GOG ... ugh...

[Tanooki]

@82-T/A I feel that.  I bookmarked it for a later far deeper price cut.

131 in collection active

128 hidden I largely got free, nearly free cheap, or a few rare mistakes of bad game I want to forget exists.

 

Let's not discuss how many were first time pick ups that just rotted disused vs lazy grabs of legit games I have where it's just easier to coax into playing.

[zzip]

1 hour ago, 82-T/A said:

Yeah, I just looked it up... it seems the Atari ST really got screwed on those games. I'm not sure why, the ST certainly has the ability to handle a game like that... I mean, if they could make it work on everything else... it doesn't make sense why they couldn't do it on the Atari ST. I never had an Atari ST during the time, but maybe it just didn't get the love it deserved. Honestly... my opinion, it was really designed for the IBM PC... graphics for all the SSI games was significantly better on the PC across the board. Only the music was better for the earlier games until they started supporting General Midi (which some of the later ones did).

It was just part of being an Atari owner, not everything came to your platform.   Even publishers that published lots of games on Atari, like SSI, didn't port everything.   In the case of Pools of Radiance, clearly a port was planned since it was advertised.  Something happened to cause it to get cancelled.    That said the ST did get a large amount of games so I don't feel deprived having owned one.  

 

1 hour ago, 82-T/A said:

I hate that Curse of the Azure Bonds was your first foray into AD&D SSI games... my opinion, really, Curse was probably the worst game out of all of them. Many people dislike Secret of the Silver Blades (which came right after), but both Curse and Secret were extremely linear... which is completely different than Pool of Radiance. Pool of Darkness, which was the fourth one, was far less linear and more "open-world" like.

My first AD&D SSI game was actually "Heroes of the Lance",  but that was more action-oriented than traditional RPG.   SSI had been publishing great RPG games for several years before getting the AD&D license,  so I'd already enjoyed Questron, Phantasie, Wizard's Crown.   The graphics on the ST version of the Phantasie series were so much better than the 8-bit versions.   They showed the right way to bring an 8-bit RPG to 16-bit graphics (The ST/Amiga ports of Ultima 2/3/4 showed the wrong way, haha)

 

[+thanatos]

I've bought a couple on GOG that I wanted.  But I still have the classic Humble Monthly subscription.  The increasing number of games I will never play is getting embarrassingly ridiculous.  At least digital hoarding is not nearly as bad as doing it in my house.

[Sir Guntz]

GOG > Steam

 

GOG doesn't treat the customer like a caged animal, doesn't require the use of a big heavy client program to always be present.

[Tanooki]

Also love some of those exclusives. I’m sure more than one older steam fan had a screamy Karen moment when blizzard dropped the Diablo Warcraft double whammy as exclusives.  

 

 

im bad though capcom 40th anniversary and I grabbed both megaman legacies for under $12. 

[BydoEmpire]

On 9/21/2023 at 9:11 AM, 82-T/A said:

I hate that Curse of the Azure Bonds was your first foray into AD&D SSI games... my opinion, really, Curse was probably the worst game out of all of them. Many people dislike Secret of the Silver Blades (which came right after), but both Curse and Secret were extremely linear... which is completely different than Pool of Radiance. Pool of Darkness, which was the fourth one, was far less linear and more "open-world" like.

Curse was the worst of the three for me. It was moer open, but it led you to get into situations way above your level. There were a few bugs as well (one particularly nasty one with importing PoR characters made me restart the game 3-4 mes because one of my character's strength score went negative. Something about having a high strength in PoR and then equipping Gauntlets of Ogre Power flipped something). Anyways, I also didn't really like the plot as much, and it wasn't as memorable. Too many human enemies, not enough monsters. It wasn't a bad game, I enjoyed it, but definitely a tier below.  Secret of the Silver Blades was probably the best of the three, technically. It's just epic. However, it would have been impossible for me on the c64, particularly without a club ebook. It's just too big. I think PoR is still the best - great settings and an awesome adventure.

[82-T/A]

On 9/21/2023 at 10:40 AM, Tanooki said:

@82-T/A I feel that.  I bookmarked it for a later far deeper price cut.

