I wish Epic would bring back Jazz Jackrabbit. One of my favorite PC games when I was a kid. Also somewhat related, I loved Epic Pinball and they should bring that back. I don't care if it's smartphone only, as long as they keep the awesome music.
Gez said: Game consoles and competing computers of the era (Amiga, Atari, Amstrad...) had dedicated hardware acceleration for sprite-based 2D games. Id software exists solely because Carmack found a way to obtain fast and smooth 2D scrolling on PCs.
You may want to remove the classic Amstrad CPC series from that list (the non-plus models): they had literally nothing but "brute CPU force" (well...a 4 MHz Z80), and the same graphics controller as the CGA cards on the PC.
Smooth scrolling was possible only with great programming difficulty, and the games that had it could literally be counted in the fingers of one hand. The fact that 90% of the CPC games were Spectrum ports didn't help much, either (BTW, that one had no hardware scrolling or sprites). The C64 was another story though, and almost every game written for it used them.
Also, some other two early 90s PC platformers (ports from other platforms, of course):
And of course there were the infamous Rick Dangerous games, but calling them "shooting platformers" would really be a stretch. A very unusual platform game was The Amazing Spider-Man,
plus there were a host of mediocre adaptations of Amiga games like Viking Child: the Prophecy or Oscar. These usually had none of the redeeming features of the Amiga versions: scrolling was choppy even on a 486, controls sucked, and any tracked soundtrack got butchered down to a tinny generic Adlib soundtrack.
Also, I'm not so sure if emulated/VERY late releases like Sonic official packs should be added to this thread. It will be much more interesting to stick to platformers that were native/exclusive to the PC and contemporary ports, not those who were only made accessible through emulation decades later, even if officially (that being said, I played most platform games through emulators even in 1996...mostly Master System and NES games).
Edit: @Maes - yeah the hardware had no speed advantage, but it was better IMO because of the powerful ROM BASIC, much better palette (CGA is fugly!), and better audio. Also the Z80 is awesomely simple, you can even write machine code directly in the debugger if you have a list of hex opcodes handy (there aren't that many). It was a fun machine to learn with. I don't know if there's any modern equivalent...
Danarchy
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Nomad said: I wish Epic would bring back Jazz Jackrabbit. One of my favorite PC games when I was a kid. Also somewhat related, I loved Epic Pinball and they should bring that back. I don't care if it's smartphone only, as long as they keep the awesome music.
I'd love remakes of all these platformers, but yeah, I'd REALLY love it if someone made more pinball games. You can't find those anywhere, either in table form or video game form. The few that exist these days are terrible and you need to do some searching for them. Epic Pinball, Silverball, and that one they made later on (I can't remember what it was called, but the demo table was rock star themed) were all pretty amazing. The best pinball game of all time, though, was Balls of Steel. I'd love to see that get released on Steam or something.
Danarchy said:
I'd love remakes of all these platformers, but yeah, I'd REALLY love it if someone made more pinball games. You can't find those anywhere, either in table form or video game form.
I didn't much like the Amiga/PC pinball games, but the Naxat Pinball trilogy for game consoles is damn good:
1. Alien Crush (PC Engine)
2. Devil's Crush (PC Engine) aka Dragon's Fury (Sega Genesis)
3. Jaki Crush (SNES)
Well there's actually a fourth title (Dragon's Revenge) but it's not all that great... Try Dragon's Fury instead.
Woah wait, hang on a minute. I remember a near identical version of that game that was blue with a blue background, and was called Electro Man. Everything else was the same--even the level design.
Oh man, the memories in this thread! Cosmo! That ending of the shareware when you just fall down into that creatures mouth really got to me when I was little.
I remember having a shareware game sampler with the keen games, hocus pocus, jill of the jungle and jazz jackrabbit. I liked jazz so much that I got it for my birthday, the CD version and man it had a ton of levels and that 3d bonus level thingy was amazing as well and don't even get me started on the music. In the beginning I remember we only had a PC speaker so I didn't get sound before we got a soundblaster 16 and then I was already pretty far into the game, so imagine me suddenly getting sound effects in the middle of this game.
