With the strong rumor that Halo: Combat Evolved is going to be remade graphically from the ground up, it brings us to the question of why aren’t more games being remade? We’re not talking about reboots like the new emo Devil May Cry, or re-imaginings like the first person shooter XCOM. We’re talking about a true remake like you see endlessly from Square-Enix with its Final Fantasy games on the handhelds – they’re completely faithful to the original, save a new engine, graphics and occasionally an additional mission or two; the upcoming localization of Dragon Quest VI is a great example.

So, we’ve picked out seven games that desperately need a modern remake, sometimes due to their primitive graphics, sometimes due to their incompatibility with the current OS, or the fact you need to do some major tweaking to get them to run (unless GOG.com does it for you, bless their souls.)

These games aren’t old or have already been remade, so you won’t see M.U.L.E., Sid Meier’s Pirates or Seven Cities of Gold – in fact, the oldest of the games is from 1994. You also won’t see games that require little work to be remade, which is why you won’t see Grim Fandango here, either. These games would require serious undertaking. The games also have to remain the same genre and style, so no Elder Scrolls version of Ultima IV, either.

Without further ado, here are five older games that desperately need a remake – in alphabetical order.

Age of Empires II

This was the game that made Ensemble Studios a star. While the first Age of Empires was a good game, mixing Civilization with Warcraft, Age of Empires II: Age of Kings, released in 1999, honed the game to a fine sheen, and made a real-time strategy game that even people who didn’t like RTS’s enjoy. There was just something magical about the game – the lush graphics, the gameplay choices and the way abilities were branched. It was as addictive as Warcraft II, but it was far easier to relate to because it was about human history, not the fictional fantasy land of Azeroth. Most gamers didn’t even know what a trebuchet was until this game.

The Remake: Well, the graphics were lush in 1999 – they’re just pixellated now. There’s no changes needed in gameplay, but the graphic engine could use a boost, even if it were to just Warcraft III levels. We’re greedy, though – we’d like to see it push graphic cards for those gamers who could handle it, like Starcraft II. One of the things that we’re implement is that every single civilization look different. The French should look different than the British, let alone the Aztecs, Saracens or Japanese. With better CPUs, have mega-sized maps with 16 players going on at once.

The Reality: Robot Entertainment, which is comprised chiefly of ex-Ensemble Studio developers, is making Age of Empires Online, an MMORTS that allows for both co-op and competitive gaming. The graphics are on the cel-shaded cartoon side, and the MMO itself will be free-to-play with premium content. It’ll be a Windows LIVE game, so it’ll even have Xbox 360 Achievements.

Deus Ex

One of the most beloved games of the last decade, released in 2000, Deus Ex successfully melded the roleplaying and first person shooter genres. The game was filled with dialog, philosophy, paranoia, and one of the first computer roleplaying games that dispensed with the idea that killing enemies granted experience points – exploration and mission goals did. The game won most of the Game of the Year Awards that year, and with good reason. People still play it even now.

The Remake: Unfortunately, the graphics were poor even in 2000. While not on the level of bad that the character models were in System Shock 2, the way the character’s mouths moved was silly at best, distracting at worst. The game desperately needs a graphic overhaul. Imagine instead of the Unreal engine it was developed on, if it were done on the Unreal 3 engine. Combat could be made smoother, though since RPG stats are applied to gun skills, it may be an inherent flaw that can’t be fixed.

The Reality: Deus Ex: Human Revolution is being released this year, as a prequel to the first game. It’s looking very good, and recent gameplay videos are reassuring in that it really is a Deus Ex game.

Giants: Citizen Kabuto

Giants: Citizen Kabuto is a game that has been all but forgotten – a third person shooter mixed with real-time-strategy, but where Brute Force failed, Giants succeeded. Not only did it have wildly different gameplay perspects when the player’s control went from the tech-obsessed Meccaryns, the magic-wielding mermaid-like Sea Reapers, to the giant Godzilla-like Kabuto, but a dry, witty British wit dispersed through the entire game. The game created a believable alien world, and had fun with it, without forgetting there was pathos as well. This game was well ahead of its time, basically Beyond Good & Evil before Beyond Good & Evil.

The Remake: The game’s beautiful graphics hold up in 2010, but the awesome vistas could be made more detailed. While all of the games in this list could use a graphic overhaul, Giants would greatly benefit from the current dual analog gamepads of today. Mouse and keyboard just didn’t feel right with Giants, and the PlayStation 2 version did use it to great benefit. Most of all, the gamers of 2010 would be more interested in Giants than the gamers back in 2000 did. This game deserves a new audience.

The Reality: There are no plans for the IP, even with Big Moon acquiring 37 ex-Shiny Entertainment employees.

Master of Magic

Speaking of genre mixing, which seems to be a running theme here, Master of Magic was a joyous blending of Civilization, Master of Orion, and Magic: The Gathering. This was one of the few games at the time (1995) which had truly unique units that looked and acted unique, while maintaining some level of balance, though some veterans will grumble about the human paladins and halfling slingers. It had colored, themed magic, aggressive opponents and some deep gameplay. It was almost impossible to play with new Windows OS’s until GOG.com released a slightly modified version designed to handle new rigs. Thank you, GOG!

