November 2019 – Something Odd!

Creeper World 3 – Fortress Siege

This game is ridiculous. I love it. If you’re a fan of tower defense games you’ll love this real time strategy game. Wikipedia describes it as a,

mix of real-time strategy and tower defense, where there is only one enemy and it can only be repelled rather than destroyed. The player must hold back a purple mass called the “Creeper”, which has already destroyed most of humanity and is now attacking Odin City, humanity’s last bastion. This is done by placing towers onto the battlefield which shoot at the Creeper. The main goal of the game is to connect the player’s base to energy totems through the use of energy collectors and relays; doing so opens a jump gate which allows Odin City to teleport to a new planet and attempt to escape the Creeper again.

Steam says I’ve played close to 100 hours in the game, many of those hours in frustration or getting overwhelmed before figuring out how to defeat a level.

It’s like tower defense except that the enemy is a liquid that comes at you from all directions so you have to build towers to protect your assets everywhere. I find most levels have an initial “OMG Moment” at the start where it all seems too much, but by building up your batteries, and your towers you’ll soon be fighting back.

Sometimes it’s a slog, and the last level I just played is one such map. Fortress Siege by Blaze in the Alpha Sector is one to leave until you’ve had plenty of practice. 4 emitters spew out vast amounts of creeper. It’s hard enough just keeping it back but advancing is on another level of difficulty altogether!

I did eventually defeat the map and once one of the emitters fell it was plain sailing. I earned two achievements playing this one:

Build 25 shields in a mission.
Build 25 Berthas in a mission.

Maybe a little excessive, but I swear they were needed! For a taste of what it’s like have a look at this video.

Disappointingly only one of my friends on Steam has the game. Check out the reviews on Steam. Recent reviews are “very positive” while all reviews are “overwhelmingly positive”.

Creeper World 4 is on the way too, but there’s no release date for it. It’ll be done when it’s done to paraphrase the developer but I’m looking forward to it already. It looks great!

RIP Niall Tóibín

Another giant of Irish entertainment and theatre has passed away. Niall Tóibín died today at the age of 89, only a week shy of his 90th birthday party.

Thanks Damien for the longer video and for linking to this article on the Examiner website.

Retro Asylum on Stunt Car Racer

The guys on the Retro Asylum podcast played Stunt Car Racer this month. That game is one of my favourites. A wild roller coaster of a game where you literally drive a car around a roller coaster.

I played the C64 version for hours on end and listening to them prompted me to set up FS-UAE again as I wanted to try out the Amiga version once more. I think I’ve only ever played that version in emulation as I didn’t have the game when I had an Amiga 500.

Anyway, FS-UAE is a great emulator based on the Winuae Amiga emulator. It uses openretro.org for database files including graphics and game information which is really helpful. It’s sort of an Amiga version of Gamebase64! Here’s a video describing how to set it up. I’ll leave it up to you to find the games and everything else but it’s not hard to find them.

Stunt Car Racer is an amazing game, and in my opinion still holds up today as a decent game. Sure, the graphics are simplistic, sound is limited but what is there is superbly polished.

The Amiga and Atari ST versions even had simultaneous multiplayer which I sadly never experienced but I’d love to know if FS-UAE could handle using some sort of virtual null modem cable to connect emulators on two machines together. It does emulate the Amiga serial port so there might be hope for the future. I found this thread about Winuae but people there didn’t have much luck.

So, what does Stunt Car Racer look like? Here’s someone who doesn’t know how to play it but he’s very entertaining and he learns as he goes..

The game is set on a roller coaster. Timing and speed are everything. You have to hit ramps at the right speed to jump gaps, and failing to line up a turn or a jump in time would result in a crash.

Here’s a much better driver, including the TNT version which I haven’t played yet but looks hard as nails!

[1] This game was created by AmiGer/CARE (http://www.discreetfx.com/care/) by modifying the original game Stunt Car Racer. The TNT of the title stands for “The New Tracks”. A track designer was written in Delphi and used to create 8 new tracks to race. The title screen and menu screen have been modified, as well as the colour palette. [2] The disk version has the track colours incorrect in the track preview window – they retain the reds from the original. The WHDLoad version fixes this problem. [3] 2-player mode via null-modem connection.

This is one of the few games I play exclusively with the keyboard. Start a race and press “p” to pause, then f1 to redefine the keys. I usually use , . t g [space] and then press o to unpause.

Stunt Car Racer appeared on multiple platforms: Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64, Speccy, and Amstrad machines all had versions. Here’s a video comparing them. It’s amazing what Geoff Crammond and porting teams did back then!

Earlier this year, (2019 for those coming across this post in the future), the game was ported to the BBC Master and it flies along!

That looks way smoother and faster than the C64 version!

There is a sort-of modern remake. The game Assetto Corsa features the first track!

Stunt Car Racer is an amazing racing game. Track down the Amiga version, fire up Winuae or FS-UAE and give it a whirl. You’ll love it!

RIP Gay Byrne

Like most Irish people my age and older I was shocked to hear about the death of Gay Byrne today. He was ever present in Irish daily life as he presented a daily radio show and a talk show on Friday evenings.

If you’re not yet 40 or not familiar with Gaybo because you haven’t lived here, @PantiBliss explained how big an influence he had on Ireland in this tweet.

The #RIPGaybo hashtag on Twitter and in part Irish Twitter is a place of mourning today.

https://twitter.com/daithigor/status/1191367626443968513

https://twitter.com/BigBoyler/status/1191420019386671105

If you watched Stephen Fry on God then you’ve watched Gay in action. Over 8m people have watched this video!

Stephen himself tweeted today about Gay, with this message sent to one of our national radio stations:

RTÉ published this post about Gay featuring lots of the “finest moments” from the Late Late Show. I couldn’t watch many of them for some reason but maybe you can. They don’t load in Firefox for me, even when I try to load them directly. I do remember Boyzone’s first public appearance on the Late Late. Can’t believe that was in 1993!

Every December The Late Late Show has a toy show episode. Here’s one with Zig & Zag & Dustin from 1992. I have to admit I never saw this clip but it made me laugh!