alfvaen | No Next Sibling

I've been playing a lot of abandonware games recently.

There were two impeti for that--one, the Chapters employee who accosted me while I was peering at Pratchett titles and told me about the Discworld computer games at the-underdogs.org. And two, the Jazz Jackrabbit demo on the shareware game CD. Simon was really enamoured of that demo, playing it over and over again, so I thought I might get him the full registered version for his birthday or Christmas. Except that the web pages were defunct. I found it on Abandonia, and now we're thoroughly tired of it.

The Discworld game is pretty cool, though. It's your basic puzzle game, having to pick up items and use them on other items and give them to people until you've collected all the plot coupons. This may be the first one I've played which is entirely graphical, no window for typing in text commands at all. And it works quite well. It's faithful to the Pratchett spirit, too. It takes bits and pieces from a number of books, up to at least Moving Pictures. You're Rincewind, in Ankh-Morpork, and you have the Luggage. Death keeps popping up, you run into Nobby and Carrot, Windle Poons, Nanny Ogg, Lady Ramkin, Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler, and the agoraphobic bogeyman.

Best of all, though, is the voices--there's a lot of dialogue. Eric Idle does Rincewind's lines(except for half a dozen or so that they probably had to put in at the last minute); Tony Robinson, a.k.a. Baldrick from "Blackadder", does a whole slew of voices, too. I also saw Jon Pertwee listed in the credits, but I'm not as sure I can tell which characters he does. This means that Simon and Luke like it a lot better than the other games where I have to read everything to them. It's quite an elaborate puzzle, though, and I confess to being a wussie when it comes to these games--I go straight for the walkthroughs. I get frustrated very quickly when I don't know what I'm supposed to do next. By the fourth time through, though, I have it down, and I'm getting a little sick of it, but it's still Luke's first choice when we sit down at the computer.

Unfortunately, my attempt to install "Discworld 2" wasn't successful. It keeps asking for a CD, or has trouble initializing the sound drivers or something.

I also downloaded the "Callahan's Crosstime Saloon" game. I remember Spider Robinson talking about it at Worldcon. It's also fairly true to the spirit of the books. It doesn't have much for animated graphics, but you have 360° pan, and you can manipulate any object with your mouse. (It gets a little silly, sometimes, when you click on the floor and then on the table, and up pops the option "Put The Floor On The Table", and it's hard to get out of that mode sometimes.) I haven't gotten too far in it yet, but I'll get back to it sometime. It doesn't seem to have voices, but then I couldn't get the Discworld ones to work until I rebooted, so maybe they'll show up next time I play it.

I tried "King's Quest", which I don't believe I'd ever played before, though I might have seen it. I keep getting lost wandering around, or falling off the bridge into the water, and Simon doesn't like it that much either. Maybe he finds the witch and the troll a bit scary.

"Dune" was more successful. It's an interesting game, with you as Paul Atreides(looking a lot like Kyle McLachlan), helping your family recruit Fremen to work for you shortly after your arrival on Arrakis. You start out just getting them to harvest spice, but more and more events happen, until you're at war with the Harkonnens. I don't know if there's the whole treachery thing from the book, since I haven't seen the appropriate character, but...well, it makes me want to reread the book again. One of my coworkers has been reading the series, so we've been talking about it at lunch from time to time, which has also repiqued my interest. I can't remember the last time I reread those books, though I have been through all six books at least twice, and the earlier ones probably more than that. Anyway, the game is interesting, a bit less puzzle-oriented and more wargame-oriented, but as soon as the Harkonnens attack I start floundering. Simon liked it at first, but then his interest waned.

I also tried one called "Elite Plus", an interstellar trading game, but I got bogged down and didn't know what the hell I was doing, and even with the PDF manual I couldn't figure out how to bloody exit the game, so I might give up on that one. Then there's "Rampage", a real oldie which I've downloaded but haven't tried yet. The boys are young enough to be scared of monsters, so maybe playing one as a main character won't go over too well. We'll see.

I remember when they used to be content for me to play the same game over and over again, and I kept wanting to switch games. But now they don't want me to go back and play the old ones, so I have to keep finding new ones. Is this a normal progression, or have I warped their personalities into neophiliacs who will never be contented with a routine? Ah, they'll be okay.