The very first graphical MMORPG I played was Everquest, way back when the premise — a game with thousands of people playing together — was something most people had no idea existed in video games. Everquest wasn’t really the first to do what it did, so why does every MMO since still feel like Everquest?
Read the rest of this entry »
Why have I not raved about this game yet?
Read the rest of this entry »
Before I begin the review, I feel I need to mention a mistake I made in my last blog entry. In Pitfall II, you don’t have to get all the gold bricks to beat the game. However, getting the bricks is good for getting more points and possibly achieving a perfect score. If you just want to win the game, all you need to do is find Rhonda(Harry’s niece), Quick-Claw the cowardly mountain lion, and the diamond ring.
Now on to the review of Jill of the Jungle.
Released in 1992 by Epic Megagames, Jill of the Jungle was a sensation in the growing shareware market. The way companies used to market their games was to release the first part or ‘episode’ of a series for free distribution, as sort of a demo or teaser, and charge a fairly cheap price for the full package which generally consisted of three episodes. It was a hit due to the amazing(in that day) graphics and soundblaster midi music, some cool puzzles, and possibly fan service.
In 1982, Activision programmer David Crane made a masterpiece known as Pitfall, a simple sidescrolling adventure game with the object of collecting all the treasure within a time limit(twenty minutes). The enemies were mostly static, except for a menacing white scorpion which lurked in the underground caves and followed ‘Harry’s every move whether he was above or below ground(Psychic scorpions, anybody?). The game was very popular and raised the bar for video games of the future. Two most notable games which readily used and expanded upon elements from Pitfall are Super Mario Bros. and Sonic the Hedgehog. A sequel to Pitfall would introduce several other features, some of them good, some bad, and at least one that would leave you bald from sheer aggravation.
With the market for video games growing, Atari decided to capitalize on a growing demographic of gamers: young children. Unfortunately, these games did not always give the buyers their money’s worth. In this article, two childrens’ games, Strawberry Shortcake and Big Bird’s Egg Catch, will be compared for design and replayability.
First a brief history of the Atari 2600 and early games:
In the late 1970’s, home video game systems were beginning to flood the market, and one company, Atari, capitalized on it by taking games to the next level: removable cartridges. This enabled the buyer to purchase a console and games separately, instead of buying several bulky consoles which often had at the most five or six preloaded games. The old machines, notably Video Pinball and the great, great granddaddy Pong, made way for a sleeker, more compact system, and cartridges which held around three to maybe six or seven kilobytes of information. The resolution improved as well, as the simple squares of the paddles, walls, and balls were replaced by sprites made by multiple pixels, forming space ships, bugs, ghosts, frogs, robots, men, and other types of characters. This incarnation was dubbed the Atari 2600, an innovation when video games were still in their infancy.
Now for the review.
  |
