Hazily Remembered Games With Only the Vaguest Notion of What They Were

fangblackbone wrote:

Sword of the Samuraii? http://store.steampowered.com/app/32...

This makes me happy! Thank you!

Geez, it's still $7!

Tamren wrote:

I used to play a game where you piloted a space ship from top-down. But the only thing I can remember about it is that you could build colonies on planets and there was a ship called a Flower Power which was a large freighter.

It wasn't Starflight was it? Only that I had that on the Megadrive (Genesis), couldn't remember for the life of me what it was called, and this thread prompted me to do a bit of digging!

Not it wasn't Starflight. It was similar to Subspace or Escape Velocity where you turn the ship in a circle using the keyboard and thrust forwards to move around. It had a premium and a free mode and I just can't remember the name.

Ascendancy or something like that?

fangblackbone wrote:

Ascendancy or something like that?

I wanted so badly to love that game, but the AI was so primitive.

Two games from Apple's early days I need help with.

The first one involved a submersible hunt for deep sea squid.

The second one was an RPG based on the gold rush era; you could try your luck gold panning or set up a store or become a doctor.

Can't help with the first Bfgp, but is the second one Gold Rush! by any chance? It was a favourite on the old Apple IIs back in primary school

Star Control doesn't have colonizing, so that's not it. (And if you're going to link to it, link to the right versions: Star Control 1 and The Ur-Quan Masters, with the fully-voiced 3DO content.)

SunDog doesn't sound like the game in question, since the top-down bit was more planetside, though it's got some features that are rare even now. I mostly just wanted to mention it.

I haven't played it, but Escape Velocity Nova sounds pretty close and had a shareware version.

Perhaps the sub/squid game was Aquatron?
Or Sea Dragon, did it have digitized speech?

Turns out the squid game was called Kraken - a deep sea quest: see here and these newspaper reviews.

With a bit of Googlefu I found out the gold rush game was actually Goldfields. Can't seem to post a second url by phone this morning but yeah these are some pretty obscure games if you were outside Australia at the time.

BGFH wrote:

I love this thread.

OK, here are two I've been trying to think of lately.

the first game is a DOS 2D action platformer, and I think starts with an X, like Xenophobe or Xenophage or something. I only played the demo back in the day, but would like to see what the whole game is like. The demo started in a forest, and you just went around collecting items and shooting things. there was also part of an underwater level in the demo.

The other game I can't remember I saw at a friends place. it was all in Japanese, but I wonder if there's an English version. It started out as a 2D space shooter like R-Type, but the bosses at the end of each level were played on the ground as a 2D fighting game. As I remember, it had some pretty good music too.

First is probably Xargon which was published by Epic (back when they were heavily into shareware under the Epic MegaGames name). I believe this was eventually made into freeware.

Second I would guess is Thexder or Sylpheed? Sierra handled bringing those to North America from Japan.

Did I mention already? This is easily my favourite thread; Nostalgia, sleuthing, 8 bit graphics. What more could you want?

Wow, Kraken resurfaces some pretty ancient memories Bfgp! Now you've got me thinking... There was another game of the time that involved you finding a series of crystals via the usual edutainment mechanisms. I've only got mental pictures of a spelling challenge and some brightly coloured aliens at the moment and I feel like it was called Crystal Quest or something similar. Does that spark anything at all?

Treasure Galaxy?

Heh, try 4-bit or 2 bit CGA ;P
We didn't have the luxury of 8-bit for years...
Thexder was a transformable shooter with the obligartory robot and ship modes.
Silpheed was faux 3d vanishing point top down shooter. So I think it is something else.

DC Malleus wrote:

Wow, Kraken resurfaces some pretty ancient memories Bfgp! Now you've got me thinking... There was another game of the time that involved you finding a series of crystals via the usual edutainment mechanisms. I've only got mental pictures of a spelling challenge and some brightly coloured aliens at the moment and I feel like it was called Crystal Quest or something similar. Does that spark anything at all?

Can't help with this one I'm afraid.

I'm surprised though as to how much old stuff can be found online including the 1990ish newspaper review for Kraken.

shoptroll wrote:
BGFH wrote:

I love this thread.