131 in collection active

128 hidden I largely got free, nearly free cheap, or a few rare mistakes of bad game I want to forget exists.

 

Let's not discuss how many were first time pick ups that just rotted disused vs lazy grabs of legit games I have where it's just easier to coax into playing.

 

I tell my wife that I'd like to be charged and found guilty of a crime I never committed, and then be sentenced to a minimum security prison where I'm forced to eat a square meal every day, work out every day, and then have a computer with no internet access, and all my old computer games. I would then have nothing else to do but to play games, and see my family on the weekends. And then... at the end of the year, through the appellate process, they realize that I was incorrectly charged and was innocent, so they set me free with no mark on my record, and as the tortfeasor, they provide me with financial restitution for lost wages and potential earnings, and I get to go back right to what I was doing. But I'd have knocked out all of those games... hahah...

 

 

On 9/21/2023 at 10:56 AM, zzip said:

It was just part of being an Atari owner, not everything came to your platform.   Even publishers that published lots of games on Atari, like SSI, didn't port everything.   In the case of Pools of Radiance, clearly a port was planned since it was advertised.  Something happened to cause it to get cancelled.    That said the ST did get a large amount of games so I don't feel deprived having owned one.  

 

It's interesting that you say this... because I can't totally remember if I ever felt this way. I grew up with an 8088... specifically an 8088 KayPro PC-10. It had an NEC V20 8.77Mhz processor, a 20mb Seagate ST-225 RLL hard drive, and dual 5.25" 360k Teac floppy drives, with 768k of ram. It had 640k base memory (which showed up in the test) and an additional 128k of memory that could be configured with a special driver as V-RAM which could be used to load the COMMAND.COM and setting COMSPEC so loading and unloading would go faster.

 

I still have my original KayPro, but years ago... I bought an original 8088 KayPro that had been locked away in storage. It had been originally sold as part of a contract to the Department of Defense, and they had several of them for sale. It came with a "Gold Disk" if you will of basic DoD software installed on it... which was essentially all boring tools that just said they were registered to the DoD.

 

But I took a video of it so you could hear all the sounds, etc. The monitor in the video is mine, and from my original 8088. The KayPro you see here is a new one that I bought (and then later sold), but I still have my original, it's just not as nice looking as this one.

 

 

Anyway, I only mention it because almost everything was available for the PC... but that said, I was always envious of the other systems... Atari, Amiga, Apple, even Tandy... Because around this time, most of the games I did play were also available on these other systems, and they all had console / Nintendo style music and sound effects... where as I only had beeps and boops. I can recall a few games that I saw in "Software City" that were only available on those other "TV Game Computer Systems" as I called them (because they all used composite to hook up to the TV). So it kind of bummed me out, haha.

 

My very first purchased game for this system though... was Starflight.

 

 

On 9/21/2023 at 10:56 AM, zzip said:

My first AD&D SSI game was actually "Heroes of the Lance",  but that was more action-oriented than traditional RPG.   SSI had been publishing great RPG games for several years before getting the AD&D license,  so I'd already enjoyed Questron, Phantasie, Wizard's Crown.   The graphics on the ST version of the Phantasie series were so much better than the 8-bit versions.   They showed the right way to bring an 8-bit RPG to 16-bit graphics (The ST/Amiga ports of Ultima 2/3/4 showed the wrong way, haha)

 

 

Yeah, Heroes of the Lance was WAY better on the NES... made much more sense on that system than being on a computer. I'm 45... so definitely grew up with older games. But Ultima 2/3/4 were rough. My first Ultima was Ultima 6... and only because a kid at school had it. But going back and playing them on the PC is rough... the graphics feel hollow. It's different on the NES though... they remade these games on the Nintendo 8-Bit. I don't know if you've ever played Dragon Warrior on the NES, but basically... Ultima 3, 4, and 5 were all remade in the style of Dragon Warrior. There were some plot changes, but basically... the games were so much easier to play, and the graphic so much more digestible... if you will.

 

 

On 9/22/2023 at 10:37 AM, Sir Guntz said:

GOG > Steam

 

GOG doesn't treat the customer like a caged animal, doesn't require the use of a big heavy client program to always be present.