The Remake: Again, the graphics, while they still hold up somewhat – after all, it is a turn-based strategy game – could use an upgrade, and unlike most games, since it’s tile-based, it would be easy to do. Of course, you could go for the isometric, breaktaking beauty of Civilization V, too. However, detailed 3D modeled units would be just fabulous. The game still could use some gameplay balance tweaking – and while you’re at it, how about AI sliders much like sports games?

The Reality: Atari owns the license, and is currently doing nothing with it. Age of Wonders was a semi-successful attempt to mimick the game, and Stardock has pined for the license for years, and have released their take on the genre with Elemental: War of Magic. At this point, a Master of Magic 2 is too much of a pipe dream – how about a Master of Magic 1.5 remake?

Sid Meier’s Railroad Tycoon

The game that started the entire “Tycoon” craze. Sid Meier created a game based on some railroad board games that he loved, in which you laid down track, being mindful of grade and value of the land, linked cities and competed with the various rail barons of the time. The game took you from the very humble beginnings of 1830, when train engines looked like stoves on wheels, to the modern era of streamlined engines. There was also economic competition, as you and three other historic railroad owners battled it out not only for cities, but for each others stock – there was nothing more fun than owning another company lock, stock and barrel. The game’s scope was tremendous – you could do the entire United States, just the West Coast, just the East Coast, and Europe. (The Deluxe Edition added Africa and South America.)

The Remake: Technically, I’m bending the rules here, since there was a remake, Sid Meier’s Railroad! However, that game had little in common with the original game. It, like Railroad Tycoon II and III (both of which were not developed by Meier), was extremely focused and had none of the scope of the original. The maps were much smaller, there was no economic warring, and it just felt limited. Having a Railroad Tycoon with the complexity of the original but 2011 graphics would be a danger to human life on Earth, from its sheer addictiveness.

The Reality: The entire Railroad Tycoon IP seems to be dormant, if not dead. Sid Meier’s Railroad! is still available for download – and pretty inexpensive. The best in the genre, however, is available free for download, though the controls are wonky.

System Shock

Rather than going with the more well-known sequel, we’re going with the original System Shock. Released in 1994, this game was shockingly advanced for its time. Most shooters were games like DOOM - maze crawls with no plot or story, or even interactive environments save “insert key here”. System Shock was basically a deep roleplaying game in first person perspective. It also introduced one of the all-time great villains, SHODAN.

The Remake: The first System Shock desperately needs an update. Forgetting the 1994 level graphics (which predate by two years games like Quake and Duke Nukem 3D), the controls are absolutely horrid. There’s no mouse look, the inventory is confusing, the gameplay is stilted. However, the design is still amazing, the environments, for all their dated graphics, are detailed and logical, and the story is just as captivating as the sequel’s. It really needs modern conveniences and standards, however.

The Reality: Forget it. The System Shock IP is in legal hell, and the closest anyone will ever come to System Shock is the BioShock series.

Thief: The Dark Project

When people talk about stealth-based games, there’s really only one series: the Thief series. Other games like Metal Gear Solid or No One Lives Forever have nods to it, but only Thief made it the main gameplay mechanic. Garrett the Thief, one of the coolest characters in videogame history, can’t fight. He can take on one guard, but if he’s discovered, you may as well put a toe tag on him. His job is to avoid contact. The hardest difficulty levels not only require he not kill anyone, but sometimes not knock any civilians out. We’re going with the first game, which is the hardest of the series to implement on new computers, and is also the creepiest and scariest of the three games.

The Remake: Like Deus Ex and System Shock 2, the human character models were terrible, even for the time (1999). Thief: The Dark Project‘s humans looked like carved wooden marionettes, and even jerked around like them. The game’s Dark engine was mainly concerned with light sources and how they fell on objects. It also didn’t let the game feel too “floaty”, which Thief: Deadly Shadows was.

The Reality: Thief 4 is coming either late this year or 2012. Hopefully, it’ll recapture the scariness and gameplay of the original. But a remake of the original story would still be awesome.

Those are the Seven Games we’d most like to see remade – let us know if you have your own ideas for games that should be remade. We do, so sometime in the future we’ll have a Part II to this list. Let us know what you think.

(Originally on GameStooge.)

There are some gaming flashbacks I look to do and I’ve got to go back and watch the video. Sometimes, however, they’re games I’ve never played and hit up youtube to see what I can find. This video review (or introduction rather) to Bikini Karate Babe’s really describes all the action. Unfortunately, many folks that read this may not speak German.

That’s okay! The video is worth a thousand words. Things to note, the guys say something to the fact that the video trailer (shown in the beginning) is “EXACTLY” like the game (being completely sarcastic). Anyone want to confess to being a Bikini Karate Babe addict?