As for pinball games, we had an amiga. And I didn't really like Epic Pinball for the PC. And I know this thread is dedicated to Pc-games and mostly platformers but many of these games were released on the PC as well. Pinball Fantasies is one of my favorites, mostly because of the music and.. well I don't really know why but the overall quality is just so good compared to other pinball games at the time. But the best of the best for me is Psycho Pinball for PC, where you could change maps in a map and all the mini-games. I wish someone could bring this one over to IOS like they've done with Pinball Fantasies.
Another game I'd like to see which I had alot of fun with is Lotus Turbo Challenge 2 and 3. Kickass music and those beat the checkpoint levels in #2 were hard as hell. You'd be lucky to get past the third map, that game required some serious skill. I've played it again on an emulator and I swear it's still hard.
DeathevokatioN said: I have no clue what button to press to unlock the caged elves though.
Please help :)
For me it's up (so you're facing the door) and then the leftright ctrl button. Kind of a weird setup. I don't remember it being that awkward. Right ctrl also casts the digging spell.
Edit: not left. Right. Apparently I don't know the difference. :V
I think it was a weird case of the same game with different licensing. I remember seeing it as Electro Man too, in another packaging, and there might even be a third name floating around. No HD versions though (the term had no meaning back then anyway).
@Abuse: very interesting game. I wonder if it was a DOS original or a backport from the Genesis/SNES/Amiga. Am I the only one hearing Hell Knight death samples? O_o
Edit: NM, wiki says it was a DOS original, and actually even cross-platform with Linux and Mac, go figure. Truth be said, it appeared in an era where such games were all but a dying breed, especially on the PC, and 3D games were all the rage (Fade to Black, Tomb Raider etc.) I don't ever remember seeing a fleeting review or demo of it.
Maes said: @Abuse: very interesting game. I wonder if it was a DOS original or a backport from the Genesis/SNES/Amiga. Am I the only one hearing Hell Knight death samples? O_o
abuse was ported to almost anything, but it's really a game from 1996 made for dos and linux. it became "famous" in certain circles for being partially written in motherfucking lisp. this is no console bullshit, my friend. just authored by a bunch of weirdos. :)
Grain of Salt said:
For me it's up (so you're facing the door) and then the leftright ctrl button. Kind of a weird setup. I don't remember it being that awkward. Right ctrl also casts the digging spell.
Edit: not left. Right. Apparently I don't know the difference. :V
Hehe, thanks man. I'm up to the jungle part now (episode 2), these levels are really intelligently designed, and I'm having a great time trying "solve" each one.
I wonder if is possible to pull off puzzles in DooM that are as intense as the ones here, that give off a similar sense of satisfaction on having solved them... without getting a "0" star rating ofcourse and having tons of "this sucks wtf must I go?" But then again I must be one of the only Hexen fans here so I'm quite sure I just answered my own question. ;)
DeathevokatioN said: I wonder if is possible to pull off puzzles in DooM that are as intense as the ones here, that give off a similar sense of satisfaction on having solved them... without getting a "0" star rating ofcourse and having tons of "this sucks wtf must I go?" But then again I must be one of the only Hexen fans here so I'm quite sure I just answered my own question. ;)
Yeah, I don't have a lot of faith in the average Doom player when it comes to appreciating stuff like Jim Flynn's maps (or, heh, Bob Evans). Just look at all the whining over some of the simple puzzles in Valkiriforce's Reverie. I love me my puzzle maps though.
Props for Xargon - played the crap out of that when I needed a simple escape. I only had the shareware version for the longest time, but I eventually found the whole thing at a store. Being able to finally play episode 2 and on was quite the relief.
I like CALL OF DUTY; MWP [Modern War Players] . It is a awesome game . which is basically based on the wars occurs in different - different countries..................
Interesting fact is it is multilayer game having very high definition graphics ....... Even i also like these kind of games alot........
I loved Hocus Pocus, Jazz Jackrabbit and Bio Menace!
Reasons why I stopped playing them... sadly:
1. Long time ago, lost disc.
2. (H.P) it stopped working altogether...
3. Shareware. ;_;
But now remembering, Bio Menace had a creepy backstory and last boss..
02-10-12 00:46 
