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Name that Game [Game Detective Thread]
wilting
I had fun once and it was awfulRegistered User regular
I had fun once and it was awfulRegistered User regular
What is this?
This is a thread where we ask about those old games we half remember and help people find them. The odd Help/Advice thread with people looking for help finding a specific game crop up, but I'd like to see if a general thread, with a common game info format and list of unknown/found games, can get off the ground. If a specific game can't be found, perhaps a similar one that will scratch the itch can be.
The OP will be updated with a list/descriptions of games people are looking for, and that people have found.
Format
Game info in the OP will be presented in a standardized format, which people are encouraged to use in their requests for help.
That format is:
Game: A pseudo-title for unknown games/the title of found games.
[ spoiler ]
Platform: The platform(s) of the game.
Genre: The genre of the game, or necessary description when the genre is unusual.
Era: Information pertaining to when the game came out, such as a rough guess of a year, whether its 2D/3D, graphic/sound quality, etc.
Description:
A description of the game play of the game, and any other pertinent info such as plot, characters etc.
Style:
Aesthetic information about the game, visuals/sounds/music etc.
Eliminated: Games that this game is NOT
Searcher : The forum poster(s) looking for the game
Finder: The forum poster(s) who identified the game
[ /spoiler ]
See the two games I've listed as examples.
Lost Games
Amiga Laser Ship Thing
Castlevania-like Platfomer
Found Games
Kingdom of Kroz
The Perfect General II
Closing Comments
Any suggestions for improvements to the OP (such as good resources for finding games, or game info format suggestions) are most welcome.
I'm unsure if screenshots/images or other media aids should be included in the OP, but feel free to use them in the thread.
If people searching for a game remember more info, or clues are found, or they want to change their description, the OP can totally be updated.
This is a thread where we ask about those old games we half remember and help people find them. The odd Help/Advice thread with people looking for help finding a specific game crop up, but I'd like to see if a general thread, with a common game info format and list of unknown/found games, can get off the ground. If a specific game can't be found, perhaps a similar one that will scratch the itch can be.
The OP will be updated with a list/descriptions of games people are looking for, and that people have found.
Format
Game info in the OP will be presented in a standardized format, which people are encouraged to use in their requests for help.
That format is:
Game: A pseudo-title for unknown games/the title of found games.
[ spoiler ]
Platform: The platform(s) of the game.
Genre: The genre of the game, or necessary description when the genre is unusual.
Era: Information pertaining to when the game came out, such as a rough guess of a year, whether its 2D/3D, graphic/sound quality, etc.
Description:
A description of the game play of the game, and any other pertinent info such as plot, characters etc.
Style:
Aesthetic information about the game, visuals/sounds/music etc.
Eliminated: Games that this game is NOT
Searcher : The forum poster(s) looking for the game
Finder: The forum poster(s) who identified the game
[ /spoiler ]
See the two games I've listed as examples.
Lost Games
Amiga Laser Ship Thing
Platform: I'm pretty sure it was for Amiga, but again, ass young, all I know for sure is it wasn't dos and mac is doubtful.
Description:
Things I remember:
It was 3d, in the technicolor untextured shapes sense.
You flew around in a ship of some sort, and had lasers.
There was an ingame map, in the "orange peel that was removed in one piece and flattened out" style.
There was a set of blocks that was supposed to be a city/colony/something or other.
Said set of blocks was getting attacked by giant walker things with lasers, War of the Worlds style.
You could break the dome on top of the walkers, presumably breaking its laser, but not actually destroying it.
You could shoot out one of its feet, causing it to fall over.
You had a few van-looking ships that would autopilot into a walker's foot, destroying the foot.
At some point you get to go up into space and shoot at what is presumably where the walkers are coming from, I think it was a sort of hexagon framework thing.
I have no clue how much of this is actually real and how much is shit my child brain made up, but dammit I remember it and it would be nice if it was real.
Searcher: NEO|Phyte
Description:
Things I remember:
It was 3d, in the technicolor untextured shapes sense.
You flew around in a ship of some sort, and had lasers.
There was an ingame map, in the "orange peel that was removed in one piece and flattened out" style.
There was a set of blocks that was supposed to be a city/colony/something or other.
Said set of blocks was getting attacked by giant walker things with lasers, War of the Worlds style.
You could break the dome on top of the walkers, presumably breaking its laser, but not actually destroying it.
You could shoot out one of its feet, causing it to fall over.