We’re flashing back to a holographic arcade title, Time Traveler from SEGA and take a reflective walk down memory lane with Apogee and touch on ROTT. We’ve got a light set of community comments and some good game news including:

• Microsoft Settles Law Suit
• Capcom charging for Resident Evil 5 features
• Blizzard Holding Creative Writing Contest
• Metal Gear Solid Touch
• Sony May have to cut the Price of the PS3
• Lionhead Studios Planning more DLC for Fable 2

If you’re looking to enter the World fo Warcraft writing contest, check it out here. Thanks for the write-in’s and, as always, we look forward to hearing more. Question of the week: Would you buy a game that sold you half of other titles in content and made you pay for the rest later in DLC form?

I remember a day when old RPG games had either a level cap or a definite ending. From Pool of Radiance to Secrets of the Silver Blades to Final Fantasy the game had a final boss or stage and often had some type of level cap. Today, gamers don’t want it to end, they’d rather have the option to wonder around aimlessly or completing minor quests in order to soak up every ounce of money they spent on the title.

Now even Bethesda is saying “we’ve learned our lesson” from the whiplash of ending their game title and capping levels. Gamers want to go back and re-try content they missed, they want to run side quests and talk to everyone in the world they want to grind themselves to über powerful levels and become a god in their fantasy world. Can you blame them?

You can’t really blame them for wanting to maximize the content, although it’s slightly more evolved than RPG’s of old. Perhaps it was World of Warcraft and other MMORPG’s that brought us to the stage in life where we all want to squeeze every last RPG dime out of the title. As a kid I wondered the world of Hyrule and covered every tile of graphical color, burned every bush, bombed every stone looking for all the content. However, even Zelda had an end with scrolling credits – you didn’t just land on a platform with your master sword and a dream.

Other titles have used level caps to limit you and draw you into the next release of the game. This was popular in the D&D world because the game is designed to target specific levels of difficulty. They may only allow you to gain level 10 because the enemies are no tougher than level 13, allowing the challenge to be good but not overwhelming. If they allow you to get to level 50 they’d have to design the game so all the enemies grow powerful along with you — that’s not always a desired result.

Final Fantasy is a popular franchise that typically allows you to grow infinitely powerful depending on how much time you want to spend repeat killing the same enemies. Gamers aren’t always into the grind, they just want to grind “enough” to make the challenges a little more do-able.

Today, however, with larger storage capacity, larger development teams and the desire to build more value into your gameplay experience titles have dozens of side quests and sub-plots that are totally optional. The result of so many sub-quests results in a player who is much more powerful at the end of those quests compared to a player who sticks to the narrow path of the main plot. So, games much grow dynamically challenging to keep the fun per dollar high.

Do you like your RPG’s to have a definite end and a high but capped level?

One of the first games I was introduced to on the 2600 was River Raid, back in 1982. I remember it vividly, as I was at my cousin David’s house, who was older than me, and he’d “baby sit” me so the adults could have some adult time hanging out in the dining room. We’d sit in the family room playing 2600, mainly River Raid.

This is an Activision game, and was later ported to Atari 5200, Atari 8-bit, C64, ColecoVision, IBM PCjr, Intellivision, ZX Spectrum, and MSX. The player controls an airplane in a top-down view over a river and gets points for shooting down enemy planes, helicopters, ships and balloons (for versions after the Atari 2600). By flying over fuel-stations, the plane’s tank can be refilled. The player can shift side to side and change the speed of the plane. Sections of the river are marked by bridges.

The game was highly acclaimed for its ability to stuff tons of map into small amounts of space. The map was huge and it fit on the disk because it’s randomly generated using a common starting seed, basically, imagine some of the Diablo dungeons…they’re randomly generated but the starting seed which starts the random process is also ‘random.’ (probably based on clock time which isn’t too uncommon). Atari, rather than try to make a random level each time used the level random generator to build a procedural based level rather than drawing it and saving it into the cart. GENIUS.

A more highly randomized number generation system was used for enemy AI to make the game less predictable.

Germany consider this game harmful to children, indexing it on their list of games “harmful for children” along with the game Speed Racer. It remained on their list until 2002 (since 1984) when developers petitioned it off the list before the PS2 launch of Activision Anthology (otherwise they’d not be able to put it in the game)

Some of the Germany reasons: Minors are intended to delve into the role of an uncompromising fighter and agent of annihilation (…). It provides children with a paramilitaristic education (…). With older minors, playing leads (…) to physical cramps, anger, aggressiveness, erratic thinking (…) and headaches (wikipedia)

All in all, a great game! To hear all the details on River Raid and our opinions, checkout TD Gaming Podcast Episode 78.

Myst was published by Brøderbund Software, developed by Cyan Worlds and created by two brothers that did the design and directed the game (it was, much like a movie).

The original game was released on the Macintosh (in 1993) and then later ported to Microsoft Windows and Sega Saturn, PlayStation, Jaguar CD, AmigaOS, CD-i, 3DO, PlayStation Portable, and Nintendo DS.

“Myst puts the player in the role of the Stranger, who uses an enchanted book to travel to the island of Myst. There, the player uses other special books written by an artisan and explorer named Atrus to travel to several worlds known as “Ages”. Clues found in each of these Ages help reveal the back-story of the game’s characters. The game has several endings, depending on the course of action the player takes.” (wikipedia)

The game was a success, no doubt, and was considered the best selling PC game of all time until TheSims dethroned it. Besides mind blowing graphics, at the time, Myst helped move the game and PC industry along by selling CDROM’s. The game required a CDROM, which was rare at the time, and I recall them bundling Myst with some CDROMS or hyping it as “you need a CDROM so you can play Myst.” On more than one occasion when a person game to me asking what they should get to show off their new (costly) CDROM I would say “you need to try Myst.”

