The Black Cauldron

Posted on January 27, 2016 by Pix

I first started playing Sierra adventure games almost as soon as I got a PC back around 89/90. The Sinclair PC200 I was using at the time was behind the times in most ways but ahead of the game in the sense that it only had a 3 1/2 inch disk drive at a time when most games still came on 5 1/4 inch floppies. Sierra were one of the very few companies to include both disk types in their boxes as well as supporting CGA graphics and I played my way through most of the AGI engine games back then.

One game I never did get around to was one of the earliest AGI titles, The Black Cauldron, an adaptation of the Disney movie headed up by Al Lowe but also worked on by plenty of familiar Sierra names. The game is now about 30 years old so lets put that right.

This is the original PC booter version and the box is a good deal smaller than the later Sierra releases than I’m more familiar with.

What it lacks in size it makes up for with a folding flap on the cover with an illustrated booklet on the inside introducing the game. It’s distinctly similar to the Infocom boxes in this respect.

There is no neat little tray at the back of the booklet though and instead the contents have to be pulled out of the box conventionally. Note the sticker at the back to cut up and stick on your keyboard so you don’t forget the keys. It’s not strictly necessary as the interface isn’t much more complicated than any other AGI game.

I’m using scummVM to play this + the version I’m playing is a later release than the one I’ve got on floppies. The game is actually free to download from www.allowe.com for anyone who wants to give it a go. I can’t compare this to the movie as I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it. I just about remember it coming out as a kid but it doesn’t seem to have been anything like as popular as some other Disney movies.

First things first, this does use Sierra’s famous AGI engine but it’s not quite how most of us will remember it. You still move your character around the world with the cursors but instead of typing commands the game uses F4 to use an item, F6 to interact with whatever you are stood next to and F8 to look with no typing required. The keys chosen are unnecessarily awkward when you have a whole keyboard of non function keys that could have been used instead but ignoring that it works well. Not having to guess the verb does make the game a good deal easier and I’m sure this was aimed at a younger audience that many other AGI games.

As the game begins, Taran is an assistant pigkeeper and not too enamoured with this state of affairs. Nevertheless life continues as normal and the first task in the game is feeding what would appear to be the farms only pig Hen Wen.

After eating, Hen Wen immediately trots off to your master and I soon learn she has the power to see far away things. She has a vision about the Horned King searching for Hen Wen in order to make her find the black cauldron and hence rule the world.

In the space of a couple of paragraphs of text, Taran’s life is uprooted and he has to take Hen Wen off to the fair folk and save her. Of course the moment I step outside the Horned King’s goons start swooping down trying to capture us both.

Anyone who has played King’s Quest will be very familiar with the mechanics in this game with the semi-random monsters. Step off the screen and they vanish again so it’s just a case of sticking near the edge of the screen for a quick escape.

My master wasn’t helpful enough to tell me where to find the fair folk but they are only a handful of screens away from the house. I do have to go behind a particular bramble bush to get to the right exit.

With Hen Wen safe, I can explore the rest of the map in peace. The world map is largish and rolls over at the top and bottom just like in Kings Quest. Playing this game is very much a trial and error approach at first with plenty of deaths and restarts along the way. Sierra got a lot of criticism for this sort of approach but since you can complete these older games in no time at all once you know what you are doing I never saw a problem in it. When the games got larger and the dead ends longer then it became more of an issue.

With my newly discovered magic word, I eventually figure out how to open up a secret passage by the water fall to find the King of the Fair Folk who wants me to destroy the black cauldron. He doesn’t offer to help as such but does give me a magic mirror + 5 portions of magic flying dust, one of which I need to use to get back out of the cave I just fell into.

From here it’s off to the scarier West edge of the world map where things get spooky and dangerous. I have to scale a cliff in a screen that would be nearly replicated in Kings Quest 3 before finding the Horned King’s castle. On the way to that, I carefully walk through the adventure game equivalent of one of those games where you have to move a metal hoop around a wire without touching it. I’d forgotten how many of these sorts of things were in these early AGI games.

The arcade like nature of the game continues on the next screens where I have to swim across an alligator infested moat (without meeting the alligators) and then climb up the castle into the window without falling off or getting rocks dropped on me.

Once in the castle, I get to spy on the Horned King before being captured by a henchman and thrown in a cell.

Escaping from the cell is simply a case of rattling the cup on the door. A trap door opens up in the floor and I’m rescued by a princess and her pet bauble.

She expects to be rescued in return. After walking through several dungeon screens, I find a suspicious looking wall which leads to a tomb and a magic sword. The princess takes the opportunity to sneak through a gap that is too small for me.

Now that I’m armed, I can escape the dungeon. The magic sword is less effective than I might have hoped but does stun the henchman for a couple of seconds. I take the chance to free one of the prisoners in return for a special harp that it occurs to me now I never actually used for anything.

I escape the castle, climb back down the cliff and head for the one area of the map I’ve not managed to achieve anything yet. This is across a swamp. You may notice that there are loads of little rocks across it. It is possible to jump across these which is how I tried it on my first attempt through the game but now I have the flying dust I take the easier option and bypass this particular subgame. This leads to a witches cottage and a chest full of frogs.

