Okay, I’m stumped. Not that I mind, really. Not much anyway. It’s a little annoying knowing that you can’t beat a video game that you’ve played before. I’ll get over it, though.
Before I begin another mind-numbing round of Dungeon Keeper, which is, to me, one of the best games ever produced by Bullfrog Productions, I’m going back to the basics of the game in hope of retrieving as much useful information that will help me through my relearning phase. No, it’s not cheating. Let’s call it a reconnaissance.
Well, Dungeon Keeper’s interface is pretty much like that of real-time strategy games. For a more detailed, if not accurate, description, I turn to Wikipedia:
The player uses a mouse, represented in the game as a hand, to interact with a bar on the left-hand side of the screen, allowing him to select which rooms to build and which spells to cast. Rather uniquely, the player can use the hand to pick up creatures and objects in the dungeon and carry them around, allowing for tactics such as gathering an assault force and dropping off the creatures en masse once a beachhead has been established.
The hand also allows the player to “slap” objects and thereby interact with them: creatures will hurry up when slapped, chickens in a hatchery will “splat,” and some traps will be triggered. Prisoners in the torture chamber can thus be treated with a hands-on approach.
The main game view is in isometric perspective; however, this view can be zoomed and rotated. The player also has the option of possessing one trap or room section. A smaller part of the map is shown as a minimap in the top left corner of the screen.
Right. Treat it like an RTS. That not only speeds up my understanding of the game, but also my reaction time. Time to research the shortcut keys and a good build order.
Here’s another cool Dungeon Keeper video. It’s actually a review, but since it’s in Deutsch (German), I can’t really understand much. Watching the video helps, though. I’m learning how to make rooms properly. Hurray!
By trying to keep up, I mean my futile attempts to keep up to the game as memories of playing it more than a decade ago flood my video game-addled head.
After a few hours (yeah, right) of playing Dungeon Keeper again, I still can’t make heads or tails of how the game works, despite having played it hundreds of times in the past … way baaack in the past.
So my knees finally buckle (or my eyes finally give way to Morpheus’ sand) and I sleep on it. While dreaming of Dungeon Keeper, I get this idea of doing a little research to help speed my understanding of the game.
Still groggy from 12 hours of sleep, I head straight for the computer and drop by YouTube and gamefaqs, my favorite haunts for video game tips and tricks. I’ve found a video!
Labeled Dungeon Keeper Beginner, my first thoughts were of a fantastic step-by-step guide about the game’s basics. Unfortunately, the video failed to help much as the player or the one who recorded the video apparently isn’t a beginner at all but a seasoned veteran.
Well, I can’t really spend too much time learning about the game’s mechanics from web sources. The only way I’ll learn, I guess, is to get down and dirty and just play the game. Here’s to 16 more hours of groping in dark and musty dungeons.
Well, at least that’s how I see my role in this video game where you get to slap the butts of goblin slaves and other monsters to keep them in line and do your bidding.
Dungeon Keeper is a PC-based strategy game released by Bullfrog Productions in 1997. Gosh, has it really been a decade? Going back to the topic, the game puts you into the role of (what else!) a dungeon keeper instead of a knight in shining armor or a muscle-bound warrior in search of good booty. Yes, pretty cool, huh?
Your goal as Dungeon Keeper is to 1) build dungeons, 2) recruit monsters to your cause, 3) set traps, and 4) fend off or eliminate computer-controlled heroes (this is the good part).
To whet my appetite, I viewed about a dozen videos. The result: I am thoroughly convinced that I need to play this game, again … and again. Time to chuck my MMORPG characters for a few days and then grab the godstick and wave them at silly adventurers trying to penetrate my lair.
As for you, content yourself with watching this video of the introduction to the game while I put on my work clothes before diving off into my game vault for the Dungeon Keeper installer.
And I think I’m starting to hate E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial for the Atari 2600, too. Why?
This video …
… has shown me all the little problems I had griped about as a kid, from the lack of intuitive gameplay to the keep-falling-into-holes-and-can’t-get-out bug. Sigh.
