What did you feel was missing from the 16bit home computer game libraries?

[CCCP alert]

Fractals!

As an Atari/C64 user in the early-late eighties I had played all 3 of the Lucasfilm Games fractal releases. I really looked forward to what could be done with such a massive palette and fast 68000 of both the ST or Amiga, but nothing ever did. It's like "here are some polygons, shut up!" and I was really underwhelmed with 3D games unless it was quite a unique gaming experience like Zarch/Virus.

Another thing was graphic adventures, on the C64 some were not just static graphics but animated scenes. I loved the Magnetic Scrolls adventures but nobody did things like Castle of Terror which had animated graphic scenes and some atmospheric music. I always thought "it would be awesome to actually see Kronos flying into the scene as the text describes" on The Pawn, which still blew me away as a quality product don't get me wrong. We seemed to go straight to point and click animated adventures via mouse etc and skip the 16bit animated graphic/text parser based adventure. As rubbish the graphics may have been it was fun to see the Gremlin twirling in the blender on your screen lol

Did you feel something any type of game got missed out along the transition from 8bit to 16bit home computer gaming?

[CodyJarrett]

More of the Spectrum isometric adventures like Batman and Knight Lore at the time.

[Megalomaniac]

Were point and click adventures not the logical mouse-based progression from text adventures? Imagine how many disks Monkey Island 2 would need if it had any significant amount of animation...

Agreed about isometric adventures, there were a few like Treasure Trap and Escape From Colditz and Treasure Trap but arguably nothing to beat the relatively by-the-numbers Amiga version of Head Over Heels.

[TCD]

Action adventures like Project Firestart.

[jotd]

Of course early 80's arcade games, not horrendous clones

[kremiso]

def more action adventures for me too

Fist 2 with the miggy IK+ graph setting would be cool to see
more games like Arabian Nights

[gimbal]

More games like Arabian Nights? More good games! Yeah you can never have enough good games. There were more than enough action platformers though, I think. A lot of them not great of course but that's what you get in the age of the 8 and 16 bitters where experimentation and diversity was still a thing.

Speaking of Lucasfilm fractal games, Youtube just so happened to shove this Lucasfilm post mortem video at me today which also goes into some detail about them and how they came to be:

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Interesting to see even if you watched all the individual game post mortems, this really zooms in on the studio itself.

[CCCP alert]

Point and click games don't really play like text adventures, different game style. I personally don't like point and click games myself, easier to type "examine room" than click on every possible pixel that could be a potential hot spot to pick up an item etc.

I watched a video with Loren Carpenter and also the one where David Fox talks about Ballblazer and Rescue on Fractalus coming into existence, and the two talents being a happy accident. I lost interest in Lucasfilm after The Eidolon, never bought anything they did after that except some FMV type game for PS1.

[copse]

Some of the 8-bit games had a graphical style that made a pleasing use of the limited resources that I still find preferable to for instance Amiga ports (even latter day).

The one that sticks out to me personally is Starquake on the c64:

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While appreciate the work that went into the amiga port, it feels to me, a little garish:

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In these days of pixel art games, I think there's a lot to be said for some of the games and styles used both on the Amiga and in the aforementioned 8 bit platforms that precede it. The spectrum version suffers a little due to the way graphics and colours works, but ignoring that represents the limited colour style well in the way I like it. The timestamped platform here stands out to me as an appealing style.

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[copse]

Originally Posted by TCD

Action adventures like Project Firestart.

I have no idea what the actual gameplay is, but wow, that looks extremely impressive just going by a quick skim of a longplay.

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[TCD]

Originally Posted by copse

I have no idea what the actual gameplay is, but wow, that looks extremely impressive just going by a quick skim of a longplay.

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It's really worth a shot if you have the time It's hard to describe the gameplay. 'Survival horror' isn't really it, but it is a horror game that had both action and adventure elements that work very well together.

[copse]

Originally Posted by TCD

It's really worth a shot if you have the time It's hard to describe the gameplay. 'Survival horror' isn't really it, but it is a horror game that had both action and adventure elements that work very well together.

Are there any gameplay quirks that need to be understood to get into it? For instance the difference between coming from modern games back to the Last Ninja games or similar which had anachronisms like tank controls.

[TCD]

I've probably played it too much to say if there are any. Here's the quickstart card that should help getting into the game: https://archive.org/details/Project_...ge/n3/mode/2up

[copse]

Originally Posted by TCD

I've probably played it too much to say if there are any. Here's the quickstart card that should help getting into the game: https://archive.org/details/Project_...ge/n3/mode/2up

Sorry for all the noob questions, here's one more Any recommendation of a preferred emulator for Windows that doesn't require much faffing around?

[TCD]

No worries I use Vice which is pretty easy to use: https://vice-emu.sourceforge.io/

I hope you remember Load "$", 8, 1

[Megalomaniac]

Project Firestart is on my to-do list as well, having never owned a C64 back in the day I never got to try it, but there are so many. Starquake is a lovely example of those games that had space to succeed on the Spectrum because of its graphical limitations, an original and well-designed game would usually outsell a relatively-snazzy but dull one, which perhaps wasn't always the case on the Amiga.

[CCCP alert]

Originally Posted by TCD

No worries I use Vice which is pretty easy to use: https://vice-emu.sourceforge.io/

I hope you remember Load "$", 8, 1

WinVICE is one of the best emulators for any system. Drop the files on the open window and it auto-starts so that's load "*",8,1:run sorted. Select disk images from file menus and you can see the contents of any tape/disk image you click on and you can double click on the list of programs stored in the disk/tape image and it will start. You don't even need to know all the weird CBM BASIC disk access quirks like load "$",8 lol

Oh and load"$",8,1 will not work, you mustn't use the ,1 at the end if you want to see a directory instead of trying to load a directory listing as an actual BASIC V2 program into RAM