Squid yes, not so octopus…
…or something. Right, apologies for the past couple of days and the varying look of the site. Stupidly when we moved from Darren Hoyt’s excellent Mimbo template to something a little less cumbersome to post to - I rushed in and grabbed the nearest template to hand and it was, in retrospect, a bit of a daft thing to do as I hated it. Far too messy and far too cluttered.
Cymons Games
Ah, is it announcement time again? *checks watch* Indeed it is.
A long time ago in a forum not so far away, a chap called Guesst reared his head with what immediately struck me as a fantastic idea. The premise was simple, to ressurect the art of the type in program. For those of a more youthful nature, you may not recall a time when even games magazines used to come with a little section filled with games that you could type in and have something up and running with a little effort. They were, of course, invariably small, occasionally fun and sometimes, they got misprinted and you’d have to spend 4 hours poring over DATA statements to see where the typesetter had managed to make a minor but crucial error that stopped everything from performing as it should.
As time moved on, the focus of magazines shifted to concentrate primarily on reviews, opinion pieces and receiving bungs for higher review scores (what?), and of course - hardware got ever more complex making the art of the type in less and less a viable proposition as something to be published in a glossy magazine. Then came the internet, and tutorials became scattered around package specific sites or big coder-centric boards and the art of the concentrated mini-program for the general public all but disappeared.
So when Guesst began resurrecting the idea on the forum, we at Retro Remakes said “yay”. For a number of months, there was a regular update schedule of games to type in and lo, it was good. Stuff this special though, well - it doesn’t deserve to stay locked in our forum forever. And so, we offered Mr Guesst a bit of space to set up his Cymons Games on a website for all to see.
As you may have worked out by now, this is the announcement we’re proud to make. Cymons Games is now live and the update schedule has begun. So, ladies and gentlemen - if you’d care to shuffle your shoes in a Cymonly direction we’re sure that Mr Guesst has many wonders awaiting you.
Retro Reviews
We’re proud ashamed to announce the arrival of a sequence of retro game video reviews here at Remakes Towers via the medium of YouTube.
Recently, we made the discovery that most video reviews with the honourable exception of Yahtzee over on the wonderous Zero Punctuation are in fact rubbish. Honestly, take a wander onto YouTube and see if you can last 2 minutes of some bloke waffling in an incredibly tedious manner over the top of the game footage. No, really - do so. Because if you do, you soon realise that the intertubes are filled with unintentional comedy genius. With this in mind, we decided that it was time to take matters into our own hands.
Of course, it’d be easy to do better - and also, not much fun. So we wondered whether we could possibly do worse. We think we’ve succeeded. The Retro Remakes Retro Reviews plumb depths that you can barely imagine - so much so, that we’re pretty confident that our Retro Reviews are the worst on the entirety of the internet. Our reviews are filled with swearing, microphone pops, inaccuracies, outright lies, faked accents and the sounds of keyboards being bashed senseless. We do so hope you enjoy them.
#1: Caverns Of Kontania
Oddbob approaches Caverns Of Kontania, an action adventure game for the ZX Spectrum. With a stick.
#2: Battle Of The Toothpaste Tubes
Every computer should have a game that involves toothpaste tubes battling it out under the title of Battle Of The Toothpaste Tubes. TCK reviews the game with gusto, enthusiasm and glee.
#3: Drunk Policeman
Examining the phenomena that’s taking over the nation. Policeman getting drunk and sticking small o’s in inverted o’s for fun.
#4: Gyruss
Caff disappears up… well, you know this joke already don’t you?
#5: Samantha Fox Strip Poker
Betpet stops hunting small children to throw into the canal and directs his attention to a pair of jugs. On his table. At least they’re not badly digitised.
#6: Stop Ball
A game about stopping balls.
#7: Killapede
Mushroom! Argh, it’s a snake… or is it just Betpet returning once more to his chair of reviewing brilliance!
