The Summoning

There are games that everyone recognizes as great. There are games which initially bask in the glory of adulation and then, through the passing of time and technology, glide gracefully into obscurity. Then there are the lost ones. Games which never got their due. Games which, though superb, never received any recognition. This column is about one of those games: Event Horizon’s remarkable role-playing game, The Summoning. Read more

Retro Sucks!

I hate retro compilations. That might come as a surprise to you, dear Game Publisher, since I’m what you would call an early adopter, a gamerdad (although I don’t have kids). Plain and simple, I am someone who’s seriously been around since the ‘80s. Read more

Night of the Living X’s

“Shamus is the scariest game in the world,” I used to tell my friends.

That was back in the day, the day being the early ‘80s. Back when my Commodore 64 was just about the hottest machine you could have. At least I thought so. I still don’t know why dad bought it. He was working as a programmer at the time (and still is, doing abstract stuff that I can’t understand). The C64 certainly didn’t pack nearly as much power as the room-sized computers he worked with. Yep, room-sized, as in Wargames-style, old school. Read more

Spaceward Ho!

Long ago in the early 90’s, in the summers spent at home during my undergraduate years, a group of friends and I would while away summer evenings together. Some nights we would play cards, some nights miniature golf. On some nights, however, we would gather every Macintosh we could and play Spaceward Ho! at the home of the only one of us that had struck out on his own and gotten his own place. Read more

The PTD Guide to Emulation

You know the drill:

Take the cartridge.
Blow into it until your lungs bleed
Use a Q-Tip to paint it with alcohol.
Blow into the control deck.
Stick the cartridge in.
Turn it on–to no avail. Read more

10 REM: Werewolves and Wanderers

I’ve always loved adventure games. From Zork to Space Quest and Sam & Max to Hotel Dusk, I’ve lost track of the number of them I’ve played and loved. So why is it that the one I have the strongest memories of is an antique text adventure called Werewolves and Wanderer? Read more

The Case for Abadonware

1993 was an important year in my career as a PC gamer. Sure, Doom was released, and it was great and all, but for me, the year 1993 will always be synonymous with one of the best computer games I’ve ever played, Event Horizon Software’s Veil of Darkness. Using an isometric view similar to Blizzard’s Diablo games, Veil of Darkness was an adventure game that had the player’s avatar fulfilling a prophecy in order to escape from a valley ruled by a vampire named Kairn. The combat was in real-time, and solving the prophecy required puzzle solving skills that had me tracking down a werewolf, solving murder mysteries, and returning beloved items to souls still trapped on the mortal plane. It was a great game and remains a personal favorite to this day. Read more

Give me Less, Give me More

It was 1982, and I still remember the box. Small, blue, with cover art of an almost cartoon-rendered Hellcat fighter shooting down a Zero, the game was titled Hellcat Ace. It came from a publisher called Microprose, and the programmer was a guy named Sid Meier. I handed over my hard-earned money and took the game home to my Atari 800. Read more

Waltzing for Dreamers

The day we brought home the Atari 2600 was a day of many firsts for me. It was, for example, the first time my parents told me to lie. As we piled out of our brick-red AMC, Mom mentioned casually, “So if someone asks, we got it as a gift. We’re behind on the rent, and if the landlord found out we spent money on this, well…” Once Dad gave the landlord-all-clear signal, Mom yanked the giant black and orange box out of the trunk and sprinted across our apartment complex courtyard with Dad leading the way. Keeping pace behind them, my sister and I found this behavior glamorous, as if we were a family of international spies. Read more

Love’s Labour’s Lost … and Found

This a love story. Like all great love stories it is about infatuation, contentment, pain, and loss. I was six, and he was new to the States, just over from Japan. He was high-maintenance, constantly asking for money when we were together. His name was Pac-Man. Read more

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