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Linux Business Entertainment Games

Hyperion to Bring IncaGold Games to Linux 163

Posted by timothy from the zoom-zoom dept.
An Ominous Cow Erred writes "Just wanted to let everyone know that Hyperion Entertainment will be bringing IncaGold's game lineup to Linux (as well as AmigaOS and MacOS), starting with Midnight Racing. On a personal note, I'm happy we're giving Linux another shot, being a devout Gentoo user myself! (I should also point out that while the Linux section of the website is kind of old and crusty, there should be more info on the new titles soon!)"
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Hyperion to Bring IncaGold Games to Linux More

Hyperion to Bring IncaGold Games to Linux

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  • So when are we talking? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Blaine Hilton ( 626259 ) on Tuesday April 22, 2003 @10:39PM (#5786631) Homepage
    Yes I would consider having the latest news dated at August 12, 2001. No Mac section, and what looks like a more up to date Amiga section. I sure hope their games are better then their website content.

    The Midnight Racer game looks good. Are there any tentative pricing information or timeframes though?

    Go calculate [webcalc.net] something

    • Re:So when are we talking? (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Blaine you sucker, you could have had FP if you never wrote so much. In the land of the First Posts, he writes the least is King. Unfortunately for you Blaine Hilton, you are just a Joker.

    • Re:So when are we talking? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by deadsaijinx* ( 637410 ) <animemeken@hotmail.com> on Tuesday April 22, 2003 @10:46PM (#5786672) Homepage
      just a bit outdated ^^.

      now, to veer a tad. It's great that companies are releasing titles for Linux, it really is, but I want more and more of the brand-spankin-new games to run natively on Linux. Sure, I know, there are more and more FPSs coming out for Linux, but I want more than that. OTOH, It probably wouldn't kill anyone to keep a 10gig partition on their machine for running the latest and greatest (as well as all the old) games. I understand that you don't want to pay the MS tax, but that's what emule is for (not that I'm suggesting you dl a copy of win2k or winxp [wink, wink]).
      Now, I'd be interested if a big player in the game industry said something to the effect of "all future titles will be released under linux." Now that would be news for nerds.
    • Give 'em a bit of a break. They ARE in the process of porting a 680x0 operating system to PPC. :)

  • Wow (Score:2, Funny)

    by stratjakt ( 596332 )
    I'm sure a handful of third rate bottom of the barrel unknown games will rocket linux to desktop superiority!

    One thing you cant find in the gaming aisle of Best Buy: complete shit.

    My karma burn for this fine tuesday. Enjoy it mods.

    • Re:Wow (Score:3, Informative)

      by fafaforza ( 248976 )
      If I remember correctly, that Midnight Racing game was bundled with TNT2 video cards to show off the graphics, pretty much. It was bottom of the barrel, bargain bin demo-ware when it was released however many years ago.

      But it was good for a few hours ofmindless racing with little in terms of physics. Decent graphics, pretty colors, so there might be some value to it.
    • It can't be as bad as that free game called Racer... Unless they've fixed it in the last three months, I remember driving off a track, trough the wall, and into the big blue nothingness. TuxRacer is gonna be hard to beat though...
      • Sure, Racer may not be as polished as your run-of-the-mill arcade racer released by an entire development team, but at least it strives to achieve something commendable: creating an auto simulator that allows for easily made add-on cars and tracks. I am sure there are many more features as I haven't followed it that closely. It is based on ODE [sourceforge.net], an open source rigid body dynamics library and is being written by one person who is more concerne with the physics than making another arcade racer, selling a few c
        • Racer isn't under the GPL, if you're trying to say it is (http://www.racer.nl/legal.htm).

          Either way, it needs a lot of work. I mean, it's not really playable when you fall off of the world...

  • erm... (Score:5, Funny)

    by lingqi ( 577227 ) on Tuesday April 22, 2003 @10:42PM (#5786657) Journal
    An Ominous Cow Erred writes...