 

I only buy "big" games from Steam... basically, games that I know are going to have add-ons... like X-Com, Civilization 5, what have you. I just don't think GOG does a good job of managing DRMs or DRLs or whatever they're called.

 

 

On 9/22/2023 at 6:31 PM, BydoEmpire said:

Curse was the worst of the three for me. It was moer open, but it led you to get into situations way above your level. There were a few bugs as well (one particularly nasty one with importing PoR characters made me restart the game 3-4 mes because one of my character's strength score went negative. Something about having a high strength in PoR and then equipping Gauntlets of Ogre Power flipped something). Anyways, I also didn't really like the plot as much, and it wasn't as memorable. Too many human enemies, not enough monsters. It wasn't a bad game, I enjoyed it, but definitely a tier below.  Secret of the Silver Blades was probably the best of the three, technically. It's just epic. However, it would have been impossible for me on the c64, particularly without a club ebook. It's just too big. I think PoR is still the best - great settings and an awesome adventure.

 

Man... I'm actually excited you said this. Were you aware that there are actually 4 SSI games in that series?

 

Pool of Radiance

Curse of the Azure Bonds

Secret of the Silver Blades

Pools of Darkness

 

 

Pools of Darkness is built using the same SSI engine that Dark Knights of Krynn, and the two Savage Frontier games were made in (Gateway and Treasures). Definitely worth playing, and you can transfer your characters from Secret of the Silver Blades.

 

But yeah, I agree PoR is still the best in my opinion. Pools of Darkness tries to go back (somewhat) to that game play style... it's an open world, with General Midi, Sound Blaster, and VGA support. But still is a bit more linear than I'd like... but far less than the others I'd say.

 

Edited September 26, 2023 by 82-T/A

[zzip]

2 hours ago, 82-T/A said:

Anyway, I only mention it because almost everything was available for the PC... but that said, I was always envious of the other systems... Atari, Amiga, Apple, even Tandy... Because around this time, most of the games I did play were also available on these other systems, and they all had console / Nintendo style music and sound effects... where as I only had beeps and boops. I can recall a few games that I saw in "Software City" that were only available on those other "TV Game Computer Systems" as I called them (because they all used composite to hook up to the TV). So it kind of bummed me out, haha.

Yeah there was definitely a "grass is always greener" feeling.   ST might have been the 3rd most popular platform for a time,  but that meant it still got a hell of lot of games.   But I'd often notice the ones that didn't get ported and get the feeling of "being left out".   Of course I never stopped to think about how Commodore 128 or Apple IIgs or CoCo3 users felt, they got many fewer ports.      But I would get that feeling at time "oh I should have gotten a PC they get everything" or "I should have gotten an Amiga, everything is better on an Amiga-  Amiga users keep telling me so"

 

But then my friend got a Tandy 1000, and so I learned that just because you have a "PC compatible" doesn't mean it's fully PC Compatible,  even if it meets the game's specs,   and the games didn't run as well or look as good as the ST (at least in the 80s,  around 1990 or so that started to shift in the PC's favor)

And then I got a roommate with an Amiga and got to finally spend time with one.   Noticed that there was very little actual difference in most games between the ST and Amiga versions, other than the sound was clearly better on Amiga and also noticed that the much vaunted multitasking features were nearly useless if you only had stock RAM and no hard drive.

 

So I guess it took me awhile to realize that no system is perfect and my ST was doing just fine.

 

3 hours ago, 82-T/A said:

Yeah, Heroes of the Lance was WAY better on the NES... made much more sense on that system than being on a computer. I'm 45... so definitely grew up with older games. But Ultima 2/3/4 were rough. My first Ultima was Ultima 6... and only because a kid at school had it. But going back and playing them on the PC is rough... the graphics feel hollow. It's different on the NES though... they remade these games on the Nintendo 8-Bit. I don't know if you've ever played Dragon Warrior on the NES, but basically... Ultima 3, 4, and 5 were all remade in the style of Dragon Warrior. There were some plot changes, but basically... the games were so much easier to play, and the graphic so much more digestible... if you will.

I'll admit I never got too far in Heroes of the Lance, my party would die off shockingly quickly!   And the controls were kinda sluggish, but hey the graphics were so pretty!

