Huz

Can't you get some kind of USB adaptor? I may have just made up their existence, but I think I saw some somewhere... maybe. Also Erwin, you should try putting some CD-ROMs in your hifi. It's just the same but with lots more data for your brain to absorb.

For some reason, I got Opposing Force for free when I installed the monstrosity that is Steam, so I'm going to be playing through that shortly - although it seems so wrong considering I still have Deus Ex sitting on the shelf. Is Blue Shift worth actually purchasing? How does it compare to HL itself and OF? I was half-expecting it to be available via Steam at a knockdown price, but apparently not. (Even that new Counter-Strike game costs more on Steam than in an actual, real box. Like I'm going to be that keen to hand over my credit card details to a bunch of clowns who got their source code nicked.) Bah.

Attention any suddenly scared programmer types - C++ and WME are, in fact, both high-level languages, though WME is apparently more of a scripting language. A low-level language would be something like Assembler, deadworm, and you don't want to scare people into thinking that's what you mean... The reference to 'Javascript experience' is also a bit misleading and potentially offputting - experience with any object-oriented programming language should be enough. If you have to pick one language as an example, JavaScript seems a bit of a strange one to pick...

I agree. I haven't been wowed by mere graphics in years, to be honest. I know they're going to keep getting better and better so it's hardly awe-inspiring when they, in fact, do. It's becoming more apparent to me that oozing atmosphere is a vital part of a good game, and effective graphics are just part of that. Screenshots or gameplay footage alone just don't do it for me...

And another thing! You can purchase the right to download Condition Zero via Steam. The cost to you, in terms of money paid out for distribution, packaging, media, and the store's markup? Nothing! What do you get for your money? Well, a few downloaded files, plus the ability to redownload them at will (assuming Steam doesn't go tits-up, leaving you up the creek). So, considering what you get and the costs involved, it should be considerably cheaper to download Condition Zero than to buy it, right? Nope, I'm afraid it costs you $10 more than getting it off Amazon - $39.95 versus $29.99. All into Valve's back pocket? What the hell? $10 more and I don't even get a fancy box? Valve are living on a strange planet if they think that's going to be a popular option.

I don't think I could live without a joystick! I find the analogue controls on joypads far too fiddly - I need a big joystick to haul on! (Fnar fnar) I also have a Logitech force-feedback steering wheel for my Gamecube, which is fantastic fun with Burnout 2! I find it much easier to control, too, with practice - and it makes the exhilerating in-car view playable. I think it might also be on the verge of giving out, judging by the burning smell it gives off after a prolonged driving session... P.S. What about those old joysticks with 'suckers' on their base, so you could stick them to desks? They were decent, until the 'suckers' came unstuck and your hand catapulted into the wall at high velocity. Joysticks nowadays just seem to have a really heavy base...

Ha, ha. That looks like a pretty flimsy joystick to start with. At least my Logitech Wingman Extreme broke in style. Incidentally, I'm replaying Wing Commander 4, as I recently cracked and bought the overpriced DVD version off Ebay. Conclusion: I'd forgotten how awesome the FMV and the plot are, but the in-game engine has not aged well. At all. It is, however, crying out for some kind of cheap Electronic Arts remake cash-in for the console market. WC4 with a modern game engine, on my widescreen TV with it-will-be-mine-oh-yes surround sound system, while sitting on the couch? Even if it is the devil spawn of bastardisation by EA? Yes please!

