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Great article—I love that the author tried to reach out to the original creator of the game "Below the Root," even though they ultimately failed to secure the r

Great article—I love that the author tried to reach out to the original creator of the game "Below the Root," even though they ultimately failed to secure the rights. I'd encourage anyone with a desire to create an homage to a game they have nostalgia for to just reach out to the original authors. You'd be surprised at how often a simple request like this can lead to you being able to breathe new life into an old game. Story time. A favorite game of mine as a young child was an old DOS game called Redhooks' Revenge. It was essentially a graphical naval adventure where each player would take turns rolling dice and moving their ship. Landing on ports would allow you to conquer them Risk-style, and at various times you would be asked a maritime-themed trivia question depending on the square you landed on. Answering correctly would give you bonuses like rum, water, extra cannons, etc. My sister and I used to play it for hours on end to the point where we'd basically both memorized all the quiz questions. Decades later, I was messing around with the files, attempting to figure out a way to add additional trivia questions. I ended up reverse-engineering the weird binary format of the asset file to randomly inject customized trivia into the game every time it was started. You had to be really careful when injecting the questions not to accidentally alter any additional addresses in the file; otherwise, the game would just crash. Out of random curiosity, I looked up the original company, ImagiSOFT, and got in touch with the author, who happily gave me permission to develop an official sequel, Redhook's Revenge II: Call of Booty. https://specularrealms.com/redhook https://specularrealms.com/redhook

immibis 2y ago
For me, it would be "Theatre: An interactive night of horror"[1], the first interactive fiction work I ever saw. I actually did email him 20+ years after it was published, asking for permission to remake it non-commercially, and he was like "yeah ok whatever". I haven't really gone anywhere with that, but perhaps one day I will. (What's more shocking is that he came from the same country as me and his company was named after a place I'd actually been to. That doesn't happen very often.) [1] https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=bv8of8y9xeo7307g https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=bv8of8y9xeo7307g
- vunderba 2y ago
  I've never played it, but it looks fun and as somebody who grew up in the age of CYOA (Choose Your Own Adventure Books) I love the interactive fiction genre.
ForOldHack 2y ago
You called it "Call of Booty?" Great title. Funny.
JKCalhoun 2y ago
Someone reached out to me because they wanted to implement my old game Glider on a Nintendo cartridge (1). My response was, "Why the hell not?" I still have one of the cartridges he created. (1) http://www.nesworld.com/spotlight-glider.php http://www.nesworld.com/spotlight-glider.php
- vunderba 2y ago
  I love the aesthetic of the original Glider - Brian really went the extra mile to port it over to 6502 assembly on the NES. Given that it looks like it was on a flashable cart as well (guessing similar to an Everdrive) I'm impressed that he was able to get the price down to just 40 USD. Sold on RetroUSB at the time: https://web.archive.org/web/20080410120221/http://retrousb.com/index.php?productID=156 https://web.archive.org/web/20080410120221/http://retrousb.c...
thaumasiotes 2y ago
> My sister and I used to play it for hours on end to the point where we'd basically both memorized all the quiz questions. Only tenuously related, but I was always a little bemused by the copy protection on Civilization. The standard for copy protection at the time was to ask a question from the manual of the game. Generally one that was otherwise meaningless, like "what is the fourth word on page 6?". It was also standard to provide a little gameplay to people who failed the copy protection, as a demo of the game. Civilization's implementation of these ideas was that, after a certain number of turns, the game would bring up a screen displaying the artwork for a technology, and ask you which technologies were the prerequisites for that one. This information was present in the manual. However, it was also a core part of the game itself, which meant two things. First, if you were familiar with the game, the odds were good that you'd recognize the technology in question from the artwork (displayed every game in a mandatory cutscene whenever you learned the technology), and know the prerequisites. Second, because this information was critical to gameplay, it was included in the in-game Civilopedia, and you were free to look it up during play, including early-game play before the copy protection question popped up. (Third, the answer format was multiple-choice selection from four possibilities, making guessing quite viable. Guessing wrong got you an instant game over.) It's the only software I know of where the copy protection had absolutely no effect on your ability to use the software.

immibis 2y ago

For me, it would be "Theatre: An interactive night of horror"[1], the first interactive fiction work I ever saw. I actually did email him 20+ years after it was published, asking for permission to remake it non-commercially, and he was like "yeah ok whatever". I haven't really gone anywhere with that, but perhaps one day I will. (What's more shocking is that he came from the same country as me and his company was named after a place I'd actually been to. That doesn't happen very often.) [1] https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=bv8of8y9xeo7307g https://ifdb.org/viewgame?id=bv8of8y9xeo7307g

vunderba 2y ago
I've never played it, but it looks fun and as somebody who grew up in the age of CYOA (Choose Your Own Adventure Books) I love the interactive fiction genre.

ForOldHack 2y ago

You called it "Call of Booty?" Great title. Funny.

JKCalhoun 2y ago

Someone reached out to me because they wanted to implement my old game Glider on a Nintendo cartridge (1). My response was, "Why the hell not?" I still have one of the cartridges he created. (1) http://www.nesworld.com/spotlight-glider.php http://www.nesworld.com/spotlight-glider.php

vunderba 2y ago
I love the aesthetic of the original Glider - Brian really went the extra mile to port it over to 6502 assembly on the NES. Given that it looks like it was on a flashable cart as well (guessing similar to an Everdrive) I'm impressed that he was able to get the price down to just 40 USD. Sold on RetroUSB at the time: https://web.archive.org/web/20080410120221/http://retrousb.com/index.php?productID=156 https://web.archive.org/web/20080410120221/http://retrousb.c...

thaumasiotes 2y ago

> My sister and I used to play it for hours on end to the point where we'd basically both memorized all the quiz questions. Only tenuously related, but I was always a little bemused by the copy protection on Civilization. The standard for copy protection at the time was to ask a question from the manual of the game. Generally one that was otherwise meaningless, like "what is the fourth word on page 6?". It was also standard to provide a little gameplay to people who failed the copy protection, as a demo of the game. Civilization's implementation of these ideas was that, after a certain number of turns, the game would bring up a screen displaying the artwork for a technology, and ask you which technologies were the prerequisites for that one. This information was present in the manual. However, it was also a core part of the game itself, which meant two things. First, if you were familiar with the game, the odds were good that you'd recognize the technology in question from the artwork (displayed every game in a mandatory cutscene whenever you learned the technology), and know the prerequisites. Second, because this information was critical to gameplay, it was included in the in-game Civilopedia, and you were free to look it up during play, including early-game play before the copy protection question popped up. (Third, the answer format was multiple-choice selection from four possibilities, making guessing quite viable. Guessing wrong got you an instant game over.) It's the only software I know of where the copy protection had absolutely no effect on your ability to use the software.