    That has to be about the most creative name I have ever heard. I do wonder if some chemicals were involved (inhaled, possibly?) during its creation, though. =)

  • AmigaOS (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tmark ( 230091 ) on Tuesday April 22, 2003 @10:44PM (#5786660)
    Forget targeting MacOS and Linux, and let's assume doing either or both is viable. But AmigaOS ? That's a business plan gone seriously awry and I have to conclude this company is doomed to failure. And I write this as a guy who is looking at a working Amiga 1000 on his dining room table right now...

    • Re:AmigaOS (Score:3, Funny)

      by SimonKeogh ( 181327 )
      Apparently they sell more Amiga ports then they do Linux.

    • Re:AmigaOS (Score:5, Funny)

      by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Tuesday April 22, 2003 @11:14PM (#5786796) Homepage Journal
      "Forget targeting MacOS and Linux, and let's assume doing either or both is viable. But AmigaOS ?"

      It's a brilliant business plan. Mentioning AmigaOS is a surefire way to get free advertising on Slashdot.

      Here are a few other phrases that'll earn you Slashvertisements:

      - "...battle with Microsoft.."
      - "...support for Ogg Vorbis..."
      - "...AMD...
      - "...ported to Linux..."
      - "...Mozilla..."

      All you have to do is work any of these phrases into the marketing literature for your product, and BOOM your site gets ground to a halt.

    • Re:AmigaOS (Score:3, Informative)

      by lsd ( 36021 )
      I'd think twice before stipulating that Linux is a viable market, and that AmigaOS isn't...

      Hyperion have been making AmigaOS ports of PC games for a while now - when Loki was around, Hyperion were seen as the Loki of the AmigaOS world. The difference between the two companies is that one is a small but successful company that continues to produce and sell products, and the other is very, very dead.

      Hyperion have ported games to Linux before, namely Shogo: MAD and SiN. They decided not to do any more after

    • Re:AmigaOS (Score:2, Interesting)

      by NeoChichiri ( 562667 )
      Actually...the Amiga is not dead...not anymore anyway. AmigaOS [amiga.com] looks very good these days and if I had the money for it I'd probably get one. If only they'd make it for the x86 platform...but I guess that's what WinUAE, Amiga Forever and the like are for. (WinUAE works pretty well actually...I forgot how good Shadow of the Beast was for its day. heh)

      • Re:AmigaOS (Score:3, Informative)

        by samdu ( 114873 )
        AmigaOS 5 (due when it comes out) is supposed to be platform agnostic. They're taking things one step at a time. First, port the OS to PPC, then make any changes necessary, then make it totally portable. It'll take some time, but that's the plan.

    • Amiga's are still alive and well in Europe, and there are plenty of people looking to upgrade there to the next Amiga. More importantly, AmigaOS has a chance to make it in the small embedded market, i.e. palm computing and the like. Yeah, this company isn't going to be the next EA by targeting Amiga, but if they can pay there bills at the end of month and have fun coding, more power to 'em.

      Besides, with the right coding methods, ports are easy. Especially if your game doesn't need to compete with Doom III

    • Re:AmigaOS (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Hyperion have ported several games to Amiga in the past including Shogo: M.A.D., Freespace, Heretic II and Quake 2.

      They have been at a consistantly high level of quality.

      They are also first and foremost Amiga developers. They have already tried to port to the Linux market, but found out that the Amiga market was more viable. The Mac market is naturally even more so.

      Besides this they are also developing AmigaOS 4.0...

    • Re:AmigaOS (Score:5, Informative)

      by Mike Bouma ( 85252 ) on Wednesday April 23, 2003 @02:22AM (#5787417) Homepage
      Hyperion is the company who is leading the AmigaOS4 project. They are very passionate about the Amiga platform.

      After the demise of Loki Games, Hyperion is probably the most important commercial Linux game developing company left on the market today. They now have a really impressive list of Amiga (and Linux/Mac) licenses and released products (Heretic2, Descent Freespace, Shogo, SiN, Soldier of Fortune, Majesty, Worms Armageddon, etc, etc!), but have been pretty quiet lately due to their top programmers leading the AmigaOS4 project, as well as being hired by Mai Logic for developing the AmigaOne/Teron firmware ROM.

      http://amigaworld.net/modules/news/article.php?s to ryid=278

      Considering their expertise in many different fields the "Entertainment" part of Hyperion's name is a bit misleading though. For instance they also have a AmigaOS4 license for porting Real3D, a great professional 3D Raytracer. They changed their name from Hyperion Software to Hyperion Entertainment simply because there was another company with the same name already.