I don't think it looked that bad for 1996. Red Alert was all the rage at the time, and I don't remember it looking much more outdated than that. I think its lack of success had more to do with being a) DOS-based at a time when that was just beginning to be scary and bad, in competition with C&C/Red Alert, and c) in competition with all the other C&C/Red Alert clones around at the time. Hmm, obscure games, obscure games... anyone remember Hardwar? One of my personal favourites - it was released in 1998 (OK, so still not really retro) after a delay of quite a few years - the final year of which was reportedly to upgrade it from a DOS game to DirectX and add 3dfx support! Sadly, despite critical acclaim, it pretty much sank without a trace. It was a space trading game in the vein of Elite (some reviews really went overboard with the "next big thing" schtick ). The big innovation was that it was set in a fairly claustrophobic game world - a collection of networked craters on the crumbling colony of Titan - so thanks to the numerous AI pilots with their own agendas, it had a real 'living' feeling to it. You could take on various roles - eg. trading (and fighting off endless pirate attacks), vigilantism, bounty hunting, or follow the fairly interesting optional storyline (complete with live-action FMV). Random images alert: If you're interested, it's available to download as one of the top-ranked games in the Hall of Belated Fame on that one site - which is nice. I wouldn't feel bad about doing so, by the way - thanks to their publishers (Interplay in the US and Gremlin in the UK) either going belly-up or being bought out, the developers apparently didn't see much of their hard-earned cash! The last anyone heard from them, they were trying to take the Hardwar engine and make a MMORPG type thing out of it - which would have been great, if they'd been able to finish it off before going bust. OK, admittedly not really retro, but I haven't just talked at far too much length about Call of Duty, at least. Edit - Also I didn't spot the word "Crazy". Bah. Still, this meets the other criteria.

Monkey Island 4 rocked!!!!!!!

Hooray! Good work Thunderpeel. Those waggle-em-ups were a killer, eh? Not just of joysticks, but of hands - I managed to take the skin off the palm of my hand while doing the hundred metres in James Pond's Aquatic Games (being dedicated, I didn't stop to scrape the skin off the top of the joystick until I'd won the race...) The first joystick I broke was while playing another waggle-em-up on the Amiga - I have a feeling it was WWF Wrestlemania, where you had to wiggle the joystick to get the upper hand in various situations. It didn't just creak and give out, the whole casing gave an almighty crack and bits of cheap plastic shot across the room! I then found myself clutching a joystick that was literally in bits. Hmm. I'm quite lucky that the Amiga was a tough old machine, because it wasn't the peripherals that bore the brunt of my anger, always the Amiga keyboard itself! Nowdays I wouldn't think twice about smashing up a PC keyboard in a rage (the stress relief would be well worth the money, though fortuantely PC keyboards are tough beasts too!), but having to replace the entire Amiga would have been rather expensive... Oh, and the last joystick I broke? My beloved Logitech Extreme Digital for the PC, now pretty much irreplacable as it's a Gameport joystick (not USB). I was playing GTA3 and it gave out an almighty crack as I hauled my car around a corner at high speed, followed by becoming slack and limp in my hand. Yes, I'd knackered the springs that return it to the centre! Luckily it still works (I just have to centre it manually), and I don't think I'll be replacing it until it breaks entirely!

Do it! Do it! All will be revealed when this is done.

Imagine the public outcry! I speak from a country where the average shopper is all "Screw Fair Trade! Way too expensive! What's the point of it anyway? But of course I buy free range eggs! Poor chickens!" - beating hookers to death with a baseball bat, fine by me, but leave the poor defenceless creatures alone!!!!!1

OK, I'm slightly excited by this sentence. Is that so wrong? Stunt Car Racer on two linked Amigas was one of best multiplayer games around at the time. An up-to-date remake would be great!

Good luck with that! I think the latency will kill you. A few of us tried Kaillera with WinUAE last year, and 'Atoms' was about as much as it could take. Let us know how it goes if you try it though.

I take it this movie is being distributed by 20th Century Fox? Mr Murdoch's TV channels certainly don't want to shut up about it.

Sounds worth a look - I see it's available for download on that site we weren't allowed to mention on that other place with the adventure games and the bickering about an inconsequential reputation system, so I might give it a go tomorrow.