You had a few van-looking ships that would autopilot into a walker's foot, destroying the foot.
At some point you get to go up into space and shoot at what is presumably where the walkers are coming from, I think it was a sort of hexagon framework thing.
I have no clue how much of this is actually real and how much is shit my child brain made up, but dammit I remember it and it would be nice if it was real.
Searcher: NEO|Phyte
Castlevania-like Platfomer
Platform: PC
Genre: Platformer
Era: Mid 90s? 2D.
Description:
Very much a haunted castle/castlevania like game (but apparently not actually a castlevania game, as far as I can tell). Secret rooms and whatnot. I recall a rising water level being a significant feature of a level, maybe entire flooding of a room that had to be escaped from. Possibly rooms also rotated/turned upside down, though I'm not certain about that.
Items collected included little swords and golden goblets. The player, weapons or enemies I remember nothing about.
Style:
Bright strong purples/blues come to mind, with a general medieval/castle style. Yellow objects. I recall a little *ding* sound when items (swords?) or treasure would drop/were collected. The water effects were pretty impressive.
Eliminated: Rusty
Demon Castle Special: Kid Dracula
Possible: Hocus Pocus
Searcher: Wilting
Genre: Platformer
Era: Mid 90s? 2D.
Description:
Very much a haunted castle/castlevania like game (but apparently not actually a castlevania game, as far as I can tell). Secret rooms and whatnot. I recall a rising water level being a significant feature of a level, maybe entire flooding of a room that had to be escaped from. Possibly rooms also rotated/turned upside down, though I'm not certain about that.
Items collected included little swords and golden goblets. The player, weapons or enemies I remember nothing about.
Style:
Bright strong purples/blues come to mind, with a general medieval/castle style. Yellow objects. I recall a little *ding* sound when items (swords?) or treasure would drop/were collected. The water effects were pretty impressive.
Eliminated: Rusty
Demon Castle Special: Kid Dracula
Possible: Hocus Pocus
Searcher: Wilting
Found Games
Kingdom of Kroz
Platform: PC
Genre: Dungeon Crawler?
Era: Early 90's
Description:
Everything was made with ascii characters. You walked around as an @ I think, can't remember. Each level was one screen big. You had a start and end in the level. I know you had whips you used to clear things. I remember there being monsters that moved varing speeds. I also am sure that at least one level had gravity. I felt like you had a score and it was a balance between get more score, and save whips to get to exit. I remember having to save whips to do stuff. I want to say it started with a b, and for some reason think bjork?
Eliminated: Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup
Searcher: DyasAlure
Finder: DyasAlure
Genre: Dungeon Crawler?
Era: Early 90's
Description:
Everything was made with ascii characters. You walked around as an @ I think, can't remember. Each level was one screen big. You had a start and end in the level. I know you had whips you used to clear things. I remember there being monsters that moved varing speeds. I also am sure that at least one level had gravity. I felt like you had a score and it was a balance between get more score, and save whips to get to exit. I remember having to save whips to do stuff. I want to say it started with a b, and for some reason think bjork?
Eliminated: Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup
Searcher: DyasAlure
Finder: DyasAlure
The Perfect General II
Platform: PC
Genre: Turn Based Strategy
Era: Mid 90s? 2D.
Description:
A hex based wargame of soldiers/tanks, with a title maybe including "general" or "commander" or something. Not a panzer general type, more stylized than realistic, with opposing sides using the same units in red or blue. I only played the demo, where you started at the bottom of the map (although I believe you could play as the defender) with the objective to capture a number of cities in a certain number of turns.
Units mostly engaged each other at range, but I recall using armoured cars in particular to 'assault' cities, which resulted in the destruction of the attacking or defending unit. Bridges could be destroyed, with yellow dots beside them indicating their condition. Before the mission started, you purchased and deployed your units. I'm not sure if you could purchase units during a mission.
Units I remember:
Infantry
Bazooka Infantry
Armoured Car
Armoured Car with Machine Gun (for AA) (really difficult to dislodge from city tiles)
Light Tank
Medium Tank
Heavy Tank (?)
Elephant Tank
Mobile Artillery
Light Artillery (stationary, area of effect weapon, long range, explosion/fire would last for a while, preventing movement)
Heavy Artillery (stationary, area of effect weapon, really long range (like half the map), explosion/fire would last for a while, preventing movement)
Plane (propeller aircraft with the appearance of a ww2 bomber)
Style:
Top down view (as opposed to a side on advance war/panzer general spirte), with strong red/blues/yellows. Turrets/weapons/detailing on units was often grey. Music was military sounding. Weapon firing had a 'pop' kind of sound, excluding machine guns, or artillery which had a barrage sound. Bullets/projectiles were little round grey balls. City assaults were noisy affairs.
