To put the wraps on the online edition of GameSpite Quarterly 5 (save those danged game roundups), we have the first part of a double-header about noir and adventure games. Here’s the first part, wherein we explore Mac games about people (namely, players) dying in a multitude of ways, all lovingly preserved in the transition to NES. Exciting!
I didn’t learn that Shadowgate was originally a HyperCard app until a couple of years ago. The irony is that the NES version inspired me to spend quite a few of my high school lunch hours in the Mac lab putting together my own point-n-click stack. Good times.
I love the MacVentures, especially Shadowgate because of all those ways you can die and kill yourself. Deja Vu’s definitely more restrained in that regard, though your gun’s pretty much a Game Over trigger depending on where and when you use it. Uninvited was pretty boring, though.
With the ever present time limit being relegated to the unnecessary ruby item on NES, you really have to be looking to die. For a haunted mansion, it’s pretty empty. More of my fun came from vandalism that death seeking in that one.
As for Deja Vu II, it’s definitely way more cruel on the death front than its predecessor. My favorite death’s definitely pissing off the dog by hitting it or trying to harm its master.
I had Shadowgate and Deja Vu, both of which were pretty easy. Not because they necessarily were easy, but because I had Nintendo Power and no qualms about using them at the time.
Unfortunately, two of my copies of Deja Vu made the ultimate sacrifice in creating a couple of custom carts (Earth Bound and Radia). That being said, I can put the old ROMs back in if necessary.
I made my first game in Hypercard. I was 8.
Occasionally I’m tempted to see if the old floppies still read and if I can throw together a Flash version.
Shadowgate, or at least the NES port of it, wasn’t *quite*
as evil as presented here. The room before the dragon was cold, for
instance, so going back into it reset how long the shield would
hold out. Likewise, the troll wasn’t solved by paying a toll; you
had to kill him the first time, and just use a spell to bypass him
subsequent times. Finally, when you revived from a death (including
death by lack of light), you were given a finite but usable amount
of torch life, no matter how many torches you had left. As far as I
know, there were only a few ways to leave the game unwinnable, such
as drinking all the bottle 2s (which made you float) without using
one to get past the rickety bridge.
How did I not know the MacVenture games were in HyperCard? My HyperCard fanboy cred is taking a dire beating, here. I did make my own point-and-click too, though. If I can get it running and screen-shot-able, maybe I”ll do a mini LP one day.
I hate to nitpick, but I don’t think these actually were written in HyperCard. It looks like Deja Vu predates HyperCard by a couple years, in fact.
I love HyperCard regardless, though. It’s pretty much where I learned to program.