Posts Tagged ‘Game’
Revisiting ‘Star Wars: Dark Forces’ with DarkXL
Posted by Dimitri | Filed under Retro Games
The original Star Wars: Dark Forces was released back in 1995. The game is a FPS that takes place in the universe created by the Star Wars saga. It had long levels and impressive cinematic sequences for its time, good graphics and also featured awesome music and sound effects. In short, it has a great replay value, so after almost 16 years, why not play it (again)? Since this is a DOS game, you will need to use a emulator to play it, such as DOSBox. The game works fine with the emulator.
Running the game at an emulated environment is not exactly a bad thing, but what if you could execute Dark Forces natively on Windows, at higher resolutions and with other improvements? That’s why there is DarkXL, an application that does exactly that, created by the talented Lucius. As explained on the DarkXL website: (more…)
Game Programming Basics: Creating a FPS counter
Posted by Dimitri | Filed under Programming
Sometimes, while creating a game, a programmer realizes that he/she needs to make sure if some part of the code is running fast enough, before adding more things that could cause the game to slowdown. To properly measure a game’s performance, there is the need to program a FPS (frames per second) counter. As the name suggests, it will count the number of frames that where rendered at the period of one second.
This is an essential information when creating games, as it will serve as a strong indicator to measure the performance impact of a recently added element to the game.
Retro Review: Vectorman (Genesis)
Posted by Dimitri | Filed under Featured, Retro Games
Vectorman was released back in 1995 for the Sega Genesis. Right from the start, the game shows that it is going to offer a different experience to the player.
Even before the game starts, it is possible to control Vectorman at the “Sega” logo screen, where you can find some of the game’s Easter eggs and input cheat codes. (more…)
Retro Review: California Games (SMS)
Posted by Dimitri | Filed under Retro Games
California Games was developed by Epyx and released to almost all platforms that where available back in 1987. Two years later, it arrived on the Master System, ported by Sega itself. For those who never played the game, California Games is a compilation of 6 unconventional sport games: half-pipe (skateboarding), footbag, surfing, skating, BMX (dirt) and flying disc (frisbee).
Before highlighting the gameplay details of each one of the sports (or as the game refers to them, “events”), the elements of the game that are common to whatever sport the player selects, will be discussed.
Retro Review: Alex Kidd in Shinobi World
Posted by Dimitri | Filed under Featured, Retro Games
A game that features Alex Kidd and Shinobi in the same title, but does these two franchises appear in the game as well? Is this game a hybrid or a completely new one? (If you don’t remember those games, read the Alex Kidd in Miracle World and the Shinobi reviews). Well, let’s start by explaining the story of Alex Kidd in Shinobi World.
In this game, the objective of Alex Kidd is to rescue his girlfriend that has been kidnapped by the evil ninja called Hanzo, which is also the name of the villain in Shinobi. The fact that Alex has to rescue someone is the only thing in common with Miracle World and Shinobi plots, meaning that this is a new story, although similar, it is not directly based on those games.