At first the witches try to add me to the frogs but after waving my sword around they agree to swap it for the black cauldron. Before I can destroy the cauldron and beat the game, one of the Horned Kings minions swoops down and grabs the thing meaning I have to traipse back to the castle once again.

The Horned King is busy raising a skeletal army with his new cauldron. I flash my magic mirror at him, showing him his true self which is apparently horrifying enough that he jumps in the cauldron committing suicide. As the castle starts to fall down in true end of the film/game fashion, I float off on a log and escape.

There is one final puzzle as the witches offer me various exchanges in return for their cauldron back. After turning down their first offers, the last of these is the return of my magic sword which I now find grants me immortality and a happy ending.

I really enjoyed playing Black Cauldron. I can’t say how much of that was pure nostalgia but I expect a large part. I may not have played this particular title but it was quite the novelty to play a new AGI game that I was entirely unfamiliar with. The colourful graphics really suited the subject matter and within the low res constraints of the AGI engine have never looked a whole lot better than this despite it being one of the earlier games.

As a game it’s a little hard to categorise. It’s certainly not an adventure game in the normal sense of the word. There was a large portion of arcade-like elements at times with walking along narrow pathways and bashing henchmen with swords. Sierra did this sort of thing a lot with their games, including things like driving through the city of Lytton in Police Quest, or the infamous arcade sequences in Space Quest.

There was a smaller quotient of puzzles than other AGI titles and the largest aspect of beating Black Cauldron was simply exploration and coming up with a plan of attack once you knew where everything was. There is a time limit of sorts with the game requiring the player to eat and drink throughout but it’s certainly simpler to play than any other AGI game that leaps to mind (short of Mixed Up Mother Goose). There is still a reasonable if brief challenge coming to this fresh. There are supposedly extra points available for taking different routes from the movie but I never found any alternative solutions other than the option to allow a minor character to sacrifice themselves at the end of the game instead of using the mirror.

I can’t say I’m entirely clear on many elements of the story actually. No doubt it would all make more sense if I’d read the books or watched the film. It didn’t get in the way though and it made just about enough sense to keep me playing. On the whole this would be a nice gentle introduction to the world of Sierra adventure games and definitely one I recommend. I wish I had some more AGI games to catch up on but this is the final one as far as I know, outside of fan games. There are several SCI titles that I still haven’t gotten around to and will no doubt be having a go at in due course.

Labyrinth (C64)

Posted on January 24, 2016 by Pix

With the all too early death of David Bowie recently, I thought I should play something appropriate. I’ve been a Bowie fan since the late 80’s and still have most of his records on vinyl. Despite that, I only saw him live the once on the Outside tour where he was being supported by Morrissey. I can’t think of any bigger tribute than to say it would have been more than worth sitting through another hour of Morrissey if I’d needed to. It’s hard to imagine that there won’t be any more albums now as they have been such a constant throughout my life.

To get back to games, the obvious (and better) choice would have been Omikron since Bowie wrote the music and even appeared in it but instead I thought I’d try Lucasfilm Games’ 1986 adaptation of Labyrinth on the Commodore 64. This is definitely a noteworthy game as it was effectively Lucasfilm’s first adventure game coming out prior to Maniac Mansion and all the other classic games that used the SCUMM engine. As such, the demand for boxed copies does tend to drive the price through the roof.

The disk release got a nice cardboard box version and is clearly the one to own. Here in the UK, you had to be relatively well off just to own the C64 in the first place. The disk drive was pretty much out of the question. For once this didn’t stop us being able to play the game as it was also released on multiload cassette which is the version I’m going to be playing here.

The packaging is a typical double cassette with a folded up leaflet inside with the loading/playing instructions. The length of that cassette bears noting as I’ll be playing through both sides of it before I finish the game.

Labyrinth gets off to an unlikely start for a graphic adventure as the first section is a mini text adventure section in which the player has to go to a cinema and watch the Labyrinth movie. It’s a two word parser but instead of being free to type, the possible words are in scrollable menus on either side of the screen.

There are only a handful of locations and one puzzle to speak of which involves stopping a geek from talking to you at the cinema so that you can settle down and watch the film. It’s not the most promising of starts despite being one of the best parts of the game in hindsight.

A minute of loading later, there is a Wizard of Oz moment as the graphics and audio kick into life and Bowie as the goblin king sucks me into his world to be his thrall. I only have 13 hours to get to the centre of his labyrinth and free myself.

Another minute of loading and I find myself at the entrance to the labyrinth. I can walk to either side and the corridor scrolls endlessly so I merely have to walk straight in. Cue another minute of loading.

The next section is mercifully larger and consists once again of a large corridor with no obvious doors in sight. Hoggle is hanging around but isn’t particularly helpful. I just have to pick up any items in the long corridor and then exit through an invisible door(anywhere the wall has graffiti). This is going to be the pattern for the game, walk around really long corridors picking up anything that isn’t nailed down and then try to find the one door which takes you to the next area in a sea of identical looking exits.

