The Obscuritory
C.I.T.Y. 2000
updated
The world of Alien Logic is supposed to feel foreign, and the game uses a lot of the same exoticizing motifs that would've been used to depict the Middle East in an old adventure film. In this case, it works extremely well to fill in the gaps of what we don't actually see happening in Ardoth to make it seem like a bustling marketplace.
This demo was recovered by the family of John Hiles, who provided me with a copy. This is only the second game by Thinking Tools that has ever been seen publicly.
Demo available at: archive.org/details/ProjectChallengeDemo_1996_ThinkingTools
Read more about Thinking Tools: obscuritory.com/essay/when-simcity-got-serious
The intro sequence is spectacularly over-the-top and sets the tone for the rest of the game. It can never live up to how extreme this is, but what could?
Due to some quirks with the image output in Perihelion, this video required some minor tweaks to realign scenes during their greyscale-to-color transitions and a few other elements that would have been cropped out of frame.
Kujanpää, also known as Andy, was a member of the Finnish Amiga demogroup Banal Projects. Balthasar placed 11th in the Assembly 1995 demoparty's 4 Channel Music competition.
[UPDATE 7/12/18: RTMark co-founder Igor Vamos confirmed to me via email that their story was a hoax. "The bug had such a deliberate appearance; it would have been a crying shame to not pile on with additional layers of provocative story," he said.]
Panasonic began replacing the game after the error was discovered, and no copy has been found in the 20 years since. But I got one! Here's a short sample of what the text-to-speech problem sounds like. It's subtler than I expected. It pops up for 1 to 2 seconds at a time.
For more information about this, see the full post on The Obscuritory: obscuritory.com/educational/secret-writers-society
Interestingly, this demo seems to use a different, probably earlier interface than the full game, mostly in terms of the fonts and using font colors to highlight bidding information.
Read more about Millennium Auction on The Obscuritory: obscuritory.com/other/millennium-auction
Read more about Music Brush on The Obscuritory: obscuritory.com/software/music-brush
I love this game so very much for capturing the fleeting spooky sweetness of Halloween night. The last shot of the house lights going off reminds me of coming home from trick-or-treating.
This video has a sample of four different events, Crazy Climbing, Computer Toss, Platform Kickboxing, and Troubled Waters. As you can tell, Gooch Grundy is an astoundingly broken game, but it's wonderful. The live action graphics are horribly animated and clash with everything, the controls barely work, and everything usually just descends into violence. But because it's so bad, there's no pressure to play well!
(I assigned Gooch Grundy to America when I played as him, but I think he's supposed to be Canadian.)
Read more here: http://obscuritory.com/sports/gooch-grundys-x-decathlon
This music manages to bring through both the mysticism and ruin of the temple. Its naturalistic technology and enormous stature are beautiful, even hopeful, but there's a deep sadness in its near abandonment. The harp melody can be interpreted as either wondrous or lonely, and the wind that occasionally drowns out the music is like audio erosion.
Another great piece of ambient game music!
(The music was slightly edited to transition between the first and second parts more seamlessly. Normally the game jumps between them as you get further into the temple.)
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© 1991 Sierra On-Line
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© 1991 Psygnosis, Scenario Developments
This video of a single lap on the track Sky Town from the 2001 racing game Ballistics is meant to demonstrate the game's extreme, almost incomprehensible speed. I crash once in a while, but hopefully you get the idea. Barf. Watch in HD if possible!
I've added subtitles to explain what the strategies used in this run. There's some tricks I'm really proud of, like using an end-game gag item to skip one of the four major mazes entirely. There's obviously tons of room for improvement in little places, like browsing inventory or accidentally going into the wrong room, and I'm aware of those flaws. With greater optimization (and changing version), this could easily lose another minute or so.
Still, 12-13 minutes is substantially faster than I expected, and it's a great start that I don't feel like working too hard to improve right now. It's fun watching this game totally disintegrate. The Labyrinth of Time's world is meant to be savored, so this is like shotgunning a bottle of wine.