The gameplay of Myst consists of a first-person journey through an interactive world. The player moves the character by clicking on locations shown in the main display; the scene then crossfades into another frame, and the player can continue to explore. Players can interact with specific objects on some screens by clicking or dragging them(wikipedia)

Franchise sales: 12-million copies (first Myst game alone in the franchise, 6-million), pretty impressive eh?

You don’t have to be a huge Myst fan to know how it changed the industry, grew the medium of CD-based games and entertained millions. A real gamers thinking game!

To hear our full impression of Myst, checkout the TD Gaming Podcast Episode 77.

Baldur’s Gate isn’t too old, it was released in November of 1998, but that’s still a bit dated now. The gaming industry isn’t friendly to the years, often working in what seems to be accelerated “dog years” in terms of technological advancements. It figured this was worth covering because it’s one of the best selling and considered a top tier single-player RPG by most accounts.

It was also developed by BioWare, who, at the time, only had one other game under their belt from two years before called Shattered Steel.

The story begins just after a devastating event in the Forgotten Realms D&D campaign called the “Time of Troubles.” This was a great twist in the standard D&D campaign, it caused all curative magic (clerics) to lose their ability to heal unless near their deity, magic didn’t function correctly (I believe this is where the Wild Mage came from) and was unpredictable and gods walked the earth as mortals which caused magic to, in effect, die while the gods were away. Since the storyline starts slightly after this event, the game contains healing and magic but the storyline is impacted by prior events of course, people have trust issues.

The game was made great because it held “mostly true” to the 2nd Edition D&D roots so the learning curve for D&D player’s wasn’t so rough; some things were adjusted to handle the real-time effect of a video game RPG. You could party with up to six Non-Player-Characters (NPC’s) whom would swap in and out of your active party over time as part of the storyline (something also implemented by the US release of Final Fantasy 2).

They start you out in a town, and you kill rats and small rodents to learn the basics of the game, all while playing the role of your newbie character. You then ride out of Candlekeep with Gorion, your teacher who is killed in the night by some shady people, you get away and meet up with your best friend, the ever annoying Imoen, who was also teaching under said master and insists on coming with you.

The story weaved well, written like a true Forgotten Realms novel, the game implemented the AD&D rules well, and the RPG genre was flailing at the time; we had Fallout and Diablo but nothing really D&D like, this helped bring back that genre and Bioware was able to build a number of expansions for the game and use the game engine to spin-off other titles like Planescape Torment and Icewind Dale, although they didn’t have a direct hand in all the spin-offs their core engine was responsible for much of it.

It wasn’t without critics, AD&D fans would complain about not being 100% faithful (they don’t understand game design), some folks were upset at the poor path finding ability (patched a few times later) and the graphics and map were awesome for the time but were restricted to 640×480, which fans later “fixed” in their own cooked up mod’s.

All in all, this was a solid RPG experience with a great core game engine helping build up a falling RPG industry. Perhaps Bioware was the inspiration for some of the future RPG’s in terms of creativity, faithfulness to the Dungeons and Dragons realms and its fairly well crafted dialog tree.

To hear all we have to say about Baldur’s Gate, checkout the TD Gaming Podcast Episode 76.

One of the most famous classic gaming moves, Screw Attack, is one of Samus Aran’s best power suit moves in Metroid. It was powerful enough to kill most enemies by contact; one hit for one kill.

What makes this special attack at retro gaming classic is its well balanced game play style. Although Screw Attack is enormously powerful it required Samus to jump at full length to trigger. On more than one occasion gamers would use their Screw Attack to kill an enemy easy to find they don’t have a great platform to stand on and land in the lava, in a worse situation than they started.

Game developers knew they had a hit on their hands, as Screw Attack makes an appearance in many of the future Metroid games after the original NES release. The power up had the ability to trigger at will, if somersaulting of course, yet requires skill and respect to use to perfection.

Screw Attack gives gamers a nice piece of mind, knowing a risky jump won’t end you with a tap from a flying enemy and a bath in the lava. You could freely jump and destroy annoying little enemies whom have no other goal but to get in your way and slowly take away energy with each tiny hit.

On one hand Screw Attacks main purpose is to allow a gamer to jump through areas in levels quickly without an extreme annoyance from starter enemies strategically placed to add challenge. As Samus grows in power the beginning enemies aren’t the true threat and thus are wiped from the level as you go. You become more worried when encountering new, stronger enemies who cause real harm to you and your super suit.

This retro move is placed perfectly in level progression, making you feel a great sense of accomplishment when aquiring it (it’s not just another missile pack) and allows you to progress into deeper caverns without utter fear at every tap. Powerful enough to invoke when needed but weak enough to leave you vulnerable in closed quarter battle.

Screw Attack, a Retro Gaming Move.