There are puzzles of sorts. The room on the top left has two doors one of which leads to certain death. The guards won’t tell me which is which unless I open all the doors in the brick corridor. The brick corridor is actually three corridors, all full of doors, one corridor of which has a guard in that I have to avoid. The solution to avoiding that guard is to attract him to one end of the corridor before escaping then when you return he hasn’t moved so you can run the other direction instead. Once solved, I’m still left with trying all of about 15 doors one at a time until I find the only one that takes me to the next screen.

Getting through all of this leads to a series of stone corridors looking much like someone has just redecorated the brick corridor. A particular door is guarded and I discover I can put the guard to sleep by giving him a peach I found earlier. I still can’t go through the door but can steal his helmet which I end up wearing for the rest of the game much to my detriment later on.

This leads on to a section with a wise man in a maze in which he gives a cyptic-ish clue such as telling me to walk the path of the clock from 12-9 which basically means go through every door of the above screen clockwise starting at the top to escape the room. The given clue and solution seems to be random as I got variations on the theme on other games.

After negotiating several more corridors of the more leafy variety, I get to Sir Didymus who is guarding the bridge over the bog of eternal stench. There is nothing to do on this screen except talk to him and then walk off for now as he wants me to rescue Ludo before I can cross.

Luckily for me, Ludo happens to be the next screen tied to a tree in the middle of a maze. This is a mini-arcade game in which the big squares on the ground change colour Q-Bert style when walked on and turn into trap doors after the final colour. I have to get a couple of guards to fall down the holes which requires priming a pad and getting them to chase after me. Ludo can then be chopped down with the shears I’m carrying.

Some more walking round corridors and a lot of loading later, I get to cross the bridge over the bog of eternal stench and find myself in more corridors except this time the walls resemble the keys of a piano. There is a black key conspicuously missing which I replace with a plank I’m carrying. I’m expecting to get to the end of the game at this point but Jared won’t let me in as I look too silly in the helmet (yes really). I can’t take it off either as that would be littering. If there was any option here other than restarting I couldn’t find it. This being the cassette version, there are no save games…

The best part of an hour later, I’ve played through the whole thing again and am back where I was minus helmet and facing the goblin king in his Escher room. What I have to do here is follow him around and throw crystal balls at him until one hits. I’ve a limited supply of crystal balls but they boomerang back to me so it makes no difference as long as you picked at least one up earlier.

Once thwacked by a crystal ball, the goblin king claims to still be my master but as soon as I speak to him turns into a frog and the game ends with no further ado.

I’ve not gone through every screen here and for good reason but I’ve left precious little out either. It appears that in the conversion to cassette some of the puzzles have gone missing. There was at least one screen missing entirely judging from videos I’ve seen on YouTube.

It has to be said that I expected something a bit better than this from Labyrinth. The loading times weren’t as annoying as might be expected given that the cassette would start up again after every single section. Each load was reasonably brief so it was never all that long to wait. Even so the hour to beat the game must have included 30 minutes of loading. My real problem with Labyrinth was that the game itself is almost non-existent. On the second playthrough I accidentally missed half the puzzles, then fell in the bog of eternal stench when crossing the bridge and it made no difference to anything whatsoever.

There are some similarities to Maniac Mansion with traces of the same humour and a similar visual style. The game looks quite nice and there are occasional bits of music from the movie to add some atmosphere. Maniac Mansion was a huge leap ahead of Labyrinth though. I associate Lucasarts adventures with strong storylines which certainly wasn’t the case here. There are elements of the original movie but no plot to speak of within the game once it turns graphical. If you haven’t seen the movie you will have no idea at all what is going on. Even if you have, it doesn’t make much sense. Similarly the puzzles were sparse and it’s almost possible to blunder through the game without having to solve anything.

If you hadn’t guessed by now, Labyrinth really doesn’t have much to recommend it. It is simple enough to give the player a good chance of beating it on the first attempt and doesn’t offer anything in particular on that brief journey. I can only assume the price it commands on Ebay these days is because of the games that came after it rather than people actually liking Labyrinth itself all that much. No doubt the disk version plays a little better than this one. Labyrinth is relatively innocuous at least and does hint at what would follow with Maniac Mansion but I’d much rather have been playing Space Quest which was released the same year.

The Hoard – January 2016

Posted on January 20, 2016 by Pix

It’s been two years since the last one so I thought it was high time for another trawl through my slowly growing collection of retro gaming bits and pieces. It’s not been my most active couple of years for collecting and a lot of this stuff won’t have even moved in the course of the last 2 years. There are definitely some new bits in there, probably not a lot but I tend to lose track for obvious reasons so I’ll just go through the lot.

The collection is still confined to the same two attic rooms in an attempt to keep the rest of the house relatively normal. I will admit to an X-Arcade tankstick making its way into the living room downstairs. This isn’t the most subtle addition given the size of the thing but other than that and the Wii it’s all gaming free until the top floor where one room is dedicated to the PC with all the big box games and the other room that I’ll start in containing all the other consoles and computers with a big couch to play them from.

So starting by the door, there is what I expect is a collection of PC gaming mags and CD’s that probably hasn’t changed since 2 years back. These are the later issues with all the earlier ones on the other side of the room.