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© 1994 Electronic Arts, The MultiMedia Corporation
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© 1995 Callisto Corporation, Halestorm, Inc., Spectrum Holobyte
This is a trailer for The Groove Thing that was included on other Big Top Productions CD-ROMs. It clearly dramatically oversells what it can do, but it's a great artifact of 90s CD-ROM pop art.
The Groove Thing is exceptionally rare, so I've made it available via Internet Archive. You can download it here: archive.org/details/TheGrooveThing_1994_Big_Top_Productions
Keep in mind that since it's designed for classic Mac OS, it probably won't run on your computer.
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© Keith Mansfield, KPM
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The Labyrinth of Time is a 1993 adventure game by Terra Nova Development and Electronic Arts. The game tasks players with freeing the world from enslavement by destroying the eponymous time-spanning, pan-dimensional maze constructed by King Minos and his servant Daedalus. Created by Michal Todorovic and artist Bradley W. Schenck (two members of game development group The Dreamers Guild), The Labyrinth of Time uses distinctive combinations of Celtic knotwork, Art Deco, Greek mythology, and surreal modernism to convey its unworldly atmosphere. Puzzles primarily involve navigating mazes and collecting items, but the reliance on inventory leaves a few opportunities for dead ends. A useful map provides players with their bearings.
This video showcases most of the first level, minus the quick intro video. Angst is a horrible game, and I wanted to demonstrate this. The quality is a little low, but frankly this game doesn't need or deserve any higher.
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© 1994 Flashpoint Productions, Electronic Arts
This video shows the opening movie. There's not much to it, but it was always really cool.
This is the sample video that came with early versions of QuickTime for Windows. The first version of QuickTime was released with the 1991 CD-ROM travelogue From Alice to Ocean.
As mentioned on the title screen, many of these levels come from the 1982 game Ladder by Yahoo Software.
This video shows the first few levels of version 1.1, which removes some stages like "Long Island" and adds others like Blazing Inferno. There may be other stages after this, but this is a pretty buggy and difficult game, and I couldn't get much further. Notice how I'll occasionally fall through the floor or be unable to climb up ladders because of a stream of barrels.
This video shows about 11 minutes of gameplay, from the beginning of the game to a two-star tower. I couldn't possibly accurately capture the SimTower experience in just a few minutes, especially not all the nuances, so this is just a demonstration to show what gameplay is like. You can notice a couple high-levle strategic mistakes I make: for instance, when I hit two stars, I spend too much money initially on hotel rooms and can't add service elevators for the maids. This was mostly just to show what the hotel rooms are were like rather than any attempt to demonstrate good planning.
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© 1994 P-Squared Productions, Safari Software, Epic Games
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Traffic Department 2192 is a 1994 top-down action game by P-Squared Productions and Safari Software, distributed by Epic MegaGames (now Epic Games). As the militaristic Vultures overtake the lonely planet Seche, turning it into a haven for drug smuggling, the Traffic Department of the city Vulthaven remains the only form of legitimate law-enforcement. To avenge her father's murder, rookie Traffic Department fireball Marta Velasquez takes the fight to the Vultures, sending her and her colleagues on an intergalactic quest for justice. Traffic Department 2192 is perhaps most notable for its complex plot, which involves themes of genetic experimentation, war, and adult situations.
This videos shows the first few levels, up to the point where it becomes nearly impossible. It is just as infuriating than it looks. The best strategy is to get the ball moving as slowly as possible, then let it rest. There were several other interesting ball colors to choose from; the game randomly picked the red one at the start.
This video shows the introduction and first round. There's an enormous disparity between the quality of the presentation and the gameplay. The commentary and visuals are fantastic, but the actual combat feels incredibly disjointed. Given all the vertical movement, I had trouble even seeing enemy ships, let alone shooting them.
To kick it off, I decided to do one that gets a lot of positive feedback, "Telecom" from The Labyrinth of Time. All the music from that game comes from the stock collection at APM Music. "Telecom" is in the Bruton collection album "Industry 2," which features music you'd probably put in a corporate recruitment video in the 1980s. Stock soundtrack or otherwise, this is a pretty powerful piece!
