It belongs in a museum!

With the quarantine continuing on, I’ve had ample time to lose myself in games, including Animal Crossing: New Horizons, which I didn’t think I’d like anywhere near as much as I do. Which brings us to today’s word.

Euththenopteron, noun – a genus of lobe-finned fishes that may be the link between sea- and land-dwelling life

Learned from: Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Switch)

Developed by Nintendo

Published by Nintendo (2020)

I loved dinosaurs as a kid, but much like the fossil record, it seems there were some gaps in my knowledge–namely when it came to prehistoric creatures that weren’t dinosaurs, per se. Woolly mammoths? No interest. Saber-toothed tigers? Young me couldn’t have cared less. For some reason, if it wasn’t lizardy and scaled, it didn’t catch my eye. (Except for trilobites–I always thought they were cool.) So it’s always cause for celebration when I learn more about the animals I just brushed off in my youth. Especially when they’re something as noteworthy as one of the first creatures to try and crawl out of the sea.

eusthenopteron

Darling, isn’t it?

Easter in quarantine

I’m not going to say “happy Easter,” because most of the things that people seem to like best about the holiday are things that they really shouldn’t be doing right now. If you’re having an egg hunt, I hope it’s indoors, or that you have a fenced lawn. Much as you miss your families, you really shouldn’t have them over for dinner. And if you’re smart, you’re not going to church, because if there are a bunch of people clustered together, the virus doesn’t care where they are. It’s understandable if this makes you feel sad, frustrated, or even guilty, but staying home and staying safe is objectively more important than putting yourself and others at risk, simply because tradition calls for it. And in a roundabout way, that brings us to today’s word.

biliary, adj. – of, or relating to the bile ducts or gall bladder

Learned from: Blasphemous (Nintendo Switch, PC, Playstation 4, XBox One)

Developed by The Game Kitchen

Published by Team17 (2019)

Blasphemous is essentially Catholic Guilt: The Video Game. It’s a 2D metroidvania full of quasi-religious imagery, where everything joyful is a sin, and if a person is suffering, that means they’re blessed. It’s twisted and grim, and a perfect example of a Kickstarter project done right. You play as the Penitent One in Silence (there are other Penitent Ones with different burdens they carry), as he tries to atone for whatever sins he’s committed, by slashing his way through an oppressive world suffused with twisted faith. Your sword is gradually piercing its way into your own flesh, you regularly anoint yourself with the blood of your foes, and your health items are biliary flasks (that admittedly look more like they’re filled with blood than bile).

In short, the game is metal. Less short, it’s a beautifully realized world, with great pixel art, plenty of secrets to find, and gameplay that’s a comfortable challenge. So if you’re stuck at home today, and looking for something new to play, consider giving this one a shot.

blasphemous

I could make a “he is risen” joke, but that’s low-hanging fruit. Also, bad grammar.

Nice body work

So, the other day, the first images of the Playstation 5 controller were finally released, and I have to say, it’s a sleek piece of hardware. As a friend of mine put it, it’s like they took the time travel suits from Avengers: Endgame, and turned them into a controller. He’s not entirely wrong–this thing is slick. And in a roundabout way, that brings us to today’s word.

chassis, noun – the supporting frame of a structure (as a vehicle or appliance); also: the frame and working parts (as of a car or electronic device), exclusive to the body or housing

Learned from: MissionForce: Cyberstorm (PC)

Developed by Dynamix

Published by Sierra Entertainment (1996)

MissionForce: Cyberstorm has the kind of title you might get from taking a few spins on an X-TREME ’90s version of roulette. But as a game, it was a somewhat deep, turn-based strategy game with mechs–mechs that you could customize from chassis, to loadouts, to pilots. But really, what it might be best-known for (if indeed, it’s known at all these days), is the fact that each box came with two copies of the game. These days, with all the worry over piracy, and the invasive DRM software in place to try and fight it, giving away an extra copy of a game for free would be nigh-unthinkable. Then again, maybe the developers weren’t confident enough that it would sell, without giving it that extra push, to help generate word of mouth (and considering the quality of the game, that wouldn’t be surprising). Either way, it was a cool little bonus at the time.