To the right of them is a big set of drawers full of all the Origin memorabilia I’ve scanned in for the site (and plenty I haven’t) as well as various cables and components and all the other bits you end up with if you have too many old computers. My Commodore Pet sits on top of the drawers + a load of Steam games are in a little bookcase at the back.

The unorganized pile below is about the most old machines you can fit on a small table and still be able to use them (with a little shuffling around). Starting on the left is a ZX81 (sat on an Apple II floppy drive). To the right of that is an Apple IIGS with a Vectex sat on it. Further right is an MSX-2 with an Amstrad CPC monitor on top of it and the CPC itself in front of there. At the front and underneath the MSX-2 and IIGS keyboards is an Atari ST.

There is another layer to the table below that with on the left a VIC-20, a slightly beat up Intellivision in the front, an Atari Jaguar on the right and a Philips Videopac G7000 (aka an Odysee 2) in the back.

The table to the right is thankfully more organised with an Amiga 1200 on the left, a Dragon 32 in the middle and an Atari 800XL sat on top of a BBC Master on the right. In the background are a load of the games for the various systems plus on the top from left to right, a colour Binatone Pong machine, a Nintendo Gamecube, a black and white Binatone pong machine, an Atari 7800, a PS2 and a Dreamcast sat on top of that. The copy of Deus Ex Machina in the background is kind of noteworthy as it is Mel Croucher’s personal copy (or at least used to be).

There is of course a second layer of machines on the table with a Commodore 128 on the left, with a Spectrum +2 on top and an MSX-1 on the right. One of these days I may attempt to tidy up some of the cables powering all of these things. The mess is merely hinted at in the photo here and the pile of wires and power adaptors behind the TV does not bear photographing.

Under the telly are a Sega Saturn, a CD32, a SNES, a NES and an N64. All the consoles in the room are connected via an unfathomable array of SCART switches on either side of the TV + the table above with a similar network of power adaptors. I have at last managed to label all of these in the last two years so I no longer have to use trial and error.

To the right of the TV is a tower consisting of a Sega Megadrive Model 2 + Sega CD and 32X, a 3DO, half of my old 90’s hi-fi (now acting as a glorified cassette deck for some of these machines) and underneath that a Philips CDi.

Moving along is my newest console in the shape of the Adman Grandstand (aka the Fairchild Channel F) which was the first home console to use games on cartridges. All of the spare controllers for the various systems are piled up under here.

The bookcase to the right contains all my older magazines + the UItima 1 RPG board game sat on the top.

Nearly there now with just room for one more case which seems to be filling up with headgear. The hat is a signed Tex Murphy fedora, there is a helmet from the Crusader games FMV sections below with a couple of Origin baseball caps, a load of Intellivision games, a couple of awards handed out to an ex-Origin employee, my DS, a Pandora computer in the carry case and the VFX-1 virtual reality headset and it’s box.

One new addition to this room is a load of Star Wars game chromeart prints on the wall next to the far from inconspicuous Bioforge standup ad. These are some of my favourite games ever (ok maybe not Rebel Assault) so I had to add them somewhere and the prints are far from rare so were easy enough to get hold of. There is a Dark Forces one over by the TV also. There were a load of similar Wing Commander prints released around the same time which I’ve not managed to acquire yet but I have the space reserved if I ever do get them.

As much fun as playing around with all those old machines is, the heart of the collection as far as I’m concerned is the big box PC games where my real interests as a collector lie. I love DOS/early Windows era PC gaming and have been collecting old PC games for approaching two decades now. It’s heavy on the adventure games since that’s what I like the most but I’m far from exclusive to one genre and tend to collect by company/series.

Starting by the door, are a pair of six shelf bookcases that weren’t enough for the job so there are a couple of layers of games on the top of them now. Some games that didn’t really fit anywhere else ended up on the top + all my SSI and ICOM games. Below that are the Cyberdreams adventure games, the Might and Magic series and all the Lucasarts adventure games. The bookcase on the right contains most of my Origin games and is 100% Origin top to bottom. One change from the last time I did this is that all the guide/hint books are now in the box of the game where possible in order to save space.

The rest of those bookcases contain a shelf or so of Star Wars games, another shelf of Star Trek games (hardly any of which I’ve ever played), pretty much everything Bullfrog and all of Trilobytes games. The big pile of DVD cases on the right is a load of self made GOG cases that used to be piled up in the corner but now are in one giant tower. Creating these seems somewhat redundant since I got unlimited broadband recently but they are there as backups at any rate.

To the right of GOG tower is another six shelf bookcase with another two layers piled on top. There are some random titles but it’s nearly all Sierra adventure games in here. I’ve filled this out slightly over the last couple of years with some of the more obscure titles like Turbo Science on the top right.

Below that, it’s yet more Sierra games before getting into Access Software, then Revolution, Adventuresoft and some more random titles.

To the right of that it’s another 6 shelf bookcase with another 2 layers of games piled above it. There are a load of Westwood Studios, followed by the Prince of Persia series, some Looking Glass, most of the Cryo/Exxos games and finally the Tsunami adventure games.

