Games you wish were more successful

DROL
Broderbund Software
17 Paul Dr.
San Rafael, CA 94903
(415) 479-1170
$39.95, 48K - disk

Reviewed by Brian Ho Fung

drol.JPG


Drol is an original, addictive, arcade-style game with beautiful graphics. The game takes you to the underground dream world of Drol, where you must rescue a small family and its pets trapped in the fantasy world by an evil witchdoctor's curse. You are equipped with an anti-gravity rescue suit and an unlimited supply of reality pellets. [bullets]

Drol has three missions: rescue a wandering girl and her jet-propelled pet lizard; save her propeller-beanied brother and his pet crocodile; and liberate the kids' mother, who is bound with rope on Drol's bottom floor.

Your hero, controlled by the joystick, travels through continuously scrolling multi-levelled corridors seeking captives and trying to avoid a host of dangers- giant scorpions, monsters, flying turkeys and a killer vacuum cleaner. When you find a captive, you simply touch it to rescue it.

Your hero starts with five lives. Completing three missions, one round, earns you an extra life. Each time your hero dies, he must start from the top corridor. This can be frustrating, especially on the third mission where each corridor is separated by only one or two trapdoors placed far away from each other. Each new round provides faster and deadlier monsters-some of which must be shot repeatedly before they die.

Drol is an exceptionally well-programmed game. It has staying power and a limitless challenge. It can be paused; you can view the high scores while playing, and high scores can be saved to the disk. Drol's one drawback-the long time it takes to load each successive mission-is offset by the game's beautiful animation, smooth-scrolling graphics and non-stop action. Droll will delight players of all ages and will challenge even skilled game players.
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This game had the best animation we'd see until rotoscoping. The animation would actually come into the gameplay. How many animation frames until you can turn around, so you could avoid a projectile, for example. It was a true arcade game.
Currently, all of Brøderbund's games, such as the Myst series, are published by Ubisoft.
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When I was a little kid, this was one of the greatest computer games. (Atari 600, 800, etc) Perhaps it was successful, I'm not sure, but I've never heard anyone talking about it outside of my family. Clearly deserved more attention.

I'd like to see them bring this game back with all the love of the original.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HARw-FKixTY

EDIT: Ok, the animation isn't that great, but it's 27 years old. Anyway, I think this would make a good browser game or XBoxLive game with updated graphics and sound.
 
Quixoticism said:
Freelancer(cause like shaker, I want FL2 so very badly!)
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Freelancer 2 techdemo leaked long ago, designed for the XB360, shame the project was then cancelled.

Anyway, a game I wish was more successful(Too lazy to do several because it would be a really long list then and take me over an hour to type.:p)

Nexus - The Jupiter Incident, the most enjoyable tactical (space) fleet simulator I have ever played.

P.S. Mirror's Edge sequel is still in development last thing I heard, http://www.gamespot.com/news/6211934.html
 
Tachyon: Enter the Fringe
Star Wars: Rebel Assault (1 and 2)
ADOM
Toribash
STARlancer
Mechwarrior (2, 3, and 4)
Battletoads
Homeworld series
Star Wars Dark Forces (entire series)
Duke Nukem sidescrollers
Tyrian
Jazz Jackrabbit
Jet Force Gemini
Maybe more as I wake up...

SACRIFICE. DEAR GOD, SACRIFICE. THIS IS WHY I PRAY FOR INTERPLAY TO BE REINCARNATED. Oh, that and Descent, I suppose.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacrifice_(video_game)
 
Red Faction 2.

Not in an underated sense, but in a "This game could have been successful if it was completely different."
Damn butchers.
 
Ezra said:
That was a great game, once a year I tend to dig it out and play it through.
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****ing A. Freedom Fighters was literally years ahead of its time. If it were made in 2006 or 2007 after Gears of War became huge, then we'd be playing Freedom Fighters 2 right now. It's an awesome game and it's a real shame there wasn't a sequel.
 
Oh god the Jedi Knight series...

Why do we get another Force Unleashed before another one of these?!?!?!
 
Armored Core 3. At least around my group of friends. It's such an incredible game, but I think the control scheme puts people off.

Armored Core 4 didn't come anywhere near as close in terms of awesome. If it had, I would own a 360.
 
The Escape Velocity series, started out on Mac but the third game got ported to Windows with the subtitle of "Nova"!

One of the most fun open-ended space games I have ever played! Tons of mods for it too.

I hope I'm not the only one here who played it!
 
I loved playing Boiling Point. The game was god awful but the premise and the way they went about it was at least admirable. Hell even the change log's used to make me laugh, for instance:
[QUOTE="Boiling Point 1.1 Changelog]
MINOR ISSUES
Police station cannot be destroyed by a crossbow anymore.

AI : NPC's behaviour has been improved in this patch version. Some examples are as follows : NPC now avoid obstacles when moving, reply when being shot at, animation and position are correct.
[/QUOTE]
 
Boiling Point actually has a sequel which is quite good, sadly it hasn't been released in English yet, it's called White Gold.

I liked Boiling Point quite a lot after the final patch(The european version got a 2.0 patch which fixed a ton of stuff and overall made the game a lot better, apparently a US 2.0 wasn't released?), sure it still had its share of notable flaws, but then again most games out of the former USSR do.
 
