Do you remember when I did a series of posts related to Konami? Well, I never did finish parsing their library of unknown and obscure. However, I did elect some candidates from their later SNES years. Let’s take a look, shall we?
———-

Konami was amazingly prolific during the Super Nintendo era. Their contribution to the Golden Age was filled with many instant classics. Many of you remember Castlevania IV. How many of you remember Sunset Riders or Sparkster?

Well, the games I’m about to mention are even more obscure. They never had a chance outside the borders of Japan. I’ve rescued the best, as usual, and now I present them to you in the hopes that they will find a home on your hard drive.

Ashita no Joe The otaku already guessed the content of this game. Ashita no Joe was an incredibly popular boxing manga/anime in Japan. A lot of great western movies have been based on boxing; it’s no surprise that the Japanese got in on the act. Ashita no Joe was so beloved by the people that they wore black armbands when it ended, reminiscent of a certain event at Reichenbach Falls. Does this game do it justice? You be the judge.

Jikkyou Powerful Pro Yakyuu If it’s not boxing, it’s the other great western Japanese past-time. That’s right, baseball! Personally, their love of baseball almost befuddles me. You know this series as MLB Power Pros, since it has now FINALLY arrived on our shores. It’s not great, but I feel compelled to mention it since there have been so many entries to the series.

Chibi Maruko-chan : Mezase! Minami no Island!! Yes, I know it’s based on a mediocre kiddie show. I can’t help it, I have a soft spot for games like this. It has a pretty cute presentation and features 3 surprisingly fun games. The first is basically dodgeball. The second is Snafu from the Intellivision. The third game has you shoving your friends off a raft. All of these games features power-ups, items, and general zaniness. It’s pretty cool and has a very nice multi-player option. Definitely give this one a shot!

Pop’n Twinbee and Rainbow Bell Adventure You know me, I always have to include a platformer. And what a platformer it is! It’s strange to see a Twinbee game take place on the ground. It’s got a lot to it, including the ability to fire yourself into the stratosphere (although I don’t recommend it.) If you’re into Twinbee or need a platformer to distract you, this is the best game on the list. I also included the Twinbee shooter for the system since it is also a little piece of pure awesome.

Gokujou Parodius This is one of the greatest space shooters I have ever seen. It’s a great recap on all the classic Konami characters, each one featuring awesomely appropriate firepower. The game has an excellent sense of humour and is nearly as wacky as Cho Aniki (I assure you, that is no small feat.) It’s Gradius combined with Wai Wai World and that’s simply an awesome idea. There were quite a few in the Parodius series; I present this one as merely an introduction.

There were a few lesser games in the Konami library; you can look them up if you still haven’t got your fix. Mouryou Senki Madara 2 seemed like a dense RPG (I have no idea if there’s a patch for it) and I heard that Tsuyoshi Shikkari Shinasai Taisen Puzzle-dama isn’t too bad either. You know where the Google is.

———
I was planning on doing several articles on Treasure. Then I realized Hardcore Gaming beat me to it. You guys rock!

EDIT: If you’re wondering why this post is so barren, Wordpress deleted most of it. I’m not happy.

I’ve been pretty busy all week, so I’ll have to make this short. Every once in awhile, I like to cover the entire library of a small developer. Today is one of those days. E. Hashimoto is just a guy like anyone else, starting off his indie career with little freeware games and is now working on commercial products.

The dream of all of us; it’s nice to see examples of it fulfilled. Hashimoto is an excellent (and entirely Japanese) example. Let’s take a look at his games. All of them feature bright anime graphics and are pretty friendly with the difficulty level.

Elemental Saga (MSX2) I haven’t been able to track down any information on this game other than the fact it was made for the MSX2. I can only wonder if a ROM might be floating around out there. He no longer offers it on his site, which leads me to wonder just how bad it might be. For those of you that don’t know, the MSX2 was a very popular Japanese computer back in the early eighties. This game was a commercial project he had a hand in; yes, Hashimoto’s history goes back that far.

Buster (X68000) His next game was a pretty-boy medieval sidescrolling RPG called Buster. It was made for the Sharp X68000, yet another very old and very Japanese computer. The download will give you an appropriate emulator, but I myself wasn’t able to figure it out. You can safely skip it as he took a lot of ideas from this version of Buster for a remake more than a decade (!) later.