Moving down we get to all my Infocom games. I think I’m just missing Circuit’s Edge for a full set of their adventure games having filled this section out quite a bit in the last year. I finally got that hard to find copy of Leather Goddesses of Phobos 2 in recent months (sealed no less) without having to break the bank. After these starts the Interplay games which is the most grown section this last two years. I might have every Interplay title by now although there are no doubt a few missing. Nothing I could name without checking Mobygames at any rate.

The room starts to get shorter from here on out with the sloping roof so the next case is just 4 shelves (with several layers + a meep on top). It starts off with loads more Interplay before branching out to the Microprose adventure games, the Ancient Art Of War series and all of Legend’s games on the lowest shelf.

Below them is a load of 90’s FPS games. I’m still looking for a copy of Blood to add to these. Below that are the largest boxes in the collection that just won’t fit anywhere else + all of Inscape’s adventure games.

The room is getting seriously short down this end so it’s mini bookcases from here on out. There is an eclectic mix in this one including nearly all of the Bitmap Brothers’ games, the Alone in the Dark series + some other similar Delphine games. It’s not especially collectible but one new addition here is a decent copy of Kingdom O’ Magic which is a strange British adventure game/RPG hybrid that I’ve always enjoyed far more than I probably should. My last attempt to buy a copy ended up in the most smashed boxed I’ve ever had the displeasure to receive in the post.

It stays eclectic down the back of the room. Included amongst this lot are a load of Monty Python games, lots of Origin console ports, the Wing Commander novels, the Lemmings series and all of Shiny’s games.

The final corner has loose CD’s, some Core Design games and the early GTA games among others.

That’s the lot for now. There isn’t exactly a whole lot of room to expand and I can’t say the list of titles I’m actively looking for is all that long any more. I might even clear out some duplicates and less desirable big boxes one day soon.

One of the things that got me started on this blog was having all those Origin games and not having played a good number of them. I may have finished all those particular games but lets face it I’ve barely scratched the surface elsewhere and I only ever get further behind. There are still Origin ports and fan games I intend to look at but this feels like the perfect time to spread my wings so I’ve decided to blog through some of these other titles for the fun of it, maybe having a look at the box contents and any magazine articles I can dig up on each game from the pile next door. I’ll concentrate on old PC games for the most part but won’t be confining myself to any platform, genre or publisher.

If anyone is desperate enough to want me to blog through anything in particular, leave a request and I may well give it a go. I don’t think there is anything I own that I wouldn’t like to at least try playing either again or for the first time. Failing that I intend to randomly flit around the collection to whatever draws my attention.

Ranking The Origin Games (10-1)

Posted on January 17, 2016 by Pix

I’ve been counting down through my favourite Origin games for the last 4 posts and now we finally get to the top 10. It should be obvious enough which 10 are left so lets put them in order.

10.Autoduel

This was the only game that Lord British would put his name on the box that wasn’t an Ultima in nearly 20 years at Origin, although it was mainly worked on by Chuck Beuche. It was another adaptation of a Steve Jackson game which apparently wasn’t too popular with the man himself as it strayed so far from the source material. It’s those changes that made Autoduel such a success as it could truly taking advantage of the different medium.

In Autoduel, Origin created one of the more unique RPG’s of the 80’s in which the player has to drive around a Mad Max inspired post apocalyptic America earning money to upgrade their car in order to survive in the dangerous wastelands. Car combat was handled in real time arcade segments that could be approached very differently depending on exactly what upgrades you had made to your vehicle. The whole thing has an extremely open world and unusually for me in an RPG, I actually liked the combat.

Autoduel certainly isn’t forgotten but it should be more celebrated than it is. I’d love to have seen some sequels and it’s a game crying out for a modern remake.

9.Wing Commander 3

It won’t be any great surprise that most of the top 10 games are Wing Commander or Ultima titles. Wing Commander 3 was a technological marvel in the day to such an extent that as impoverished student, I had to combine the best components of my PC with 2 of my housemates in order to create something that would even run it. It still took several minutes to load each mission and the planet missions were nearly unplayable even in VGA so we kind of missed some of the impact. It was a great experience despite all of that.

The heritage to WC2 was a lot clearer than it would become in WC4. The movie sections were clearly replacements for the animated equivalents and for better or worse didn’t take over the game in the same way as the sequel. The in-flight SVGA engine was a little monochrome if I’m honest and I was slightly disappointed with it after playing Armada prior to this. It was the epic quantity and quality of all the movies that really kept me going on that first playthrough. You no doubt had to be there at the time to appreciate this of course, in the same way as the digitized speech impressed so much in WC2.

When I finally got a machine capable of playing it properly the combat sections came into their own and I could finally see the whole package in all it’s glory. Arguably the combat had been a little more fun in WC2 but this was a new and different experience that I replayed far too many times back in the 90’s.