Look forward to more of these in the future. They're pretty easy to crank out during times when I'm busier with real-life responsibilities.
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© James Asher, Bruton APM
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The Labyrinth of Time is a 1993 adventure game by Terra Nova Development and Electronic Arts. The game tasks players with freeing the world from enslavement by destroying the eponymous time-spanning, pan-dimensional maze constructed by King Minos and his servant Daedalus. Created by Michal Todorovic and artist Bradley W. Schenck (two members of game development group The Dreamers Guild), The Labyrinth of Time uses distinctive combinations of Celtic knotwork, Art Deco, Greek mythology, and surreal modernism to convey its unworldly atmosphere. Puzzles primarily involve navigating mazes and collecting items, but the reliance on inventory leaves a few opportunities for dead ends. A useful map provides players with their bearings.
This video shows the credits and opening cutscene/cartoon. You really have to appreciate all the effort Bright Star threw into the visuals on this one, even if it's not Saturday Morning Cartoon quality. Enjoy the theme music!
This video shows the entire game. It's incredibly short and also a bit frustrating. The game never indicates how far your ball will go, so until you get the rhythm down, doing well boils down to trial and error. This is my second time playing through the game, so I barely manage to scrape by, hugely over par. The hazards are also annoying since they send you back to the start of the hole instead of giving you a penalty. That's especially annoying on larger holes.
This video shows the opening sequence to Lighthouse. It was taken from the DOS version, not the Windows one, hence the scanlines in order to make the video play right.
The actual Lighthouse video will be up shortly.
Then, by popular demand, the Spaceship Warlock song!
The speech segment is especially hilarious. It seems to search for keywords like Terra and Kroll, then match them up with positive words (awesome, victory, yay) and negativity (death, sucks, lose). With some luck, you can get applause for statements like "Terra is the best... NOT."
Anyway, that's the end of Spaceship Warlock. Hope everyone's enjoyed the bizarre and mildly awkward ride that this game has been. I realize that these videos skipped over a lot of entertaining side areas, but that was mostly for the sake of getting a straightforward, complete playthrough. I'm still considering doing a death and/or montage, so if there's any interesting side bits people want to see, please let me know!
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Spaceship Warlock is a 1990/1991 interactive movie by Reactor Inc. One of the first games to take advantage of its exclusive release on CD-ROM, the game throws players into a battle led by space pirate Captain Hammer to reclaim the Earth - now known as Terra - from dreaded alien Kroll. The remarkable interactive world (for its time) presents opportunities to make allies, fight enemies, talk to others and learn about their lives, and explore the vast confines several planets, ships, and the Warlock, the pirate mothership. Combat plays a large role, letting you fight through most situations with fists and guns.
This section of the game has significant audio-visual glitches throughout. Without fail, the gun sprite will have a giant white square around it. Perhaps most significantly, the vault door to the Kroll Drive causes massive slowdown when shot. In alternate Windows 3.1 video modes, this sequence runs at full-speed, but the rest of the game drags to a crawl. I can't think of a reason why this would happen.
Unfortunately, Windows 3.1 video modes play back at different framerates. My video editing program, VirtualDub, refused to splice them together, and I was unable to find any other free software that gave me the frame-by-frame accuracy I needed to piece the segments together. I've been on-and-off experimenting with this for the past few months, trying to come up with a seamless solution, but I decided just to leave it be and let the glitch speak for itself.
Given some windfall of money (lottery, eccentric billionaire, Free Parking, etc.), I will likely invest in higher-end editing software so this kind of insane delay doesn't happen again. Thanks once again for your patience.
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Spaceship Warlock is a 1990/1991 interactive movie by Reactor Inc. One of the first games to take advantage of its exclusive release on CD-ROM, the game throws players into a battle led by space pirate Captain Hammer to reclaim the Earth - now known as Terra - from dreaded alien Kroll. The remarkable interactive world (for its time) presents opportunities to make allies, fight enemies, talk to others and learn about their lives, and explore the vast confines several planets, ships, and the Warlock, the pirate mothership. Combat plays a large role, letting you fight through most situations with fists and guns.