      Keep up the excellent work Hyperion! :)
      • While I won't say that Hyperion's not important, isn't what LGP doing something of similar importance? I'd hate to think I was working for nothing now... :->
        • (Again, I should mention that anything I say here is my own opinion, not Hyperion's.)

          I think Mike's just being enthusiastic. :-) LGP certainly has a stronger commitment to Linux than Hyperion does, so "most important" probably isn't exactly correct.

          Plus, that doesn't take into account first-party developers who do Linux ports like Bioware. It's very important for Linux gaming that developers continue to want to do ports of their games.

          That said, there's not exactly a lot of third-party publishers left. I
          • Oops watch the posts pile up that can lead to misunderstaning. By "Mike" I mean Mike Bouma, not Simms. :-) Mike Bouma is an enthusiastic supporter, and it's cool that he thinks so highly of Hyperion, but LGP has a few more Linux releases under its belt, so they would probably qualify as the "most important", at least among the third-party developers.

            I enthusiastically await Disciples 2. ^_^

            (Incidentally, did people complain about Candy Cruncher because it wasn't some epic RPG or million-dollar budget FPS?
            • (I know this is not up on the main area, but I'm posting it as an aside, just in case you're following your posts)

              To my knowlege, I don't think anyone is complaining about Candy Cruncher- or really even commenting about it. Surprising, really.
        • Well, I did state "probably". It's just a personal judgement based on all the high profile game licenses they we able to acquire.

          But I believe the Amiga and Mac markets are likely far more important to Hyperion. Mac as a good sales platform and Amiga for their future ambitions and passion.
      • What the heck are you smoking there Mike?

        Might I point out Hyperions port of Shogo to the Macintosh? Things behind objects would be rendered in front of them! Yeah, high quality work, can't even do z-buffer removal.
    • What a brilliant insight you have .... a non-Palladium, non-spying-on-the-user, non-virii inflicted, non-Backdoor for the NSA, non-exorbinant licencing terms, non-subject to the whims of BG OS is doomed?

      Please! I'll continue on with Free Computing on PPC.
      I NEVER went over to The Dard Side!

      (This 68060 A2000 running Amiga OS3.5 enabled my reply)
      ,
  • This oughta add a couple more genre's to the native linux market. Comercially speaking of course.
  • Great move for them. Now they can break into the big leagues of Linux Gaming by releasing blockbusters like "Bowling USA" and "Family Collection", both 1 AND 2. Oooh.

    Me, I'm holding my breath for "Paintball Heroes".

  • woo (Score:5, Funny)

    by nomadic ( 141991 ) <`nomadicworld' `at' `gmail.com'> on Tuesday April 22, 2003 @10:54PM (#5786718) Homepage
    "I want to risk our company's future by supporting the Linux platform; it's not widely used, and the few people who do use it don't like paying for stuff."

    "Sounds a little bit too safe for me. Let's support AmigaOS too, and we'll be SURE to fail!"

    "Great idea, Bob!"
    • Thank you for that post...I needed a good laugh. For that effort I proclaim you the winner of today's funniest post award. Your check is in the mail.
    • You obviously don't grasp reality.

      Unless you are a huge mega-corp with a heavy thumb on the distribution chain, you HAVE to take risks to survive.

      Henry Ford was considered crazy for making cheap cars.

      DuPont was hedging that the U.S. was actually going to win the war of 1812 when he set up a gunpowder factory here.

      Drake was drilling for Oil at a time when coal was king. He was within a few feet of his investors picking up stakes and leaving had he not struck oil.