Searcher: Wilting
Finder: Orogogus
Genre: Turn Based Strategy
Era: Mid 90s? 2D.
Description:
A hex based wargame of soldiers/tanks, with a title maybe including "general" or "commander" or something. Not a panzer general type, more stylized than realistic, with opposing sides using the same units in red or blue. I only played the demo, where you started at the bottom of the map (although I believe you could play as the defender) with the objective to capture a number of cities in a certain number of turns.
Units mostly engaged each other at range, but I recall using armoured cars in particular to 'assault' cities, which resulted in the destruction of the attacking or defending unit. Bridges could be destroyed, with yellow dots beside them indicating their condition. Before the mission started, you purchased and deployed your units. I'm not sure if you could purchase units during a mission.
Units I remember:
Infantry
Bazooka Infantry
Armoured Car
Armoured Car with Machine Gun (for AA) (really difficult to dislodge from city tiles)
Light Tank
Medium Tank
Heavy Tank (?)
Elephant Tank
Mobile Artillery
Light Artillery (stationary, area of effect weapon, long range, explosion/fire would last for a while, preventing movement)
Heavy Artillery (stationary, area of effect weapon, really long range (like half the map), explosion/fire would last for a while, preventing movement)
Plane (propeller aircraft with the appearance of a ww2 bomber)
Style:
Top down view (as opposed to a side on advance war/panzer general spirte), with strong red/blues/yellows. Turrets/weapons/detailing on units was often grey. Music was military sounding. Weapon firing had a 'pop' kind of sound, excluding machine guns, or artillery which had a barrage sound. Bullets/projectiles were little round grey balls. City assaults were noisy affairs.
Searcher: Wilting
Finder: Orogogus
Closing Comments
Any suggestions for improvements to the OP (such as good resources for finding games, or game info format suggestions) are most welcome.
I'm unsure if screenshots/images or other media aids should be included in the OP, but feel free to use them in the thread.
If people searching for a game remember more info, or clues are found, or they want to change their description, the OP can totally be updated.
wilting on
0
Posts
Genre: Dungeon Crawler?
Era: Early 90's
Description"
Everything was made with ascii characters. You walked around as an @ I think, can't remember. Each level was one screen big. You had a start and end in the level. I know you had whips you used to clear things. I remember there being monsters that moved varing speeds. I also am sure that at least one level had gravity. I felt like you had a score and it was a balance between get more score, and save whips to get to exit. I remember having to save whips to do stuff. I want to say it started with a b, and for some reason think bjork?
Eleminated Games:
Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup
Found Game:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Kroz
Is it Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup? (Literally first google result).
I guess that's only recent. Might have to add 'eliminated games' to the format.
Nope, that is not it. It was more Diablo 3 like in the fact that it was live game. You didn't type commands. I'm sure Space was the use whip command, and other than that arrows to move.
Edit:
Found it!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Kroz
Funny, it bugged me since around 6pm on sunday PST, and I couldn't find it. Than I post here with your thread and find it.
My two games have been bugging me for years.
I got nothing on either, otherwise I'd be all over it. I remember one game mildly close the the castlevania game, maybe you're a vampires son or something but like a kid. Very arcadey/cartoonish looking. but I have no idea what the game was nor what system.
Origin: Broncbuster
My guess for the title in question would be Rusty
I'm pretty sure it was for Amiga, but again, ass young, all I know for sure is it wasn't dos and mac is doubtful.
Things I remember:
It was 3d, in the technicolor untextured shapes sense.
You flew around in a ship of some sort, and had lasers.
There was an ingame map, in the "orange peel that was removed in one piece and flattened out" style.
There was a set of blocks that was supposed to be a city/colony/something or other.
Said set of blocks was getting attacked by giant walker things with lasers, War of the Worlds style.
You could break the dome on top of the walkers, presumably breaking its laser, but not actually destroying it.
You could shoot out one of its feet, causing it to fall over.
You had a few van-looking ships that would autopilot into a walker's foot, destroying the foot.
At some point you get to go up into space and shoot at what is presumably where the walkers are coming from, I think it was a sort of hexagon framework thing.
