I’ve been trying to find things to stretch my existing PC game collection while I wait for the funds to upgrade to something a bit more contemporary (which will take a while). Here’s some stuff I’ve been playing for the last few months; most of it is free stuff downloadable from the internet:
I-Go: a freeware beginner’s version of the popular Japanese game Go. It has an excellent interactive tutorial that can teach anyone the basics of the game (it worked for me!). It features a simple 9 by 9 board for easy play (real Go boards are 19 by 19). If you’ve ever wanted to learn how to play Go, I recommend this as a starter.
Quake 3 Arena mods and total conversions (all free off the ‘net!):
Team Spoon finally came out with a Superheroes mod for Q3A a few months back; I was a fan of the Q1 and Q2 Superhero mods from years ago. There’re a lot of power combinations to explore, so I expect at least another year of this before I get tired of it. Very slick. Try it with some superhero skins.
Urban Terror: this total conversion for Q3A makes things very realistic and gritty, though perhaps some might find it disturbing in the current socio-political atmosphere. Still, if you’d like to play a nerve-wracking game with realistic physics, realistic weapons, and realistic player limitations, this is it.
Bid For Power: Dragonball Z fans? This is the Q3A mod for you! BFP is a successful translation of the insane ki-power combat of the DBZ ‘toons onto your computer. I’ve already gotten my ass kicked royally by the BFP analogues of Goku, Trunks, Piccolo and Vegeta. Legal issues kept the developers from using any DBZ names, but you can tell. It’s definitely worth a look. The included maps, while weakened by certain profound crudities, are immediately recognizable locations from the series.
Maps: I’ve become enamored over the last year of so-called “Lilliput” or “mouse Quake” maps. These maps are made to make the players appear to be very small, fighting it out in such environments as kitchens, bathrooms, bedrooms, offices, and gardens. Very cool stuff, and most are very cleverly made. I particularly recommend the various Pad maps by Ente (Pad Kitchen and Pad Garden I can play; Pad Shop is too hardware intensive to run on my computer. Oh well…).
Unreal Tournament: About 2 years ago I picked up Unreal Tournament Game of the Year Edition off the shelf at CompUSA for $20 – right next to the regular UT box at twice the price. A no-brainer; more stuff at half the price, plus it came with a store-brand bonus level. I eventually found a Superheroes mod for UT that’s even more slick than the Q3A supers mod. And then I discovered a bunch of those “Lilliput” maps for UT! These days, I play UT and Q3A pretty interchangeably.
Baldur’s Gate: Team Baldur’s Gate made an unofficial add-on a while back called Dark Side of the Sword Coast. It’s a free download (but very large – I think about 120 MB), but my friend bought it for me for Christmas. The $15 CD has the latest version, plus some powerful editing tools that allow you to actually mess around with the game engine. The add-on provides about 6 new NPCs for your party, a slew of new magic items (including many powerful class- and race-specific items), new spells, a very high experience cap, and new areas to explore. I think it also changes some dialogue options and character texts. I have found it to be very worthwhile to reinstall BG and the official add-on, Tales of the Sword Coast, and re-play this awesome classic with the new add-on.
Wizardry: Not the latest release. I found an Apple emulator and the original Wizardy: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord, as well as the next four Wizardry games and a few other monochrome classics such as The Bard’s Tale, all for free on the ‘net. Primitive? Very! Fun? Extremely! Wizardry was the very first computer game I ever played, aside from arcade games. I played it on a monochrome green screen Apple II for a couple of hours one day in 1982 or 83, and I never forgot it – in fact, I have always had about a third of the first level map memorized from that first day. May explain my inability to remember more important things today….
More retro kitsch: Arcade games. There are a bunch of very good arcade game machine emulators out there; I’m partial to MAME. And up to about the end of February, there were literally thousands of arcade game ROMs available on the internet – with a bit of searching, one could find almost any video game that ever came out from the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s. Most of those ROMs are now gone, thanks to a determined legal push by certain big-name game vendors. But I found some games from my misspent youth that I haven’t seen or heard of since the mid-80’s: Assault, Zwackery, Altered Beast, Phoenix, Star Castle…
Looking Forward (stuff I’ll have to actually BUY – and the reasons I want to upgrade):
The first true superhero computer game has been released. Freedom Force
Neverwinter Nights: back on track after a big corporate shakeup this winter, NWN’s release has been pushed back only a few months more and looks great so far. If the promises hold true, this will be just about the be-all, end-all of CRPGs, until such time as computer technology makes the next big advance. Third edition rules, solo play, network play, and user-created adventures means I’m going to become a real hermit shortly after buying this. This is going to be THE purchase of the year for all computer-using Dungeons & Dragons fans. Possibly followed by…
Dungeons & Dragons Master Tools: the agonizingly slow progress of this, the “core rules” program for the third edition D&D rules, has been worsened by the periodic news of shakeups both in Wizards of the Coast as well as the development team and the liaison/consulting personnel. Still, the program seems to be moving ahead – it is currently in beta test - but no release date has been announced as of yet.
That’s it. So long!
“Just” John O’Neil
(originally appeared in the RISFC newsletter May 2002.)
