’s one of my most-used pens and worth every penny.
• Wietse wrote on gamegeschiedenis.nl an elaborate (Dutch) article on the history of Jazz Jackrabbit, a game in the Dutch video gaming canon, crazy!
• A link for (Dutch) PKM lovers: Frank Meeuwsen showcases his Obsidian start page. I don’t have any and just immediately ⌘+P may way to where I need to be. I’m far from an Obsidian power-user like grandmaster Frank is.
• Frank also shared Deanna Dikeman’s gripping Leaving And Waving photo album. I was not prepared for that…
• I’m sure this link doesn’t need any more sharing but here goes anyway: Manual Moreale says small scale is the best scale. Indeed, but the question is: is self-hosting a patch? (I disagree)
• Jw recently played Eastward and wrote down his thoughts. It also flew under my radar, thanks for the review Jw, I’m putting the game back on the radar!

Other random links

• In case you are not aware, Mike Monteiro wrote Ruined By Design, a book about design ethics and activism that’s high up on my to-read list.
• Did you know there’s a Roland MT-32 emulator called the McCake that leverages the Raspberry Pi? Watch/listen to root42’s comparison analysis to see how it performs. See the MT32-Pi project for more information. Serdaco in Belgium sells them pre-assembled.
• If you’re interested in wave table daughter boards, Heros Inn recorded MIDI samples on SoundCloud that should showcase the key differences between the different boards (also by Serdaco). VOGONs also has an interesting DreamBlaster and Roland Comparisons thread.
• I lost my phone for a while and had to recover 2FA entries from a FreeOTP backup. It didn’t work. I gave up and am switching to https://getaegis.app/ now.

Related topics: / metapost /

By Wouter Groeneveld on 3 December 2024.  Reply via email.

Remember my analysis and gripes with the Rock Paper Shotgun 100? Well, since I’ve been slowly but surely building up my own video game database over at https://jefklakscodex.com where I log all my playthroughs, I figured I could just as well generate my own list based on the data I already had. I’ve been fiddling with the page for the last week and the result is stable enough to present here.

Visitors of https://jefklakscodex.com/top100 can marvel at Yet Another Personal Top 100 List, but this one is mine and I like it. Here’s what a part of it looks like:

I approached building the page as an exercise in refraining from using too much JavaScript to inject the interactive parts, and instead learning some neat CSS-only tricks like the lightbox that’s triggered with the :target element. Filtering and the generated SVG charts below the list did require some scripting. You can click on the bars of the graphs to automatically filter the list, which is one of the cool advantages of rendering SVG in JS.

Those of you who saw my Top 25 GOAT list last year will not be surprised at the first 25 entries. But coming up with 100 entries that are worthy of such as list, let alone ordering them, was quite a daunting task. So I approached things a bit differently. The list is split into four tiers, as you can see from the labels on the top left of each cover image: D (red), C (orange), B (yellow), A (green), and S (dark green, spot number one). Each tier is simply randomized—not at page refresh but at page build time. That saves me the stress of exactly determining which game goes where. I’m not entirely convinced by the D tier entries so a few tweaks in the near future might happen.

Analysing the RPS 100 list (see last week’s analysis), I noticed its middle point was well beyond year 2010. The graphs in the statistics section of my own list showcase that I gravitate towards the end of the nineties and beginning of the naughties. Perhaps unsurprisingly so as that was my last high school and first university years where I had plenty of time to consume games—which was also a sensitive period for me that now inevitably triggers nostalgia.

But seriously, those where the years! The release of the Game Boy Advance and GameCube, the many heights of RTS (Warcraft III, Age of Empires II) and RPG (Deus Ex, Diablo II, Baldur’s Gate II, Wizardry 8, Arcanum) gaming on the PC… And yet I’m not immune to nowadays greatness: if you sort the list by release year, you’ll notice the first 10 entries range from 2018 to 2024. Granted, Paper Mario, Quake, and even Tactics Ogre are technically speaking re-releases, but still.

My most liked genres are no surprise either: 2D platformers (metroidvania is a subgenre, I know, I’m still figuring out how to incorporate that), role-playing games, a good doze of retro shooters, turn-based strategy games, and even seven classic point and click entries are present, of which two made it into the A tier.

The biggest problem I now face is that most of these entries are not yet reviewed on the site! That’s because I only started methodically collecting screenshots and logging my plays five years ago. Given the combined How Long To Beat hours I’m staring at, this will likely be a multi-year project to take on.

Hopefully my list triggers something for you. A thanks for discovering a potentially interesting game to check out or a flame war to start because game x is not there and y is listed too high—I welcome all feedback!

Related topics: / lists / games /

By Wouter Groeneveld on 30 November 2024.  Reply via email.