The Incredible Machine (TiM) is a game designed and developed by Kevin Ryan and produced by Jeff Tunnel (now co-founder of GarageGames and their successful title Marble Blast Ultra on the 360 and co-founder in Dynamix makers of A-10 Tank Killer and The Red Baron). At the time, The Incredible Machine series came out of the shop known as Jeff Tunnel Productions.

Jeff Tunnel Productions published the first Incredible Machine games from 1993 to 1995 while Sierra Entertainment published all the rest of their titles all the way up to 2001. What is The Incredible Machines all about? It’s a game where you must build a series of Rube Goldberg devices in a “needlessly complex fashion” all to perform some simple tasks. That is the entire point to a Rube Goldberg device, which was originally defined as “accomplishing by extremely complex roundabout means what actually or seemingly could be done simply.”

I think everyone has seen a Rube Goldberg device, their are examples in science museums, and entire Myth Busters Episode about them, they appear in many movies (Goonies used one to open the fence to let in Chunk after he does his dance as did Doc Brown in Back to the Future to cook his breakfast and get his dog food).

The world has always been fascinated by the concept of the Rube Goldberg device, so making a game to accomplish the same tasks should be an obvious success.

Available objects ranged from simple ropes and pulleys to electrical generators, bowling balls and even cats and mice. The levels usually have some fixed objects that cannot be moved by the player, and so the only way to solve the puzzle is carefully arrange the given objects around the fixed items. There is also a “freeform” option that allows the user to “play” with all the objects with no set goal or to also build their own puzzles with goals for other players to attempt to solve. (wikipedia)

The first game in the series was supposed to be developed for EA and the Commodore 64 in 1984 but Dynamix was busy on Arctic Fox for the Amiga and didn’t get to it in time. The first title, named “The Incredible Machine” arrived 1992 with a taste of what was to come, a bunch of awesome levels of creation but it wasn’t until “The Even More Incredible Machines” which arrived later that year with twice as many levels and many more parts to use to build your Rube Goldberg devices–around 160 levels of crazy machines.

After their first two releases there were some cartoon like spin-offs called Sid & Al’s Incredible Toons and another called The Incredible Toon Machine–both were not part of the series. In 1994 and 1995 we received The Incredible Machine 2 and The Incredible Machine 3 then in 2000 we got Return of the Incredible Machine and The Incredible Machine: Even More Contraptions in 2001. Their last two titles rehashed a lot of content with updated graphics, sounds and music but the last title had the ability to swap contraptions with other people online (although the service WonSwap is now defunct).

This game series, by far, is one of the best unique designs and creative thinking that I’ve seen in the industry. Although most titles are available on DOS or ran on pre-windows 95 (i.e. win 311) you can still find a few updates to make them playable on todays hardware. Although some critics say many titles after part-2 were re-hashes of the same features the original concept was innovative and a great seller, as a matter of fact Jeff Tunnel and Chris Cole (developer of the toon titles) earned a patent for their innovative game play concepts.

Unfortunately, today, it’s hard to find a fresh copy of TiM because Dynamix was closed by Sierra in 2001 and a bulk of Sierra’s was gutted by a financially flailing Vivendi Universal in 2004 (Vivendi, remember, is the parent company of Blizzard Entertainment or…Activision Blizzard if you will) and Sierra along with much of its development history was lost to new management, re-organizations and the like. You can indeed find TiM on GameTap if you belong to that services–it might just be worth it for this game alone. A release date of 2007 was announced for the original title to show up on Xbox Live Arcade… not sure where that has gone.

To hear all about The Incredible Machine, checkout the TD Gaming Podcast Episode 56!

Mega Man, a series franchise was born in the month of December, a series we rarely hear about today but one that inspired many great games in the side scrolling genre. Mega Man was foundation brick in the early Nintendo consoles and a bread winner for Capcom, he was a mascot to represent a genre typically dominated by Mario.

The name Mega Man, in the 1980′s was synonymous with the word awesome. It was also synonymous with the word difficult.

A character that had so much potential you can now find him in mobile phone gaming and the virtual console in Europe.

“In the year 200X, master robot designer Dr. Thomas Light, and his assistant, Dr. Wily, worked on a project to create human-like robots with advanced intelligence.” (wikipedia) Each robot was designed to perform a specific task, Cut Man was designed to cut down trees, Guts Man is designed to pickup heavy things, Ice man for arctic exploration, etc. His assistant grew envious of Dr Light so he reprogrammed the robots to do his bidding, which was nothing but evil. Your job is to undo this evil.

There are six stages, each one represents one of the reprogrammed robots. You must explore the stages, in side-scrolling mannerism, and battle the bot at the end of the level and obtain their secret weapon. Each robots secret weapon does something new and unique for Mega Man and he can utilize the weapons to do additional damage to other robot bosses. Some robot bosses are extremely susceptible to specific secret weapons, if you can find out which does the most damage you can simplify the battles.

Each stage is themed after the specific robot you must defeat, which makes the game a little more fun and immersive. Each weapon is unique and can help you through different stages, since each boss can be defeated in any order you want to try to pick the order that’s most advantageous when you gain the secret weapon in the end of the stage.

