So here's an odd concept for a game...

[edmonddantes]

I was going thru an archive of Commodore 64 games, and found this series called Questprobe.  It's a series where each installment follows a Marvel Comics character.  The three installments are The Incredible Hulk, Spider-Man, and the final one was Human Torch and The Thing (why not the entire Fantastic Four?)

Okay, just from that, what do you think these would be?  Arcade style games?  Platformers?  Some sort of primitive Metroidvanias?

.... how about text adventure?

(Well, they've got graphics but still a parser interface, basically like Sierra's Mystery House).

Yeah, so...

At some point in time, someone said "let's make a text adventure, a genre that's all about brainbending puzzles... and have our main character be THE INCREDIBLE HULK!"

That was the first of the series, by the way.  Also all three are by Scott Adams, who is something of a legend in this field.

So I boot up the Hulk one and... honestly, it's not bad so far.  It seems like Adams actually put some thought into this concept.  The very first puzzle does a neat thing where you use the obvious solution and it works, but you're reverted back to Banner by gas as the game's way of telling you "that won't work all the time."

Also, it seems you can't actually die--you go thru a sequence where you're told "its not your time yet" and get sent back to a predetermined area, with no penalty that I could find.

So... its an odd premise for a game but it actually seems it might be something interesting.  I only wish I could find the DOS version as the C64 one, of course, has tons of loading times and it kills the pace.

.....

Well, might as well end with a question:  Have you ever played a game with an odd concept (like a licensed character but in a genre that seems to not fit them at all), but which surprisingly worked?

(There's also a He-Man text adventure, by the way... I think I see why people love the C64)

[condroid]

I don't think that was such a novel concept considering that adventure games were a very popular genre back then. It is also a genre well-suited to storytelling which is a very important aspect of many licensed properties. Just off the top of my head there were text adventures based on Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, Asterix, Neverending Story, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Dallas, Gremlins, Masters of the Universe, Perry Mason, etc.

[toei]

Sept 16, 2018 19:29:54 GMT -5 condroid said:

I don't think that was such a novel concept considering that adventure games were a very popular genre back then. It is also a genre well-suited to storytelling which is a very important aspect of many licensed properties. Just off the top of my head there were text adventures based on Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, Asterix, Neverending Story, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Dallas, Gremlins, Masters of the Universe, Perry Mason, etc.

Besides, the C64 didn't really allow for visuals resembling the licensed material much, so the best way to represent that universe might have still been a text adventure.

[Arale]

I mean, superhero stories are interesting when they're about concepts instead of action, so...

[Discoalucard]

I had a few of these for the Atari 400 when I was a kid, this is actually how I was introduced to Marvel superheroes. We played a lot of the Spider Man one. We had the Hulk one too, though since I was like five or six years old, we had trouble figuring out how to get out of the chair you were tied to. I think you just need to "BITE LIP" or something to Hulk-out and escape before something killed you.

Anyway, the concept really isn't that odd for back then. Text adventures were fairly easy to program and were relatively popular, and the visuals made it much closer to playing a comic book than a typical early 80s action game would be.

[edmonddantes]

It's just like.... well, I remember an HG101 article mentioning the Gremlins text adventure pointing out that pretty much every puzzle became "kill Gremlin."

That's why I find a Hulk one novel. Because what is Hulk known for? HULK SMASH. You don't really go into a Hulk game thinking its gonna have brainbending puzzles, you go in thinking you're gonna break stuff. It's similar to what Nintendo Power said about Godzilla on Gameboy... suddenly he's in a kind of puzzle game, which isn't what you expect from a character known for smashing cities.

(And yes, Text adventures were popular, but this was still a period where a lot of licenses were used more in either arcade action or platformer varieties. The afformentioned He-Man text adventure came out a year AFTER a pseudo-Metroidvania called He-Man: The Illearth Stone, and the same year IIRC as the movie tie-in, which was arcade-style. Spider-Man also had a platformer at the same time as his text adventure).

....

Speaking of odd-sounding premises that kind of work, I actually like the Godzilla strategy games where you play as the military and try to stop Kaijus. The genre totally needs a modern take tho.