#8: Sqij
Caff makes a squidgy sound with his head and a keyboard. Very messy.
#9: Auf Weidershein Pet
Sadly cut short by the arrival of the police at Remakes Towers to arrest everyone involved in this terrible crime against YouTube.
#10: The Ninja Master
Happy Monster dresses in black and manages to hurt his hand on blocks of wood whilst no-one is looking.
Winds of Change
Like any community, RR is constantly evolving. People come and people go but it’s not specific people that I’d like to focus on here. I’d like to talk about the general feel of the place and how that is in a constant state of flux.
Our tale starts with a young Scottige getting the bus from his country home of the JSW yahoo group to pimp his wares in the bustling metropolis of Retro Remakes, or Remakes.org to you old timers out there. The former analogy is how it felt, coming from a small nice community into a much larger, busier community.
When I first arrived, there was always something happening. There was always some new remake to look forward to and some entertaining and humorous thread on the forum to keep you amused. The staff ( or reprobates to you and I ) were friendly and although were course in their humour and practical jokes, always went out of your way to make you feel welcome and point you in the right direction.
Feedback on projects was also a lot more forthcoming which in turn encouraged further development and spurred others into action to try and recreate that piece of nostalgia locked away in the back of their brain. For a few years this atmosphere remained pretty constant. While there were technical changes to the format and layout of the site, the community pretty much stayed the same. After a while this would change however.
It would not change to any great detriment and some would argue that nothing really changed. It may just be my perception of change due to being a long termer, like the crazy old man living on the hill watching the world go by.
In my opinion though, change did come. Enthusiasm seemed to wane for both remakes and feedback of remakes that did get a start. Regular remakers were now struggling to complete a project or even find the motivation to start a new one. The WIP forums became quite quiet with little in the way of encouragement. Even though most people remake games for their love of the original title, it is still disheartening not to get any feedback or your hard work to go unnoticed.
Now, I can’t say whether the chicken or the egg came first in this case but the lack of feedback to lack of games situation had a knock on effect with each other. This downward trend would put off potential new members of the community. A lot of this can be attributed to burnout I think with lots of people having worked so hard for so long just needing a time out. Online activities can take over your life if you’re not careful and before you know it you’re thinking to yourself, “Hang on a minute, I spend half my days on here.” I took a back seat myself for a while when the place started to feel more like work than a hobby, something I would recommend to anyone who spends a lot of time here and is feeling a bit down about the place as the break really does you good.
Another factor is that a lot of remakers had simply done the games they wanted to do. I personally don’t see much point in making a game if there is no personal motivation.
Your heart wont be in it and you can bet your arse your lack of enthusiasm will show in the final product.
Getting back to more recent times, people seem to be getting their mojo back and getting finger to keyboard again. The frequently run mini competitions have a lot to do with it I think. The often silly ideas and lack of real rules and pressure make for a lighter environment and often give people a taste of what made them want to code in the first place. The only recent element that I think that we can do without, and indeed appear to be rid of to a good degree, is the introduction of the dreaded hero worshippers. People that latch onto a game that is considered a “Biggie” and heap a sycophantic amount of praise on it as they are under some perception that this will somehow raise their status and they attack anyone that dare has an opinion different from, “This is perfect in every way.”
Now, people are free to speak their mind but it has an unfortunate trend of making sure that only these releases get attention. With everyone arguing over a few games, lots of others are going un noticed. This may come across as negative, not wanting people to praise games. Let me assure you that it is not like that at all. Positive praise just like constructive criticism is very welcome. Saying some thing’s shit for the sake of being nasty is just as bad.
You can just tell from some of the sycophants posts that they have no real knowledge of the game and just want to be seen hanging out with the cool kids at school. “It’s good in every way just like everything you do and anyone who disagrees is stupid.” is hardly constructive. Why is it good? Tell us! We want to know!
Those are the ones I have a problem with. The ones that have a go if your opinion dares differ from theirs.
