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Author Topic: Forgotten Games of my youth  (Read 1059 times)

Salmeuk

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Forgotten Games of my youth
« on: September 30, 2010, 02:02:14 am »

I recall a topic like this in the past, but I have been google-ing my ass off for about 4 hours with no luck.

I have a few games (and I'm sure you all do too) that I played a whole bunch as a kid, without really understanding what I was doing. I remember having loads of fun though, and I've been wanting a new chance to play them, or at least see how true my memory of those games is.

The first game I vaguely recall was a first person (or possibly third person if you pressed a button) mech game. I remember it being tough as balls for me, and the few other things I do remember I will bullet below:

    +You could choose what mech you deployed to the mission with (I recall some mechs weighing more than others, and being        named generic mech names like Atlas and Orion)

    +It was shareware (I could only play with some of the mechs, those below a certain weight class)

    +Armament included LAZORS, mgs, rockets, photon cannon things and big bullet cannon things. shields too

    +Your mech could be outfitted with a jetpack. As I mentioned earlier much of the actual fighting was too much for me, so I would just fly around the massive canyons on the planets with the jetpack. There was lots of fall damage

    +The maps you played on could vary greatly, from grass covered with big (I mean fucking massive) buildings to climb around on, to giants sandstorm desert planets, to completely pitch black desert planets where you had to turn on some sort of infrared vision just to see.

    +in addition to this mech fighting stuff, there was a campaign mode (I think) where you controlled a planet in a seemingly randomly generated solar system. The view of this was a 3d starmap. Flying to other planets let you harvest their resources, with the planets varying in resourcefulness and size and whatnot

That is pretty much what I remember. It is none of the games on the wikipedia list of mech games (I youtubed every single one), and googling various combos of the above facts turn up nothing. I played this on a macintosh.

FOUND: YOUNGS MODULUS

http://www.indiegames.com/blog/2008/05/freeware_game_pick_youngs_modu.html

My second game is even more vague in my memory. It involved moving chess pieces around a grid map, and taking control of territory.

    +Each territory you took control of gave you points to build more chess pieces.

    +I think there was a specific tower for each kind of chess piece you could build.

    +the game played out turn based, with the human building different pieces and battling the AI.

    +there were both melee and archer pieces (sketchy memory)

    +the grid system had a black background, with the view being isometric. The actual tiles you captured had different graphics on them, from grass to ruins to dead trees

    +I have a strong sense of ravens and graveyards when I think of this game

    +It was nothing like actual chess

    +Macintosh

The third game I have been meaning to find is looked remarkably similar to

http://courses.cit.cornell.edu/ee476/FinalProjects/s2008/jk459_mmi4/jk459_mmi4/index.html

and

http://www.javagameplay.com/WarZone.html

but was neither of these games.

I distinctly remember:

    +multiple levels, not waves

    +multicolored blocks and tanks (orange green red blue)

    +6 levels

    +Pretty sure it was vector graphics, but my 7 year old self could not have known that

    +Macintosh also


I hope I'm not being too demanding asking for help finding these games, I just feel that the people who play DF are very qualified for the obscure and old game finding job :D

This will probably turn into a 'post your mysterious memory of a childhood game' thread, which I don't mind at all!

« Last Edit: September 30, 2010, 10:41:33 pm by Salmeuk »
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GFXiNXS

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Re: Forgotten Games of my youth
« Reply #1 on: September 30, 2010, 03:13:09 am »

I'm thinking the mech game you are after is Heavy Gear 1 or 2.
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PrimusRibbus

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Re: Forgotten Games of my youth
« Reply #2 on: September 30, 2010, 03:25:27 am »

The first game sounds a LOT like Young's Modulus by Laminar Research (the maker of X-Plane). It was recently rebranded as "Giant Fighting Robots" (*groan*) and has been released for the iPad/iPhone.
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Moogie

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Re: Forgotten Games of my youth
« Reply #3 on: September 30, 2010, 09:31:13 am »

Third game: Spectre?
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Itnetlolor

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Re: Forgotten Games of my youth
« Reply #4 on: September 30, 2010, 02:58:05 pm »

Game 1 sounds eerily similar to Mechwarrior. Which one exactly, not sure. Closest I can think of would be Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries. Another game that may fit the profile could also be any of the Armored Core games. Atlas and Orion sound like familiar mech names to me. And those photon cannon things, you mean PPC launchers, right?

Nothing like outfitting a mech with a half-dozen of those. One shot *ALARM* Warning, internal heat at 700 degrees Kelvin, Shutting do--Overridden :Shoot again: *Mech goes kerplooie*.

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Computer voice should ring some bells at least

EDIT:
Okay, I guess my suggestion wouldn't work. It would've been listed as a mech game. Are you sure it wasn't something like Tribes 1 or 2?
« Last Edit: September 30, 2010, 03:21:36 pm by Itnetlolor »
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Sowelu

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Re: Forgotten Games of my youth
« Reply #5 on: September 30, 2010, 03:50:14 pm »

Third game, and on a mac?  Yeah, Spectre.

First game...reading...mechwarrior obv...mechwarrior...mechwarrior...mechwarrior...wait WHAT?!  Okay I don't have a clue but I want it, whatever it is.
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nenjin

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Re: Forgotten Games of my youth
« Reply #6 on: September 30, 2010, 07:09:33 pm »

It does sound a lot like Mechwarrior, tbh. It's probably been a decade or more since I played it though, so I don't remember all the details. The star map and harvesting thing I don't remember so much....but the rest sounds exactly like. Particularly the shareware and mech tonnage limit.

But yeah. Mechwarrior, Ghost Bear's Legacy, those two are nigh on impossible to get your hands on now, even through the internet. Let alone get working.
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a1s

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Re: Forgotten Games of my youth
« Reply #7 on: September 30, 2010, 10:13:35 pm »

actually they're pretty easy to get (for, as they say, "educational purposes")* . Easier then it is to get them working correctly :-\.

*And, yes, I checked, both can be found in under 5 minutes.
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Dwarf

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Re: Forgotten Games of my youth
« Reply #8 on: September 30, 2010, 10:19:02 pm »

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Salmeuk

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Re: Forgotten Games of my youth
« Reply #9 on: September 30, 2010, 10:35:49 pm »

The first game sounds a LOT like Young's Modulus by Laminar Research (the maker of X-Plane). It was recently rebranded as "Giant Fighting Robots" (*groan*) and has been released for the iPad/iPhone.


*DING DING DING DING DING*

YES! That's the one. When I read the name, it hit me like a falling kitten~


thank you for your knowledge!
Third game, and on a mac?  Yeah, Spectre.

First game...reading...mechwarrior obv...mechwarrior...mechwarrior...mechwarrior...wait WHAT?!  Okay I don't have a clue but I want it, whatever it is.

Third game: Spectre?

Nope. The game I am thinking of had extremely strong colors, and had straight vector graphics.

Thanks for the input everyone!

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