I initially intended to start Longbow 2 straight after finishing Super Wing Commander but it’s taken me a while to get going in the end. I’ve been distracted by other things as always happens but I’ve also been put off by the sheer size of the manual which is possibly the largest I’ve ever seen. I’d more or less decided I was going to try out the California Pacific version of Ultima 1 first as I’ve recently purchased a usb floppy disk reader from http://www.kryoflux.com and I quite like the idea of being able to read my Apple II disk with it and actually play my own copy of the game, rather than getting a copy which has probably been altered off an emulation site. This is assuming that the disk is still readable, of course. However, despite being one of the first to order (within 30 mins of the store opening), it appears I was one of the last to get my order shipped so I’m still waiting for it to arrive…

I’m sure it will be worth the wait. Kryoflux is an interesting looking product for anyone who wants to back up their game collection. I especially like the fact that it will read any format of disk from any platform. Usually I would just download a game from an abandonware site but playing cracked/altered versions of games is something that always bugs me slightly and this is the perfect solution. At around 100 Euros, it’s very much a product for enthusiasts only but I seem to often find myself wanting to use an old floppy drive for one reason or another and getting it working is so much grief that this is easily worth the money for me. I’ve also got loads of games which I’ve not been able to previously attempt to back up due to copy protection. If you fancy one of these boards for yourself, the bad news is that they sold out almost immediately and you will probably have to wait until the next batch arrives at the end of December. I expect with a product like this that there will be a load of people like myself, who have been waiting for something like this for years and will buy it immediately but that once these people all own one the demand will be extremely limited. I doubt whether it will be viable to keep producing them after this demand has died down but I hope I’m wrong about that.

I’ve also been busy finishing off my Origin collection. I still haven’t found a copy of the long sought after Caverns Of Callisto, other than the one copy on Ebay for a frankly ludicrous $2500. The same guy is/was trying to get $2000 for a shrink wrapped copy of U9 Dragon Edition on Amazon and I could go on with more examples. I know that I don’t (and under no circumstances will) have to pay these insane prices myself, but I don’t like it when someone who is a collector themselves and knows the true value is attempting to rip people off. I find it offensive that anyone would end up paying this much and presumably people do or he wouldn’t do it. I’ve always found that the collecting community is all too willing to help each other out and this sort of profiteering rubs me up the wrong way. It’s a far cry from the likes of C. E. Forman over at Ye Olde Infocomme Shoppe, who offers a real service to collectors.

I may be unwilling to spend $2500 on a game but I have decided that all the UO games are now cheap enough that I’m going to buy them even though I’ve never had any real interest in Ultima Online. Buying games you have no intention of playing is as sure a sign that you are a true collector as anything I can think of. I’m only picking up the ones with the Origin logo on and got the lot for less than the price of a new game so it’s not broken the bank. On similar lines, I’ve also picked up the 5 action figures that were based on the Ultima Online 2 game which never got released. I’m glad to say that I’ve never been into action figures, which are dolls for geeks in my eyes and now I’ve got some I’m less that sure what to do with the things. I expect they will end up on the tops of my bookcases “decorating” the games room. They are being all but given away on Ebay and Amazon or I wouldn’t have bought them – the demand for figures based on a game that never happened must be extremely low.

I remember all the Ultima fans being up in arms around the time Ultima Online 2 was being developed about the technology element being mixed into the world and looking at some of these figures, I can see where they were coming from. A cyborg Blackthorn is not something I ever expected to see. On the other hand, a series should evolve and I felt that Ultima got too stuck around the virtues in it’s later episodes. It’s not like advanced technology in Ultima games is unprecedented with Ultima 1 containing phasers, light sabers, space combat etc…
That said, I’d probably side with the people who hated the idea as it feels grossly disrespectful to the series. I’ll be able to decide better once I’ve read the trilogy of novels, that I’ve also bought. These “Technocrat Wars” novels were again intended to be released alongside Ultima Online 2 but then re-branded to Ultima Online and released anyway when UO2 was cancelled. I was half expecting these to be rare and therefore expensive but I picked them all up very cheaply. It’s curious that all this merchandise is available for a game that never existed but I gather it was contractual. It must all have been much to the bemusement of anyone who bought this stuff at the time, expecting something related to Ultima Online. The fact that I can pick up the action figures new and sealed so easily for 99p 10 years later, suggests that someone lost a lot of money on these things. It’s kind of like the situation the British government finds itself in at the moment where after recent budget cuts they are stuck building an aircraft carrier even though they won’t have any aircraft to put in it. I may well write reviews of the books anyway when I’ve read them. Reviews of all of Origin’s books was something I talked about doing a long time ago in this blog, but have yet to get around to.