PS5-Controller_04-07-20

This is the DualSense controller for the PS5. Its design is futuristic, sleek, and pretty damn appealing if I do say so myself.

Cyberstorm_Cover

This is the box for MissionForce: Cyberstorm. It’s, erm….none of those things.

Bodies at rest

I’m sure most of you are under some level of quarantine at this point. Even I, who falls under the “essential worker” category in my state, am currently in the middle of what amounts to a four-day weekend. I’m reading more, whittling down my to-read/watch/play piles, and heck, I’ve even started painting again. By no means do I intend to make light of the COVID-19 situation, but I could get used to this. Which brings us to today’s word.

inertia, noun – the tendency for a body at rest or in motion to remain so, unless acted upon by an outside source

Learned from: Star Control (Genesis, Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, PC, ZX Spectrum)

Developed by Toys for Bob

Published by Accolade (1990)

Part of me wishes I’d been a bit older when I first played Star Control, because there were a lot of bits of parody that I didn’t get way back in the early ‘90s. From androids having letter designations of tax forms, to the ships of the all-female race of Syreen being shaped like marital aids, most of it sailed right over my naïve, innocent head. What stuck with and captivated me however, was the incredibly addictive combat.

Each of the 15 different races had their own style of ship, with its own unique set of primary and secondary weapons. Everything from cloaking devices, to automated fighter drones, to acidic bubbles made an appearance in this game, and some of the matchups were incredibly fun. The battle between a lightly-armored, inertia-less Arilou fighter, against a hulking Ur-Quan Dreadnought remains one of my favorite in the game, in an Ajax vs. Achilles sort of way: speed vs. raw destructive power and all that good stuff.

Again, they don’t make covers like this anymore, and that’s a shame.

So, about the Archon series…

I realize with my last post, I jumped into the sequel without talking much about the game that came first, though I have learned words from both of them. In an odd, meta-narrative way, this is actually fitting, since I did play Archon II before I ever gave the first one a shot. Since they’re both pretty fun games, with different things to offer, I felt I should give the original some attention. Which brings us to today’s word.

manticore, noun – a mythical creature with the head of a man, the body of a lion, and the tail of a scorpion, also (sometimes) the wings of a bat

Learned from: Archon: The Light and the Dark (Apple II, Atari 8-bit, Commodore 64, Amiga, PC, Macintosh, NES, Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, PC-88)

Developed by Free Fall Associates

Published by Electronic Arts (1983)

In many ways, the first Archon is a much more straightforward game than its sequel. It has the same system where if two units land on the same square, the screen shifts to an abstract representation of the battlefield, where you fight in real-time, but there’s less environment variety. Instead of elemental planes, you’ve got what amounts to a chessboard with white and black squares. The gimmick comes in the fact that the board undergoes a constant day/night cycle, where the Light side is stronger during the day (and on white squares), while the Dark side is stronger at night (and on black spaces). There are also in-between squares that shift colors along with the time of day. This injects a bit of strategy, where your most mobile units can get to the enemy leader faster, but taking them to their max range in a turn might leave them on the wrong-colored square as day/night is approaching.

And oh, are there a lot of unit types. From basic soldiers, to trolls, to shapeshifters, to the manticore. The description of it above comes from Arabian mythology, and I have to admit, it’s pretty cool…but at the time, I had no idea what I was supposed to be looking at. The thing was just a vaguely quadrupedal mass of blue pixels, with something that looked as much like a satellite dish as a tail. Not exactly frightening. Thankfully, my parents had an encyclopedia with a better illustration, and from that point on, my imagination filled in the blanks better than any graphics of the time could have (cheesy as that probably sounds).

archon

If this looks like an old album cover, you’re not entirely wrong. Some games from this era came in what were essentially record sleeves.

