Gnome's Lair

Dec 13, 2007

And a very happy Saturn Junkyard Birthday!

In case you haven't notice those (us, really) SEGA Saturn retroboys are having a party over at their Junkyard under the wise guidance of the venerable Father Krishna. Have a look!

The first video game patch in history. Well, probably.

JSW cover scan blatantly stolen from JSW Remakes

Mathew Smith's 1984 Jet Set Willy on the ZX Spectrum, a game that was so much more sophisticated, surreal, fondly remembered and popular than Mario (well, at least in Europe it was), was also a bastard to beat. All you had to do was miss a jump by a pixel or fail to act in a nanosecond and you were dead. Why? Just because a talented 18 year old designer was in a cruel mood, that's why, and of course because back then even you, oh most glorious and esteemed readers, hadn't achieved gameplaying perfection yet.

Software Projects, the game's publishers, sensed that the sadism inherent in JSW would make for a great competition and thus a chance for some extra publicity, and knowing that the gamers of the era were hardcore 14 year olds, they merrily went on with their plan. The first one to find all of the JSW objects would win a helicopter ride and a case of champagne. The competition though, finally won by Ross Holman and Cameron Else, besides the publicity bit, did help bring forth 4 major bugs in the game and Software Projects decided to patch it. Probably for the first time in video gaming history and apparently to show they sort of cared.

A Freak Brothers related pic from Wikipedia

They came up with the fixes, but lacking in the Internet department, they had the users type them in. A series of four historical POKEs, collectively remembered as the official Software Projects Pokes, were released and distributed (mostly) via magazines. According to this apparently well informed corner of the web (and from what I can still recall) them official POKEs were:

Moving an invisible object from the First Landing to The Hall (42183,11)
Removing a killer object from the Conservatory Roof (60231,0),
Changing a block in the Banyan Tree to a walk-through type (56876,4)
The Attic bug fix Poke (59901,82).

All you would then need to do would be type them in, in way not dissimilar to what Your Spectrum would advise:

Rewind the Jet Set Willy tape and load it using MERGE "", press Enter and start the tape. Once the loader program has been loaded you will get the 'OK' message on the screen and you should stop the tape. Now enter:

CLEAR 32767
LOAD "" CODE as direct commands and start the tape. After the main part of the program has loaded, enter the following as direct commands:

POKE 60231,0
POKE 42183,11
POKE 59901,82
POKE 56876,4

and your problems should be over. To start the new version of the game, enter GO TO 40.

Dec 12, 2007

Passage

I could easily come up with a 500 words piece on the excellence Passage, but I wont. It would simply take a bit from joy of discovering its beauty by yourselves and I really wouldn't want to spoil anything for you. Knowing that it's an incredible, unique, moving and handily free game that can be played in less than 5 minutes should be all the information you need. Or, to put it bluntly, simply trust me and go download Passage right after you wash your hands.

Dec 10, 2007

Aquaria released - underwater fantasy gaming reaches the indie loving masses

Not every game can win an IGF Grand Prize (actually only one game per year can, and that's ..uh.. not many games and definitely not every; yes) and only one game ever managed to grab the 2007 version of said illustrious prize. It was none other than Aquaria and happily this indie masterpiece has just been released, meaning you too, and yes that does indeed mean you, can grab a fairly priced copy here or download the incredibly hefty demo there.

Now, before going off downloading and/or wisely buying stuff, before even enjoying the sheer beauty of Aquaria's video teaser, better read a bit of the official word:

Aquaria, winner of the Seumas McNally Grand Prize at the 2007 Independent Games Festival, features over 175 strange and wonderful creatures (including several massive and ancient "bosses"), 8 magical forms with unique abilities, 50 original music tracks, and over 2000 pieces of hand-painted 2d artwork.

Related @ Gnome's Lair: Storked, The B-Games mega feature, Soldner-X, the Pathologic sequel

Dec 6, 2007

An hour of hot D&D 4th edition insider info and some other (audible) stuff

Yax was kind enough to include Gnome's Lair in Dungeon Mastering's Top 50 RPG websites and, being the sensitive little gnome I am, I sort of felt the obligation to blog about something vaguely related. Failing to come up with a Top 60 tabletop gaming blogs piece and ultimately ignoring the pleas for a Naked Cthulhu Gaming guide, I had a quick browse through the Velvet Dice Bag and found out that Gaming Steve's latest podcast -episode 64- has been made available here. You'd better go listen to it, especially if D&D is your thing.

It's a 148 minutes long monster, mind you, and besides discussing Super Mario Galaxy, the Witcher and a variety of non-analog games, said podcast sports 62 minutes of Christopher Perkins interview goodness. Shockingly, Mr. Perkins, Story Design Manager RPGs/Minis R&D at Wizards, chooses to discuss the 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons and offer invaluable behind the scenes info.

Dec 2, 2007

Monty's Christmas Misty Eyed Special

We make the cops look bad is so much more than a commendable social practice and the way to a better mankind. It's a fantastic blog of a highly talented retro remaker (extensive info on the very playable part of said talents in a post that should appear before 2008), who also happens to be a human, a gamer, not particularly odd and a great writer: oddbob. Interestingly, said bob, having absolutely no relation to any Black Adder Bobs you might have fond memories of, posted an exhaustive preview of Monty's Christmas Special and got me desperately waiting.

Well, guess what. In an anti-twist of blog writing fashion, I'm happy to inform you that the wait is finally over. Auld Games have, as of December 1st 2007, released Monty's Christmas Special for freeware public consumption and it's an absolutely gorgeous Spectrum-like, non colour-clashing platforming beauty. Download the game here NOW and see what this classic police avoiding rodent is up to.

Those either caring for more top quality interactive entertainment or looking to find out more on Monty Mole could do worse than grab the remake of the original Monty On the Run and have a read here.