For instance, Cut Man is weak against the Super Arm weapon which you get from defeating Cuts Man. If you play it in the wrong order you won’t have the Super Arm to help the battle and you’ll work harder (or end the stage and try Cut Man). Each boss has a weakness against another boss, so you have to start somewhere (without a secret weapon at first) and try to work them in the order that makes most sense…or guess.

Mega Man, the original title, is considered the hardest in the series by most fans. IGN ranked it on the top 10 most difficult games to beat. Most of the franchise contains at least eight stages while the original only has six stages but many new features (such as sliding and charging your weapon) didn’t exist in the original, some of the newer features may have made the game a slight bit easier. Also, the corridors at the end of the stage which bring you to the boss are empty in most Mega Man titles, but not the first one…the corridor is loaded with enemies that you must defeat before battling the boss…which is just pure frustrating.

Mega Man also contains many pause glitches, which we’ve talked about in another game, Master Blaster. Pausing this game can cause all kinds of crazy things to happen during a boss battle, weapons to pass through walls, extended damage (like Master Blaster where you do “damage over time” while the game is paused) and a few other glitches to make the game slightly easier…yet it’s still kinda “cheating.”

Mega Man also has made the Top Ten Worse Covers for a video game. The American version, Mega Man is a middle aged man holding a hand gun when he’s really a young boy with a mega blaster that looks nothing like a hand gun. The environment around mega man also, has nothing to do with any objects found in the game.

You can also find Mega Man in a few episodes of Captain N the game master back in 1989.

Crazy translation issues: In the manual Dr. Light is referred to as Dr. Wright. In Mega Man 2 he’s referred to as Dr. Right (different spelling), it wasnt’ until MM3 that they got the name correct, going back to Dr. Light.

This game was crazy, creative, and set the stage for a big franchise hit. To hear all we had to say on Mega Man, checkout the TD Gaming Podcast Episode 50.

Lode Runner, a game many of us logged hundreds of hours upon. Lode Runner has a great deal of replay value thanks to its great map editor. The game was first published by Broderbund in 1983, but was first prototyped by Douglas Smith, an architecture student at the University of Washington.

The Lode Runner prototype was called Kong and was originally written for a Prime Computer 550 minicomputer on campus, but shortly after it was ported to the VAX minicomputer. Originally programmed in FORTRAN and utilized only ASCII character graphics (the most basic of characters).

In September of 1982 Smith was able to port it to the Apple II+ (in assembly language) and renamed it to Miner. In October of that same year he submitted a rough copy to Broderbund and he’s said to have received a one-line rejection letter, “Sorry, your game doesn’t fit into our product line; please feel free to submit future products.”

The original title had no joystick support and was developed in full black and white…not exactly exciting. So, Smith then borrowed money to purchase a color monitor and joystick and continued to improve the game. Around Christmas of 1982, he submitted the game, now renamed Lode Runner, to four publishers and quickly received offers from all four: Sierra, Sirius, Synergistic, and Brøderbund.

The game was released in mid-1983 on the Apple II, Commodore 64 and Sinclair Spectrum and Microsoft’s MSX computer. Of course, later we’d see them on the Atari, NES, Windows 3.1, Macintosh (where I first played it) and the original Green Screened Gameboy.

What did this game do for the industry?

This game offered the industry something new in terms of replay by offering a level editor for gamers to developer their own levels. Once you’ve burned through 150 levels (or prior if you want), you could break open the editor and challenge your friends (and yourself) to new creative levels out of your own imagination.

Back in the early 80′s having a level editor was crazy, considering they probably didn’t even have them for developers to build levels at that point in time. Although ID Software would build internal level editors, later released to the public, it wasn’t for years to come.

Game level editors were something we see now from time to time and everytime a new game is released with a level editor we see its lifetime expanded for years. Today, we just call it “modding,” “conversions” or “total conversions” of a game system much like Half-Life and Counter Strike or any of the thousand mods you can get in games like DOOM, Quake and many top rated FPS style games. Some games, like Dungeon Keeper, are themselves a full game of level editing. Halo 3 has an internal game editor to assist in bringing new content to the world without the need of developers to step in and regulate.

What did this game offer gamers?

Besides a cool game with 150 stages of play, it offered users the ability to develop their own stages as we’ve said. However, it offered them an EASY way to design levels–it’s not so hard to toss a pile of crap to the user community and have them design games without a clue, but to offer an easy way of doing it means you’ll end up with more common gamers taking advantage of the level style.

Proof is in the pudding, gamespot rated Lode Runner “Greatest Games of All Time” list, the first game of many to make its list.

Does this game deserve a remake?

Lode Runner is a classic, with many remakes already. In January of 2008, an Xbox Live version of this game was announced (at CES) and will feature revamped HD graphics and full multiplayer support with leaderboards and such. Although no game editor was announced the main menu has a “downloadable content” button so it’s presumed such might become available (if not at release).

Hudson Soft released Lode Runner on the DS in 2006 and many other sequels have been designed for the game. Lode Runner is simple enough yet creative enough to rebuild for many game devices and remakes with better graphics can only revive the title to our younger audiences.

It’s one of those games that you really would have a hard time not loving. Hear all our commentary on Lode Runner in Episode 60 of the TD Gaming Podcast.