It’s the end of the world as we know it

Or at least that’s what it seems like. Schools, libraries, restaurants, sports venues, and more are all going into quarantine in my area, despite there being no confirmed cases of COVID-19 in our neck of the woods. I’m not downplaying the danger–a 3.7% mortality rate doesn’t sound bad until you extrapolate it out to a country of some 330 million people. If even a third of us catch the coronavirus before the pandemic ends, that’s still over 4 million dead Americans. So while the panic might seem out of proportion at first dint, I can understand the measures being taken. Which brings us to today’s word.

apocalypse, noun – the end of the world; a great and wide-spread disaster

Learned from: Archon II: Adept (Apple II, Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Atari 8-bit, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum)

Developed by Free Fall Associates

Published by Electronic Arts (1984)

Less chess-like than its predecessor, Archon II abandoned the checkerboard playing field in favor of a board with four tracks, each aligned with one of the four elements. And instead of just trying to kill the enemy leader, the aim was to summon various creatures (each with their own elemental preferences), to take control of four power points that moved around the field.

That, or just end the world.

Archon II is one of the only competitive games I can think of where, if the match wasn’t going your way (and you had enough mana saved up), you could just flip the digital table and say “If I can’t win, no one can!” Apocalypse was an expensive spell to cast–possibly the most expensive spell in the game–but the option was always there if you really wanted it.

And really, it always struck me as kind of weird that this one spell was available to both players. See, Archon II was less about Good vs. Evil, and more about Order vs. Chaos. Taking your proverbial toys and going home doesn’t really seem to fit the Order M.O., but maybe after putting in different sets of creatures for each faction, there wasn’t enough space left on the disk to give each side a tailored list of spells. Considering that a 5.25-inch floppy only held around 180kb of data, it wouldn’t surprise me.

Still, despite its limitations and odd tactical choices, Archon II was a great game with a lot of replayability.

Archon2adeptcover

Plus, it had some awesome box art–they don’t do covers like this anymore.

Welcome to the world of tomorrow!

For this entry, I find myself in the odd position of writing about a game that hasn’t been released yet. I’ll explain in a moment.

oniric, adj. – variant of oneiric: dreamlike or pertaining to dreams

Learned from: Iris and the Giant (projected platforms: PC, PS4, Switch, XBox One)

Developed by Louis Rigaud

Published by Goblinz Studio, Maple Whispering Limited (projected release: 2020)

So, I was scrolling through my Facebook feed today, and an ad for this game showed up, proclaiming it to be a “roguelike oniric deckbuilder”. I knew what two of those words meant, but I’d never heard the term “oniric” before. After looking it up, and perusing some of the screenshots on Steam, I can say it does look rather dreamlike. As a fan of deckbuilding games (100+ hours in Slay the Spire, and counting), and the randomness of roguelikes, I may have to give this one a shot whenever it comes out–I almost feel I owe it that much for already teaching me a new word.

iris

I do love how indie games are willing to experiment with different art styles.

My coworkers can’t spell

In the back storage room where I work, there’s a bunch of stuff that probably hasn’t been touched in years: paper files dating back almost a decade, microfilm copies of records that are older still, outdated equipment, etc. There is also, inexplicably, a plastic container of 3.5″ floppy disks, labeled, and I quote: “MICS DISCS”. Putting aside the fact that “discs” should be spelled with a K in this instance, they abbreviated “miscellaneous” wrong. Which brings to mind today’s word.

miscellaneous, adj. – not falling into any set category, having numerous and varied traits

Learned from: Dragon Wars (Apple II, Amiga, Commodore 64, Tandy, PC)

Developed by Interplay Productions, Kemco (NES version)

Published by Activision (1989)

Dragon Wars was a first-person dungeon crawler, that had more of an RPG aspect than some other games in the genre (there were actually NPCs to talk to, and choices you made actually mattered, so it wasn’t all about the combat/puzzles). It was a difficult, at times weird game that had an unexpected amount of depth. And to some degree, that depth extended to the magic system.