  • Linux gaming is alive and well... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Toasty16 ( 586358 ) on Tuesday April 22, 2003 @10:57PM (#5786730) Homepage
    Truly this is the dawn of a new era of interactive entertainment for Linux. I mean, how can you not be *ahem* bowled over by Bowling USA! [incagold.com] Or if tossing heavy balls is not your thing, then try your hand at every podunk dweller's favorite pastime (not including watching NASCAR) with Paintball Heroes! [incagold.com]

    Seriously, is this truly front page news? This seems more like a press release than a real story, and it's not really news to announce the Linuxification of Family Collection 1 [incagold.com] and 2 [incagold.com]. And the last *real* game released by Hyperion for Linux was the poorly selling Shogo [shogo-mad.com]. It's gonna take more than a couple of B games to sprout a thriving Linux game community. Maybe the real starting point for Linux gaming is the distro for the PS2? At least I know one thing for sure: this is not it.

    • Shogo was a GREAT game. It was very FUN to play. I'd recommend you try it if you can find a copy cheap.
    • Truly this is the dawn of a new era of interactive entertainment for Linux. I mean, how can you not be *ahem* bowled over by Bowling USA! [incagold.com] Or if tossing heavy balls is not your thing, then try your hand at every podunk dweller's favorite pastime (not including watching NASCAR) with Paintball Heroes! [incagold.com]

      Troy McClure of the Simpsons should be doing radio commercials for this. (you may have seen me in such films as...)
    • (I should note here that all of this is just my personal opinion, and has nothing to do with Hyperion's position on anything.)

      Unfortunately I think that the days of people like Loki (and us for that matter) shelling out massive amounts of money to license absolute-top-tier games for Linux are over for the forseeable future. Loki did this and crashed and burned. We were burned hard by the Linux market as well. I think it says something when Amiga games outsell Linux ones.

      What you see here is Hyperion tryin
      • It's a change from what you all had been doing. Not a bad change, mind, just that it's completely different. Midnight Racer, if priced right, might well be a good alternative to TuxRacer. There's a few other games (Paintball Hero's not one of them, though... :-) that might fall under that category (Something like that Soccer game might be nice... :-)

        Anyhow, it's GREAT to see you back in the Linux game market- let's hope it's better for you this time around than last time around.
  • Wow! That is really cool that there is someone still developing games for AmigaOS. Ah... those were the days :-)
  • . . . makes a dent in the PC Gaming market. IncaGold, publishers of such classics as Midnight Racing and . . . what else exactly? This is about as newsworthy as me deciding to port my SHA1 hasher utility to Linux. It will mean a whole new world opening up for hashing on Linux! Yeah, we almost care.

  • Mindnight Racing is a terrible game (Score:5, Interesting)

    by recap ( 209790 ) on Tuesday April 22, 2003 @11:02PM (#5786757) Homepage
    While it's nice to see Linux and even my old favorite Amiga OS get some new software Midnight Racing is a terrible game.

    I picked it up for the equivalent of about $2.50 US and felt thoroughly ripped off. While the screenshots look fine it plays like it was written by someone who's never been in a car much less driven one! On the bright side the DVD style case could be reused after throwing the game out.

    I hope their other titles are better but given Autobahn racing looks like it uses the same game engine I don't hold out much hope.
    • I distinctly remember three things about this awful game:

      1) It didn't matter which track you drove, they were all exactly alike. Lengths varied, but if you've seen the screenshots on the website...well...that's it. That's all you will see throughout the entire game. A highway at night. No change of scenery whatsoever.

      2) You steal the cars you drive. This is shown by means of a black screen...with some strange clickety-click sounds coming from the speakers...right.

      3) Whilst racing your monstrous beastly e

  • Interesting? Maybe not. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Its nice to see some games coming to linux - however they are clearly bargain bin games. Thats fine and all but lets hope they stay priced as bargain bin games.

    Perhaps making these games open source might be a good idea. If Incagold really want to encourage interest in these games I think the interest will lie in modifying the engine to people's own devices.

