Game wishlist

[leilei]

Also note there was a Serious Sam Test 2 from December 2000 as well

[MrFlibble]

Nice! Didn't know that

[Edit] Whoops, did you mean TFE Public Test 2? It's also present on FilePlanet. (For some reason I thought TSE public test... Weird.)

[MrFlibble]

While we're talking Serious Sam, another similar game is perhaps worth mentioning - Will Rock. Although it had not received a lot of favourable reviews by the critics, personally I find it quite fun and nice-looking game.

Will Rock has an Ancient Greek setting (originally, several time periods were planned, including Ancient China and Medieval Russia), and the developers have enlisted the help of specialists in Ancient Greek and Roman architecture to create more realistic and detailed environments. Several locations throughout the levels are obviously based on real-life places; for example, the first level recreates the exterior of Al Khazneh from Petra, and the first location of level two is based on the Petra Theatre. Greek and Roman frescoes decorate the levels, including the well-known ones from the Villa of the Mysteries.

While the gameplay scheme follows Serious Sam pretty closely - wide open areas, hordes of monsters, - there's a little twist in that the player can buy powerups with treasure collected in the levels and then activate them at any moment. These powerups are nothing out of the ordinary - temporary invincibility, quad damage and slo-mo mode - but the ability to use them when they're necessary, rather than when the level designers decided it would be nice to throw a couple in at a particular moment, adds some diversity to playing strategies.

The game is not overall difficult, as ammo is plentiful even on higher difficulty settings, but in addition to pure action there are jumping and switch-hunting puzzles that require (careful) exploration of the environment.

Will Rock Demo at FilePlanet
Interview with Matthew Karch (President, Saber Interactive)
Interview with Andrey Iones (Lead Programmer, Saber Interactive) and Vladimir Chernysh (Art Director, Saber Intercative) (archived copy)

[leilei]

I hated Will Rock, due to the broken mouse input

[MrFlibble]

Hmm, I've read about mouse problems elsewhere too, but personally I've never experienced that problem (except maybe in the demo). Have you been playing the patched version (v1.2 is the latest IIRC)?

OTOH, I've had badly messed up shadows in certain parts of several levels.

[MrFlibble]

Not exactly a request, but these seem to be rare:

Ishar 2 playable demo:
http://cd.textfiles.com/cdromgamesgdc1/GAMES/ISHAR2/

Ishar 3 playable demo:
http://cd.textfiles.com/cdromgamesgdc1/GAMES/ISHAR3/

Note that those are plain files though, not zipped or anything.

[MrFlibble]

BTW, I've been complaining about the Alien Rampage shareware virtually not available on the net and on shareware CDs, but in fact there's one at cd.textfiles.com:
http://cd.textfiles.com/cdaction/cdaction07a/RAMTEMP/

I did not mention it previously because of the doubts that the package is not the original one, but this is still better than nothing.

I finally got some time to check this out, it's the original installer for the shareware demo v1.12. The date stamps on the files also seem to be correct.

[Edit] Here's additional confirmation that said files are original:

Alien Rampage will be downloaded to your computer as a 6.5 megabyte self-extracting executable file named sdramp.exe. Run it and it will create a temporary subdirectory called ramtemp within the current directory. Go there and run install.exe to install the game.

(source; emphasis added)

[Litude]

Regarding Alien Rampage, here are a few versions that I've managed to find:
Shareware Version 1.0 (09/19/95) - Installer
Shareware Version 1.11 (10/14/95) - Installer
Shareware Version 1.12 (10/31/95) - Installer
Shareware Version 1.13 (12/12/95) - Installer

[MrFlibble]

This is incredibly awesome As usual, I might add

[DOSGuy]

Sweet game! I need a doublecheck on the original filenames on those last three archives. Were they really called ramtemp.zip?

[Litude]

They were actually all present as loose files on different cds I have access to. Version 1.0 was in a folder called RAMPAGE, while version 1.11, 1.12 and 1.13 were all three in folders called RAMTEMP.

[MrFlibble]

It is my understanding that the RAMTEMP folder with the installer was generated by the self-extracting archive called SDRAMP.EXE (I suppose SD stands for SoftDisk) which had been available from SoftDisk FTP. Apparently, all versions above v1.0 used that method of distribution.

[MrFlibble]

Would you consider adding Robert J. Deutsch's shareware RPGs?
The Great Ultizurkian Underland Version 5.5
Ultizurk III: The Guildmaster's Quest Version 1.1
Wraith Version 3.0

Also, what about Spiderweb Software RPGs (at least the old ones)?

[DOSGuy]

I'd consider adding anything, but there never seems to be enough time to actually do it!

[MrFlibble]

Sorry to hear you've got such a tight schedule!

Anyhow, it turns out there's a demo of Shadow of the Comet, a video of which I've found here. A little bit of Googling brought up this page with two demo versions, one of which appears to have been originally published on a CD.