O-DEN2000 Hashimoto disappeared off the map for awhile after that. Maybe he got a job or became consumed by Real Life like so many of us. Fortunately he made his return to indie gaming and has been doing it ever since. His first real offering (using DX7, fancy!) is a shoot-em-up which is well-trodden ground for most game developers. It’s not that good, but the presentation is pretty slick.

Bungaru Wa This is a pretty good game. It’s sorta like Icy Towers (well, the goals are the same) but features very different gameplay. You charge up jumps and hopefully you recover before the floor falls away from you! This game gives us a taste of the awesomeness Hashimoto would offer us in the future.

Kimaru This is a pretty bizarre mini-golf game. It’s very reminiscent of Kirby’s Golf Course although it is far more restrictive. It’s not a bad game, but there’s very little depth. It is quite challenging and might keep a few of you mini-golfers busy for an hour or so.

Akuji the Demon You may have noticed this game and the game below on this site already. I dunno what happened, but Hashimoto decided to up the ante. Instead of a simple distraction, he gave us a game with multiple levels, good play control, and a pretty interesting twist to an old plot. You play Akuji, hellbent on killing the hero who took away your powers. This game is very Kid Dracula.

Guardian of Paradise For his next project (also generously translated by Aeon Genesis), Hashimoto made a top-down action RPG. It’s not a very difficult game, but features some very unique puzzles due to the odd powers granted the main character. If you’ve been looking for an RPG to fill your time and you’re into Zelda, you seriously can’t afford to miss this one. It’s probably his best work thus far.

Buster Buster is a pretty simple platformer (even if the controls are pretty advanced.) It’s a remake of his old X68000 project although it has little in common with the original and should be regarded as a sequel if anything. You actually have to pay for this one, which is a departure from the usual. I may or may not buy it myself after I’m done playing with my custom Portal maps.

It’s been a few years and who knows what Hashimoto will work on next. I for one am looking forward to his follow-up project. See? Japan has more than Pixel.

If you guys are interested in keeping up with the indie on the other side of the pond, I highly recommend the following site.

I’m gonna go play with the Source SDK! I’ll see you guys later!

Okay I’m getting sidetracked once again. I’m writing this post to tell you about the importance of voting. Voting drives forth the process of choice. We each need to remind ourselves that an individual’s choice may not matter much, but collectively our individual choices can become meaningful.

What?? No I’m not talking about the US presidency; Lord knows there’s enough of that going on. I’m talking about Tigsource and their Procedural Competition! Yeah, now that’s awesome!

As you may know, Tigsource holds a contest every now and again. This month, it was all about creating games that randomly generate new content upon each successive play. There is a total of 60 entries. I won’t lie to you; half of them are pretty terrible at best. Some of them won’t even play properly.

As always, I separate the grain from the chaff. Well, this time it was pretty tough. I actually had to agonize over my votes, despite picking *6* entries! I narrowed it down to 18 at first. Then I was lucky to get it under 10.

So here (in my opinion), are the best games from the competition. You can download them here.
—————————–

dropTD by nuryKabe This game has a very simple presentation. The idea behind it is incredibly fascinating. Drag and drop files into the game to generate a level and then your towers to defend against the impending onslaught. It doesn’t look or seem like much, but it’s an astounding programming feat worthy of mention.

sin(Surfing) by twohalf and Sifu Peng It may not seem like much at first, but this game has excellent play control. I also get a kick out of the music. The presentation is top-notch retro and the controls are very intuitive. Okay, there isn’t really much to this game at all. You simply surf and flip around to pull simple stunts. It wins my vote simply by invoking the Rule of Cool.

Everyone Loves Active 2 by Kyle Pulver The VGNG title doesn’t really do the game justice. It’s bright, it’s musical, it’s schizophrenic; the best qualities any shooter could hope for. It’s got a whimsical insanity about it that is simply charming. The only gripe I have is the advanced firing; the play control for it simply doesn’t work.

Rescue the Beagles by nenad I didn’t even realize this was part of the competition when I first played it. It’s extremely polished and the basic concept of the gameplay works very well. The storyline of saving the puppies is… odd, but what the hell. Really, it’s a solid platformer about judging distances.

Wall of the Words by Robson It has a bare-bones and barely decent presentation. Therefore, to get a vote, it must be absolutely awesome and addictive. If you have any Scrabble in you, you won’t be able to leave this game alone. It’s simply one of the coolest implementations I’ve ever seen.