 

For the Ultima games though,  my friends got me into D&D around 84,  and I became obsessed with it for awhile.   Up to that time, I had never seen an RPG game on a computer, most games were arcade-style or something. I was reading Electronic Games magazines and there were these games being covered- Ultima II and III.   I read the reviews of them, and it sounded like D&D in computer form.  Must have!   Only problem.. didn't have a disk drive for my Atari 800XL yet.     Luckily soon after disk drive prices fell, and I got a paper route so I didn't have to beg my parents for things.     

 

So as soon as I got a disk drive, Ultima III was one of the first purchases.  The graphics didn't bother me,  they may have been crude Apple II graphics, but they were stylized and it was like a graph-paper D&D map come to life.   The only thing that bothered me about Ultima III was it was repetitive and the map was smaller than I expected, so it kind of wore out its welcome by the time I finished it.    Then Ultima IV came out that winter and it was so much better-- it was everything I'd wanted in a computer RPG at that time.   I understand why they changed it for the NES, but those versions never sat well with me.  I also don't like the way they tried to colorize the Amiga/ST versions of III & IV and only made them look worse.    The early Ultima games may not have aged well, but they were perfect for the time and place and level of technology.   Other games of the time tried to duplicate what they wee doing, but never quite so well.

[Tanooki]

@82-T/A  Sounds like a life goal right there, definitely.

[BydoEmpire]

6 hours ago, 82-T/A said:

 

 

Man... I'm actually excited you said this. Were you aware that there are actually 4 SSI games in that series?

 

Pool of Radiance

Curse of the Azure Bonds

Secret of the Silver Blades

Pools of Darkness

 

 

Pools of Darkness is built using the same SSI engine that Dark Knights of Krynn, and the two Savage Frontier games were made in (Gateway and Treasures). Definitely worth playing, and you can transfer your characters from Secret of the Silver Blades.

 

But yeah, I agree PoR is still the best in my opinion. Pools of Darkness tries to go back (somewhat) to that game play style... it's an open world, with General Midi, Sound Blaster, and VGA support. But still is a bit more linear than I'd like... but far less than the others I'd say.

 

Oh yeah, I always forget about Pools.  My memory is that by the time it came out there were so many other options and spinoffs it got a bit lost in the shuffle.  I should give it a try one of these days, along w/ the Krynn games... just not enough hours in the day. 

 

I did play Gateway to the Savage Frontier (via gog)- I enjoyed it, it was solid, but not as much as the others. It felt just a bit more bland as an adventure - lots of human enemies, warring factions against each other. I tend to like the more epic, monster-filled adventures. It wasn't a bad game by any means.

[Gamemoose]

I feel better that I'm not the only one that falls into GOG's and Steam's traps. Between free stuff (most of my stuff on GOG was free), bundles and impulse buy sales I have way more than I'll ever play in my lifetime. Guilt does set in, even though for most I paid less than going to see a movie at a regular theater. It's just seeing that list.....and it's like TOO much choice which I've discovered is a bit paralyzing for me. I'd go do something else than wade through my digital horde.

[82-T/A]

On 9/26/2023 at 12:26 PM, zzip said:

But then my friend got a Tandy 1000, and so I learned that just because you have a "PC compatible" doesn't mean it's fully PC Compatible,  even if it meets the game's specs,   and the games didn't run as well or look as good as the ST (at least in the 80s,  around 1990 or so that started to shift in the PC's favor)

 

The thing that I always liked about the Tandy, was it's 3-voice polyphony. Even though it was still a PC speaker, the fact that they used 3-voices made all the difference in the world from normal beeps and boops. The awesome thing is... almost all games that support Tandy Sound, also support different graphics modes (because by the Tandy 1000 era, people were putting VGA cards into their machines). What's cool about that is that there are a bunch of aftermarket Tandy sound cards. The most popular one is a parallel port device. But there are also some ISA cards. I bought one that was designed by someone in Russia, but it's not available anymore. There are a few specs / schematics for them... but this is really cool. All of that said, I think DOSBOX supports Tandy now anyway natively... but if you like to play on old-school hardware... then these cards solve that probblem.