To get back on topic, I’ve got a bit of time on my hands this weekend so while I’m waiting for my Kryoflux board, it must be time to get started on Longbow 2. This post was originally going to be an intro to that but since I’ve managed to ramble on at such length, I’ll file this under off topic and start a new one.

It’s been another long break, while I’ve been distracted with other things. In all honesty, I think this blog is nearly dead as I don’t have much motivation to continue with it. At this rate, I’ll never play Lazarus and if I’m entirely honest I think the reason is that I don’t want the time and effort of writing up such a large and complex game.

So rather than letting this drift indefinitely, I’m going to reduce my aims for the remainder of this blog so that I can at least wrap it up neatly. I’ve still got the option of coming back and doing a few more games at a later date if I want. So I’m now looking to play Longbow 2, Super Wing Commander and I’ll also take a look at the Origin FX Screen Saver which I finally picked up recently. The game I’m starting next is none of these, however. I’ve played most Looking Glass games now so I thought I’d finish them off. I’ll give Flight Unlimited a miss and instead play the final one remaining which is Terra Nova. This is advertised as having Wing Commander 3/4 style production values which sounds right up my street although it’s only on the one CD so there can’t be all that much FMV. I’ll start on that over the weekend with a post on Monday by the latest.

My collection of Origin software is nearly complete now, having picked up Origin FX and also Super Wing Commander recently. Caverns of Callisto still eludes me,  I’m keen on trying out Super Wing Commander and owning the original game gives me the option of picking up a real 3DO to play it on if all else fails. They go for about £30 apparently which isn’t going to break the bank. For anyone curious about what the collection looks like these days, I was advised to document it all for insurance reasons. I figured the easiest way to do that was to do a quick video on my phone which I thought I may as well share via youtube (which also means I can’t lose it). It’s less than exciting but for anyone curious here is the collection as it stands these days:-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5K_Pg21F6I

I didn’t get chance to play Thief 2 last night so I thought I’d do a slightly off-topic post today. JCC mentioned Thief 2 being in his shortlist of top games and I thought it might be fun to draw up a list of my top 10. This is surprisingly difficult and I’ve had to miss out games I love to get the numbers down. In reverse order here they are:-

10. Magic Carpet (Bullfrog)
I wanted to include a Bullfrog game somewhere in my list but I had trouble deciding which one to go for. Every game they released was always extremely polished, inventive and above all fun. I’ve never enjoyed purely strategic games like X-Com but Bullfrog always managed to mix action and strategy together in a way that no one else was doing.
I could easily have picked Dungeon Keeper or Syndicate either but I went for Magic Carpet as it was the game that impressed me most at the time. The graphics engine was amazing if you had a good enough computer to run it with everything turned on. I especially liked the way the landscape morphed when you built your city.

9. Fate Of Atlantis (Lucasarts)
It’s hard to believe it these days but there was a time where Lucasarts could do no wrong and they released one fantastic adventure game after another. Picking one of these wasn’t easy. I could easily have gone for Monkey Island 2, Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle, etc…
One of the things I always loved about these games was the conversation system where you had several options at each stage in a conversation all of which might hide a funny response but you could only see all of these with multiple playthroughs of the game. To add to this Fate of Atlantis had multiple paths through the game where you could play half the game using either action, team or puzzle paths.
Above all else the writing in this game was superb. This should have been the 4th Indiana Jones film and is far better than the film we eventually got.

8. Martian Dreams (Origin)
This is the first of 4 games from this blog that make the list. I was originally going to pick Ultima 6 as my favourite Ultima game from the main series but I decided that i actually prefer this spinoff.

It took the excellent Ultima 6 engine and wove a strange and original tale with it. This is one of the best designed games that I’ve ever played. Despite the large cast of characters and the big open world, the story always keeps moving forward to a very satisfying ending.

7. Wing Commander 4 (Origin)
This is the first of 3 interactive movies to make my list. Again I could have picked an earlier game from the series quite easily or gone for Privateer for that matter. I decided against Privateer as it did have the tendency to get a little repetitive.
Wing Commander 4 is a game that if I stick the DVD in and start playing it, I’ll still be there until I get dragged away from my PC or I finish the game. It was much criticised for the lack of gameplay but as far as I’m concerned this is just reviewers that can’t cope with sitting through a few minutes of movies. Every aspect of the game is extremely polished and the missions more varied than any other Wing Commander game.
It is the movie and plot that drive you through the game. It’s such a fun and satisfying game to play and the nearest we ever got to playing a Hollywood movie.