Self Destruct by Terry Cavanagh and Annabelle Kennedy The fact that this is made in Allegro makes me all warm and fuzzy. This game and a few others had some simply amazing production values. The gameplay is simple arcade, but it’s implemented with extraordinary skill; a serious kudos to you two. This game alone convinced me to enter Tigsource’s next competition. I gotta get in on some of this fun!

—————————–

There were some concepts presented in the contest where I thought, “Hey this is cool.” Unfortunately, one month isn’t enough time to realize an MMORPG Tycoon (awesome as it sounds, by the way.) Hopefully you guys continue working on your games; they really do deserve it!

Forgetting my list for a second, there are at least two dozen games in the contest worthy of free time. I would highly suggest checking out the full list at Tigsource’s Procedural Generation Competition. Don’t forget to cast your vote!

Yes, I wrote about Doom last week. Yes I said I was done. Well, it turns out that I lied. I was in a hurry to get the post done (we were really busy that day), so I left out a lot of stuff. In the end, I had more material than a single post could possibly hope to cover. I’m done talking about Doom and the technical specs of the engine.

Let’s talk about the user content some more.
———-

Doom had a lot of user content. In fact, any PC gamer can tell you that’s the measure of a game’s true popularity. Think about it: Quake Wars was an absolute failure; we know this due to a lack of significant user content. Half Life 2, however, still has a strong following in the community and there are a ton of mods for it.

Doom can easily be credited as the backbone to the first modding community ever. Even with a lack of tools, Wolfenstein was torn apart. The id team realized this and made available the tools (and later the source code) to support the fan community. Based on these tools, the fans made their own and started tinkering with the game at a rabid speed.

So if you wanted to make your own mod, just what would you have to use?

The Tools: Level Design

Level Design is usually the first thing you need to worry about. Fortunately, there are quite a few programs to make your life easy. Building a level in Doom is as simple as an overhead 2D map, with indicators as to the sprites in the level and all the variables for each sector. Okay, actually it’s kind of complicated. But googling for a tutorial will turn up dozens of easy-to-follow results.

When the community first started making levels, the most sophisticated tool was DEU. It wasn’t bad, but it certainly made the job tedious. Making a single level could take a whole day! Eventually some tools were released to ‘browse’ your own level and simplify environmental variables. DETH and DoomCad carried the community through the Win9x years. Nowadays, with the advancement of operating systems, you might want to invest time in something XP compatible. These level editors even have automatic sector generators: fancy, but doesn’t really make for good levels.

The Tools: Media Design

If you really want to impress the community, you need to make your own graphics, music, and sound. Maybe change the look of the enemies and the HUD too! If you want to add some nifty in-game media, you’ll need to use a WAD editor. There are quite a few here that can do the job (Deimos for you Mac addicts!). My personal favourite is Deutex (which was later updated to a very powerful Wintex). Of course these programs would just let you swap out old media for new. You’ll have to use Photoshop and a MIDI editing tool like Session to actually make the new stuff.

Okay, so we got some shiny new graphics and music. We also got a couple of levels to impress our fellow DOOMers. It’s been a week of hard work… and we decide it’s not done yet. No, we have to go whole hog with this conversion.

The Tools: DeHacked

Yes, it’s time to edit the exe file itself! Change the speed of guns, the ammo they use, the physics of the game, the timing of frames, the movement of creatures; let’s go crazy. There are a few tools that can do the job, but no self-respecting DOOMer travels without a copy of DeHacked. Once you finish doing a heavy edit of the exe file, the original game will likely be unrecognizeable. This is called a “total conversion”. Batman and Aliens TC were some popular examples of total conversions I posted last time. Some conversions even take it further and retool the source code itself. Let’s not get too crazy.

So after a month of heavy work, hopefully split up with a few teammates, you’ll have your very own mod. Easy to do if you’re interested. Of course the modding community for Doom is pretty dead. If I were you, I’d move on to Half Life 2. Maybe I’ll talk about those tools some other day.

But on Friday, we get back to Build.
———-
Some More Popular Mods:

I know, I finished the post. I couldn’t let it go. Here are some more awesome levels to check out if you’re on a serious Doom kick:

Requiem – It doesn’t change much about the original game, but it does push the engine to limits you’ll rarely see. It’s a solid effort and you should check it out.

Fistful of Doom – It doesn’t have great level design, but the immersive spaghetti western theme wins it some pretty serious points.

