Star Comma Eight

Screenshot of the day: The Magic Candle

This loading screen is from the Commodore 64 version of the 1989 CRPG The Magic Candle. I have long felt this game was the best RPG of its generation apart from the Ultima series, largely because of its sophisticated systems underlying the usual CRPG combat/exploration/leveling mechanics. You could detach party members to go get regular jobs and make money for you; you could earn the trust of individual towns' populations, getting discounts and other boons from them if you liberated them from the thrall of nearby monsters. Your party could pop mushrooms to get stronger in combat. There were a lot of offbeat, humorous, unexpected touches, but the RPG fundamentals were also solid. That said, I've not played it at any length in a quarter-century. So I don't know how it, to use an expression I'm not crazy about, "holds up."

It's not much of a screenshot, I'll grant, but more pictorial ones are forthcoming. I posted this one just because I've always wondered what that "Garvath!" means. The best I can come up with so far is from this site which purports to transcribe some of the dialogue from the game. One of the characters opens a sentence with "Garvath" in a context which makes me think it's a synonym for "Hello." So, Garvath, everyone!

The developer of this game, Ali Atabek, was in my opinion one of the major voices in the earlier days of CRPG design. So it was with a twinge of sadness that, looking him up on LinkedIn, I learned that he has not worked in games for many years. Well, not everybody gets rich in that gig, and we all gotta make a buck somehow.

Screenshot of the day: Realm of Impossibility

This 1984 co-op action-adventure, part of Electronic Arts's early lineup of games, was not so great. Certainly it never attained the classic status of peers like M.U.L.E., Seven Cities of Gold, or Archon. You ran around, with or without a buddy, in these quasi-isometric maps -- you could pass in front of structures but not behind them -- dodging zombies and picking up ancient scrolls and keys. As with many 8-bit offerings, the lavish box design promised more than the technology of the day could really deliver. What's memorable from the vantage point of 2016 is its cheerful mash-up of an Indiana Jones aesthetic with Lovecraftian overtones, its bouncily rousing title tune by Dave Warhol, and the overtly Escher-like level designs. In part because of the overall simplicity of the gameplay, in part because of the awkward and too-sensitive controls, the Escher-paradox stuff was never able to have a meaningful impact on the game. No matter whether the level defied the laws of perspective and logic, you were just bumping around on pixels and trying to climb up finicky ladders. But it was a good look, all the same. The precise concept -- 3rd-person co-op action/adventure with a Lovecraft vibe and Escher-esque levels -- might make for a hell of a game nowadays.

Screenshot of the day: Castle Wolfenstein

The Wolfenstein 3D games are now much better known, but of course the whole "Wolfenstein" thing started with this 1981 game by the late Silas Warner. It's not much to look at nowadays, and the gameplay, as with so many early action titles, is hampered by sticky, unintuitive controls. (The more old games one plays, the more it becomes evident that fluid and responsive control had as much as anything else to do with the alchemy that makes a classic -- Super Mario Brothers being the most obvious example.) This is one of the earlier examples of stealth gameplay that I'm aware of; the guard patrols back and forth in a way not unlike that of 1998's Thief: The Dark Project, albeit restricted to a 2D environment. Only when you step into his line of sight does he notice you. That swastika's on backwards, though.