Don’t get me wrong, I still love the wrinkly ol’ alien, the film and, yes, the Atari game (sort of). It’s just that it’s really hard to forget the shortcomings of this classic when every other Tom, Dick and Harry keeps reminding you.
If anything positive came out of my watching the video, it’s that it gave me a lot of laughs.
Who is Zack Scott and what does he know about Nintendo and video games?
Well, borrowing from what he’s written on the About page of his blog, Zack Scott is a prolific videographer. His collection of videos, which is very extensive, focuses mostly on comedy, education, and (gasp!) his cute pets.
So what does his being a, uhmm, cute pet lover have to do with Nintendo and widely or little known facts about the company? Watch this.
You have no way of knowing this just by viewing the video on Re:Retro, but when you hop over to YouTube and check out the Zack Scott’s collection, you’ll discover that his “Amazing Nintendo Facts” video has racked up more than 2.5 million views. Whew!
Hahahaha! Sorry, I couldn’t help myself. I just remembered something funny that happened way back in the 1980s concerning my fanaticism for all things Nintendo, particularly the Nintendo Entertainment System and, of course, the Nintendo Family Computer. My cousins shared this obsession.
In our desire to improve our gaming experience (with the Nintendo Family Computer), we scoured a local Christmas bazaar (yeah, it was that time of year) for not only new games but console enhancements as well. We found this nifty (well, at least we thought it was nifty about an hour before we bought it) add-on to the Family Computer’s controllers.
It was actually a replacement part that would have taken the place of the eight-way direction control by turning the flat cross-shaped key into a mini-joystick. Yeah, right, as if that would work.
Well, it worked, all right, meaning it functioned as it was supposed to function. But we later found out that it could never really replace the flat key simply because the little shlong protruding from the center of the crosspiece delayed reaction time. Oh, and it also made your left thumb (and a few fingers) hurt faster than the D-pad.
Sigh. Now I’m stuck with a single thought: Why did we ever buy the darned thing and, worse, install it in our Famicom controllers!
The little gadget looks kinda like the D-pad on this nifty baby, the Archer Competition Controller. The only difference is, the “joystick” on the cross-shaped key we bought looked more like a cigarette stub than a small marble.
Today’s generation of gamers have it easy. They’ve got dozens of gadgets at their fingertips and all the data they need to finish the games they play on these gizmos. Talk about spoonfeeding.
Yesterday’s generation, on the other hand, went through the haystack to find the needle, which represents information on how to solve difficult puzzles or finish entire levels unscathed.
This thought has been nipping on my brain these past two weeks (which is probably why I’ve been scouring YouTube and other video sources for quickfixes). So it was no accident when I bumped into this video:
Sigh. It’s days like these when I miss my trusty ol’ Apple IIc, on which I played the most enjoyable games a 10-year-old could ever hope for—Taipan, Othello, The Bard’s Tale, and of course Hard Hat Mack.
Duh! If you don’t care much about racking up points and just want to finish the darn game, then look no further. Here’s a video that will show you how to finish Super Mario Brothers for the Nintendo Entertainment System in five minutes:
So that’s how I finished Super Mario Brothers (back in 1987, that is)! Gee, thanks for the video Jinx505. It brings back good memories.
A warning to new players and old players who aren’t as nimble as their, uhmm, six year old selves: the one playing the game in the video makes it look easy, but doing the stunt is actually hard. Don’t believe me? Try it.
Did you know that there have been at least 63 video game consoles and personal computers in the past 50 years? Well, I didn’t … honestly. So imagine my surprise when I came across this video:
The author of this mish-mash, however, missed the entire Apple line of personal computers. I owned an Apple IIc, so I know first-hand that a lot of video games can be played on the machine—that is, if any Apple computer is still intact to this day.
Here’s another video featuring a television commercial for the Coleco Telstar Arcade, my first video game console. Sigh, wish my Coleco Telstar Arcade’s still in pristine condition. But that’s all it is, a wish, since the cartridges that contain the video games have been lost. So here’s a toast to this personal trip down memory lane:
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The little gadget looks kinda like the D-pad on this nifty baby, the Archer Competition Controller. The only difference is, the “joystick” on the cross-shaped key we bought looked more like a cigarette stub than a small marble.
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