8.Ultima 6

Ultima 6 marks the best middle ground of the main series for me between the hardcore RPG’s that preceded it to the almost statless and adventure game like Ultima 7. The dialog was expanded hugely and conversing with the many NPC’s is one of the largest and most enjoyable parts of the game. The combat was still much the same as Ultima 5 except all on the same map now and I only had to worry about controlling the avatar. This speeded progress massively and was a vast improvement. For anyone who really didn’t like combat, it could be largely avoided throughout the game and you wouldn’t be punished. There is precious little in Ultima 7 that wasn’t already in Ultima 6 outside of the fancy full screen graphics.

The plot while at first appearing standard RPG fare wasn’t quite what it appeared in one of the better twists of the series. About my only complaint with Ultima 6 was how dark it got at night. Origin really knocked it out of the ballpark in 1990 with this and Wing Commander 1 both coming out. These games heralded the shift in power to PC gaming in what was a long overdue change in focus from the Apple II for Origin.

I did miss the 3D dungeons a little but we got Underworld not long after which made up for it and then some.

7.Wing Commander 2

This was the first Wing Commander game I ever played and was by far the most impressive thing I’d ever seen on my PC at the time. It was an incremental improvement over the first in the series but it all added together to that much more of a satisfying experience. The cutscenes had far more animation and variety, the explosions were a little bit prettier, the music a little more varied and of course there was the speech dotted throughout that so impressed all the Soundblaster owners back in the day.

Even the ships had more variety from the nimble Ferret to the ponderous but extremely satisfying Broadsword. Capships could no longer be shot down with anything except torpedoes and these tense bombing runs are some of my fonder memories of gaming back in the early 90’s. It didn’t have the branching mission structure to the same extent as WC1 but since near enough everyone always replayed until they won I don’t think it was too much of a loss.

6.Martian Dreams

This is probably a controversial choice to place so high but I’ve always loved Martian Dreams from the first time I played it. This was long after the original release as it’s the game that got me into collecting in the first place. I’d been something of an Origin fan from about 1992 after playing Wing Commander 2 and Ultima Underworld in fairly close succession. I kept up with most of their newer releases after that but never really got into the Ultima series until the Ultima Collection was released in 1998. This was of course missing Martian Dreams (among others) so I thought I should do something about it and I kind of kept going from there.

The game has one of the least likely plots ever to come out of Origin with the Avatar joining a bunch of historical characters in the past to journey to mars via a cannon to rescue yet more famous historical characters and ultimately revive a long dead alien race…and you get to take Warren Spector along for the ride. What should be a ridiculous plotline works brilliantly and disbelief is entirely suspended as the story gradually unfolds before drawing to a fitting climax. The sci-fi nature of the plot is right up my street as I’ve never been overly keen on fantasy by comparison. The reskinned Ultima 6 engine never looked better and fitted the game brilliantly. I even love the music (especially the credits theme). Even better, it’s free on GOG these days rather than the silly money I paid back in 98/99.

5.Privateer

I rushed out and bought Privateer when it was first released, more or less ignoring the required specs on the box which my PC barely met. The result was an impressive intro but an unplayable game where my framerate led to me not being able to land any shots whatsoever. I ended up returning it to the store and never played Privateer again until it came around on this blog. I should have given it another chance years earlier.

The start of the game is certainly unforgiving but that’s what makes progressing so rewarding later on. Origin created a compelling universe to explore on that large pile of floppies and it takes a little perseverance before you can branch out to its furthest extents. The engine was arguably a little dated at the time given that it was still using pre-rendered sprites. These looked much better than they ever had in WC2 though and the music created an extremely effective atmosphere for the game. I especially liked the jump drive mechanic in which the player would have to reach a blue cloud of gas marking a jump point before being able to leave the sector. It led to lots of tense moments when trying to escape enemies. You could argue that Privateer was just an updated version of Elite but I don’t see anything wrong with that whatsoever. It was far more fun than Elite 2 ever was after all.

4.Wing Commander 4

Wing Commander 4 probably holds the record for the game I’ve played through more times than any other. Any time I’ve started to play it, I’d invariably be there several hours later trying to complete it in the one sitting. The snag with that is that I know the game all too well these days and can’t really go back to it any more.

The movie sections provide a compelling sci-fi action romp through the galaxy and were a huge improvement over WC3 in every aspect. WC4 really was an interactive movie in every sense with the story driving the missions rather than the other way around. The British press almost universally panned it at the time for having too much movie and not enough game but I don’t agree with this at all. The flight sections were arguably more challenging here than in WC3 and there was more branching and variety in the ship types so I thought it stepped things up a notch if anything. I even reckon the game flowed quite smoothly between flight and FMV, especially in the climactic later sections. I liked this game so much I bought a Creative DXR2 just to get the DVD version back in the day.

3.Ultima Underworld 2

Ultima Underworld 2 was a rushed sequel released in very short order to capitalise on sales of the first game but you would never know it (unless you run into a certain game breaking bug). The viewing window was substantially larger, the creatures far less pixellated, the worlds more varied and it was simply superlative at the time of release. Nothing else came close except Underworld 1.

The increased size of the game did have some pitfalls and there were parts that felt less polished than UW1. The varied worlds of UW2 didn’t hold together as a cohesive whole in quite the same way and there were some parts of the ethereal void especially that I wasn’t a fan of. I also didn’t like the music as much and the intro/outro were less epic. There are minor points though in a game of this size and scope. It’s probably the better game of the series but I can’t really give it the top spot given that it didn’t innovate in the same way.