DOOM is a PC game titlat that wasn’t initially released in stores. It was uploaded to an FTP server in the University of Wisconsin-Madison and on the Software Creations BBS on the 10th of December; released as a shareware game, people were encouraged to download and spread the game around to all their friends.

In days before social networks and the wildfire of the Internet (or high speed networking) this game still managed to spread around to everyone in the gaming community. From1993 to 1995 the title had an estimated install base of 10 million computers. We were one of them.

Granted, ten million copies were installed but most were not registered and simply remained as shareware. However, over one million copies were sold for the registered version of DOOM and this brought momentum to their next non-shareware copy of the DOOM series. The Ultimate Doom (version 1.9, including episode IV) was released, making this the first time that Doom was sold commercially in stores.

In a press release dated January 1, 1993, id Software had written that they expected Doom to be “the number one cause of decreased productivity in businesses around the world”. This prediction came true at least in part: Doom became a major problem at workplaces, both occupying the time of employees and clogging computer networks with traffic caused by deathmatches. Intel, Lotus Development and Carnegie Mellon University are among many organizations reported to form policies specifically disallowing Doom-playing during work hours. At the Microsoft campus, Doom was by one account equal to a “religious phenomenon”. (wikipedia)

The history to DOOM is very deep, involved and most people know of some of the basics. It’s an early First-Person-Shooter (FPS) game where you experience the world in the eyes of the character. The objective of each level is “simply to locate the exit room that leads to the next area” (usually labeled with an inviting red EXIT sign or a special kind of door), while surviving all hazards on the way. You’ll find monsters, pits of radioactive slime, ceilings that come down and crush the player, and locked doors for which a keycard, Skeleton key, or remote switch need to be located. The levels are sometimes labyrinthine (the automap is a crucial aid in navigating them), and feature plenty of hidden secret areas that hold power-ups as a reward for players who explore.

Development started for DOOM by John Carmack in 1992 while the rest of the team was finishing Wolfenstein 3D’s sequel Spear of Destiny. The game was a hit, inspired companies to start working on competitive FPS titles and pretty much created the landscape in US gaming that we have today. Although Japan and other regions may not be as crazy about FPS titles as we are, there is no doubt DOOM impacted the world in terms of raising the bar in graphics, 3D design and level creation… oh, and graphic violence.

Although DOOM‘s name dropped from the charts when Duke Nukem 3D and Quake arrived it is still regarded as the “Elvis of Gaming” or the “Beatles of the Game Industry” – the number one video game of all time.

To hear all of our thoughts, checkout TD Gaming Podcast Episode 48.

Double Dragon II: The Revenge, this is a sequel title to a game which arrived earlier on the NES as an arcade port, something pretty standard back in the day of arcades, and like it’s original port, has variations from the arcade.

The trick is, the variations are much less than that of the original (which might as well been it’s own version of the arcade game but sucky). I was a huge fan of the original Double Dragon title in the arcade and was met with extreme disappointment when I found out it was strictly single player on the NES console.

This game was 300% better than the disappointing Double Dragon release on the NES. Granted, the NES version was fun to play, in single-player, but I purchased it for the two-player nature of the arcade version so I could play the game with my friends. Double Dragon II, on the NES had finally restored my faith in Technos Japan and the american publisher Acclaim. They took a bad situation and made it much better in the second release, why they didn’t make the original multiplayer is beyond me.

“All of the player’s techniques are available from the start and the two-player cooperative gameplay has been kept this time (with an alternative mode that has the friendly fire option turned on). Two new special techniques are added to the player’s repertoire in addition to the Whirlwind Kick; the Hyper Uppercut and the Flying Knee Kick. The NES version’s stage layout is composed of nine missions (including the final battle). While none of the stages are direct reproductions from the arcade game’s stages, they share many of the same elements, including background music. Many of these stages don’t have actual bosses, but traps which the player must avoid to clear the stage.” (wikipedia)

I understand why stages are modified for the home console release; after playing an arcade emulator of Double Dragon on my PC a year or so ago I was met with disappointment as I realized how short the stages and overall game is compared to any NES counterparts. The reason, to me, is simple: I had infinite quarters and when you have infinite money everything seems shorter than it really would be in “the wild.” However, in the arcade you want shorter games so you actually stand a chance of beating them without spending a thousand dollars and 10 hours at the helm.

The fact that they also give you all your abilities up front is nice, that’s how it was intended, why the original made you “learn” them with some stupid skill bar is beyond me, the game is a pure blood punch-and-fight arcade style title, not an RPG. If you wanted an RPG you’ve got to add more words, a plot that holds up and is well translated into English (for the most part) and has a varying degree of character development and roundness… in Double Dragon I just wanna beat things to the ground.

“Whereas in the original game, Marian was kidnapped, in the sequel she is shot to death by Black Warriors’ leader Willy right in the very beginning of the game, giving the game a much darker tone than the original. The plot deviates slightly in the NES version. While the revenge premise is the same, Willy does not appear in the game at all and a new final boss (the Mysterious Warrior) is introduced in his place.

