BadHat

The "what the crap was that game called again?" thread

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It wasn't Jetpac, was it?  Platform isn't right, but it's possible that it got a pirate port or cloned, since shit like that happened all the time. 

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No. I think the gameplay was top-down. Or possibly 45-degree angle. I have a clear mental image of the river being a strip of blue in the middle of screen with green above and below (i.e. the grassy north and south banks of the river).

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I've done some more googling and the closest I've come to an answer is this post from a similar thread on another forum. I thought I'd copy-paste his post in case its somewhat better description sparks anyone's memories.

 

In the first game, you controlled a person in a world and the perspective was like a 2D Zelda game. The overworld had a river running through the middle with a raft at the Western end that you could ride towards the East on. And there was a waterfall at Eastern end of the river. And I think there was a bridge that connected both sides of the river.

At the top of the overworld was a mountain with a ski lift that you could ride on where I think you started out at in the beginning of the game. At the Southern portion of the overworld was a small dungeon with a dragon. And I vaguely recall some sort of educational tie-in where you enter caves or something of the sort scattered throughout the overworld where you likely did something like solve math equations. I was fascinated by the overworld itself so I my memories aren't strong on the other component.

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Ah crap, that ski lift sounds really familiar... I have no idea what game that was, but math problems sparks something to.

 

Unless I am taking every apple 2 game I played and vaguely combining them together to create what ever that description is.

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thorn - I'm pretty sure I played it. In fact, I've been looking for the name to that one for quite some time now, but I haven't been able to figure it out. Even trolled the entire list of Apple ][ games to see if anything sparked.

 

I thought it was ___'s Adventure with some goofy alien name in the blank (Zonk or Bonk or something) - if I recall you were a little alien with big eyes, but couldn't find anything that way either.

 

When I can remember, I'll paw through my old Apple disks at my parents' house and see if I can find it.

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I've done some more googling and the closest I've come to an answer is this post from a similar thread on another forum. I thought I'd copy-paste his post in case its somewhat better description sparks anyone's memories.

Hey, thorn.

 

 

It's called Tonk in the Land of Buddy Bots. I thought you were building a ship, but no! You're building a bot. Who's your buddy. A buddy-bot, even.

 

Listed for Atari, but I definitely played in on the Apple II, maybe a pirate port or something.

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I want to remember the name of the platformer I used to play on a shitty IBM-PC back in the late 80s/early 90s where iirc you control a little pink square with a face navigating single screen levels with all the platforms made up of similar small squares on plain backgrounds, only a step up from ASCII graphics. It was kind of a Super MeatBoy predecessor and I think it was called Jumping Jason or something like that.

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I want to remember the name of the platformer I used to play on a shitty IBM-PC back in the late 80s/early 90s where iirc you control a little pink square with a face navigating single screen levels with all the platforms made up of similar small squares on plain backgrounds, only a step up from ASCII graphics. It was kind of a Super MeatBoy predecessor and I think it was called Jumping Jason or something like that.

 

It sounds like something that would have been done in CGA, since pink was used a ton before EGA came around and opened the palette up a bit. Maybe (John Romero's) Dangerous Dave?

 

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No, the graphics were even more basic than that. The character was simply a tiny square/oblong (may have had rounded off corners) with a five-pixel smiley face.

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I remember seeing that character an awful lot back in the DOS days. It was an ASCII character.

 

Unfortunately, this means it's going to be a bugger to track down.

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Damn. I'm starting to wonder if it was Jason, as that garners no results...

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It's pretty much the same graphical fidelity and style, and it even has either the same or very similar pink smiley square, but my game was a side-on platformer very much in the vein of Super Meat Boy (single-screen, lifts, spikes, split-second jumps).

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No, not Jumpman. Again, the character was simply a small square with a smiley face (presumably an ASCII character).

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I've got one (that my memory is pretty fuzzy on, so I may be misremembering some of the details) - 

I played it on the PC, maybe around 2000?  It was 3D, set on a space station and maybe sort of vaguely RTS?  You had to do some sort of terraforming and manage the space station.  I don't remember if there were actually 'enemies' or fighting at all.  Sorry that's such a vague description...

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Awesome; that's totally it!  I do remember it being rather excellent and I'm going to go buy it right now.

 

Thanks, 'what the crap was that game called again' thread!

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