 

 

On 9/26/2023 at 12:26 PM, zzip said:

So as soon as I got a disk drive, Ultima III was one of the first purchases.  The graphics didn't bother me,  they may have been crude Apple II graphics, but they were stylized and it was like a graph-paper D&D map come to life.   The only thing that bothered me about Ultima III was it was repetitive and the map was smaller than I expected, so it kind of wore out its welcome by the time I finished it.    Then Ultima IV came out that winter and it was so much better-- it was everything I'd wanted in a computer RPG at that time.   I understand why they changed it for the NES, but those versions never sat well with me.  I also don't like the way they tried to colorize the Amiga/ST versions of III & IV and only made them look worse.    The early Ultima games may not have aged well, but they were perfect for the time and place and level of technology.   Other games of the time tried to duplicate what they wee doing, but never quite so well.

 

I totally get it. It'll be a long time I think before I ever get around to playing them. I was obsessed with U6-U7p2, with the add-ons. They lost me a bit on Ultimate 8, and while I have 9... I haven't honestly played it. I really liked the original Ultima Underworld and Underworld 2, fantastic games. There's a NEW one I think, which I bought... but it's just not drawing me in. It's too different, and really doesn't feel like the originals. The graphics are great, but I'm just not really understanding the point of the game. Like, there is a really, really torturous mandatory training that they make as part of the game, and I honestly could never get past it. Underworld Ascent. Here's the trailer...

 

 

When looking this up, apparently a lot of people are dumping on it. So I guess I'm not alone. I was looking for an Ultima Underworld type game I guess. I paid full price for it on Steam and even pre-ordered it... but like I said, I can't (bring myself) to get past the first couple of rooms... and I just totally lose interest. 

 

 

23 hours ago, Tanooki said:

@82-T/A  Sounds like a life goal right there, definitely.

 

LOL! Definitely not a goal, but it's something that I wouldn't be horribly upset about if it happened... and give me time to take a breather. Ideally, it would be better if it was only 3 months. I think I could get through everything I wanted to pretty quick. As long as the guards left me along to play my games! Haha...

 

 

21 hours ago, BydoEmpire said:

Oh yeah, I always forget about Pools.  My memory is that by the time it came out there were so many other options and spinoffs it got a bit lost in the shuffle.  I should give it a try one of these days, along w/ the Krynn games... just not enough hours in the day. 

 

I did play Gateway to the Savage Frontier (via gog)- I enjoyed it, it was solid, but not as much as the others. It felt just a bit more bland as an adventure - lots of human enemies, warring factions against each other. I tend to like the more epic, monster-filled adventures. It wasn't a bad game by any means.

 

They Krynn ones are really, REALLY good. I mean that. They are still a bit linear, but I think more along the lines of Pools of Radiance. Let me quantify that. Champions of Krynn, which is a fantastic storyline, follows a book series from Margaret Weiss / Tracy Hickman. So it is VERY linear. There's literally a road that you travel along, and you can't really do anything until you solve the problem at the previous village.

 

BUT... the next game in the sequence, Death Knights of Krynn... is VERY... VERY much like Pool of Radiance, and I mean that. Even to the point that you can go anywhere, and do anything... and there are mini-quests that serve no purpose other than to enrich your characters... and there's a lot of travel from one town to the next, to solve certain problems. A lot of unique monsters, plus Draconians are everywhere, which is great. But even more so... you're supporting the Knights of Solamnia, and you have to go back routinely to get "orders" if you will, from the Knights headquarters. This is not unlike when you'd go to the townhall office in Phlan to find out what areas needed to be cleared out. There's a lot, I mean a LOT of great story there. Death Knights of Krynn is in EGA, but also supports Adlib for action sounds, and General Midi for music. For the life of me, I don't really remember the Dark Queen of Krynn... but I think it was also a bit linear, but had the enhanced engine, and in VGA.

 

For the Savage Frontier series... I would agree with you. I did like it (I'm going through it now), but I remember MUCH preferring Treasures of the Savage Frontier, which was the sequel to it.

