Classic Game Collecting: Diablo II Gold

I’ve been looking at all the brochures that come with the newspapers just lately, seeing as it’s Christmas soon. I also went online to view several retail websites, too. Why? to see all the games on offer, of course.

One thing caught my eye though: Diablo II Gold. In preparation for the release of Diablo III, Blizzard seems to have re-released a lot of their classics, but in some killer bundles. In addition to Diablo II, there’s StarCraft Gold and WarCraft III Gold – and these all come with the available expansions for said games.

Then it was off to the actual stores to take a look. At most places, such as Musica, CNA, and Look & Listen, I mainly spotted the expansion pack, Lords of Destruction, and the price was usually around R99.

Eventually I had to ask a salesperson if they had the Gold edition I was looking for in stock. It wasn’t even on the shelves. They’d been hiding copies in the back room. But I managed to get one for R99. And to think that on the shelves, they had either Diablo II or the expansion pack both going for the same price, separately. One wonders if they intentionally try to screw you over, sometimes. So instead of getting both for R198 and upwards, Diablo II Gold is at least half price.

Score. Now I’m going to play this old classic along with all the mods and unofficial expansions that have been made over the years. Like I always say, sometimes it pays to wait – in this case more than a decade.

Classic Game Collecting: Diablo II Gold

2011: Full of Video Game Anniversaries

In the latest issue of NAG magazine, I had a rare read of Miktar’s column. In addition to being a columnist and overseas correspondent (East coast of the USA), he is also a former moderator on the NAG Online forum – although was shunted out of the job, probably because he was a massive troll, according to some. It was bad for business.

But he brought up an interesting conversation piece. 2011 is chock full of anniversaries relating to video games. Landmark, revolutionary titles that paved the way for all the games you play today.

Let’s have a look at those he listed:

30th Anniversary: Ultima, Castle Wolfenstein, Frogger, Ms. Pacman

25th Anniversary: The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Castelvania

20th Anniversary: Street Fighter II, Sonic the Hedgehog, Civilization

15th Anniversary: Resident Evil, Pokémon, Diablo, Tomb Raider, Crash Bandicoot

10th Anniversary: Grand Theft Auto III, Halo, Devil May Cry

The ones I care about most here are probably Castle Wolfenstein (without it we wouldn’t have had Wolf 3D, RTCW, and every other game that followed in that series); Frogger (played it a hell of a lot as a child); Street Fighter II (hailed as one of the best fighting games of all time – the measuring stick to which all other fighters to this day are compared); Sonic the Hedgehog (come on…); Resident Evil (made survival horror the popular genre that it is – or was, anyway); Tomb Raider (without it, you probably wouldn’t have Uncharted, maybe even Assassin’s Creed either); Crash Bandicoot (played this a lot as a kid, too); Grand Theft Auto III (one of the best games ever).

But suspiciously there were a few left off the list at some point. I think most of the games he mentioned were released in November or December (I know because I looked them up). So there was some sort of trend he was adhering to.

I’d add in Duke Nukem 3D. It’s the last truly great game in that series, which even DNF failed to topple this year. Released at a time when people still used the term “Doom Clone”, it proved that it wasn’t just another rip-off title – it was THE rip-off title; the undisputed king of rip-offs, taking “inspiration” from several films and other games, as well as pop culture. But it had enough going for it to make it pound for pound the best FPS I’ve played to date, honestly.

Quake wasn’t brought up either. Major oversight there. Also released in 1996 like DN3D, it was the first fully 3D FPS, and debuted the Quake engine. Without this engine, we might not have had every other id Tech engine released to date, and probably every other id game released to date, either. Every Doom, Quake, and even Wolfenstein title to follow used a version of the id Tech engine. Many, many games from other developers to date have used id Tech engines as well. You wouldn’t even have Call of Duty, seeing as all CoD games to date have used snippets of id Tech code in the engines that power them.

Final Doom. All right, so it was a glorified double expansion pack for Doom II: Hell on Earth – but what expansion packs at that!

The Plutonia Experiment was particularly challenging. Created by the Casali brothers, it made Doom and Doom II seem like child’s play for the most part. TNT: Evilution wasn’t that spectacular, but it did see one of the most beloved guys at id get hired – and that man is Tim Willits, who still serves as creative director at id today. He started off as just a mapper, and fan of the original games.

If anything, Final Doom showed that fans could make a decent game, filled with challenging maps and maybe tad innovation that impressed developers so much that they hired them and put them on the payroll. This trend has continued to this day, with modders and mappers being picked from the modding community and given jobs. You often see this with companies such as Valve – Valve is predominantly made of former modders.

So anyway, 2011: what a year – for new games and old!

