Happy Holidays 2024!

Here we are at the end of yet another year...so welcome to the traditional end-of-year roundup! As always, a lot was going on this year so I was again unable to keep up the monthly news/review cadence. But plenty of updates and game information was sorted out, and below another tradition will be continued with a handfull of mini-reviews! This time around I've picked out four games which are presented below in ascending order, from worst to best. Outside of the the classic games realm, what games have I been playing this year? I wish there was more time, so not much and I'm probably not the person to look to if you want reviews of the very latest and greatest. This year, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and Super Mario Wonder have been my games of choice; I highly recommend both, they're outstanding! Meanwhile, my nephew has been engrossed in Minecraft and Roblox; he doesn't seem to be taking to the adventures and RPG's that I love. Could be he's still too young or just has different tastes, but either way I'm glad he's having fun! That's enough rambling for now, let's get to it...

First, let's take a look at this year's database stats:

• Game listings: 3125
• Screenshots: 60850 (4043 screenshot groups)
• Cover scans and photos: 12974 (2211 cover groups)
• Other photographs: 15811 (2102 picture groups)
• Technical specs: 8080
• Game credits: 3052
• Releases: 13172
• Game logos: 1593
• Company logos: 152
• Related game groups: 256
• Instruction Manuals / Documents: 1138 (825 games)
• Game Overviews: 896 (461 games)
• Advertisement scans: 4295 (2351 groups for 1771 games/tech specs/game groups)

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  Matterhorn Screamer!

  Disney was apparently keen on getting into the video games market, and why not? Seems like a great way to make some money licensing stories and characters. And by 1988 they weren't new to this either, with Disney themed games going all the way back to the early 1980's with several Atari 2600 titles, a few from Sierra, and many more having been released. Matterhorn Screamer! for the IBM PC is yet another, this time from Hi-Tech Expressions and featuring Goofy trying to climb the famed Matterhorn. Conceptually, it's not a bad idea; it might not be particularly innovative or anything, but if done right could be a fun game with a popular Disney character. Unfortunately, this one turned out terrible. Graphically, the game is pretty decent for 4-color CGA graphics. However by 1988 CGA only graphics was a little dated looking but this was typical for Hi-Tech Expressions, likely to keep development costs low and the game budget priced. The main issue with the graphics isn't so much how they look as how they animate. Characters are very flickery! Additionally, when Goofy jumps horizontally he disappears entirely for a moment and reappears further over making the whole horizontal jump confusing and cheap looking. To make your way from screen to screen can take some guesswork and memorization; it's not always obvious where the point you can jump from one platform to another is, and in some cases a mistake will cost a life. To jump, you need to move the joystick a direction and push the button — up to jump up, down to jump to a lower platform, and so on. I found it's a bit unintuitive, actually, plus it's not always clear to new players if you should jump horizontally, down, or up when the platforms aren't too far apart. Given that jumping to different platforms is a key part of the gameplay, that's not a good thing to have happen. The controls are rather sluggish too, making avoiding the goats and snowmen more difficult and annoying than it should be whether you have a joystick or just the keyboard. Too bad, as overall, the control issues and flickering kill what could have otherwise been a fun little game. There were also Apple II and Commodore 64 versions which each have graphics that are more colorful but not as sharp as the PC version; they also improve on the animation greatly, so they are definitely preferred to the PC release. Unfortunately, the clunky jumping mechanism remains so those versions, while better, retain that annoying jumping factor so they still aren't as fun as they should have been. Soundwise, there's not much - the PC and Apple II versions have typical internal speaker sounds, but the Commodore 64 version is really disappointing - despite the capabilities of those computers the game only uses a single voice sounding not that much different than the other versions.

  Rating: D
• 

  Nord and Bert Couldn't Make Head or Tail of It

  Nord and Bert is a fairly unusual entry in Infocom's catalog of text-based adventure games! Rather than present a single story, it is broken up into eight chapters with each chapter presenting a different style of wordplay with a different goal. Set in the town of Punster, Idioms and clichés have somehow become literal and (as tends to happen) it's up to the player to fix all of the chaos. The puzzles are not of the usual adventure game type, and instead involve providing correct responses that correspond to the wordplay style of each chapter. As an example, early on you'll come across a molehill blocking your path; to get past it, you'll need to make a mountain out of a molehill. The game is filled with creative wordplay like this, however, this also makes the game harder for many players as there aren't many clues actually in the game itself — you need to have on hand a decent knowledge of the English language and its idioms. If you are a master linguist, this is definitely a game you'll want to check out for it's unusual style and great humor. Even if you aren't, it's worth trying as it does have some pretty good entertainment value for a while. Unfortunately, it will also become frustrating quickly if you aren't already familiar with the many phrases and references needed to complete the game which is why I decided to give this one a C rating. But despite that it is still a rather humerous adventure and a clever change from your typical interactive fiction!