It’s detrimental to the authors of these games too as focus in the threads turn to people beating drums and arguing instead of discussing the game the author has just spent months slaving over.
Thankfully that element seems to have mostly retreated into the ether. Bringing us to today, I would say there’s a return to the days of yore. The WIP forums are busier than they have been in ages and everyone seems to be supporting each other be it with good feedback for a piece genuinely enjoyed or constructive criticism to help better the final product. A lot of new faces combined with a lot of old timers slowly getting their mojo back is resulting in good times for the site once again. The atmosphere is light and the toy throwing is at a minimum.
There’s also a lot more discussion behind the scenes for future features, competition ideas and general ways to make it a better experience for everyone.
Anyway, is that the time? If you got this far, thanks for reading my ravings.
The Mini Compo Results
Well, looks like the Top Down 2d Mini Comp has come to an end, the voting has been cast and as yet, the winner not actually announced on the front page! Lummy, I’m slipping here.
It’s a massive congratulations to JTR with his excellent Rat Cave and to Splodgeman with his barely pronouncable (dear Firefox, this is a word - Ed) Abkharzia who both stormed to a joint victory using the powers of blood, sweat and darkness as their guide. In joint second place we have Gordon Kings Catacombs Of The Damned requiring a new rose to play and Endurions semi-sequel to his smash hit C64 game Joe Gunn, Joe Gunn Dungeon.
Massive thanks as always to everyone who took part, and it was nice to see a few folks rising to the mini-comp challenge for the first time. For those who’ve not been following the saga, you can find and download all the entries here and feel free to leave your comments on the forums.
Now that I’ve got a bit more spare time on my hands to pick up the reigns again on the site, we should be seeing a new competition soon. In the meantime, I’ll leave you all to enjoy the fruits of folks labours in the dungeon compo.
Stay on target, stay on target…..
Right, I had a wee bit of fun with this mini comp and managed to pull the finger out of my hiatus. Catacombs of the Damned, albeit short, marks a notch in representing another game that I’ve managed to trudge through to completion. This made me ponder about projects that never see the light of day. I was inspired by this compo idea as it was quite open ended within the genre. I thought this would encourage a good number of mini games that would be fun to play. There has been quite a good few been mentioned, but I fear that quite a few will never see the light of day.
RR, In my opinion, has always had 2 camps, and that settles down to 2 quite simple ones - those that do and those that don’t.
People like Smila, Ovine and Musti & Gigatron are quite prolific releasers. These are chaps that say they are going to do something, do it with the miniumum of distractions, then announce a successor. I admire the continuity of their releases.
The other camp are the eternal wipsters (/me waves at Minion). They are simply project workers, who easily get bored when the challenge of coding the difficult parts is over. The fun is gone and the next thing comes along. Perhaps once in a blue moon, we get a full release from them.
In truth, there is actually a third group. Those are the septic beings who always seem to talk a good game, but we never seem to see even the teeniest of an alpha from them. They want the social graces, and the glory and seem to bullshit about every aspect regarding coding/remaking without ever producing one line of code.
It’s Camp Number 2 though, that inspires me for this article. Why, when someone has made it so far, they give up before the finishing line? I don’t believe for one minute that they have the attention span of a goldfish, but sometimes it seems this way when the other Camp is churning out release after release.
I personally think that staying the course is more important than the coding itself. This site would not exist if it weren’t for the completed releases. Look at the excellent releases of the last few years. In taking one of many examples, Head Over Heels looked like a gargantuan project and my hat’s off to Goring and Tomkat for their endurance. That’s a marathon achievement lads.
I became a remaker because I wanted to release games that I loved. I know that mine are far from perfect, but I don’t have that perfectionist streak in me that others may do. Those that have this trait always see it as an art project that is never done.
I’m glad I don’t suffer from that and can move on to the next project once one is completed. Perhaps that can be said of everyone in Camp 1.
