The Secret of Monkey Island (1990)

 

So I didn't have a PC in 1990 when The Secret of Monkey Island came out.  I only know it by reputation, and what a reputation it has.  Much beloved to this day, with another sequel just announced.

I... well I didn't like it all that much.  I didn't hate it either though.

I'm inclined to think it's me.  I'm old now, and the humor didn't really land with me much.  Some wry amusement when I could tell they were trying to be funny.  But no audible chuckling.  Although it's always possible I wasn't creative, or persistent enough to bang my head up against the really obscure interactions that drag out the best jokes.  That happens sometimes.

Return to Castle Wolfenstein (2001)

Return to Castle Wolfenstein came out in 2001, as a farmed out sequel to an id Software property largely overshadowed by Doom and Quake.  Computer Gaming World gave it a fairly lukewarm 3.5 stars at the time, comparing the game unfavorably to Half-Life and No One Lives Forever.  It's hard to disagree with the sentiment.

I know I played this once upon a time, but I have next to no memory of it.  I remember the opening castle you begin in, but only the very start of it.  I actually remember a bit of the burnt out industrial area too, and the "lopers" that would chase you.  Yet that is all.

I've played a lot of older shooters lately, but I actually found this one had some rather extreme difficulty spikes, which surprised me.  You take a lot of damage very quickly from relatively low level enemies on the medium setting.  A lot of the combat encounters seemed designed around rather simple, and frustrating, ambushes.  I quicksaved a lot to diffuse them, as there seemed little other way to avoid those traps short of springing them, and then trying again better informed.

Heretic: Shadow of the Serpent Riders (1996)

Heretic: Shadow of the Serpent Riders came out a while after Heretic had been released as Shareware.  Two years by my count, checking Mobygames.  I remember as a kid I'd played the Shareware episode to death.  But actually purchasing Shareware games was a no-go since it involved giving my parent's credit card out over the phone, or mailing a check for a bank account I didn't have.  It was retail or bust for me as a young teen.  Lawn mowing cash only.  

So it was at some point post Quake 2 that I found the belated retail version of Heretic in a bargain bin or a bundle, probably at CompUSA, and snatched it up.  I may or may not have even installed it.  It mostly sat in my collection, a memory of all the fun I'd already had with the free Shareware episode.

Well I finally dusted off my old copy that I've kept with me ever since that day.  And I played through it to completion, all five episodes.

Zork Grand Inquisitor (1997)

Zork Grand Inquisitor was the last Zork game ever released in 1997.  The gameplay was very much in the style set by Zork Nemesis, with the addition of better inventory management and a spell book.  But while Nemesis was a un-Zorky product of games trying too hard to be "mature", Grand Inquisitor matched the humor I always heard the grizzled old reviewers in Computer Gaming World write about.

Not that I'd know personally.  I never played the text based Zork games.  They were before my time.  But the reverence for their humor was an undercurrent to nearly every other adventure game I read about or played.

Honestly I'm not sure why I kept buying the graphical Zork games as a kid.  I never really liked Return to Zork, although the rather sizeable print copy of the Encyclopedia Frobozzica it came with was well worth the price, and gave me a lot more enjoyment that the game itself.  Zork Nemesis looked really pretty, and it's panning environments put Myst and 7th Guest to shame, but as a kid I found myself stuck constantly given my refusal to take notes.  All the puzzles in Nemesis involve copious note taking.

Whatever the reason for my persistence, it paid off.  I loved Zork Grand Inquisitor as a kid.  I must have really beat my head against it, because unlike other games I'd played for the first and last time over 20 years ago now, I remember it like the back of my hand.  A feat that was at once validating, and also ruined the game for me.

Jagged Alliance (1995)

Jagged Alliance is a tactics game where you command a squad of mercenaries, and attempt to conquer an island from a bad dude with his own army of mercenaries.  It was released by Sirtech in 1995 for MS-DOS, and was generally well received.

It's been on my bucket list for quite a while.  A few years ago, before I built my first retro computer, I attempted it using the Gold Edition I'd bought on Steam.  It ended very swiftly in disaster.  I hired nothing but the cheapest mercenaries, believing I'd be saving money, and they would eventually grow into their roles.  I'd raise them to be the perfect warriors, like Pokemon.

Instead most of them were dead or dying after a brief encounter with the enemy in the first sector on the first day.  I realized I didn't have the time to commit to learning how to get started in this game, and shelved it.