@damianogerli Any word on how Puma Street Soccer sold? I saw mention in there that they made money from selling the engine to Ubi, but nothing on how it fared commercially. (Also, I'm semi-familiar with Football Generation; I had no idea its origins lie in a cancelled Zidane licensed game.)
@damianogerli Interesting! I haven't played it yet, but I was reading about it earlier and wondered about the story behind it. Seemed like a neat counterplay to the trends of the time that struggled to get air against the dozens of other football games coming out at the time. It got glowing reviews in a Portuguese magazine and a Dutch magazine.
This cover conjures images (for me) of a football game played along a city block, dodging bystanders and traffic, bouncing the ball off lamp-posts and shop windows, rolling it under parked cars.
Unfortunately the game itself is just a standard outdoor riff on indoor soccer, presumably based on the Puma Street Soccer Cup that ran for a while in the 90s (and beyond?).
Unfortunately the game itself is just a standard outdoor riff on indoor soccer, presumably based on the Puma Street Soccer Cup that ran for a while in the 90s (and beyond?).
Macstodon: a Mastodon client for Classic Mac OS.
Not to be confused with a Mastodon theme that's also called Macstodon.
@Bogusmeatfactory By buying the hint book, obviously! It's exactly the kind of crap that Sierra would pull all the time in the Quest games, so really it's very authentic as a shareware tribute to LLL's gameplay.
As for Hugo's inspiration, Gray had just one game in mind: Sierra's Leisure Suit Larry. Here's what he told me when I interviewed him for Shareware Heroes. (He was also inspired by TV series Hammer House of Horror and a book of monochrome clip art.)
People who paid the $20 registration fee for the shareware #dos adventure game Hugo's House of Horrors (1991) would receive an auto-playing version of the game intended for children and a hint booklet with floorplans and both "medium" and "obvious" hints.
When the third Hugo game came out, creator David P. Gray put together a trilogy pack and repackaged all the hint booklets into one — a few pages of which are pictured here.
#shareware #retrocomputing #retrogames #gamehistory
When the third Hugo game came out, creator David P. Gray put together a trilogy pack and repackaged all the hint booklets into one — a few pages of which are pictured here.
#shareware #retrocomputing #retrogames #gamehistory
@MossRC Here's Glider PRO in your browser. https://galeforcegames.itch.io/aerofoil
"Do we have any quotes to put on the back of the box?" "Eh, kind of, but they're all like, 'This game is not terrible.' Why don't you just make some up instead?" "Sure!" *scribbles down furiously*
The original game had a lovely quaint charm to it (what Calhoun calls a "quiet domesticity"), but I love the creativity of the commercial sequels, which came with a Room Editor app that people used for all sorts of offbeat and original ideas. Just look at all these cool room designs.
The Glider games have been a huge part of my life, from shareware original on a b/w Mac through two commercial releases in the 90s and later an iOS/Mac game. Interviewing creator John Calhoun in depth and dedicating a whole chapter to his work was the biggest highlight of working on The Secret History of Mac Gaming (https://secrethistoryofmacgaming.com) for me.
The MOOF A DAY collection just passed 50 items.
What's a MOOF? It's a copy-protected Macintosh program, imaged using a flux reader called APPLESAUCE and made bootable in an emulator at Internet Archive.
If you lived through the early black and white macs, this growing collection is going to bring back amazing memories, and make a familiar "BING!"
@BrendanSinclair Yep, and for any studios and operating groups that are well managed, having that independence and agency within the ginormous Embracer family may let them thrive. But I'm not convinced that they're all well managed, and with minimal top-level personnel changes post-sale I suspect any dysfunction or incompetence has just been ported over and given a clean slate.
But back to the original point, I don't see any clear signs that they're even planning to implement a coherent business-wide strategic alignment. They seem to treat it more like an investment portfolio.
But back to the original point, I don't see any clear signs that they're even planning to implement a coherent business-wide strategic alignment. They seem to treat it more like an investment portfolio.
@1Bit Yes, absolutely. She gave the Mac so much character and spunk, and her artistic and design sensibilities complemented beautifully the ideas of Bill Atkinson and Steve Capps.
@BrendanSinclair I'm starting to wonder if the different units within the Embracer group even talk to each other or have any real strategic alignment at all. The sale to Embracer certainly doesn't seem to have changed anything in the business management practices of the former Eidos studios.
Embracer Group set up an archival group saying it wants to preserve game history, then it pulls this nonsense.
https://www.eurogamer.net/deus-ex-go-becomes-unplayable-in-january-even-if-you-paid-for-it
@1Bit I love her little dig at the idea that computers need to be used for serious work and business.
Quick MacPaint Masterclass from Susan Kare
https://youtu.be/zOP1LNr70aU&t=1267
