Re: "8 Classic Games You Haven't Played (but should)"

On Sat, 01 Feb 2025 01:36:25 +0000, ant@zimage.comANT (Ant) wrote:

Mike S. <Mike_S@nowhere.com> wrote:

On Fri, 31 Jan 2025 10:30:16 -0500, Spalls Hurgenson
<spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

>

The gameplay of "Syndicate" was awesome, but what I really remember
about it was its intro cinematic. A full-screen animation (back when
full-screen anything was still rare), it was incredibly stylish and
hinted at depths to the world that neither the manual nor the game
itself lived up to. It could be launched with its own executable
(intro.exe) which I would run again and again, just because it was
_that_ cool. To quote an earlier poster in this thread:
>
    "The music was great to a younger me sitting in a dark
     cold bedroom staring at a 14" CRT with small speakers
     blasting out, the soundtrack, happy days"

>

I remember the music of the Syndicate intro very well. If I heard it
now, I would recognize it immediately.

>
And the animation! I couldn't play the demo on my IBM PS/2 model 30 286
10 Mhz PC. :( My next door neighbor (I miss him) could on his custom
built 386 PC so we played there. Haha.
>

For those of you wondering, "What are all these old farts talking
about? How good could that intro really be?", let me present you with:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrR2N7C7Ddk


Although watching that cutscene again reminds me of a question I've
always wondered: is the cyborgization machine SUPPOSED to look like it
has googly-eyes?

(And speaking of music and games from Bullfrog... "Lemmings", amirite?
Such catchy remixes of old classics, all 'sung' through the squeal of
a Soundblaster's OPL3 chip. I'm pretty sure that the game itself
wouldn't have reached the heights of popularity it did with a
different soundtrack.

>

Lemmings had a lot catchy tunes. I have several in my soundtrack
collection. But I don't think Bullfrog had anything to do with
Lemmings. That was published by Psygnosis I think.

>
Yeah, not from Bullfrog (RIP). Lemmings was fun. I never liked the 3D
version though!

Honestly, I never cared much for any of the sequels. This probably
won't surprise any of you who've been paying attention to my rants,
but the added complexities in the sequels (new tribes, new abilities)
had little appeal for me. It all felt more for the sake of being more.
Rather than adding more abilities to the lemmings, I'd have rather the
developers just worked on differentiating the maps with new tricks and
traps.

Lemmings was sublime. Lemmings 2 was okay. The rest (Chronicles,
Lemmings 3D, etc.) just descended into ever deepening levels of
mediocrity.

It didn't help that Bullfrog kept trying to play up the characters of
the Lemmings. The critters were cute, but they were one-note jokes,
and despite all of Bullfrog's attempts to add history and lore, just
didn't have the depth of character to support it. And the game really
didn't need it; "just keep these weird green-haired idiots from
plummeting off the edge of the map" was enough to keep up interest, I
think.