Indeed, you got 'points' for nearly every violent act - ramming cars (until they exploded), running people over, jacking someone's car and then reversing over them (you got extra points for that one!), running groups of hare krishnas over for a 'GOURANGA!' bonus... In fact the only way to complete some of the levels, unless you did the missions flawlessly, was by getting a decent 'multiplyer' (by completing enough of the set missions) and then going on a rampage until you had enough points to progress. Of course, you could still just follow the missions and otherwise be well-behaved, but it was an awful lot harder... I personally wouldn't say that GTA1 & 2 'suck' - they're both great fun and not just because they 'encourage violence' (as if driving your little computer-car over little computer-people does that) - but GTA3 and Vice City are in a league of their own.

Here are the results of the Dogman Jury: Jake's - ACE Erwin's - BEST Remi's - ACCEPTABLE Toblix's - CONFUSING Manny's - TOO SMALL AGA's - The who? Chris's - BEARDY LeChuckie's - GRATE Moos' - GENIUS Intrepid's - DISTURBING And finally, Jayel's - BIZARRE CHOICE Also, LeChuckie, that's the funniest thing I've ever seen you say. Probably...

Why is he staring at the joystick and giving it funny looks rather than concentrating on the game? Is it a force-feedback joystick that will escape his grasp and leg it out of the room if he's not careful? He certainly seems to be putting an inordinate amount of effort into moving it. Perhaps it really is a big pile of poo. Either way, joysticks really need to come back into fashion, and pronto.

And they're pretty good too - at least for three seconds. Very primitive, but you can't expect much more from a bunch of third-party hackers. Get a hold of them and The All-Seeing Eye, then drive round Vice City with your fellow hardcore experimenters and weep tears of joy as your computers crash in unison. The idea of a MMO GTA is really exciting, but I'm at a loss to imagine how they would pull it off. How do you solve the problem of everyone wanting to be a hero, nobody willing to slum it by having anything less than an Apache helicopter for transport? Some kind of reputation-based economy? That would be awesome, if done right, and if it wasn't just some dumb "levelling up" experience where you slay Haitians or something. Other than that: rocket-powered skidoos. Definitely something that's missing from the current GTA generation.

What does AO stand for? Adults Only? I'm not surprised. Playing something so saaaaad is probably more harmful for young minds than a lifetime trapped in a small room with only GTA3 and some Spice Girls CDs for company.

I thought he was good! A lot of Simon's lines and the situations he found himself in were ludicrous anyway, so Chris Barrie played it with just the right amount of understatement and irony... "I leave you with this extremely valuable spell-book, and dog, to assist you..." ...is just about the only line that springs to mind right now, and that's because it's in some dodgy remix. I never got around to playing the talkie version to the end (having already completed it on the Amiga), so it's long overdue for a dust-off - I'll be able to find out whether my original opinion was the result of being a mad Red Dwarf fan-boy then!

First scary moment in a game? Hired Guns on the Amiga - the crackle of footsteps, an understated flashing of the screen - what's this? Something odd happening? I turn around and there's a fucking skeleton standing there, immobile and yet KILLING ME! Things have moved on since then, and I hope to face System Shock 2 all on my own one day. Oh, and this might amuse you - my latest "awesome!!!!!!!!!!11" moment was today, while playing Ocarina of Time for the first, er, time. I think I can safely say that it's stood the test of, for the love of God this isn't deliberate, 'time'...

Sorry, I was making no sense there! I just meant to point out that the CD-ROM version came out at the same time as the non-talkie floppy version, not as some kind of bastardising last-minute addon as you seemed to be implying. I know what you mean though - I didn't much like the voice acting in Fate of Atlantis once I got the CD-ROM version, since I'd played it on the Amiga and formed my own idea of the 'voices'. I still reckon the mere presence of Chris Barrie made the talkie version of Simon 1 a worthy upgrade, though. As for the Simon humour, it does have an uncanny knack of polarising opinion! I much prefer the humour of Simon 1 and the character of Simon in it (in number two he just needed a slap!). I really need to replay both, though, because the details in my brane are sketchy...