Arcanum: this to me is fallout 3

Vampires the Masquerade: between mods and fan made patches this game is pretty awesome

Myth 1 and 2.... well 3 was fun but it kinda killed the mystique for characters like Balor and Soulblighter and I'm hoping bungie pick up this title
 
Tagaziel said:
NO.

Arcanum's one of the greatest RPGs in existence. To even compare it to Fo3 is an insult to everyone who worked on it.
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:eek:

easy....

I just meant this is how FO3 should have been, you know actually role playing not a dungeon crawler. I mean I like FO3 and I happen to like dungeon crawlers but they kinda missed the whole point of what made FO1and2 good.

Plus the whole setting was fantastic, although one broken quest just bugged me, the whole conspiracy about the gnomes and kidnapping women to breed with ogres... got so frustrated I decided to kill all the gnomes after that.
 
I never played Arcanum - how does it compare to the Planescapes and BGs of this world?
 
Warbie said:
I never played Arcanum - how does it compare to the Planescapes and BGs of this world?
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Well nothing can compare to Planescape, but Arcanum is this little gem.... how do I describe it.


Think of it like this, it's fallout from the black comedy too combat (if you choose turn base that is) with a pretty original mechanic.

what shines the most is the setting with magic and technology both existing, guess it's steampunk. The mechanic is that you cant be a mage while you use a shotgun as mages disrupt anything technological same goes for tech experts.

Story is pretty epic, you descended from a blimp crash unscathed and a monk named Virgil finding you thinks that you are the chosen one to battle out some evil elf dude if memories serves me right. (also to note if you use a character with low intelligence conversations are hilarious)

NPCs are memorable and entertaining, pretty good voice acting to boot. if you can find a copy I suggest you go out and play it.

My old copy is sitting in a drawer in my room somewhere.
 
Sounds good - I like the idea of choosing between tech and magic. I'll keep an eye out for a cheap copy.
 
Arcanum is definitely one of the best RPGs ever made in my opinion, and anyone who likes western-style CRPGs owe it to themselves to play it!
 
Heh, I played Oni on the PS2 and not the PC, good memories though!
 
Can't ****ing wait for Bungie to move on from Halo. I don't care what they return to... hopefully a new IP, as fun as Oni was at times.
 
10six.

An early MMO that was before its time and poorly budgeted. The concept behind it was great but they executed it in a way that was destined for failure and thus, it failed. A few tweaks and it would have been one of the more recognizable mmos around... instead it was scrapped after a couple years of struggle.

HEAT.Net was pretty good too. It was a multiplayer portal for a lot of games back in the day. Kind of like an od Gamespy or whatever. They'd have competitions and prizes and such. Sega failed for both HEAT and 10six and they were both great ventures. It was all around the time the Dreamcast came out too...
 
Man I remember the days of the Dreamcast. With shadows on the horizon of something known as the Nintendo Revolution.

I wish that more people would think of Uplink as being successful. One of the most addictive games I've ever played but it does have some design flaws.
 
The MMORPG Neocron; it was absolutely booming in the beta back in 2002 or whenever it was in development and then, as standard, the devs slowly tweaked it with patch after patch until it became nothing more than a big skill specialization orgy where you had to grind for weeks on end to even be slightly effective in PvP. Such a shame too, I adored the atmosphere, community and the overall game play mechanics; it could've really kicked off had the devs just listened to the community.
 
Lokain said:
:eek:

easy....

I just meant this is how FO3 should have been, you know actually role playing not a dungeon crawler. I mean I like FO3 and I happen to like dungeon crawlers but they kinda missed the whole point of what made FO1and2 good.

Plus the whole setting was fantastic, although one broken quest just bugged me, the whole conspiracy about the gnomes and kidnapping women to breed with ogres... got so frustrated I decided to kill all the gnomes after that.
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Oh.

If that's what you mean, then I wholeheartedly agree with you, good sir.
 
Gargantou said:
The Escape Velocity series, started out on Mac but the third game got ported to Windows with the subtitle of "Nova"!

One of the most fun open-ended space games I have ever played! Tons of mods for it too.

I hope I'm not the only one here who played it!
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You are not. I love EV still to this day.(haven't played it in a long time though)
I got it when it first came out and even made some of my own storyline mods for it. EV is my favorite in the series but Nova was really good as well.
The biggest thing I felt was missing from the game was multiplayer. If they made an MMO out of the game I would actually pay for that. Or just being able to have a server to play online with a few friends.
 
another vote for Escape Velocity

also Rune and Quake Wars Enemy Territory
 
Quixoticism said:
You are not. I love EV still to this day.(haven't played it in a long time though)
I got it when it first came out and even made some of my own storyline mods for it. EV is my favorite in the series but Nova was really good as well.
The biggest thing I felt was missing from the game was multiplayer. If they made an MMO out of the game I would actually pay for that. Or just being able to have a server to play online with a few friends.
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I only played the first through the mod-port available for EVNova, since I've never owned a Mac.:(
 
Thief: Deadly Shadows.

It was good enough to at least warrant a sequel.

Knights of Honor.
Children of the Nile.
 
StardogChampion said:
Thief: Deadly Shadows.

It was good enough to at least warrant a sequel.

Knights of Honor.
Children of the Nile.
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Thief 4 was confirmed to be in development last year, just so you know! Eidos Montreal are the devs.

Very early in development though.

Edit: Nevermind, I misunderstood what you were saying with the sequel sentence, my bad :(

Also, Knights of Honor is great.

I own CotN+the expansions on Steam, fantastic games.
 
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