Hi Richard,
Glad that you found my initial post useful. Actually huge introductory posts are one bad habit of mine, <smile>. TO cut a long story short, I usually post long mails as I find a Web based forum interface largely inferior to an e-mail or news client as far as keyboard usability in managing messages goes. Just compare the hotkeys for windows list views and menus to sequentially tabbing around a Web page.

But back on track, great to hear you're actually building a top 10 list for partially sighted people as well. I recommend you get input from as many people as possible. Although one can list features that are likely to make a game accessible across the board, my sight is still pretty unique so something that's accessible to me might not be so accessible to someone with a different kind of sight impairment. But then again I'm at the low end of the spectrum with only a very small fraction of useful sight, so that balances things a little.

Also I suppose some low-vision gamers might be reluctant to come in on a forum like this as they can play mainstream games and not something VI specific. But as with so many other things promoting awareness of accessibility issues and sight-impaired gameers could actually boost accessibility quite a bit. The example of the Toygame in my original post is one such thing. A trivial hack made an unplayable game decently accessible.

Another point I'd like to raise here is that it is hard to order the games in terms of accessibility. It all depends on persistency as well not just how accessible the graphics are.

I would tentatively categorize the accessibility into groups like no accessibility problems, minor issues, major issues and inaccessible. A number of games I've listed do have minor issues, but that's again a matter of definition.

In beat em up games, for example, I cannot really trakc how much strength I've got left as that means I'll have to look up and examine the meter meaning I'll be more vulnerable during that time unless I pause the game. But that's not an issue in most such games. Having an approximate idea and hearing the danger cling are good enough in say Mortal Kombat.

One genre I totally forgot in my initial mail was pinball games. Most of them such as the WIndows NT pinball or the old DOS game Tristan would be in the major issues category as both the ball and the flippers are very small. I cannot play real world pinball machines either. But there are exceptions. Many 90s DOS based pinball games had the wonderful idea of zooming in close and then tracking the ball in a playing field that was scrollable. Such games have a big enough ball and flippers for me to play them effectively.

Pinball Dreams and Fantasies are the first games that come to mind in this genre and they are accessible, although pretty hard to play otherwise. There are others as well. Epic Pinball is not very easy but it is playable. The pinball machine I've enjoyed the most over the years is the DOS game Psycho Pinball, however. SOme of the mini games could be easier but all in all it's got easier gameplay than say Pinball Dreams. I'm uncertain whether the difficulty of Pinball Dreams is that it is simply difficult, that I haven't played it all that much or if it might have something to do with accessibility.

Hmm thinking of other games, there are plenty of platformers of course. Many bitmap brothers games are accessible largely due to same reasons than Prince of PErsia is that is Gods and Magic Pockets, for example. Some older EGA based platformers are quite playable too, stuff like Dark ages and Commander Keen. Of the early releases, I liked the original Duke Nukem quite a lot the first game is much easier than its sequel due to simpler graphics. Of course many CGA games are, too, such as early Apogee releases but the trouble here that they are not good games frankly speaking.

There are also plenty of old emulated games that are playable. Most vector based affairs are hard or immpossible to play, for me at least. I haven't used MAME much but one of my favorites is the ancient driving game Pole Position. A few minutes of extreme concentration trying to get a perfect score nailed down. In the emulated category many 8-bit Nintendo games do well. THey are actually easier on the computer as I've always been a PC gamer and because the average PC monitor suits my sight better than the average telly. I've already mentioned Mario and Megaman. Others include: Bubble BObble (playable but not easy), Galaga, Gold Medal Challenge (depends running is the easiest), Ice Climber (this is very accessible even with a narrow FOV), Tetris (of course, no background is a bonus) and Winter Games (at least the PC port ).

Hmm I wonder what I've missed:
Ah strategy games, well many conventional ones are accessible, if you're able to manage large chunks of the playing field in your mind. Computerized versions of stuff like chess, othello, four in a row and Reversi, though I haven't been very good in any of them. Others include hmm Lemmings, that's one I've forgotten. Basically plenthy of time to look around, especially if you pause the game and if you select tools with the F-keys, the only thing you need the mouse for is actually using the tools on individual lemmings. They are pretty small, admitted, but there are so many in a screen at once that this is usually not a problem.