The ending also differs between the original arcade version and in the NES version. In the arcade version, the game ends after Billy (and/or Jimmy) defeat their evil doppelgangers. The game shows a photograph of the Lee brothers and Marian. Marian sheds a tear that forms the words, “The End,” at the bottom of the screen. In the NES version, there’s an additional stage after the doppelgangers, where Billy and Jimmy must confront the Mysterious Warrior in a two-part final showdown. After they defeat the Mysterious Warrior, he tells the Lee brothers of the prophecy of his fighting style. Billy returns to Marian’s body to find her restored to life, as if she had merely been asleep.” (wikipedia)

Regardless to the weak plot, Double Dragon has always had a place in my heart, I’d love to see a re-creation on the Xbox 360, PS3 or Wii with “next generation” style, not another port or virtual game (save that for River City Ransom). I spent hours in the Pizza Shop as a kid playing Double Dragon, been kicked out a handful of times for being roudy, and had a plan o’l good time!

You can hear the full flashback in TD Gaming Podcast Episode 51.

I miss old SSI games and all the beauty and wonder they brought me as a child. Perhaps it’s more of the feeling of playing old MS-DOS games and that no worries feeling of playing games all summer long when your parents are out working; no cares in the world but that of the evil dragons and goblins of an RPG world. Secret of the Silver Blades arrived in May of 1990, developed and published by Strategic Simulations Inc (SSI), a company we covered in our gaming history back in TD Gaming Podcast Episode 9.

Secret of the Silver Blades is actually the third in a four-part game series which was eventually packaged in the Gold Box editing of the SSI games. It was a continuation of the game Curse of the Azure Bonds and the first in the series: Pool of Radiance. The cool part of the series was the leveling system where each would let you level to a certain limit just like most modules in D&D games, this game let you get to level seven which means a Mage could use the cool Delayed Blast Fireball spell which was one of my favorite magic spells in D&D (yeah, I’m a dork.)

The graphics were a whopping 16-colors, with slight graphical improvements over the other two prior games. This game didn’t have an overworld map like the others, going full first person for the length of the game. Another great enhancement was the ability to use the arrow keys to navigate menu’s without the need for “hot keys” like older SSI titles, given the game is very much menu-based for combat, equipment and inventory management it was very handy to have the use of those nice little arrow keys.

You create your party and start adventuring in a game engine very similar to all the games before it, so introduction to game mechanics was minimal, you could advance your characters further in level and, most importantly, import characters from previous games. The D&D world is really a character-driven game environment and you grow fond of your characters and understand the best ways to battle with them, importing is key and still, today, is a big part in well done RPG expansions (Guild Wars is a great example). Unfortunately, many games fall short of character import and it kind of blows away some of the magic of an RPG.

One of the frustrating issues with Secret of the Silver blade is the limitation on levels for the Cleric, because they can’t level up past 7 they can’t get the good ressurection spell, only allowed to use Raise Dead which lowers your characters constitution by 1 (much like the traditional D&D rules). However, given its a video game and not a paper-dice based game, the raise dead penalty is annoying, so it was easier to save often and re-load when you died to try again and avoid the penalty. I do recall their being some scrolls or something to get back your constitution penalty… but it’s been awhile I might be making that up.

Anyway, a well done series, classic RPG and helped build a foundation for games like Morrow Wind and Oblivion in my opinion.

SimCity was released in 1989, was originally called Micropolis and was designed by the infamous Will Wright. For those that don’t know Will Wright, its suffice to say he’s one of the most popular and influential game designers of our time. SimCity, TheSims, SimAnt, SimFarm and Spore are a few of his hits and TheSims has taken many records since its original release.

Wright had trouble finding a publisher for a game in which you couldn’t really “win or lose.”  Turned down by Broderbund, Wright eventually pitched the idea to Jeff Braun of Maxis.  Maxis agreed to publish Simcity as one of its first two games.

When near complete, Wright and Braun took the game back to Broderbund to clear the rights for the game.  Broderbund executives Gary Carlston and Don Daglow saw how addicting the game could be and signed Maxis to a distribution deal.  Four years after initial development, SimCity was released for the Amiga and Macintosh platforms, followed soon after by the IBM PC and Commodore 64.  On January 10th 2008, the SimCity source code was released under the GPL license as… Micropolis!

The objective of the game is simple, build and design a city.  Though the player could focus on building a highly efficient city with an ever growing populace, it was by no means required.  In a sense, open ended, the player was free to design the city as they chose.

Included in the city building experience was the possibility of natural disasters such as flooding, tornadoes and more.  Pre-designed scenarios were also included in the game such as the Boston 2010 nuclear meltdown, or mass coastal flooding of Rio de Janeiro of 2047 … even a Godzilla attack of Tokyo in 1961.

In the years to follow, the SimCity franchise would continue to expand with greater detail as SimCity 2000 (1993), SimCity 3000 (1999), SimCity 4 (2003) and a host of other “Sim” games and until the release of “The Sims” in 2000, the SimCity series was the best-selling line of games made by Maxis.

In Fall of 2008, EA will release the next child in the SimCity family, SimCity Creator for the Nintendo Wii and DS systems. And thus, history continues!