 

 

58 minutes ago, Gamemoose said:

I feel better that I'm not the only one that falls into GOG's and Steam's traps. Between free stuff (most of my stuff on GOG was free), bundles and impulse buy sales I have way more than I'll ever play in my lifetime. Guilt does set in, even though for most I paid less than going to see a movie at a regular theater. It's just seeing that list.....and it's like TOO much choice which I've discovered is a bit paralyzing for me. I'd go do something else than wade through my digital horde.

 

Dude, for real... I have 300+ games, and while most of them were only a couple of bucks... EVEN still... this has got to add up to $1,000 bucks is my guess. And it absolutely is... a digital hoard.

[zzip]

18 minutes ago, 82-T/A said:

The thing that I always liked about the Tandy, was it's 3-voice polyphony. Even though it was still a PC speaker, the fact that they used 3-voices made all the difference in the world from normal beeps and boops. The awesome thing is... almost all games that support Tandy Sound, also support different graphics modes (because by the Tandy 1000 era, people were putting VGA cards into their machines). What's cool about that is that there are a bunch of aftermarket Tandy sound cards. The most popular one is a parallel port device. But there are also some ISA cards. I bought one that was designed by someone in Russia, but it's not available anymore. There are a few specs / schematics for them... but this is really cool. All of that said, I think DOSBOX supports Tandy now anyway natively... but if you like to play on old-school hardware... then these cards solve that probblem.

Oh yeah that's right, it did have enhanced graphics modes since I think the Tandy design was based on the PCjr?   But as I recall many games we tried didn't support Tandy mode so we had to drop down to CGA with it's awful color palette.    I don't recall much about the sound.  My friend used to call me to help him get things working, since I was the "computer expert",  but I always found its capabilities wanting..    To this day, I'm not much of a fan of PCs prior to the 386-  at least not for gaming purposes. 

 

33 minutes ago, 82-T/A said:

I totally get it. It'll be a long time I think before I ever get around to playing them. I was obsessed with U6-U7p2, with the add-ons. They lost me a bit on Ultimate 8, and while I have 9... I haven't honestly played it. I really liked the original Ultima Underworld and Underworld 2, fantastic games. There's a NEW one I think, which I bought... but it's just not drawing me in. It's too different, and really doesn't feel like the originals. The graphics are great, but I'm just not really understanding the point of the game. Like, there is a really, really torturous mandatory training that they make as part of the game, and I honestly could never get past it. Underworld Ascent. Here's the trailer...

I'm not sure I'd even bother with Ultima III.   Ultima IV is considered one of the best RPGs of all time, but even when I play that these days, it's constant combat due to random encounters and it gets tiring fast.

[+Zeptari]

On 9/20/2023 at 3:21 PM, 82-T/A said:

Dude, it was SUCH a good game. It literally came out on everything...

https://playclassic.games/games/role-playing-dos-games-online/play-pool-of-radiance-online/play/

 

 

Umm OK.. New AA avatar in the making...nawww LOL.

[82-T/A]

2 hours ago, Zeptari said:

https://playclassic.games/games/role-playing-dos-games-online/play-pool-of-radiance-online/play/

 

 

Umm OK.. New AA avatar in the making...nawww LOL.

 

Hahahah!!! I forgot about that. That "feature" was not about TSR being inclusive or edgy, it had much more to do with poor programming. It was much easier for them to simply include all images of both sexes in the avatar images. Haha...

 

I remember that as you'd be going through, it ended up like that. Obviously, I never had a problem with the lower half there, but i never actually picked it because I always felt it looked a little bit ridiculous, and when I was a kid, I took my characters super seriously, haha...

 

Still the game was totally awesome...

 

 

[zzip]

3 hours ago, Zeptari said:

https://playclassic.games/games/role-playing-dos-games-online/play-pool-of-radiance-online/play/

 

 

Wow!   George Lucas looks good in Princess Leia's metal bikini....  who knew? 

 

[82-T/A]

Just looked... I have 372 games in GoG... and they are all awesome... and I can't bring myself to play them. There's definitely something mental here. I'll let myself play the GameStation Pro, or the VCS now and then... but the second I go to play a game on the PC... I feel like I should be doing something more productive and immediately come up with an excuse for why I shouldn't be playing games. Yet, I keep buying them on GoG for this one day that never comes... lol.