2011: Full of Video Game Anniversaries

400th Episode of The Verge, The Verge Turns 3

If you haven’t heard of or seen The Verge before, it’s a show about video gaming on DSTV, channel 123 (Vuzu). It’s been running for nearly the past 3 years, since late 2008. Wednesday the 23rd of November, 2011 marks the 400th episode of this show.

Yes, 400 episodes of news; trailers; reviews; looking at Pippa and her various “interesting” hairstyles; changing timeslots; putting up with Mo (and more recently Thomas), and even the odd bit of the old mockery from Lala – odd coming from a show whose target audience happens to be gamers.

The 400th episode will have reviews on Rage, Battlefield 3, and will feature Pippa’s top 5 iPhone games.
December 1st marks the show’s 3rd birthday – but there likely won’t be an episode of either The Verge or PlayR on that night, seeing as Dec 1 is a Thursday, and neither show airs any episodes on a Thursday.

Source: The Verge

400th Episode of The Verge, The Verge Turns 3

New Review Published: Stealth Bastard

The latest and biggest thing to hit the indie PC game scene is Stealth Bastard. You’ve read about it; you’ve heard of it; you’ve played it. Yes, you have. It’s free. That’s how I know you know about it.

To summarise, it’s a freeware 2D platforming title developed by London-based developer, Curve Studios. It’s similar to Metal Gear Solid and Splinter Cell in theme, but more like Abuse (that old game for MS-DOS) or even Oddworld: Abe’s Odyssey in the way that it plays. There’s stealth, death, and that sort of thing, but much more fast-paced than any stealthy FPS title.

Anyway, I downloaded it recently and gave it a go, and managed to actually write a 1500 word review on it. Don’t quite know how, though. You can go through to the piece on HP, if you care.

New Review Published: Stealth Bastard

Dead Cyborg Episode 2: Halfway To Release

I was taking a look through my bookmarks and saw on Dead Cyborg’s Twitter account that Episode 2 of this free-to-play beggarware title is getting a little closer to being released. It’s halfway there to be exact – as far as donations go. Endre, the one-man developer behind the project, claims that the donation meter is 50% full.

The actual development on Episode 2 is coming along too. There was a trailer of it released not too long ago, and it’s looking pretty good. This time, the player ascends to the surface and sees first hand the aftermath of the apocalyptic war that took place, and drove people down in to bunkers in the first place.

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Source: Dead Cyborg on Twitter

Dead Cyborg Episode 2: Halfway To Release

Random Madness: Micro Doom

This post marks the return of Random Madness here on AAA. I had some inspiration recently.

Windows XP has been around for a long time. I was just reading on Joystiq the other day in an article where it was said that it is in fact ten years old as of last month. After so many years of using Windows XP myself, I recently made the jump to using another version of Windows. On the laptop I acquired recently, I have installed on it Windows Vista. True, it’s not the latest Windows, or the best. Some call it the black sheep in the family.

Anyway, I had read about a feature that was first introduced in Vista that obviously wasn’t in any previous Windows that we know of: User Account Control, or UAC. Basically it ensures that programs run only when you want them to and that any sort of malware that attacks your system doesn’t have full control over what goes on, even if you’re running an administrator account.

Now the gamer in me instantly thought of something else when I read that acronym. The UAC is instrumental in the storyline of the Doom series. It stands for Union Aerospace Corporation. Now while the UAC’s background was only really expanded upon in Doom 3, it existed all ready in the original games in the early-mid 90’s.

Now knowing my inquisitive mind like I do, my thoughts started to wander if there was some sort of link or is it just coincidence? This wouldn’t be the only time there was a possible link between id Software’s Doom and Microsoft. More than a decade and a half ago, Bill Gates promoted Windows 95 by superimposing himself in to Doom and blasting some zombies. Doom was originally programmed to work in MS-DOS when released in 1993, but was still massively popular even years later.

Maybe this UAC feature was an homage of sorts to Doom. Windows UAC tries to limit malware attacks, much like Doom’s UAC tried in all Doom games to date to prevent the demonic invasion from hell – ultimately (get it? The Ultimate Doom?) it failed every time.

But seriously, don’t quote me on this. It’s all rubbish. Interesting to think of, though.

Random Madness: Micro Doom

I’ve Become an Advisor at ShopSquad.com

I received an email last month which looked like it had gotten through the spam filter. It talked about something called Shopsquad.com. I had apparently been invited to join this website.

So I thought I might join and see what it’s all about; maybe report back on progress in some time. So far I’ve written a couple of articles over at HubPages on the subject. There’s an introduction as well as tips on how to succeed using the tools provided for you at ShopSquad.

So come and chat to me over at ShopSquad.com under the nick “Andr01d” (same handle as my profile on HubPages). You never know – I might actually know a thing or two about video games. I’ve been playing them long enough.  Otherwise I also deal in categories such as electronics, computers, etc.

I’ve Become an Advisor at ShopSquad.com