On the Apple IIe I found a G.I. Joe game which... well, its premise isn't that odd, but it is more fun than I expected: You pick a joe, get sent to some area where you face a member of Cobra one-on-one... basically, imagine Combat, but with better graphics and a perspective similar to the first King's Quest game (including the ability to go behind obstacles). It's way too easy against the comp tho, but it IS two player...

[Weasel]

It's certainly a better justice done to its source material than, say, GBA Superman Returns. Expecting a side-scrolling platformer? A beat-em-up? Nope - it's a dressed-up sudoku game!

[kingmike]

Well, it does almost make for a joke response to Superman 64, if it is true that the 64 developers' say their vision was hindered by DC limiting what Superman was allowed to do.

[edmonddantes]

So this led me to trying out the Hulk game on Sega Genesis, which... for some reason I remember playing it years back and not liking it, but now? I... kinda dig it. IT's more what I expect from a Hulk game--side-scroller and you even have special moves (easy to do ones) that are oh-so-satisfying to do. I tried out the SNES version but it feels like the Genesis controls are slightly tighter. Could just be a quirk of emulation tho.

Hey, didn't this website used to have reviews of Capcom's two SNES games, X-Men Mutant Apocalypse and Marvel Super Heroes: War of the Gems? I seem to remember this site hating both games.

Well, I half concur about the X-Men one. It's one of those "otherwise good games marred by a bafflingly stupid decision" instances. In this case, the thing being that you have to input Street Fighter-style button combos to use your mutant powers. Even tho the game only has B and Y assigned to functions (meaning you've got two face buttons and two shoulder buttons that do absolutely nothing). Someone should hack this game and fix it.

They apparently learned, because while Marvel Super Heroes: War of the Gems has special moves, they're a lot easier to do and also far less necessary. I actually got a decent way into the game before realizing you even had them, and most of them are done just by double-tapping a direction and hitting Y, tho there's a few fireball motions in there... and each gem is supposed to have a supermove you can pull off but I only did that once, by accident.

War of the Gems also gave me the satisfaction of seeing Magus, Nebula, Thanos and Doctor Doom all fall to... Spider-Man. Because of course. Also some dude named Black Heart who lives on an asteroid belt. Who the hell is Black Heart?

One thing I'm... not 100% on, but I think you need to beat some levels with certain characters in order to find that level's Gem (you get it once you beat the boss). But the last two I found by happenstance and there isn't really a way to deduce it, you just have to get lucky if this is your first time thru (free tip: Latveria with Spider-Man is probably the easiest stage to tackle first, and hope you get either the Time Gem or the Reality Gem. Hoooo boy).

Gonna go check out more 16-Bit Marvel... possibly some PS1 era too.

[toei]

There was a quick review of those two SNES Marvel / Capcom games as part of the old Capcom beat-'em-ups article. It was extremely negative, as you remembered, and didn't do those games justice (they're actually pretty decent, and somewhat original). Also, the writer claimed that one of the games was incredibly slow - this was actually an emulation issue with older versions of either SNES9X or ZSNES, I don't remember which. The game itself ran at a standard speed for a SNES action game.

Both games involve fighting game motions. It's honestly more fun if you look up a movelist, especially so you can do the specials in the second game.

[edmonddantes]

I wound up discovering a lot of the moves on my own, particularly the way to break some levels by throwing Captain America's mighty shield (particularly any that have those annoying winged assholes, whoever they are--yeah something tells me much of the mythos of these games is from the Marvel Comics of the 1990s, which I'm not as familiar with)

I noticed emulation issues with Marvel Super Heroes on ZSNES, but it wasn't slowdown... it was that the image was incredibly flickery for whatever reason when you were in the training stage (can't recall if this continued into the real levels). On SNES9x it played fine (both were on a WinXP desktop BTW... I tend to build desktops with classic PC gaming in mind rather than emulation which is why I don't just use BSNES).

Incidentally, I saw this yesterday: www.youtube.com/watch?v=rO5cdKCeCtE

I had to look up who Exodus was... and there is just something hilarious yet awesome about Beast (the best X-Man) being so OP.

This is good for a laugh: www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8vmiohWtCM