  Rating: C
• 

  Winter Games

  Time for the B review! For this let's take a quick look at Winter Games for the IBM PC. As part of Epyx "Games" series, you'll be familiar with the formula if you've played any entry in the series. Based on Olympic events (this time for the winter games, of course), up to eight players can compete for the best score! Players can choose different countries to represent and compete in the whole series of events or just practice one or two. Gameplay characteristics can vary from event to event, and there are a few joystick-waggling races that seemed to become common for sports games of the era. Some of the events take a bit of practice; for instance, you'll want to check the manual for learning how to perform moves in figure skating, and getting the touch for the fast paced bobsled will take a few tries. But overall the whole "games" series formula proved to be a winner for Epyx, and Winter Games didn't dissapoint and is quite fun to play. Winter Games originated on the Commodore 64, and it should be no surprise that is the best version in terms of graphics and sound. The IBM PC version works fine gameplay wise, but unfortunately Epyx didn't take advantage of PC hardware well. The graphics are CGA only, so the colorful 16 color images found in the original are reduced to CGA's famed cyan, magenta, white, and black. The graphics are essentially a direct conversion of the C64 version — that includes the blocky 160x200 resolutions parts of the image. CGA had fewer colors, but the graphics could have been much sharper and more detailed to make up for it. It's unfortunate no effort was made to improve here; while CGA only was common at the time, 16 color EGA and/or Tandy/PCjr would have been possible which would have made for a great addition. Probably they were keeping costs low for the port and dropping support for hardware that wasn't yet commonly owned made financial sense, but still was always a disappointment. Despite the less than ideal graphics, though, the Winter Games gameplay is in tact and is a title I thoroughly enjoyed at the time.

  Rating: B
• 

  Flight Assignment: A.T.P. (Airline Transport Pilot)

  I don't usually review games I haven't played a lot or aren't in a genre I'm fond of...and, 2024 has been a difficult year here at PixelatedArcade. Back in early September, we lost one of the best pilots the world has ever known; very unexpectedly, our close friend Brian passed away. He was a man who loved flight; from the earliest years, he was fascinated by and studied flight. By high school he was already flying Cessna's and shortly after graduating college began his career as an airline pilot and worked his way up to captain of 737's for Jet Blue. His dedication to the craft was unparalled, and even when relaxing and taking time to play video games his game of choice was a realistic flight simulator, and A.T.P. was one of those he immediately snagged when it first came out. While flight simulators haven't ever been something I'm into, for someone like Brian it was perfect — it offered a realistic airline flight experience with realistic flight characteristics, sharp graphics, and even featured synthesized voices for the control tower and more. A wide variety of graphics hardware was supported, so the game looked optimal on almost any computer of the era. You could even adjust the speed of flights; if you wanted, a flight in the game would take just as long as in the real world! Or, if preferred, parts of it could be sped up so a portion of the trip that didn't require much interaction was essentially fast-forwarded. Needless to say, Brian preferred the realistic time experience! The developer, subLOGIC, was of course no strangers to the flight simulation genre, with many iterations of flight simulators already under their belt. And A.T.P. was their latest and greatest effort. This tragedy has been difficult to put into words; it's not much, but I wanted to at least leave this small memorial. Brian is among the best the world has known, dedicated to family, friends, and the phenomenon of flight; based on his enjoyment of this title, it is awarded a solid A.

  Rating: A

That's all of the mini-reviews for now. As always, a lot of work took place behind the scenes that's not necessarily visible immediately. We had a number of infrastructure and code updates to improve reliability and performance as well as enhance the site features. Some of these new features include starting to add product catalog scans to companies, such as these for Atari, and in the technical specs we quietly started adding what resolution games use for some systems and hardware. Some of these features are still a little experimental, and I'll add some more improvements and detail at a later date. The video resolutions are particularly tricky as it's not as straight forward as it might seem when it comes to old hardware; tricks like composite artifacts and display list interrupts make noting what a game is doing visually more complicated than it would appear at first glance. And finally, while not live as of this writing, a new version of PixelatedImages has been in the works and should be up very shortly (I hope!). It will take a while to reload all of the photos there, but we'll get there eventually; It's been a tough and busy year for sure! That's all for this update; enjoy the holidays, and until next time stay safe, stay healthy, and take care!