Just a middle aged Canuck who grew up in the 8 bit world and still wants to spend time there.
When the unfamiliar imagine video games, a few common images might occur to them: mowing down fields of descending aliens, in the vein Space Invaders, or perhaps navigating a running, jumping figure through a pixelated landscape à la Super Mario Bros. After that, they might describe something like Blockbuster.
Stronghold is one of those games which I have personally never stopped playing since 1993. Not every day, not every week, but with an almost alarming regularity, I keep coming back to it. Which made it all the more painful that this game was covered by what was probably the worst review of the complete website. Time to alleviate this lack.
Mr Creosote
On to equally gloomy themes, SuperKarts is all about polluting the environment irreparably until our earth turns into a literal hell hole, with the last survivors being forced by mutant gods to perform deadly races for their amusement… or is it?
Mr Creosote
Aren't we all in the mood for a bit of apocalyptic material right now? Yup, time to re-visit game ID 1 of our database. Actually, It Came From the Desert wasn't the very first game to be covered here, though a later database transformation moved it forward to the beginning of the list. Nevertheless, this was a trip back to the "early days" for sure. It was a relief to see this beloved game held up well.
Mr Creosote
Lazy policeman drinking coffee and eating donuts… well, at least the landscape is quite scenic, isn't it? And I can assure you the other side of the law, the illegal booze smuggler organization the player belongs to in Moonshine Racers, doesn't exactly come across as less of a cliché. It's a big part of the fun.
Mr Creosote
Even in 1993 this game's title came across like pure provocation. Aufschwung Ost? All the big promises of social and economical upturn after the so-called German reunification of 1990 had burst like the empty bubble it had been. Bleak reality had caught up with all those who had lived a lollipop coloured dream for a brief time. If the game is to be believed, it more than anything revealed how big a lie it had all been. How foreseeable the looming disaster should have been.
Mr Creosote
Surprise, surprise: here is the sequel to last week's game. Discovery – In the Steps of Columbus, released in 1992 appropriately, has actually been on our website for a long time, though coverage left a bit to be desired. So here we go again.
Mr Creosote
Going even more obscure, Merchant Colony is a game which for sure you have never heard of. If you have… congratulations, you are one out of thousands. Though for sure, you have played other games from Impressions, as they became quite famous by the mid-90s. If you would like to know where they started, this is your opportunity!
Mr Creosote
Trying to brighten the moods again a little, you know what always works to get people entertained? Templar conspiracies. Already before the more famous Broken Sword, there was Time Gate: Knight's Chase. Though you may not have noticed back then, as it flew way below the general public's radar.
Mr Creosote
These days, new year is not so much a time of big bang and loud fireworks. What we have behind us is very likely the weirdest year of many people's lifetime so far. We kept all this out of the website on purpose, but nevertheless, it is clearly the right moment for humility and introspection. Considering and maybe re-considering what we're doing, what we're doing well and what is maybe just eating our time with no or little payoff.
So this is what we did. Following some intense discussions (not all public), The Good Old Days is changing. Slowly, but surely. Exactly in the way I said: trying to focus on what we do best, saving time on what maybe others can do better. For instance, we've now finally written down some quality standards for reviews. We're also busy going through all existing contents, classifying and improving where we can.
One thing you may have noticed is that some old game reviews are being moved to "archived" status. We don't plan to remove any existing contents, don't worry. Though this indeed should signpost that as per today, we're not fully happy with those older contents anymore. This doesn't mean anyone did anything wrong at the time. We've been online for almost 21 years now. What constitutes a good game review has evolved over the years. For instance, when we started out, highly detailed description of game mechanics, really explaining how a game plays were still the norm. By now, other media (such as Let's Play videos) have emerged which put a big question mark to the usefulness of doing this in writing. Nowadays, we are trying to write much more about interpretation, the big picture and historical classification.
With the amount of stuff we have produced over those years, all this takes time. We're proceeding step by step while obviously also keeping the site running with new contents, but sometimes also re-visiting already covered games with new thoughts. In some cases, former authors are not available anymore to re-work old contents, so at some point, we will have to take decisions concerning those items. It will all happen in due time.
A time of change, of course, is also a good opportunity for new beginnings. Where do you think the site should go? What is it that you visitors are really looking for? Feel free to share your thoughts in the forum. Here is to a better new year!
Mr Creosote
This promotional claim, you will find paraphrased in the coverage of most websites reporting about this recently released game. Excitement seems generally high – another boxed release of a new game for most classic computer systems by the same people who already brought us Hibernated just 1.5 years before? Very cool for sure! Though as it is our habit, we don't content ourselves with just reproducing official announcements here, but we look beyond the cover.
Mr Creosote