2.System Shock

Splitting the Underworlds is the ever popular FPS System Shock. This is another game that I couldn’t get into on first release. I really wanted another Underworld and the lack of NPC’s and conversations was something of a gamebreaker for me. Also, lets face it that control system takes some getting used to but it works well enough when you have the hang of it.

It probably didn’t help that I had the floppy version. System Shock didn’t really come into its own until the CD release some time after. This was done so well and fitted so perfectly it’s hard to believe now that it wasn’t released in that format in the first place. The atmosphere of the game is intense, the action and story extremely well presented and in some ways it’s a template for many games that followed it. I wish more of those games had more of the freedom and exploration of System Shock instead of the on-rails FPS’s that are so prevalent these days.

1.Ultima Underworld 1

It may not be a coincidence that my #1 game on the list is also the first Origin game I played. Playing UW1 was an experience unlike any other with its true 3D world making a huge impression on gamers like myself who were not used to 3D. I’d compare playing this in 1992 to anyone trying VR for the first time now. It really did feel like being there with the sudden switch to combat music making me jump out of my chair on numerous occasions if a denizen of the abyss had crept up on me. The music and visuals created an incredibly dark and foreboding atmosphere of the sort that I’ve only experienced since in games like Amnesia.

Beyond that, the dungeon was such a compelling place to explore with loads of inhabitants to meet (both hostile and friendly), a damsel to save and ultimately a demon to banish. Each level would bring something new and there were so many ways to approach the challenge. The simulation aspects that Looking Glass brought to this on top of the 3D visuals were the cherry on the cake. It’s ridiculous how advanced the game engine was compared to everything else on the market.

After days of traversing the abyss, there is a closing passage where the Slasher of Veils is banished and a breakneck run through the ethereal void with him breathing down your neck. It’s probably my favourite endgame of all time in what could well be my favourite game of all time. Looking back at this 30 years later, it would be impossible to play it with the same perspective but I have never been as immersed in any game before or since.

So that’s my top 55 Origin games. Hopefully, I’ve not annoyed too many people by putting favourites low down the list. I’d certainly be curious to know what anyone else’s top 10 would have been and the reasons why. I can’t say I found it all that easy to compare many of these titles and my list would no doubt have been different on another day. I was heavily influenced by the games I played nearer their release date which I’m almost always going to remember more fondly. There is also a tendency to avoid clumping all those Ultima/Wing Commander games together and even then I ended up with a top 10 that was 40% of each.

The irony isn’t entirely lost on me that my top three games were all developed by Looking Glass rather than Origin but Underworld was always going to win out in my case and the other two are built from similar moulds.The good news for me is that they all have sequels on the way so let’s hope those can live up their predecessors.

Ranking The Origin Games (20-11)

Posted on January 14, 2016 by Pix

Continuing my list of favourite Origin games, let’s see which games didn’t quite make the top ten.

20.Bioforge

Starting us off is Origin’s answer to Alone In The Dark in the shape of Bioforge. It was a fantastic looking game in its day, with a warped sci-fi plot and some decent puzzles to break up the action. The basic game mechanic may have been borrowed but Bioforge was very much its own beast and presented an alternative approach to the interactive movie which Origin never really pursued any further. Bit of a pity really as it’s one of their better told stories provided you don’t object to reading the lengthy documents you pick up along the way. The main things holding Bioforge back are the lack of an ending since the sequel never happened and the clunky combat. The combat is awkward enough that I strongly recommend playing this one on easy which makes it play more or less as it should in the first place as far as I’m concerned.

19.Privateer 2

This is the Wing Commander game that wasn’t really a Wing Commander being headed up by Erin rather than Chris Roberts and set in a separate universe. The FMV portions had one of the best casts ever assembled for a video game but were a lot less Hollywood and more original series Doctor Who in terms of style and presentation. This didn’t bother me one bit mind you.

The in flight engine was quite a bit smoother and better looking than the Wing Commander 4 equivalent if less satisfying in combat. Flying the ships in Privateer 2 was a very different experience all round but one I always enjoyed. It’s a game that seemed a little under-appreciated in my eyes and might have been better off without that Wing Commander branding that got applied at the last minute.

18.Serpent Isle

Ultima 7 and Serpent Isle are two games that I really should go back and play again one day as I don’t feel I spent enough time with either. Both used the same engine but had quite different structures with Serpent Isle offering a more linear experience to Ultima 7’s open world approach. I’m usually all for a strong storyline but in this case the latter appealed to me more plus the slightly unfinished nature of Serpent Isle was apparent at times. I’d never played this prior to the blog and definitely rushed through it too much – I may well appreciate it more second time around but it still gets a lofty place in the list.
17.Ultima 9

It may be a contradiction but I’ve never been more disappointed by a game than Ultima 9, yet I still enjoyed playing it immensely. The seamless open world and the accompanying music were a revelation back in the 90’s. The dungeons were challenging and varied, the world itself beautiful (for 1999) and I can’t say I ran into half as many bugs as other players were reporting at the time. The disappointment came from aspects of the storyline, voice acting, general treatment of the series legacy and especially the ending with its almost mocking techno-stones music. You would have thought the story should have been the easiest part to get right, at least where they referred to previous events. Overlooking this and all the pregame hype, there was still a great game here that was years ahead of its time. More development would clearly have helped and it’s not how the trilogy of trilogies should have ended but I’d never played anything like this in the 90’s.
16.Crusader No Regret

An RPG engine shouldn’t ever have worked as the basis for a running and gunning action game but in the case of the Crusader games they would turn out far, far better than Ultima 8 whose engine they shared. A few extra years of PC horsepower allowed the move to SVGA which didn’t hurt of course.