Memento Mori 2 (Co-op) – Months of development with dozens of contributors. And it’s all friggin’ amazing. The first Memento Mori was also co-op friendly; I suggest checking them both out.

10 Sectors – This was an unusual but brilliant competition back in the day. We were tasked with making a level with only 10 sectors. Pretty limiting huh? Well, it turns out that you can do A LOT with only 10 sectors. It defies imagination and simply must be seen.

Mordeth – The architecture of this mod is simply breath-taking. If you want to be awed and impressed by level design, this is one of the few that can stand tall in that department.

Nimrod – There isn’t a lot going on here that’s fancy. I can’t really claim that it’s pushing boundaries or anything. No no, let’s just focus on the one thing that matters: this mod is really really fun.

Look I obviously left a lot off this list. There are popular conversions dating as recently as last year. Modding the source ports (like zDoom) is pretty popular, resulting in some interesting work. I can’t be expected to cover everything. You can do that yourself. I’ll see you guys in a few days.

Continuing with the history of 3D shooters, today we’re going to cover the Doom engine. Released in 1993 and sequelized in 1994, this engine completely redefined the entire genre. For starters, even in a paltry 320×200, it looked amazing at the time. There were also some interesting technical advancements.

The Technical Stuff

Carmack had moved on from tilesets and was now working with sectors. Each sector was made up of vertices. You could define the lighting and environmental effects (such as flickering or glowing lights) for each sector, and could even have scrolling textures after a few improvements were made in Doom 2.

It also had parallax skies, allowing you to walk around outside. Sectors could also vary in floor and ceiling height (hence crushing ceilings, all doors opened straight up, elevators would change floor height, stairs, etc.) and they didn’t need to be perpendicular.

And it ran so smooth on a 486/66.

Okay, there were still some serious limitations. You still couldn’t look up or down (since the 3D was based on the vertical, shifting your horizon would completely mess it up). Sectors couldn’t overlap and you couldn’t change the size of them in-game. There were no slopes, no destructible environments, and the gameplay was still run-and-gun basic.

The Revolution

Just as Wolfenstein did a few years prior, Doom completely redefined the genre. But that wasn’t enough. It also brought some serious network play into the mix, inventing the immortal fragfest and was the reason for most LAN parties for years to come.

The main appeal for a lot of us wanna-be game designers? The WAD. Doom was remarkably easy to pull apart. Adding new music, graphics, enemies, and even changing the game physics allowed for some absolutely fantastic mods. Many a BBS had entire sections just for tracking new Doom content. Even after 1996, when the Doom engine became outdated, the source code was released and is still getting the indie treatment to this day. There are several websites dedicated to organizing this absolute abundance of user-created mods. There are literally tens of thousands of levels out there just waiting for you in Doom. And there are dozens more every week even now.

Doom is more than a game and it’s more than an engine. It was a cultural phenomenon that lasted many years. Even now, it’s considered one of the greatest and certainly one of the most influential games ever made.

The Games

Doom / Doom 2 (Bill!) Started it all. Featuring digitized clay models and midi metal, it’s hard to take it seriously. The level design wasn’t realistic at all, which actually makes it more interesting. The structure of the levels favours puzzles and bizarre look-you-picked-up-a-key-now-all-the-lights-are-off-oh-god-what-was-that-sound approach. There were so many expansion packs and ports for both Doom and Doom 2, it’s crazy. You can find it on most any old video game console now. It was also re-released with new episodes like Final Doom and Ultimate Doom. The list goes on and on.

Heretic / Hexen Heretic was a medieval fantasy take on the engine by Raven. You used magical weapons to take out your enemies. It wasn’t such a bad game, although it can get tiresome. Fortunately, this was kicked up a notch in the sequel. Hexen introduced character classes and had hub-style levels (reminiscent of the first Quake). It was also far more immersive in level design; I’d suggest picking it up if you can find it (avoid the console ports at all costs).

Strife This was a pretty interesting idea that reworked the Doom engine to a large extent. Just like Arena, it had NPCs, an inventory, and quests. You could also develop your weapon skills and could affect the plot. Yeah, the best way to describe it is a steampunk Elder Scrolls using the Doom engine. That is exactly as cool as it sounds.

The Mods

I’m only listing a few popular conversions. You can find dozens more at: Doom Wad Station.

