Ridiculously quick update before I (and with "I" I mean not me, but Discoalucard who originally posted this message on the main page) head out the door for Otakon:
Suda 51's Michigan: Report from Hell, a strange, first person horror title that's not terribly good as a game but fascinating as a whole; Sega's
Quartet, a side-scrolling four player take on Gauntlet; and NG: Dev Team's
Gunlord, recently released on the Dreamcast, which is heavily inspired by European PC titles. Specifically,
Turrican, an older article that we've completed revamped and updated for the occasion. Part 13 of the
iOS Shooters article covers Cosmic Birds, Nanoids, Icarus-X, and River Raid F22. No kusoge this week, sorry!
Also, iOSShooters Part 13:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.hardcoregaming101.net/iosshooters/iosshooters13.htm
As a minor correction to the Turrican article I would like to mention that supposedly the creator of The Great Giana Sisters wasn't actually Manfred Trenz but Armin Gessert (who programmed the original C64 version). However, Trenz did the graphics at least for the C64 and the Amiga versions. Interestingly, the graphical style of the unofficial sequel to Giana Sisters, Hard 'n Heavy (which was originally intended to be official sequel) bears minor resemblance to some levels in Turrican 1-2.
ReplyDeleteAlso, if I remember correctly, the C64 version of the first Turrican had in-game music during the jetpack levels.
It's hard to be sure about this kind of stuff, since these old C64 games only credit the technical tasks and no game designers. Trenz is generally considered to have designed both the game and the levels, though. He also lists himself as the designer on the DNS homepage.
ReplyDeleteIt appears that you are right and I was mistaken: http://www.denarisoftware.com/HTML/C64_GianaSisters.html
DeleteMy error was probably caused by the title screen not mentioning Trenz's role as designer. I sort of assumed that if Trenz had been the designer, he would have programmed the game himself.
To my opinion Gunlord is one of Dreamcast's best games in the last several years. Developers, Designers etc - all of them are superheroes in my world.
ReplyDeleteAbout the music: Looking at longplays on youtub, it seems like actually many of the later C64 stages have music, just like in Turrican II. Weird, I must have played through the whole C64 game with audio turned off...
ReplyDeleteAt least the longplay at DerSchmu's channel had apparently the music edited in afterwards. The uploader in the comments section:
Delete"I`ve edited the sound to the video with an video editing program.
Turrican have some really great soundtracks and it were a waste not to use them."
However, I still think that the jetpack levels in the C64 version had music during the gameplay (since I played the C64 version on the real hardware years ago). If you compare the other levels with the music to the jetpack levels in the longplay, you'll notice that the latter do not have sound effects during music.
By the way, have people at HG101 yet heard of the Metal Warrior series for C64? They are Finnish freeware games with Metroidvania elements and originally released in 1999-2003 with the latest versions released in 2012:
http://cadaver.homeftp.net/games.htm
I haven't yet played the latest versions but they may be some of the best action adventures developed for C64 with appropriately cheesy plots and some nice music:
http://cadaver.homeftp.net/music/mw.sid
http://cadaver.homeftp.net/music/mw2.sid
http://cadaver.homeftp.net/music/mw3.sid
http://cadaver.homeftp.net/music/mw4.sid
how does the PAL version of Michigan work on NTSC systems? Does it have a 50/60hz option? I've been wanting to try this game for ages.
ReplyDeleteWell, you'd need to modify your system to boot PAL games, or you'd need to do the swap trick. There is a 60Hz option for when running it on a PAL console, so in theory that should work well.
ReplyDeleteyeah I have Swap Magic to boot imports on my PS2... this works fine most of the time "forcing" the games into PAL, though some games lose too much important stuff from the bottom. IE: Shmups that don't have a legit 60hz mode sometimes actual playing field will be lost. I'm guessing that a game like this should be fine though either way.
DeleteNice revamp on my old article - yeah, I noticed only now - . It makes for a smoother reading while retaining almost everything of the original piece. :)
ReplyDelete