…because everybody loves lasers.
Also, reading this made me realise that there’s people out there who have never heard of Mutant Storm prior. Which I find weird given PomPom were doing this whole indie thing before most people could pronounce indie. But I guess this also means I’m fucking old. Very fucking old. And maybe we’re doing a really shit job of indie game history too.
My first instinct is to shout HOLY FUCK, MAN or something similar but on consideration, it’s actually really cool that there’s still people out there with games to discover.
Working on DRM at the moment, I’m sorta flitting between some other games for inspiration so I figured why not take this opportunity to list a couple of them and hopefully, it’ll help some people discover some games they’ve not played before too.
Robotron
This is where it all fucking begins. Everything. There’s gaming before Robotron but that isn’t important, that’s just stuff that exists. There’s gaming after Robotron and some of it is pretty alright but none of it is Robotron. The noise, the bitcrushing visual overload, the every second you’re alive is either a miracle or skill of it all.. it’s a thing of tremendous beauty.
To do it justice, you’ll need a fairly recent version of MAME and the appropriate ROM or Ray’s PC version is pretty fine too. Download that here.
Pic nicked from Retrogamer.
Wild West Hero
“A blimmin’ good mega zap”, it seems. From the guy who ported Robotron to the Speccy only to have it lost to the void of time until rescued many, many years later, this shit should not be possible on a ZX Spectrum. It’s a marvel that it exists, never mind that it’s incredibly good. It is good.
Grab yourself a decent Spectrum emulator and the original from World Of Spectrum or play the PC remake. Grab that here. Original website mirrored here.
See also: Dustman and pic nicked from Stu’s article.
Llamatron/Minotron
Fairly interchangeable but given Minotron is more accessible being available right now to buy for iThings, you should probably try that. Failing that, a good ST emulator and a copy of Llamatron should see you right.
Although to be fair, you could probably insert any of Jeff’s games here and we’d be good.
Spheres Of Chaos
The most beautiful take on Asteroids ever made. Sadly, the older PC version is somewhat fucked beyond reasoning on Win7/8 PCs so you can’t really enjoy it as The Laser Gods intended anymore but the 2012 remake ably fills the void, even if it isn’t quite as astonishing to watch.
Spheres Of Chaos is astonishing to watch and listen to, the audio is a complete joy and pretty unsurpassed in the headwrecking stakes until Brainpipe years later.
It’d be nice to have both working properly as they’re suitably different feeling *hint* *hint*. Archivists and purists may be more interested in the Archimedes original, mind.
All available from Iain’s site.
Echoes/Echoes+
With Echoes+ still shamefully not released on the PC (HELLO FOG I WILL PAY YOU MONEYS FOR A COPY), you’ll have to make do with Echoes if you don’t have an XBLIG. However, that’s not really all that bad because it’s still a fairly great game, y’know?
A fast paced arena take on asteroids with a slight (but only slight) nod to the more casual player. For me, it’s all in the different modes with + but as I say, the original version is still pretty solid. Get both here.
‘Troid
‘Troid is fucking hard. I love it.
Yeah, you can also see the rest of the games Matt’s dropped out too. You really should, they’re all great.
Mutant Storm
PomPom were doing this indie shit before Cave Story existed. We forget this sort of thing way, way too easily. But anyway…
Mutant Storm is sorta the proto-indie-twin-sticker. It’s very, very much of its time although you wouldn’t really guess thanks to a glorious HD makeover. Before Geometry Wars warped everything that would come afterwards, Mutant Storm took its lead from Minter and from the arcades and mashed it all up into this thing, this wonderful thing.
Scoregasm
Everything Mutant Storm Empire should have dreamed to be but never was. Charlie’s arena shooter tour de force.
Bullet Candy was great but it’s the all out lunacy of Scoregasm that nails it entirely for me. Also, biscuits. Sometimes it’s about not just having one idea but having all the ideas and cramming them into a framework that accommodates all the ideas. That’s what Scoregasm is. It’s all the ideas.
DRM is something of all these things, I guess. It’s also, obviously, a bit SYNSO because I’m not quite done with that yet and doubt I will be until I punt SYNSO3 out the door once and for all and get some closure.
More on what it is in a day or so. It’s probably exactly what you think it is already, mind.