6. Gabriel Knight 2 (Sierra)
I always enjoyed the Sierra adventure games but for the most part they were lagging slightly behind Lucasart’s offerings. The exception to this was the Gabriel Knight series. I could have picked either of the first two games but my liking of interactive movies draws me to the second game. The third game deserves an honourable mention for the Serpent Rouge puzzle which was possibly the best puzzle in an adventure game but the clunky control system for the 3D engine held the game back for me.
It’s GK2’s atmosphere and plot that make it stand out above other adventure games. The way that fact and fiction are melded together lend the werewolf plot credibility and despite using the Phantasmagoria engine GK2 still has some decent puzzles.

5. The Longest Journey (Funcom)
This is the newest game on my list. My favourite genre has always been adventure games but the genre more or less died out as soon as 3D came along. Every publisher needed all their games to be in 3D and we got travesties like Simon the Sorcerer 3 which hid a decent game behind an inappropriate and out of date engine. Lucasarts fell fowl of this also. Grim Fandango was a great game but the control system is awful.
TLJ used a similar engine to Frim Fandango but instead of the ridiculous AITD style controls we were back where we should be with a point and click control system. The visuals of the game were always striking, the puzzles well designed and the plot moving between the two worlds of science and magic was totally compelling. The game was full of interesting well developed characters that you came to care about. It’s sequel Dreamfall was by far the best 3D adventure game I’ve played if disappointingly short. I’m looking forward to the next game in the series more than any other game at the moment.

4. The Pandora Directive (Access)
I love the whole Tex Murphy series but this was an easy choice as the best game of the lot. I remember buying Under a Killing Moon when it first came out. It got slated in the reviews for the system specs required and the lack of gameplay but far from being lacking on the gameplay front, the 3D engine actually worked extremely well and you really did feel like a PI scouring each location for clues.
The Pandora Directive raised this to a new level with a detailed plot, many branching paths throughout the game, more locations and better acting. Chris Jones plays Tex so well it’s easy to forget that he’s the MD of access and not a professional actor. The tongue in cheek feel he brings keeps the game light hearted despite the serious plot. I’m reminded now that I’ve not checked in on his latest company in months – hopefully the new Tex game is somewhere near completion.

3. System Shock (Origin)
There are no great surprises about this game being on the list. It’s a near perfect blend of horror, sci-fi, FPS and RPG that only suffers for it’s hideous control system. Like any control system you can get used to it with practice and this is more than worth it to play one of the all time greats.

2. X-Wing (Lucasarts)
I’ve always liked space-sims and for all of Wing Commanders graphical splendour and storyline, I think it’s X-Wing that still holds the top spot for me. It doesn’t hurt that this was the first game I played on my 486 when I bought it. The difference between a 386SX with an ISA graphics card to a local bus 486 was like night and day.
The thing about X-Wing was that it really did play like a simulation rather than an arcade game. It rewarded practice and you needed to be able to make every shot in an X-wing count making adjustments for which of your 4 lasers was firing.
The game had the ultimate reward of the Death Star battle which was what kept you playing as well as the fantastic use of iMuse which is sadly lacking from the collectors edition. It was a tough game requiring many hours to beat but easily worth the effort.

1. Ultima Underworld (Origin)
Underworld 2 is the better game but I’ve gone for the game that did it first. I love everything about UW from the intro music, the gloomy atmosphere, right the way through to the fantastic end sequence running from the Slasher of Veils in the ethereal void. This game captivated me when I played this back in 1992 and I don’t think I’ve ever been drawn into any game world to that extent since. This was also the first Origin game I played and ultimately what led me to doing this blog years later.

A few games that nearly made the list are Ultima 4, Final Fantasy 7, Bioshock, Psychonauts and Grand Theft Auto 3. On a different day I may well have picked any of these. I notice that most of the games I’m going for are from a fairly narrow era around the start of the 90’s. There have been plenty since then that I’ve enjoyed but not many that I would want to go back to them again once I’d finished.

I’m not doing anything in particular tonight so I should manage a level or two more of Thief 2. While I’m posting does anyone know anything about the latest version of Freedo? I’d like to play the 3DO game Super Wing Commander. This appears to work perfectly in the latest version of Freedo that I can find (2.10) but I can’t figure out how to get the joystick working. Everything being in Russian doesn’t help.