OK, here are two I've been trying to think of lately.

the first game is a DOS 2D action platformer, and I think starts with an X, like Xenophobe or Xenophage or something. I only played the demo back in the day, but would like to see what the whole game is like. The demo started in a forest, and you just went around collecting items and shooting things. there was also part of an underwater level in the demo.

The other game I can't remember I saw at a friends place. it was all in Japanese, but I wonder if there's an English version. It started out as a 2D space shooter like R-Type, but the bosses at the end of each level were played on the ground as a 2D fighting game. As I remember, it had some pretty good music too.

First is probably Xargon which was published by Epic (back when they were heavily into shareware under the Epic MegaGames name). I believe this was eventually made into freeware.

Second I would guess is Thexder or Sylpheed? Sierra handled bringing those to North America from Japan.

YES to the first one. I immediately knew you were right when reading your post. Thank you! I've been trying to find this one forever.

After doing some more detective work, I found the second one too.

It was Tekkaman Blade:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m14c...

We got an email from a listener and came up blank. Maybe you fine people can help!

My wife grew up playing games on an Apple II, and there's this one game she remembers that we haven't been able to find evidence of anywhere. You played as an apprentice weather wizard and the game taught you all about weather through quizzes. She remembers a scene where you're standing on a beach and you learn about how temperature differentials cause wind, and are then asked what you should set the temperature to to cause a land breeze. She also thinks the same company made a space game where you rose through the ranks of a NASA-like organization by answering quiz questions like ones about how the moon affects tides.

This is the most comprehensive list of educational titles I could find easily

http://apple2online.com/index.php?p=...

I found this 1991 catalog from TESS that mentions some weather-related educational software. The Internet Archive has some Apple software archived, if someone wants to take a deep dive into that.

Poking around some more, Orange Cherry Software had Space Mission Problem Solving and The Weather Science Set.
IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/koJCdN6.gif)
IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/XBVgGa5.gif)

Both of which run in the emulator and seem to match the description.

DanB wrote:

This is the most comprehensive list of educational titles I could find easily

http://apple2online.com/index.php?p=...

I read through this list and downloaded anything that sounded like it could be a match, but nothing looked right.

Gremlin wrote:

Poking around some more, Orange Cherry Software had Space Mission Problem Solving and The Weather Science Set.

Both of which run in the emulator and seem to match the description.

This is as close as I've gotten, with two similar games from the same publisher. But the weather one doesn't involve wizards, and the quiz portion is just a single screen word match. The space one has a story, but it doesn't match with what my wife remembers. I'm going to show both of them to her when she gets home just in case.

Might be worth going through the collection on the internet archive to see if anything jogs her memory.

I have an extremely vague memory of a game from the early PC CD-ROM days, back when you could still rent PC games. You start out by creating some characters similar to the Might and Magic games but you are either part of or the guards of a caravan and one of the first areas you pass through is a forest with giant spiders. Fairly common trappings for that era of game, but I believe it was set in a world that started with an A, like Arca...something. Anyone have ideas on what this game could be?

Realms of Arkania? There were a few games in that series.

Yeah, it could be the Arkania series. Arkania had traveling similar to Might and Magic, but when you got into combat it was turn based.

Arcanum is another, although that was more Baldur's Gate style the whole time.

CptDomano wrote:

Yeah, it could be the Arkania series. Arkania had traveling similar to Might and Magic, but when you got into combat it was turn based.

The Arkania series started right around when some of the games started being released on CD for PC so that would make sense given the description.

Arkania sounds likely, but if that isn't it...

For PC RPGs, we want to check the CRPG Addict's spreadsheet. The CRPG Addict has only gotten to 1991 or so in his playthroughs, so there probably won't be a review to help us, but it's a pretty thorough list. We can also check the MobyGames database, which helpfully lets us narrow things down by year and some other categories. Was the game 1st person or 3rd person?

The multiple characters and character creation details narrow things down a lot. Couple of possibilities that I haven't played: Crystals of Arborea, Challenge of the Five Realms.

You can also check the CRPG Book Project screenshot archive, which has screenshots from 400 CRPGs. Might be easier to jog your memory that way.