I have yet to try those but I imagine some Master of Orion style games with standard GUI controls just might be playable. I think the WIndows game here is Stars. ANd on the Mac using the spoken interfface one might be able to play Spaceword Ho. I have yet to try either of those so this is just speculation at this point.

Many breakout games are also quite playable, though again a larger field of vision would benefit players. For some reason the top two games in this genre that come to mind are the original arkanoid (DOS) and a piece of Windows shareware called DX Ball.

Hello Dark,
It's great to share experience with people in a similar situation and I think our sightes are actually pretty close at least in terms of gaming ability. But let me first address one particular genre of games I've forgotten. As far as reading text goes, my sight is only good for large and high contrast menu text and other truely large print.  I canot read most story text let alone real world stuff like unmagnified books or news papers.NO chance at all.

The genre I forgot are the so called snake, or if your Finnish worm, games in which you navigate a snake in a maze and collect things that make the snake grow. The classic game here would be the Q-basic program nibbles.bas  for MS-DOS. Although the numbres collected could be larger, the game is easy to play as you don't have to necessarily see which number you r collecting. The name is also a funny hacker pun as a nibble in addition to meaning a small bite means a small byte with a y, that is half a byte to be exact. The game is so popular that even the Linux desktop environment Gnome has a clone of it with the same name.

I think one of the favorite snake games of mine is gotta be Drug Worm 2 for DOS. It uses relative rather than absolute movment and the worm makes analog like turns rather than turning 90 degrees at once. The bonuses are very large and easy to see as well. The catch is that when the worm gets high it introduces jitter and all kinds of other control gliches which is actually more fun than it sounds and the whole point of the game is surviving in such circumstances.

The other classic snake-style game for me is the MAMe version of blockade. It is like 2-player nibbles except that there are no obstacles or collectables, the snakes grow continuously and move in grainy and large chunks probably due to performance reasons. The objective is to kill the other player by making him or her collide with the walls or you or the other player's tail. The game is so good that I did as an exercise an 40x25 character-based ASCII version in Turbo C 3 for DOS but have, unfortunately, lost both the source and binaries.

And now I'll comment your post in detail:
It's interesting you mentioned console gaming, I've never even owned a console myself having been a PC gamer since a 386SX with DR-DOS 4 on it. Many friends of mine have had consoles, though,and I got into 8-bit Nintendo and N64 games in their houses and later via emulation on the PC. Still I'm pretty much a console newb starting from the controls. I find the 8-way D-pads pretty hard having always used the arrows. The trick is to use your thumb for them, of course, but that took me quite long to discover. A friend of mine gently made fun of my playing saing that I hold the controller like girls do, <smile>.

Yes laptops are hard for gaming, the keyboard is on the way so you cannot get as close to the screen as would be needed for my gaming. Fortunately I have a stand under which the laptop goes at home so I can work and play rather ergonomically yet use a laptop such as this one.

Agreed the FAQS you mentioned can be mightily helpful in games, especially now that it is easy to multi-task and jump in and out of the game to refer to some guide. In fact when I tried playihng Half-Life 2, which turned out to be a pretty complete failure as HL1 is just bearly playable, I would use the walk through virtually all of the time.

Another valuable resource are game manuals which usualy list stuff in left to right, top to bottom order as opposed to say alphabetically.

Ah Command and Conquer, I havne't been able to play that one iether, but thatsighted gaming friend of mine used to be a fan. I was very impressed by the cutscenes and overall SFX back then. Now I liked some of the music, too, and have noticed that in my own music making I'm into wonderfully LoFi gamy textures resembling the NES and some sounds in C&C.

Ah I share your frustration with most 3D games apart from some FPS stuff like Doom which I've mentioned, audio Doom would be cool and simple by the way. Most newer console titles are out for me too due to fancy backgrounds and or 3D. I've been thinking of getting into console gaming some day, though, are there any console platforms or games you would recommend in particular?