    Otherwise we're just looking at a sad indication of the fact that our choices are so few that people who make hasty, poor quality games can envision
    • Its nice to see some games coming to linux - however they are clearly bargain bin games

      But they' will soon be "our bargain bin games".. **cough** **cough** I mean, who's complaining, they've gotta be better than "trophy", "race", "rallyx", right? I am just glad it's not yet another tired rpg or fps.

      I am glad to see more companies supporting GNU/Linux. Yay!
      • Oh my, we have Neverwinter Nights now, I guess that's too many RPGs for Linux!

        We'd better get one racing game and then we're all set. No more games ported after that please. One of each genre is plenty.

  • Not much of a lineup sadly. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mrseigen ( 518390 ) on Tuesday April 22, 2003 @11:19PM (#5786829) Homepage Journal
    Don't get me wrong, it's fantastic that Linux is getting more games. I love games. It's just that your average Joe definitely isn't going to jump on with Linux if the entire game collection consists of clones of other games and very few "big-name" games will run on it.

    Porthouses like Hyperion need to start talking to the developers that make big-name games, considering that the publishers certainly aren't taking a chance on it. Simplistic? Yeah. Idealistic? Definitely. But it needs to happen.

    • You have to start somewhere.

      I think there a lot of people (like me, for example) who aren't really into games, but wouldn't mind being able to do some laptop racing on a long flight. FreeCiv used to fill that role for me, but I'm bored with it. Something like Midnight Racer could keep me entertained for a while.

    • switching to linux because of the games is like deciding to be a gas-station attendant for the money.

      /tim

    • Titles like Tropico, GTA, etc. cost large sums of money just to get the privilage to port them. This is part of the reason why Loki went under in the first place- too many top titles too soon. You probably won't see a port of Tropico unless one of the LGP people win the lottery in their respective locations as the publisher and studio want way, way too much (which is their right, afterall) for it to be economical to port it. The same goes for Warcraft (and anything else from Blizzard), any part of the
    • >Porthouses like Hyperion need to start talking to the developers that make big-name games, considering that the publishers certainly aren't taking a chance on it. Simplistic? Yeah. Idealistic? Definitely. But it needs to happen.

      Why? I'm a programmer, working in a game studio, and I'd like to know why everyone expects this to happen. In my previous career (internet/database programmer) I was a big user and advocate of Linux in my workplace(s) because there was a clear cost saving to my employer(s) and

  • Ah very impressive... (Score:5, Funny)

    by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Tuesday April 22, 2003 @11:20PM (#5786832) Homepage Journal
    "Three of these things belong together
    Three of these things are kind of the same
    Can you guess which one of these doesn't belong here?
    Now it's time to play our game!

    Now let's play our game!

    "Half Life 2"

    "Doom 3"

    "Midnight Racer"

    "GTA3 Vice City"

  • Ok, I do think it is great that anyone is porting ANY games to linux... but... Midnight Racer? I mean, who cares?
  • OMG You mean I'll be able to play all those popular games on my Linux box? No way!
  • Someone tell me that I can now put away my C-64.

    • Someone tell me that I can now put away my C-64.

      PCs just don't have all the good games, I don't think we can get rid of C64 yet... Some nice PC titles have surfaced on genres that are difficult to implement on C64 (large RPGs are really cool on PC, without the constant floppy swapping, and the graphics are finally starting to get better than some of the best C64 titles...)

      did you know they haven't even produced a single fun soccer game for PC? EA is rumored to push some garbage for the unsuspecting ma

  • Quality-not quantity. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Martigan80 ( 305400 ) on Wednesday April 23, 2003 @12:47AM (#5787135) Journal
    That about says it all; sure we want more games on Linux but I think we want to see quality games. Sorry but with the hardware we have these days we should expect more from a game. The graphics from this game look a bit dated. What worries me is how much do they want to charge for this product? If they even think about $20 they will have one heck a battle in the sales department. Yeah, yeah I know they don't have the big teams like ID, EA, or anyone else. This doesn't excuse one of putting out a crappy game. For those people that want to prove Linux is better than Windows in every aspect-don't show them this game.
    • That about says it all; sure we want more games on Linux but I think we want to see quality games.