Welcome to the new home for Pix’s Origin Adventures. It’s been a lot easier to move than I anticipated. I’ve sorted out some webspace with Freeola at a more than reasonable price (especially for unlimited bandwidth and space), moved my blog over to wordpress, changed all the links + am currently uploading all the screenshots to my new webspace and believe me it will take a while. I didn’t realise it at the time but yesterdays post took me past the 10,000 screenshot mark since I started this blog. To reel off another stat the import file had over 430,000 words which is nearly as many as Lord of the Rings. I’m impressed even if no one else is.

I’ve got loads of new features + full control over the site now so I might look at changing it around a bit at some point. I’ve also finally got viewing stats so I’ll be able to see if anyone ever reads this which is something I’ve always wondered. Before I do anything else though, I’m going to go back to Deus Ex and play the other two endings as soon as I get everything moved across.

If anyone spots any problems on here, let me know and I’ll try to sort them out.

My breaks between games on here get ever longer but I’m going to start up again this weekend, writing the first post on Monday at the latest. I’ve lost the drive I had when I was trying to complete the main part of this blog and it’s going to be a case of playing each game as and when I feel like it but I expect to speed up after Summer. I’ll have a lot more time when the rugby season finishes in a few weeks.

Since this blog is something of a gaming diary, I thought I’d post a bit of an off topic catch-up post. I still haven’t got round to playing the 2nd Tales Of Monkey Island but I’ve had a go on a few of the Interplay games I picked up in the GOG sale. I enjoyed Sacrifice a lot which I’d never played before. It’s a 3D RTS from Shiny that completely passed me by at the time but still plays well 10 years afterwards and has masses of replay value with 5 different factions to align with + the option to swap between these factions as the game progresses. At $5.99 I’d recommend this to anyone. I’ve also had brief goes on Redneck Rampage and Die By The Sword which aren’t that bad but I’m not sure I can ever see myself getting very far in either of them. With the 2 for 1 offer, I’m not too worried if I don’t play some of my purchases much as others will make up for it. I’ve already had my moneys worth out of Sacrifice. The Might and Magic 6 special edition is also out of GOG which includes every M&M game before it – this would be a must buy if I didn’t already own the boxed version. M&M is clearly inferior to Ultima in my eyes but I still enjoyed World of Xeen enormously. It’s an RPG stripped down to its most basic elements with no real dialog or plot but it does it so well that its one of those games that you sit down to play for 20 minutes and still be there 3 hours later.

It’s been said that the games on GOG often fail on being either good or old, and as much as I like GOG there is definitely some truth to this. I’ve been going properly oldskool and playing a few ZX Spectrum games, which for those of you who don’t know was a very popular home computer in the UK back in the early/mid 80’s. There’s even a challenge on youtube at the moment where a few of us old speccy types try to outdo each other on Daley Thompsons Supertest and post our efforts. What appeals to me more than anything about the Spectrum was the fact that anyone could create a game for it independently and this led to a huge number of games and loads of originality. There’s a lot of nostalgia for me going back and playing some of these old games but in all honesty the Speccy wasn’t up to much. The C64 and Apple 2 have it well beat in terms of games that are still genuinely interesting for the era. That’s not to say a lot of the games aren’t still fun – they are just a bit on the simple side. Growing up with a speccy is probably one of the reasons I can still cope with playing Apple 2 and DOS games, since they usually look and/or sound better.

To go even further off topic, I’ve discovered a very nice bit of software called Guitar Rig 3 which has seriously rekindled my interest in playing the guitar. I’ve played on and off for years without ever getting particularly good but being able to use a bit of software like this to get the sound I actually want has given me the incentive to get practicing again. This is probably going to eat into my gaming time more than anything else but my fingers aren’t up to playing for too long. I’ve decided to use youtube as a sort of video diary for my guitaring, so as I learn new stuff I can post it on there and hopefully look back at it in a few months time and see that I am actually improving. Posting on youtube also gives me some incentive to try to do a half decent job of learning something so that it isn’t embarrassingly bad. I’ll see how this works out but it will be months before I know if I’m getting anywhere.

I mentioned looking at some of Origins literature at the end of the last post but I’m going to go for a game next instead. I’m still undecided on which one but I’m veering towards Standoff. I gather the latest version fixes all the bugs and I fancy an arcade game after all the creeping around in Thief.