For every good hack, there are dozens of bad ones. Like this hack of Super Mario Bros. 3 where the levels are changed around to produce blind drops, vomit-inducing colors, and lots of frustration.
I don’t do so well at it.
Okay, altering the graphics of Mario games? Yeah, they’re occasionally pretty hilarious, but maybe you want more. Okay, how about a Castlevania game that has had the graphics redone and the levels changed around?
What would you think of that?
Let’s step away from Mario games for a moment and go to the old-school shoot ‘em ups, specifically, what Galaga might look like if the ship in the game were replaced with the Enterprise from Star Trek for some reason.
It might be a better show if I didn’t suck so bad at this game, but I never claimed to be good at Galaga… or Star Trek.
I don’t really know what to say about this game, Mario turns into a half-car hybrid, pipes get converted into houses, and fireballs turn into tiny stick figures. Plus lots of other small touches. I can’t even begin to fathom this thing.
I love it.
Most of the ROM hacks I come across are just plain old Super Mario Bros. with some kind of skin on top of Mario and pals. But occasionally I’ll run across a game that’s something else… like Super Mario Bros. 3 with a different skin on it. Like Mario and Luigi dressed up like Abraham Lincoln.
Yeah, all that stuff.
Continuing our journey down the sometimes twisted world of ROM hackery, this week I bring you a game where Pac-Man must save Ms. Pac-Man from… some kind of wizardy vampire guy. I might not be up on my Pac-Man lore to know who he is, heck, I didn’t even really remember that Pac-Man having much lore.
Continuing our journey down the sometimes twisted ROM hacks we have this… gem. It’s a game where the guy from Kung-Fu has been replaced by He-Man.
And, while I’m sure the other things in this game are supposed to be other characters from that universe and everything, I don’t recognize any of them.
And I still haven’t figured out why he doesn’t use that sweet sword when he’s beating these ninjas to death.
Game: Blackout!
Purchased from: The iTunes Store
Price paid: $0.99
Platform: iPhone, iPad, & iPod Touch
It seems to me that the iDevices are fairly well suited to puzzle games you can just pick up and play for a few minutes at a time, so I like to pick up a few of the cheapies… also, it turns out that I like to try lots of cheapie games.
Blackout!, exclamation point and all, is a game where you have to match colors (*gasp!*)… sort of. You have a series of grids full of gems, ‘starter’ pieces, and a light source. You have to use your wits (and your finger!) to clear gems away and create paths through the dirt so that the light flows through your tunnels to the unlit lights. You do this by rubbing your finger over the gems you want to get rid of, and by using two fingers to scroll the screen around. Pretty straightforward stuff.
But I ran into one big problem with this game: I don’t have a transparent hand. As you can probably tell from the video above, when you’re dragging your hand across your iThingus, trying to make your clears, your hand gets in the way, making it kind of difficult to string together anything longer than about four pieces. This also comes into play when you’re trying to scroll the screen around looking for clears. It’s kind of tough to see through your hands to the game board.
Other than that, the game’s pretty unremarkable. It tries to be clever by adding more colors or unclearable stuff that you have to work around. Pretty standard stuff. I’d probably get more play out of the thing if I could somehow make a clear hand to play with, but as it is, it’s not too awful.
No no, I’m not talking about Basscomm, I’m Talking about Beneath a Steel Sky, a game that time has forgotten about. If you came here today looking for greatness…you picked a good day to visit.
BASS was originally released in 1994 by those wacky Brits on the SCUMM engine and mixes humor, sci-fi story telling and a strong serving of cyberpunk. For those of you unfamiliar with cyberpunk go here for a wikipedia definition. It basically means that its a scenario where science and technology have progressed and futuristic devices exist but society has taken a turn for the worse, much like Blade Runner or maybe Borderlands. BASS is also know for its art work that was done by Dave Gibbons, more popularly know as the guy that did the ink work for the Watchmen as well as various other comic books of the time. The graphics, although dated by todays standards, are amazing. The worlds are cleverly designed and do a great deal to convey the atmosphere of the game.
The game is set in a future Australia where there has been a major fallout of one variety or another and most all of the land has been made unlivable. The story follows Robert Foster after he is adopted by Aboriginals in the outback after a helicopter crash when he was a small child that left him parentless and stranded in “The Gap”. The Gap is the barren wasteland between the two major factory cities. The opening movie shows that Robert Foster is being hunted down by soldiers from Union City that are being controlled by a computer named LINC. All of the opening is illustrated by Dave Gibbons and has full voice narration and voice acting. One thing that sets this game apart from some of the similar games of the time was that all of the characters had voices and almost every line was spoken out loud and with the added bonus of top notch art work made this game very easy on the senses.
So as I was saying, you control Robert foster and his sidekick Joey the robot that he built living with the natives of Australia. After being forced back to Union City the helicopter you were brought in on crashes, bringing your escape from custody and the start of the game. Your mission is to find out why the authorities are looking for you and what is really going on with the mysterious LINC computer system and eventually gain your freedom. The controls are a lot like other point and click SCUMM games. Left mouse controls where you go as well as using it to examine items. Your right mouse button controls actions like open and use and talk and so on. F5 brings up your menu to save and load and adjust game settings. Side note: I noticed when I saved my game to a slot nothing showed up as being there, so if this happens to you don’t worry, its there it just doesn’t show up.
I won’t spoil anymore of the games story, you’ll just have to play it yourself. Its is stuffed fully of funny dialogue and sight gags as well as a serious tale of corporate greed and oppression. In 2003 the game was declared freeware from its producers and is freely available from many sites on the web. You can get it from the SCUMMVM site or from Good old Games, which I highly recommend. Their site is much easier to navigate and you don’t need to download SCUMMVM to play it and its still 100% free and DRM free. Also at GOG you can get the manual and other artwork for the game as a separate download. They have a very good layout and many download options once the game is in your library. I could spend a whole article talking about how much i love GOG.com, but I’ll save it for another day, just go there and get the game and I promise you will be happy. So if you love point and click adventure games and cyberpunk post apocalyptic future dystopias with a sense of humor, then this game is for you. Its is also available on iPhone and Android for .99c with a few updates to the game play thrown in.