Being an oldschooler I'd still like to support NIntendo but am afraid most Wii titles would be too graphical for me. It isn't a Wii game but do you know if guitar hero might be playable? I used to play an early rendition of the same concept on the PC called Quest for Fame which was playable if I switched the graphics to 640x480. Yet some newer games in that genre aren't. IN Donkey Conga for example, it is hard for me to differenciate the note symbols from each other in time. If I could kill the background layer in some emulator or patch the game graphics that would probably help. BOth are prety much no can do. I've played the piano many years and do music on the computer so I guess it is natural to be interested in games that measure musical skill yet manage to be fun.

Regarding DS Vs the old GameBoy Advance, how are you able to play the Advance games do you get the image on the TV screen? I don't actually have a telly here in my room so to use a console with some existing monitor I'd need a small yet surprisingly expensive converter that is from PAL to VGA I think.

A slight tech niggle most beat em ups don't have sprites the old MK games would have digitized actors and nowadays it is graphics made up of polygons. A sprite is a usually hard-ware managed small image or pixmap which supports moving operations in which you don't have to worry about redrawing the background under the moving sprite. Back to more relevant stuff though, yes I know exactly what you mean about large characters in beat em ups helping mightily. My friend's little bro is into beat em ups so I'll ask if he has Soul Calibur also. Unfortunately, his main focus areas seem to be wrestling (not the real Greco-Roman thing) and Dragonball Z as far as fighting goes.

Yeah my sighted gaming friends are also very willing to choose game settings in which it is easy for me to play. In scorched Earth clones like Tank Wars we always pick the black background. In FPS games like DOom I max the lighting and the opponent chooses a skin that's easy to see.

The only scrolling beat em up I've played seriously is the old PC game Time COmmando. IT is actually fighting with weapons in 3D but the levels do scroll. Not very accessible, the stone age is easy but ROme after that always beats me.

My retro-gaming has been game emulation on the PC as that means authentic games rather than clones, the ability to customize graphics by disabling layers as well as in some games reading the text if I pause the game and set my screen reader magnifier in DirectDraw compatibility mode. I might be able to play early FInal Fantasy games that way but have yet to try that.

Of course clones do have advantages like not being technically illegal as is emulation for most people. Another legal way is to get the WIi and use its emulated NES and Super NES games, too. I think that might be one of the major attractions for me, legal emulation that is.

As I'm much more into driving and 2D platformers than strategy or puzzle, would you happen to know of any clones of the arcade game Pole Position? IT might be cool even in 3D but I've yet to find any. SO I play the original in MAME in stead.

You know I'll have to familiarize myself with turrican I've heard the name and the C64 sound track but that's about all i know . Wikipedia is probably my friend in this regard.

Rocks -n- diamonds seems pretty cool as well, thanks. The only game of that kind I've gotten into seriously is the early DOS-based realtime bolder-dash variant called paganitsu. It's got moving enemies and all.

On a side note, do you know of any fighting space sim style games in 3D which might be accessible? Being a Star Wars nut as far as SF movies go (in books Asimov, Brin and Clarke beat the heck out of Zahn's Starwars), I've tried playing the original PC game Tie FIghter. There ar two main issues. The first is that the radar Which shows were enemies are in space is at the two top corners of the screen which means that when I look at it I cannot pay attention to the main gameplay. The second difficult moement for me is when the box that indicates a target changes into an initially tiny ship. THat transformation is hard to follow quickly before the ship is too close.

I've also played the original Descent which was cool in terms of controls but not very accessible otherwise. ANd a Babylon 5, another great SF series, inspired freebie for Windows with physics resembling Newtonian stuff rather than dog fights in space. Well that wasn't very easy, either, and flying with Newtonian physics is very difficult to say the least. I still think it might be great fun to do head to head combat in such a sim if it was accessible. Too bad that gaming ffriend of mine has completed The whole Tie FIghter game so I'd have to train myself pretty rigorously to even get close.

Well if your post is about to become a dark star AKA blackwhole then my original is got to be a singularity, <smile>. I'm a big fan of e-mail myself but in this case would suggest we keep the discussion on the forum at least for a while. chances are that other low-vision folks might join in and the management wanted our input forr a top 10 list of accessible games in terms of low vision, so that's another reason.