I have no clue how much of this is actually real and how much is shit my child brain made up, but dammit I remember it and it would be nice if it was real.
Warframe/Steam: NFyt
@B:L
Thanks for the suggestions, sadly neither of them are it (seen rusty before).
The tank hex & turn-based strategy is probably The Perfect General II.
The Perfect General II is spot on, thanks! I thought Hocus Pocus might be this game before, but certain things don't quite add up, I'm not sure to be honest.
The game is a blue car/jet from a semi top down view and the jet car has to make it over platforms while heading in towards the top direction, while the platform can get smaller and more trickey to navigate. No, its not from first person from windows 95 space game from windows arcade, that's not the game.
There was also a Command and Conqor game that was in first person. You could be a mechanic and drive vehicles, tanks, a sniper class and a few others.
The object of the game was like original rts, you had to kill the other persons base. You could also repair the buildings in the base by teaming up with other engineers.
C&C Renegade multiplayer is the second one.
No clue on the first.
SkyRoads
I guess I need to be as diligent with the gb as I was on nes, it felt very capcom to me so I listened to all the capcom nes songs
Im pretty sure it was for the Commodore 64, but it may have been an Amiga title. Or both!
This was a post-apocalyptic open world top-down shooter. You played as a dude and you also had a car. I think it was red. You drove around and could get out if the car and enter buildings. I think your enemies were either primarily or entirely zombies. The buildings you entered would have ammo and gas. Also a lot of green oozy barrels. Acid I think? I think there were acid pools too.
The end goal or maybe only the goal of the first chapter was to make it to some kind of arena.
It was kind of like Autoduel but more advanced and less open worldy.
I know it's the wrong system, but that sounds amazingly like Mad Max for the NES. Perhaps it was on one of those two consoles as well?
PSN: Wstfgl | GamerTag: An Evil Plan | Battle.net: FallenIdle#1970
Hit me up on BoardGameArena! User: Loaded D1
Not quite a ninja, but maybe the Jackie Chan game?
Genre: Shooter-ish
For years I haven't been able to remember a game I played one weekend at a friends' house. It was on the NES, and it was top down. Sort of like Contra, if the camera was over the players heads and not to the side. It was co-op, but I don't recall if you had a choice in character. You shot generic guns and moved up the screen and shot more guys. The one specific scene I remember was we fought a boss in a sewer, and when we won he picked us up, spun in a circle like he was throwing a discus, and tossed us out of the sewer and into the next level.
Platform: Arcade
Genre: Beat'em up (like Double Dragon)
Era: Mid(?) 90's
This game was a lot like River City Ransom, but the only part I can recall and explain was a bonus area where we were in these little ships, or cars. We had to quickly go down corridors and could pick different paths, but if one of us chose wrong then both players had to back up so they could go down the correct one. I feel like this bonus level was electrified looking in some way. I don't expect anyone to know this one, heh.
I'm pretty sure it was SNES but it may have been sega or NES. He had all three.
Platform: SNES (probably. Possibly NES or SEGA)
Genre: Metroidvania
Mostly all I can remember now is that it was a metroidvania, except you were in a ship, flying around tunnels and stuff. You could get upgrades for your ship. If you can't figure it out from that, I won't be upset, but if I don't ask, I'll never know, right?
Eliminated games:
Blaster Master
Probably a long shot, since it's such a well-known game, but that description could fit Blaster Master.
Pretty sure this is Sub-Terrania. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-Terrania
Kid Niki Radical Ninja www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4CBb_FGTHM
It's literally been decades since I played it, but could it have been Guerilla War? I dug up this video, but only watched part of it:
There was also Heavy Barrel, but I don't remember if that had co-op.
And there's always the Ikari Warrior games.
My Backloggery
Renegade?
Sounds like Gradius III or maybe certain stages in Darius.
or if the tunnels were organic and it was a NES game, maybe Abadox
Hmm, maybe. I'll try it when I get home. The art style seems familiar...
I don't think so. The art seems more realistic than what my foggy memory thinks it was :P. I'll try it too.
Thanks, guys!
Sounds like Section Z to me.
twitch.tv/Taramoor
@TaramoorPlays
Taramoor on Youtube
Could it have been Guardian Legend for the NES? I never played it myself, but it's often lauded as being ahead of its time. Looks like a standard vertical shmup at first, but the next area you're walking around like in Blaster Master. I believe you can upgrade the ship too.
My Backloggery