This video shows off a complete "playthrough" of the game from beginning to end. I'm happy with what I captured, minus one hilarious "Yeah right!" response to pleading Not Guilty. There's some surefire ways to pass the various writing challenges, but it's almost more fun to see how far the game is willing to tolerate.
This video shows off the tutorial, as well as the first level. Ladder Man is incredibly tedious, as you can see from the lengthy segment where I have to move two blocks across a large flat area. Most of the game doesn't even have water or other interesting obstacles; it's just mazes of blocks and diamonds.
This is a video of the trailer for The Journeyman Project, included on the disc. It's pretty cheesy. Apologies.
This video shows the first four waves on the easiest difficulty, just to give an idea of what the gameplay is like. It's hard to see which piece is going where given the complicated pipe patterns, but I'm actually pretty happy with how I did! If you can't tell, the "F" piece picked up toward the end partially fills the beaker with rock, limiting the number of atoms that can be carried.
Spaceship Warlock is surprisingly short: this is fairly close to the end of the game. If you haven't noticed already, a sizable chunk of the game involves running around and taking elevators. There's plenty of content, but it all moves quickly, even if the action parts are a bit numbing and occasionally laggy.
Anyone else wonder why the Kroll would transport their Overmind in an unaccompanied, understaffed ship?
The fight with Raskull at the beginning of the video is aggravating beyond measure. Don't be fooled by how quickly it ends: the hotspots for connecting a punch constantly move around, and it's really a matter of luck and perseverance rather than skill.
This took ages to record. My Windows 3.1 video drivers started messing up, and I had to record the game in one-minute intervals. A video of this length took two days to put together after extensive editing. I've since fixed the driver problem, and videos should be much easier to make more quickly.
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Spaceship Warlock is a 1990/1991 interactive movie by Reactor Inc. One of the first games to take advantage of its exclusive release on CD-ROM, the game throws players into a battle led by space pirate Captain Hammer to reclaim the Earth - now known as Terra - from dreaded alien Kroll. The remarkable interactive world (for its time) presents opportunities to make allies, fight enemies, talk to others and learn about their lives, and explore the vast confines several planets, ships, and the Warlock, the pirate mothership. Combat plays a large role, letting you fight through most situations with fists and guns.
This video shows off all three difficulty levels. I stopped playing halfway through the third one, as it got a little too hard too quickly. My strategic skills weren't sharp enough to pull of a good run within the YouTube time limit.
Additionally, you might notice the other options on the main menu. The full version of Dinosaur Predators includes there other periods that, despite their distinct lack of dinosaurs, play the same way. These were only available in the full version. Animal Quest, another game by Alive, plays the same as well.
The one disappointment in this playthrough is that I never got to the explanation for the Key to Perihelion. It's the device found in the L-shaped tile minigame a few videos back. Essentially, the Key is a high-tech teleporter that Dr. Avery intended for Robot City to use to travel between planets and expand their civilization. Katherine came to Robot City with Dr. Poole to retrieve the device. Although it works properly, only Katherine had the batteries to run it.
Except for that big story oversight, I consider this a pretty successful playthrough! I hope everyone watching/reading enjoyed it. Too bad Byron Preiss went out of business.
Robot City has multiple endings depending on whether or not you stay and if you destroy the city or not. I might put together a quick clip of these alternate endings at a later time.
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Robot City is a 1995 adventure game by Byron Preiss Multimedia and Brooklyn Multimedia. Stranded on a distant and self-sufficient robot-run planet, an amnesiac identified as "Derec" must prove his innocence in murder mystery that invokes Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics. With help from Alpha, a robotic sidekick capable of deductive reasoning, the players must assemble clues, gather evidence, and use Asimov's laws to manipulate the city's positronic inhabitants. Limited exploration windows provide brief chances to explore new parts of the planet through mine shafts and a massive subway system.
You might notice all the other skill cubes Alpha has. Three of them are blown out (sadly including Entertainment). The other module, Robotics, presumably gives Alpha more information about how robots work, which might come in handy for solving puzzles. However, I honestly forget what it can be used for. Maybe it helps explain the Key to Perihelion.