Well as far as consoles go, I'm stil a big fan of the mega drive and snes, and stil collect original games for both of them. unfortunately though, tracking down games for them is now becoming a slightly difficult process, and sinse I've been collecting games for them for about 15 years, it's actually getting to the stage where I'm running out of new titles to search for (there are stil a few, such as Prince of Persia 2 on the Snes, but not many).

there are some great and highly accessible games on both machines, but as original hardware is getting increasingly hard to come by, emulation might be the way to go. Games like Super Metroid, Castlevania 4, first Samurai and Gunstar heroes are deffinately worth playing (to name a few of my personal favourites).

Even counting the odd beat em up, there haven't really been enough playable games for me to warrent buying a Playstation (or much less Ps2), of my own, though I've picked up one or two games which I've managed to play on my brother's playstation.

the next console I bought was a Gamecube, mainly because of the Gameboy player add on that allows playing of any Gameboy, Gameboy colour or Gameboy advanced game full screen. this is great, sinse there have been some 2D Gameboy advanced games like Mega man Zero, Metroid fusion or Astro boy Omega factor that have really complex gameplay elements, (and of course some good Faqs and game scripts written for them). also, I've recently played quite a few games in the Nes classics series, such as original Castlevania (though the contrast on some of the enemies is horrible), Ice climbers and Dr. Marrio.

The buble boble old and new game is alsogreat, particularly sinse it allows you to start at any level you've completed, which makes it easy to learn enemy positions (I'm currently on level 87, but it wasn't easy to get there).

The Gamecube also has a few great game collections available, such as the mega man Aniversery and Mega man X collections, which contain original Mega man 1-8 pluss the two arcade games, and the 6 Mega man X games (they didn't have a Pal release, but the Freeloader disk from Datel design is a quick, cheap and easy way of changing regions).

Mega man 8, and mega man X 5 and 6 are probabnly the most graphically complex 2D platformers I've ever played, sinse they were some of the very few 2D platform games released on the playstation (the only other Playstation platformer I know is Pandemonium).

I think the only actual game cube games I own are Mortal combat deadly alliance and soul calibur 2, (again, thanks very much to Mzilinski's highly complete faqs at gamefaqs for help playing these games).

I'm very interested in the wii, mostly because of it's emulation capabilities (odds are that I wouldn't be able to play any Wii original titles either). However, when i tried one at a friend's, I found the remote controled mouse pointer an absolute nightmare, particularly sinse you couldn't actually point at the screen, and had to sit a fair distance away for it to work. However, recently my friend tells me that they've updated the wii's operating system to allow the mouse to be directly controled via the D-pad. When I next go and see my friend, I'll try this out and see if it's any better.

the annoying contrast on the mouse pointer doesn't help either, though I'm hoping that the large game icons, and the fact that the control goes into force feedback when the mouse pointer hits an icon will make it possible to use with a bit of logic and memorization.

there are loads of great original Snes and Mega drive games that are highly worth playing, and my older hardware won't last forever, so i'm very much hoping the wii will be workable.

It's not particularly a site thing, but I also don't like joypads much, I can use them if I have to, though I hold them in a very weerd and possibly feminine way (though sinse I have a couple of female friends who are also gamers and up until recently had a pony tale, I don't particularly mind this), ;D, but my favourite games playing device is deffinately a good arcade joystick!

I've got several capcom arcade sticks for the snes and Mega drive, and an absolutely monstrous X arcade stick for the Gamecube (it's apparently bullit proof), which I'm hoping will convert to the Wii should I get one.

I deffinately appreciate the Tv business. One of the reasons I've got interested in Pc gaming is that I just don't have the space to bring any console or a Tv to my room here at university (especially considdering that I really need at least a 20 inch screen to play most games). hopefully when i manage to finally move out of colidge and get myself a flat things should change.

At the moment though, it's console gaming whenever I go home, and Pc gaming here at uni using my 19 inch flatscreen.