      I agree about quality being are more important than quanity. I bought a GameCube just so I could play Metroid Prime. (And I went ahead and got a few other games too since I had the console. But Metroid Prime is the reason I bought it.)

      Actually I'm about done with PC gaming. I like the idea of tossing in a disc, pressing power, and being "off to the races". As soon as consoles get up to par with Network

  • What about FreeBSD? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Will this be ported to FreeBSD too? That's what I run on my desktop now.

  • Honestly (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Wednesday April 23, 2003 @01:04AM (#5787184)
    Linux doesn't need that many games, just a few key titles. Sure, the hard core gamers are constantly looking for something new. But for us casual gamers, things were perfected around the time of Starcraft, Half-Life and Unreal Tournament. Yeah, it's nice to have new levels and graphics, and a few new play modes. I for one don't need yet another deathmatch game. But for the most part older games are just fine. Now if we could just get some OEMs to start including decent graphics cards and maybe bundling some games...
  • Are you sure this isn't a repost from, say, several years ago?

  • I'm really glad... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dolson ( 634094 ) on Wednesday April 23, 2003 @01:55AM (#5787342) Homepage Journal
    ...that all the Linux users keep on shooting down all the games that Hyperion considers porting. I mean, why should they bother? No one has anything good to say about it, and the same jokes are being said over and over again.

    We could have had a port of Tzar, but no, everyone had to complain about it, and now we could get a racing game, but it's not good enough...

    I recommend Hyperion to just go the way of Tribsoft and forget they ever considered Linux.
    • Michael Simms is the CEO of LGP and he was the one that was asking about it on LinuxGames. I know, I was one of the ones that responded in the negative (This was before I signed on with them- they actually had a better game in the process of being approved, Disiples 2...). Tzar was an okay game, but not okay enough in my opinion to bother with it.

      Racing games, eh? I'd have thought that Ballistics would count for that category.

      As for the stuff Hyperion's porting, more power to them. I'll probably buy c
      • LGP was going to publish it, but Hyperion was going to port it.

        And Ballistics isn't even in beta yet, so does it really count?
        • Didn't know Hyperion was going to be doing the porting- I'd assumed that Michael was going to do the same thing he's doing with Ballistics, etc. To be honest, the LGP people were split down the middle on it and it just didn't look like as much of a game compared to Disiples or Majesty. And, I'll make the observation that LGP not publishing it isn't the killer for this game- Hyperion could still produce it with a different publisher. One should note that I don't see a burning demand (Though I suspect ther
          • And just how many other Linux game publishers are there? Come on now, be for real. Who would touch a Linux port by Hyperion?

            People whining for things doesn't help anything. We're not getting EA Sports games, we're not getting Unreal 2, we're not getting BF1942. At this stage, we should be glad we get anything.

            Ballistics is a racing game, sure, but it doesn't have cars in it. It's more like Wipeout XL or something. You or I may not care, and we just like the fact that we're getting a racing game, but some
    • That's because the titles they're porting are the same jokes being released over again. Either bring out something new with linux support at launch time, or bring out something old but seriously classic, immortal as it were, and not already copied by everyone a zillion times. Otherwise, who cares? When you port a game that's so crappy that you might as well rewrite it anyway, something that ended up in the ninety nine cent rack of software etc more often than not... Who can muster the effort to cheer? Port
    • I'm really glad you can't see a total freaking joke when you see one. It's so much easier to separate a fool from his money.

      Look at IncaGold's website. Just look at it. I don't care how old and crusty Hyperion's website may be, IncaGold's is downright dead. They're thanking people who dropped by their booth at E3. That's great. But know what? This year's E3 hasn't happened yet (it's May 22-24), so they're referring to LAST YEAR. They talk about licensing Traitors Gate, which they think will be a big seller
      • Suit yourself, but when Hyperion calls it quits for good, it won't be a wonder.

        I'm still amazed to see how the Linux community can feel good about killing off two porting companies like that.
        • Why should I feel bad about watching a stupid business model fail?