Both Crusader games had near identical gameplay in which the silent and conspicuously red silencer would roll around various locations mowing down enemies and searching for keycards and buttons. The controls really took some getting used to but became second nature after two or three levels. Near enough everything in the environment could be blown up, there were a plethora of weapons to choose from and I can’t think of any other games that play quite like them. The ar 15 parts is what you can get when it comes to weapons.

No Regret was the sequel and introduced some new weapons and enemies but dialled back a little on the copious FMV of the original. Since I’m a sucker for FMV, I’m placing the sequel slightly behind in this list.

15. Ultima 4

Ultima 4 has to be the most significant game in the series. It was where it truly became the franchise we are all hopefully familiar with by now introducing the virtues and Britannia. It’s also the entry in the series to introduce the name, job, bye conversation system. Talking to the characters in the world is undoubtedly my favourite part of any Ultima and started a welcome new aspect to the gameplay learning all the clues needed to beat the game by asking the right people the right things.

Playing the game now, the simplistic mechanics are readily apparent and it’s perhaps hard to appreciate its impact at the time. Despite this it remains approachable and far more relevant than any game over 30 years old should be. I’d prefer a slightly smaller party size if I’m honest but Ultima 4 is a true classic.

14.Wing Commander

Chris Robert’s seminal space shooter heralded the start of PC gaming becoming a serious force back in 1990. It was one of the first games that would have made an Amiga owner jealous after Commodore’s machine had led the way for years. Amiga owners did get a decent version of their own some years later but by then the Amiga had truly lost the race.

The sprite scaling engine behind Wing Commander does show it’s age these days but the rest of the game still looks and sounds as good as ever. It’s all the extra effort that went into Wing Commander that really impresses. Origin could just have put out a basic shooter with the same engine and it would have sold by the bucketload. Instead we got a space epic with flashy cutscenes, brilliant graphic design, a branching mission structure and even lip-synced dialogue (for the very few who noticed). It epitomizes what Origin were all about and why I bought so many of their games in the 90’s. I do think later games in the series improved on the formula so it just fails to make the top 10.
13.Crusader No Remorse

As already mentioned there wasn’t a whole lot to choose between this and No Regret. No Remorse included a section where you got to return to a rebel base between missions and talk to all your comrades, buy armour from a shady character (in more ways than one) called Weasel and generally have a good time with the b-movie cast. Origin got everything right first time around in the Crusader series so with the FMV in No Remorse providing a good bit of incentive to progress and getting some extra points for getting there first, No Remorse warrants being a couple of places higher on the list.

12.Wing Commander Prophecy

Prophecy is a game I have mixed feelings about. The FMV sections were a huge step back from Wing Commander 4 or Privateer 2 and a real disappointment. The script for these was similarly average at best. The 3DFX powered flight engine on the other hand was simply stunning and the combat in this game is as good as it ever got in the Wing Commander series. I also loved the new alien ships which all had plenty of character and unique traits. Looking back at it now, I can’t think of an arcade/action space shooter that plays better to this day. The fan enhancements and games that have been made since using this engine take it even further and show a glimpse of where the series might have gone next had it got the chance. As an overall package the FMV, storyline and the fact that I didn’t get to play Blair keep it out of the top 10.

11.Ultima 7

Ultima 7 arguably remains the seminal open world RPG to this day. Having said that, it’s debatable how much of an RPG it is with the stats and combat really taking a backseat to world exploration and conversation. The overall storyline is a little simplistic involving a chase around Britannia but works very well within the open world allowing the player to wander off course at will and take on all the side quests. The full screen engine used for this and Serpent Isle was visually a huge leap forward from Ultima 6, if notoriously fiddly to get running for years prior to Exult/Dosbox. I did find the inventory system quite frustrating it has to be said – give me Ultima 6’s slot based approach over the disorganised piles of things in a backpack any day. The combat became a little random also but not to the extent that it ever felt frustrating. Other than that I think Ultima 7 succeeded at nearly every thing it went for. I’m surprised it didn’t end up in the top 10 but something had to give.

I’ll count down the top 10 in the next and final post. I expect the final 10 will have been largely predictable for anyone who knows my tastes but there are possibly a couple of surprises.

Pix's Origin Adventures

Author Archives: Pix

The Black Cauldron

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The Hoard – January 2016

Ranking The Origin Games (10-1)

Ranking The Origin Games (20-11)

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