Only one video to go!
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Robot City is a 1995 adventure game by Byron Preiss Multimedia and Brooklyn Multimedia. Stranded on a distant and self-sufficient robot-run planet, an amnesiac identified as "Derec" must prove his innocence in murder mystery that invokes Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics. With help from Alpha, a robotic sidekick capable of deductive reasoning, the players must assemble clues, gather evidence, and use Asimov's laws to manipulate the city's positronic inhabitants. Limited exploration windows provide brief chances to explore new parts of the planet through mine shafts and a massive subway system.
The mine navigation minigame is pretty fun, even if this video shows possibly the shortest solution (this seems to happen often in this playthrough...).
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Robot City is a 1995 adventure game by Byron Preiss Multimedia and Brooklyn Multimedia. Stranded on a distant and self-sufficient robot-run planet, an amnesiac identified as "Derec" must prove his innocence in murder mystery that invokes Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics. With help from Alpha, a robotic sidekick capable of deductive reasoning, the players must assemble clues, gather evidence, and use Asimov's laws to manipulate the city's positronic inhabitants. Limited exploration windows provide brief chances to explore new parts of the planet through mine shafts and a massive subway system.
The mine music doesn't usually play because a disc change right before entering cuts off the audio. That's normally not a problem, but the transition was sloppily done here. Originally I thought this was caused by a data error and wasted lots of time trying to fix it. You learn something every day I guess.
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Robot City is a 1995 adventure game by Byron Preiss Multimedia and Brooklyn Multimedia. Stranded on a distant and self-sufficient robot-run planet, an amnesiac identified as "Derec" must prove his innocence in murder mystery that invokes Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics. With help from Alpha, a robotic sidekick capable of deductive reasoning, the players must assemble clues, gather evidence, and use Asimov's laws to manipulate the city's positronic inhabitants. Limited exploration windows provide brief chances to explore new parts of the planet through mine shafts and a massive subway system.
The levers that open the path to the Maze Center teleport you back to the Cretean temple. Returning to the ziggurat means going through the mirror maze again. Apologies for all the backtracking.
As always, remember that The Labyrinth of Time is still on sale from Wyrmkeep Entertainment Co. via GoG.com and the iOS App Store. It's cheaper than a new game, and it probably looks much cooler. Speaking of looking cool, make sure to support the game's artist, Bradley W. Schenck, by checking out his personal website.
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The Labyrinth of Time is a 1993 adventure game by Terra Nova Development and Electronic Arts. The game tasks players with freeing the world from enslavement by destroying the eponymous time-spanning, pan-dimensional maze constructed by King Minos and his servant Daedalus. Created by Michal Todorovic and artist Bradley W. Schenck (two members of game development group The Dreamers Guild), The Labyrinth of Time uses distinctive combinations of Celtic knotwork, Art Deco, Greek mythology, and surreal modernism to convey its unworldly atmosphere. Puzzles primarily involve navigating mazes and collecting items, but the reliance on inventory leaves a few opportunities for dead ends. A useful map provides players with their bearings.
Unfortunately, the sequel promised in the ending was never created. Wyrmkeep Entertainment Co., a team composed of some of the game's original developers, has been trying to put that game together for a few years. If you want to help them, PLEASE buy a copy of The Labyrinth of Time from GoG.com and the iOS App Store, or give some financial support to Bradley W. Schenck, the game's artist.
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The Labyrinth of Time is a 1993 adventure game by Terra Nova Development and Electronic Arts. The game tasks players with freeing the world from enslavement by destroying the eponymous time-spanning, pan-dimensional maze constructed by King Minos and his servant Daedalus. Created by Michal Todorovic and artist Bradley W. Schenck (two members of game development group The Dreamers Guild), The Labyrinth of Time uses distinctive combinations of Celtic knotwork, Art Deco, Greek mythology, and surreal modernism to convey its unworldly atmosphere. Puzzles primarily involve navigating mazes and collecting items, but the reliance on inventory leaves a few opportunities for dead ends. A useful map provides players with their bearings.