There weren’t really character classes in Dragon Wars, per se, and it was really a character’s stats and training that determined what they were good at. So, you might have someone who’s really skilled in Sun Magic, but had no High Magic spells. If I remember correctly, there were five schools of magic: Low (entry-level stuff), High (better versions of Low spells, and more versatility), Sun (for those who really wanted to cast the spells that make the people fall down), Druid (less damage, more summoning), and finally, Miscellaneous. I don’t think there were many spells in Miscellaneous Magic, and thematically they didn’t seem to fit anywhere else–sort of a haste spell, and a high damage spell that wasn’t elemental or sun-based, I think. There may have been more, but I honestly don’t recall. But if it really was only that handful, it seems like they could’ve found some way to tweak them so they’d fit in a different school, and get rid of the pointless appendix that was Miscellaneous Magic.

Just like we should really just get rid of “MICS DISCS” at work. I’m sure Mic won’t miss them.

dragon_wars

Unrelated note, but I really do miss hand-painted box art. They don’t make ’em like this anymore.

1,000 Points of Light

By this point, I’m sure most of you know about the situation in Australia. If somehow you aren’t, the continent is on fire. Millions of animals have died, thousands of people have been displaced, and as of right now, the fires show no signs of stopping. Today’s word should be self-explanatory….

inferno, noun – an intense, uncontrollable blaze

Learned from: Shadowgate (Apple IIGS, Atari ST, Amiga, CD-I, Game Boy Color, Macintosh, NES, Palm OS, PC, mobile phone)

Developed by ICOM Simulations, Inc.

Published by Mindscape (1987), (Kemco, 1989 for the NES)

Far from the real-world horrorscape that is Australia right now, opening a door to find just an entire chasm full of fire seems downright passe. Shadowgate was known for being unpredictable. Each door, or hatch, or hallway could just as easily lead to a wizard’s laboratory, or a dragon’s hoard, or a bridge over a sea of flames. The sheer variety of scenes led to an equally broad set of creative solutions in order to progress.

Sadly, there’s no icy crystal orb we can shatter against the ground to put out the infernos raging across Australia. Indeed, once you see some of the photos from the area, it can be easy to feel like there’s no solution at all. And for any one of us, that’s true. Fortunately, fixing this–or any other problem of this scope–doesn’t fall on the shoulders of any one person. The most any one of us can do is what we can. If you’re inclined to spit in the face of impossible odds, and do all that anyone could ask, this article has a list of things you can do to help, at the bottom. Again, no one person could be expected to do all of them, but any of us could do at least one.

Happy New Year

Ye gods, the holidays are busy. Between social obligations, longer hours at work, and an unfortunately-timed head cold, I haven’t had a lot of time to sit and focus on this project. I did have time to bake two surprisingly gigantic loaves of cardamom bread, after discovering how much my wife likes that particular spice…which brings us to today’s word.

pestle noun – a club-shaped utensil for pounding or grinding material in a mortar

Learned from: Tower of Doom (Intellivision)

Developed by Mattel Electronics

Published by INTV Corporation (1987)

So, the recipe I was using called for ground cardamom, but all we had on hand were whole seeds. After grinding them by hand, I think Home Ec. should count as a gym class substitute–those things were tough! Also, the entire house smelled wonderful for days afterward, so it was totally worth it.

As for the game itself, Tower of Doom is one of the first roguelike games I ever played, and certainly the first one I played with real-time combat. The story was simple: You’re stuck in a labyrinthine tower full of monsters and traps, and you have to find your way out. For some inexplicable reason, you start at the top of the tower, but coherent plots generally weren’t a high priority back in the ’80s.

In traditional roguelike fashion, besides the enemies, the tower was filled with a variety of mysterious items that had different effects, each time you played. So, that red potion might heal you, or poison you, or make you blind. The same thing went for scrolls, wands, mortars & pestles, etc. Tower of Doom was actually pretty complex for a console game of its time, and thinking back, the Intellivision actually had a lot of games like that. It was a system ahead of its time, and the fact that they’re going to be reviving it this year with the Intellivision Amico makes me smile.

tower_of_doom

I mean, look at this: a procedural map, inventory system, health bar. This was impressive stuff for a system whose games were only a few kilobytes.