A Boy and his Quirky Oldschool Video Game Revival

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A Boy and his Quirky Oldschool Video Game Revival

Unread postby BrainWalker » Wed Mar 04, 2009 10:16 am

I did not see this coming.

It looks gorgeous, and it's actually being made by a developer I respect. Dare I get excited about this?
Anime is kind of like fish in that it is better the less "fishy" it is.

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PriamNevhausten
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Unread postby PriamNevhausten » Wed Mar 04, 2009 11:16 am

This could actually be more fun than the original, what with the likelihood of significantly fewer exploration-by-repeatedly-dying mechanics which always turned me completely off to the old one.
"You haven't told me what I'm looking for."
"Anything that might be of interest to Slitscan. Which is to say, anything that might be of interest to Slitscan's audience. Which is best visualized as a vicious, lazy, profoundly ignorant, perpetually hungry organism craving the warm god-flesh of the anointed. Personally I like to imagine something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It's covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth, Laney, no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote. Or by voting in presidential elections."
--Colin Laney and Kathy Torrance, William Gibson's Idoru

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Unread postby BrainWalker » Wed Mar 04, 2009 12:16 pm

Yea, the original wasn't so much good as it was interesting, mechanically. I still played it as a kid, even though I died four hundred billion times. And never could get anywhere on Blobolonia until I read about how to get past the cherry bombs in Nintendo Power.

And now: screenshots!
Anime is kind of like fish in that it is better the less "fishy" it is.

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Unread postby Christian » Wed Mar 04, 2009 2:12 pm

Sweet!

I used to play the first game a lot, never even made it past the first stage though, I think?

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Archmage
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Unread postby Archmage » Wed Mar 04, 2009 5:24 pm

It wasn't really defined rigidly into stages. There was an underground sewer/HUMONGOUSLY EXPANSIVE CAVERNS FOR NO REASON where you needed to accumulate a small fortune in order to buy the world's most expensive vitamin supplements since the local health food store apparently only accepts chests filled with gold and jewels in exchange for their wares. The caverns, of course, were filled with nonsensical hazards including jumping death-caterpillars and oddly lethal spider webs (since your character could be incapacitated by a strong breeze). Boy+Blob's protagonist would probably need two weeks in the ICU to recover from a stubbed toe, assuming he wasn't sent straight to the morgue.

The second portion of the game involved running around dodging killer food on the Blob's homeworld and occasionally shooting things with extremely toxic doses of vitamin C. Linus Pauling would've been proud.

You could actually bypass the entire caverns sequence from the get-go and through various chicanery make your way through Blobolonia without the vitamin supply and I'm not actually sure this made the game unwinnable, just more difficult. For the record, no, I've never played it all the way through, but I'm pretty sure I watched a TAS video where somebody did just that, bypassing 3/4 of the game and blowing through the rest in about two minutes.
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Unread postby Idran1701 » Wed Mar 04, 2009 6:00 pm

Archmage wrote:You could actually bypass the entire caverns sequence from the get-go and through various chicanery make your way through Blobolonia without the vitamin supply and I'm not actually sure this made the game unwinnable, just more difficult. For the record, no, I've never played it all the way through, but I'm pretty sure I watched a TAS video where somebody did just that, bypassing 3/4 of the game and blowing through the rest in about two minutes.


There's not really any chicanery involved; you start with the jellybeans that let you change the blob into a rocket. I'm pretty sure you do need the vitamins in some form, though, since you need them to kill the boss.

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PriamNevhausten
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Unread postby PriamNevhausten » Thu Mar 05, 2009 1:37 am

You certainly do not, you dump a jar of vitamins on him to kill him--a jar which is conveniently placed to fall on him. And TAS videos are not to be trusted; the more recent iterations for this game completely break the shit out of it in the name of speed.
"You haven't told me what I'm looking for."
"Anything that might be of interest to Slitscan. Which is to say, anything that might be of interest to Slitscan's audience. Which is best visualized as a vicious, lazy, profoundly ignorant, perpetually hungry organism craving the warm god-flesh of the anointed. Personally I like to imagine something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It's covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth, Laney, no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote. Or by voting in presidential elections."
--Colin Laney and Kathy Torrance, William Gibson's Idoru

Idran1701
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Unread postby Idran1701 » Thu Mar 05, 2009 12:26 pm

PriamNevhausten wrote:You certainly do not, you dump a jar of vitamins on him to kill him--a jar which is conveniently placed to fall on him.


Oh, really? Huh, I must have been remembering wrong. Never mind, then.

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Archmage
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Unread postby Archmage » Thu Mar 05, 2009 9:04 pm

Idran1701 wrote:There's not really any chicanery involved; you start with the jellybeans that let you change the blob into a rocket. I'm pretty sure you do need the vitamins in some form, though, since you need them to kill the boss.


The chicanery is surviving the hazards of Blobolonia without the vitablaster, not getting there. Getting there is something most players do by accident the first time they play the game, because interstellar travel is actually simpler than what you need to do to find the caves segment of the game.
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Unread postby Idran1701 » Thu Mar 05, 2009 10:59 pm

Well, I'm just misinterpreting all around, aren't I? :P

But yeah, I definitely remember that being the case for me when I played it; it being easier to figure out than finding the caves, that is. I think I only found them by accident, even.

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Unread postby pd Rydia » Tue Mar 10, 2009 4:23 pm

There's a couple videos up at joystiq (and probably elsewhere):
http://www.joystiq.com/2009/03/04/video ... in-action/

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Re: A Boy and his Quirky Oldschool Video Game Revival

Unread postby BrainWalker » Tue Sep 08, 2009 12:51 pm

THIS JUST IN!

Anime is kind of like fish in that it is better the less "fishy" it is.

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Re: A Boy and his Quirky Oldschool Video Game Revival

Unread postby Capntastic » Tue Sep 08, 2009 5:22 pm

Looks a lot like Henry Hatsworth, especially with the BLOB-TIME mecha power.

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Re: A Boy and his Quirky Oldschool Video Game Revival

Unread postby KingOfDoma » Wed Sep 09, 2009 10:17 am

... yeah, this looks awesome. *gives the KoD Seal Of Approval(tm)*
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