          I mean... really. They're not porting anything that a significant number of people are interested in. And somehow this is our fault that they fail? Hey... you know what? If you port something people actually want then you might succeed! Of course, doing that costs money, while I suspect that Inca gave Hyperion the code for free with royalties on sales - after all, it costs Inca nothing to do it in that case and they may actually get some rev

  • Traitor's gate could be fun (Score:3, Insightful)

    by LarsWestergren ( 9033 ) on Wednesday April 23, 2003 @06:25AM (#5788099) Homepage Journal
    People don't seem to be too impressed with the quality of the games. I haven't heard of most of them, so I can't comment on them, except on Traitor's Gate. The Swedish company Daydream did a game called "Safecracker" way back. A very addictive little puzzle game, you had to crack all the safes in a house with a time limit. One or two of the safes were based on real safes, others were logic, mechanical or cypher puzzles. The game wasn't true 3d but used the Quicktime system where you can stand still and look around 360 degrees. When you click to move forward on one of the hotspots it plays a little movie until you reach the next place where you can stand still and look around.

    Traitor's Gate seemed to be a bit updated version of it with a bit more action. There were guards, and you had some Thief style non-lethal ways of dealing with them, but if you were spotted it was game over. The few people who noticed it gave it quite decent reviews.

  • Game Titles (Score:4, Insightful)

    by StormReaver ( 59959 ) on Wednesday April 23, 2003 @09:42AM (#5788987)
    I'm not a big game player, so I'm not that upset with the limited game selection on Linux. However, I do like to play them sometimes. I bought the tin-box Linux version of Q3A, bought UT and downloaded the Linux installer, and bought RtCW for Linux.

    Last year I bought a PS2 to satisfy my non-FPS gaming desires. Since then I've bought about eight games for it (GTA, GTA/VC, Spiderman, ATV Offroad-whatchamacallit, and a few others I can't recall right now). I mostly play them with several cheats enabled to bring them down to a level where they're fun. I'm not a gaming purist. I have games to pass some time and divert my attention for a while, not to forge a new lifestyle (which is why I won't buy or play NWN or participate in any MMORPG).

    The point of all this? I'm more than willing to pay for quality games that I'll only play every now and then, and they don't necessarily have to be big blockbusters.

    Two of the most enjoyable games I've been playing recently aren't even commercial. I've been playing FooBillard off and on for a few weeks, and I love the game (I'm not even a pool fan). Same thing with Kolf. They're quite simple (from a playability perspective) and a great way to recharge my brain after (or while) working.

    High quality doesn't have to mean expensive or big name. Too many game designers are focusing heavily on visual effects and too little on re/playability. Castle Wolfenstein, Doom, and Quake were brilliant (I am quite impressed with Carmack and co.) in terms of both replayability (I still fire them up from time to time) and uniqueness.

    But now everyone and his brother (and including Carmack and co.) keeps pumping these rehashes out. When I had first heard of RtCW, I couldn't wait to get my hands on it. After playing it for a while, though, it quickly dawned on me how repetitive and uninspired it was. It just just another Quake with different graphics and a new storyline. The gameplay was the same old stuff. Like Star Wars and Star Trek, it's time to let these franchises take a vacation.

    I know that John, for example, is capable of great gameplay insights, and I'm still greatful that he is allowing for Linux versions of ID games (and releasing old games under the GPL!). But I just can't bring myself to buy yet another FPS or common rehash.

    I remember from years ago, a company called MVP [Software | Games] made a very simplistic but incredibly fun game based on the 1991 gulf war. I had no money back then, but I would have bought the full version if I could have. Now that was different and fun. It was shareware, and would have been well worth the money.

    Now that I've been gainfully employed for a few years, I have discretionary income that's looking for fresh outlets. If shareware game makers would use OpenGL/SDL and exercise creativity, I'd be happy to pay for their products. As it stands, games have become mostly monotonous and trite over the last couple years.
  • 2nd hand auction for Windows version can't find a bidder at US$2.50 (NZ$5.00). LOL

    http://www.trademe.co.nz/Gaming/PC-games-Action/au ction-3657085.htm [trademe.co.nz]

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