There were also quite a few important source ports that you should check out. Many of them switch the game engine to take advantage of 3D acceleration and play in a higher resolution. In particular, I’d suggest Vavoom and JDoom and Zdoom. They certainly make the mods above even more fun. Check it out!

——————
Honestly, I could probably go at length about Doom for several weeks and never run out of material. And I don’t think anyone here is interested in talking about Doom 3 or the movie. Seriously.
So we need to get on with it. Next week, we take a look at the Build engine.

The Umihara article from last week was redrafted and is now available on Hardcore Gaming 101. There may or may not be more contributions on my part for that site. In the meantime, let’s get back to a bit o’ history for PC gaming.
————————–
3D graphics have been around since the start. During the Atari days, we had Battlezone eating our quarters. Wireframe 3D, basic polygons, no texturing, there wasn’t much that could be hoped for. There was the odd win, but usually the games were Epic Fail. The sad truth was 3D could never be really impressive. Customers didn’t have the hardware for ‘realistic 3D polygons’.

The road for real 3D was just too long, literally decades away. What could be done?

A New Way? Tile-Based 2.5D Engines

There were a few men that simply couldn’t let the idea go. They threw out the idea of polygons and decided to use tiles like any other game. However, these tiles would have a constant height, the perspective of the player being calculated from the horizontal. Sure the walls weren’t actually 3D, but it LOOKED like it was.

This was the beginning of the First Person Perspective. John Carmack and Ken Silverman are just a few names which immediately come to mind when you think of the early days of 3D graphics.

These early games had a lot of limitations. Every wall was a constant height and
you couldn’t have stairs or any other such devices. You HAD to have a ceiling and thus could never go outside. It was possible to open walls as a sliding texture specifically designed for that purpose. A world object was just an image that always faced the player (known as a sprite). An enemy was just an animated sprite (although if you viewed it from a particular angle it would suddenly change so you’d see him from the side or from behind). There was no lighting (so every place was brightly-lit) and no physics beyond the simple game logic.

Look, it was very cool at the time.

Catacomb 3-D As you would expect, the idea of this engine began with John Carmack. After two simple overhead games, they finally decided to push the limits of hardware by making their first 3D game in 1991. It was a simple game with EGA graphics and typical fantasy ideas. You ran around shooting orcs with fireballs and that was pretty much it. Look, this isn’t a good game. Fortunately, the follow-up of Catacomb Fantasy was a bit better. Catacomb Abyss is provided in the download; you might like it.

Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss This game didn’t get a lot of attention. Even though it had sloping, dynamic lighting, and many other really cool techniques, it just didn’t sell. It turns out, the game wasn’t terribly exciting and it had pretty high computer requirements. Still, this game has it’s place in history. When the tech demo was shown off in 1991, Carmack (coming down off Catacomb) was convinced, “Hey I could totally do something like that!” And he did. He created the Wolfenstein engine. It didn’t have sloping or lighting or anything else fancy, but it had a lot of appeal and ran on most machines. A huge selling point as it would turn out.

Wolfenstein 3D This game changed the face of first-person shooters. It’s always fun to mow down Nazis. The game has seen several ports (Germany and Nintendo obviously decided to remove all the Nazi paraphernalia for their respective releases) and is probably well-known already by anyone reading this. The follow up, Spear of Destiny, was basically the same game with new levels. It did feature some new ideas such as transparent walls, like vines and windows, and a few minor improvements.

Ken’s Labyrinth Before the Wolfenstein engine would be released to copycat developers, Ken Silverman made his own engine independently. At first it started out as a project called Walken to impress his Wolf3D-obsessed brother. With a lot of help from his family he was finally able to get it published through Epic MegaGames. Did I mention he was still in highschool at the time? His role in history would be with Apogee and a little idea for a new graphics engine. But more on that another time.

Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold Blake Stone, made by JAM, was one of the first 3D shooters based on the Wolfenstein engine. Trust me, there are a lot of them. This one is notable mainly because they added textures to the floors and ceilings. It’s also sci-fi. Look, it’s not a bad game and is probably one of the few good ones.

There are numerous examples of other games using the Wolf3D engine: Corridor7, Shadowcaster, Operation Body Count, etc. It was pretty popular and some people just wouldn’t let go. Many years later, Rise of the Triad was released as a super overhaul of the Wolfenstein engine. But more on that and other ‘advancements’ in 3D gaming next week!