Adventure Gamers - Forums

I have noticed you do like obscure games, so you may qualify as one of those who wouldn’t mind a bad game as much as some others.

I used to do hunt down odd games years ago, when I first played around with emulators. There are a lot of oddball old games made during the 8-bit days. I recall one old adventure where the main character was a vegetable (and actually every other character were vegetables too)... I forget the name to it, but it may have been for the NES. Anyway, it was such a bizarre game that I liked it.

If you do try any of my games, I suggest The Murderer for the PC, as it’s at least semi-modern (kinda). It’s only 10+ years old rather than like 20. I got around to fixing the links on my site, so it can be downloaded now. Or The Hollywood Murders, which is a bit pulpy, but isn’t that terrible (I hope)—I know some people at the time liked it. If you want to try any of the Inebook stuff, let me know and I can probably find a full version. I’m just not sure how well they’d work on modern Windows, as they were sort of geared towards PDA screens.

Well, this calls for another round of cheers to Kurufinwe for tirelessly ring-leading, and Bastich for keeping the ball rolling. Not only are we getting daily rarities, now we’re even getting the authors of those rarities stopping by - thread series full of win.

Thanks for all of the interesting insight Michael (although I guess that’s not exactly an appropriate word to describe Your experience with Sir Rah), I’ll definitely give the games a spin, including Lazarus. You know, there are rumors about Amiga games possibly coming to GOG (and with news like these, it seems more and more likely) so… 

You don’t sound too convinced, but I think games like Yours would, or rather should be a perfect fit for that place, especially for maybe a “Remastered” package since You’ve obviously got the source code and some patches already in the wings.

To be honest I’m a bit disappointed in the direction GOG has headed, was hoping pulling long lost rarities like these would be precisely their bread and butter, but maybe that was naive. Anyway, I digress. If not (or better, “Besides”) GOG, maybe a Remastered Collectors Box Set so Physical Media & Cardboard lovers could throw some dough Your way instead of ebay’s? Yeah, I guess I am naive

MoP - 10 July 2013 08:30 AM

Thanks for all of the interesting insight Michael (although I guess that’s not exactly an appropriate word to describe Your experience with Sir Rah), I’ll definitely give the games a spin, including Lazarus. You know, there are rumors about Amiga games possibly coming to GOG (and with news like these, it seems more and more likely) so… 

You don’t sound too convinced, but I think games like Yours would, or rather should be a perfect fit for that place, especially for maybe a “Remastered” package since You’ve obviously got the source code and some patches already in the wings.

I have purchased some GOG games (most recently several RPGs) but never really thought of them as a place for games like mine. To be honest, most of my games are too short and really aren’t good enough. The fact my Amiga games are parser based, and I should add have a really horrible parser, doesn’t help much. The systems I used back then were Amiga ‘adventure’ languages, and they were both lacking as to the user experience and coding (major pain) regarding the parser. My Murderer game would be considered my ‘remaster’ of the Amiga version, and it’s extremely short, probably similar to a freebie flash game you play for 30 min - 1 hr—not something you offer on GOG. As for Lazarus, if you give it a try during evenings (EST), it’s your best bet to find others online (including myself). But the past two weeks we’ve really been empty—not sure if it’s due to it being Summer or we have hit an extra bad lull.

As for Amiga news, I am not sure what to make of that recent purchase announcement yet. A lot of Amiga people think it may simply be a repeat of the shell game Amiga Inc have played—if you haven’t followed, they more or less avoided bankruptcy and debt by using shell companies years ago. They had a big lawsuit against them, which they lost ... and pretty much did nothing with the brand for 10+ years, until very recently with some Blackberry ports.

MoP - 10 July 2013 08:30 AM

Anyway, I digress. If not (or better, “Besides”) GOG, maybe a Remastered Collectors Box Set so Physical Media & Cardboard lovers could throw some dough Your way instead of ebay’s? Yeah, I guess I am naive

Severed Heads and The Murderer were sold commercially, albeit in extremely small numbers. The other games were sold online or were freeware/shareware. The Amiga stuff was meant for Sir Rah originally, until they fell apart. Severed Heads had a Video Cassette type of hard case, which was sort of weird. And The Murderer was in a DVD case, in two versions—first version didn’t have speech. It’s an odd story, but originally I didn’t know what I was going to do with the game. I had one publisher semi-interested in it, but he ended up going out of business (I want to say Xing Entertainment, but I may be remembering wrong). There were also rumors he was a bit of a scam artist, so best I dodged that bullet.

After I released the game as freeware, I then strangely noticed a website selling my ‘free’ game in packaging. A company in Australia called Nodtronics decided to sell my game without my knowledge. I contacted them, and they conveniently stated (lied) that the ‘do not resell for commercial purposes’ text was omitted in the help file. Anyway, at the time I started a speech version, told them they could sell it if they paid me something (they gave me like 1K). The only problem was that the first version they sold was illegal in two ways ... the system I used didn’t have a license to resell commercially, so they had to dump or recall all of the first batch. Long story short, the game comes in two flavors of packaging. Well, actually a third, in a big box bundle, which they sold illegally after the contract expired.

I am curious if anyone has seen a packaged version of Inebook: Detective Adventures from a company called Alten 8? We had an agreement with them to bundle Inebook titles. I had a couple of games in it, but they stated they never got to publish it. It was listed on Amazon UK, and some other sites, but I don’t think it was actually ever published. Due to how scammy some companies are, just wondering if anyone ever actually saw a physical copy?

Nameless - 10 July 2013 01:20 AM

If you want to try any of the Inebook stuff, let me know and I can probably find a full version. I’m just not sure how well they’d work on modern Windows, as they were sort of geared towards PDA screens.

Well, if it’s no trouble, that would be great. I don’t mind fiddling around with such things. I’ve played old cellphone games in Windows before. I can’t imagine it would be any more constricting than that, assuming they will actually work.

Bastich - 10 July 2013 11:14 PM

Well, if it’s no trouble, that would be great. I don’t mind fiddling around with such things. I’ve played old cellphone games in Windows before. I can’t imagine it would be any more constricting than that, assuming they will actually work.

Give me a couple of days and I’ll see what I can find. I expect they are on my old computer. There is a bit of a hack to get one working, to get around the keygen stuff—it’s legal, since the Inebook owner actually gave me the keygen program to distribute (he lost the compiler to make free versions of his own software, evidently) , but it’s clunky. I think it should work, but won’t be bigger than 640x480 probably, and will require vertical scrolling on occasion.