I don't know why, but for some strange reason I am absolutely appauling at any racing game I've ever tried! The graphics are (as you said), highly visible, and I've even tried topspeed 2 which is a completely audio racing game, butt whatever I do, I end up with more crashes than the average copy of Ms windows! so, I'm probably not the best person to ask about racing games. I do remember a top down racer on the Amigar called Nitro, and I believe the Micro machines games were a similar viewpoint as well.

As far as 3D space combat games go, the only one I've really played extensively was Starwing aka Starfox on the Snes, which had several handy features, such as large, highly visible (and even highly audible), enemy bullits, and good cartoony graphics, not to mention a fantastic psudo orchestral soundtrack (yes! I'm a game music fan as well), I'm afraid I never eally spent time with that game getting used to the controls.

I did enjoy several of the psudo 3D vehicle stages in the Super starwars series on the Snes, because the controls were very easy and the enemies obvious. I also like those games because there is a real mix of Gameplay elements, 2D based platform exploration and 3D vehicle stages.

\It's interesting you mention snake games. the amigar game Negatron sounds very similar to the game blockade you mention, accept that rather than beeing snakes, you simply drew a green or orange line on the screen with the joystick. Also, one of the stranger applications of the Rocks -N- diamonds engine has been the creation of two Snake level sets, which are certainly fun, ------ though rock hard in terms of the spacial logic required.

I'd certainly advise you to try Turrican 2002. turrican 2 on the Amigar was the first game that I really loved, and thhe soundtrack actually got me interested in music with interesting minor chord sequences (an interest that stil continues, even in my own compositions).

what's also great about the Turrican games is that the one background that does  provide contrast issues, is a sky background that's drawn as a set of colours that flow one to another in strips , fading from blue to white to yellow to orange to red to black, therefore only some bits are difficult to see (the yellow and white sections), and Turrican has some great weapons for clearing the screen.

Amigar emulation with windows is beyond my technical expertees at the moment, (also the version of Winuae I tried wasn't particularly screen reader friendly), but T2002 is a great game, and actually expands quite considderably on original turrican 1 and 2, particularly in size of levels, some fan created levels are truly huge!

One other game that I probably ought to mention here is RoX. It's another boulderdash style game, but features much larger charactors, some great music, and something which I've not seen before, elements that change colour every level. so, if your not happy with the colour of the earth, the gems you must collect and the rocks, just restart the level and they'll change!

This page contains the game as well as lots of other info:

http://www.bd-fans.com/RoX.html

One thing I really like now that I'm getting into Pc games, is that I can use my screen reader to muck about with the game, change options, or rename things in the game to make them easier to find.

for example in Rocks -n- diamonds, because there are so many user created levels, I've created three folders in the levels directory called 1, 2, and 3 in progress, and any level sets I want to play I can just load streight into them, rather than trying to find them on an absolutely huge list.

this is deffinately one helpful aspect about Pc gaming, though i think learning things on menues or large pictures like the charactor select in beat em ups or the level select in mega man games has helped to improve my memory.

I must admit, that the hole 3D fps thing is something I've just not gotten into. My brother didn't really play those games much, so I didn't get chance to try them in the early stages of developement when graphics were relatively symple, and now of course, the likes of Metroid Prime are well beyond what's easily visible for me (worst luck!).

this has been one reason I've got into playing audio games, sinse there are several rather fun 3D perspective things that I couldn't usually play. I do admit playing without the graphics did take a bit of getting used to, but once I'd adapted it was fine.

It's interesting you mention Audio doom. The first audio game I played was shades of Doom, a game heavily enspired by the doom series. one thing that made that a nice way to adapt myself to playing audio games is that Shades of doom, like most games produced with the Gma engine, actually has an incredibly minimal, white on black graphics display (though you stil have to use the audio extensively for matters like targiting enemies).

You can find a demo of the game, as well as more info here:
http://www.gmagames.com/

Oncemore, this post is getting very very long with many links, so I'd better stop before I run into my own tale ;D.

Last edited by Dark (2007-02-17 17:30:31)

I've actually heard quite a bit about Wolf 3D, and having played Shades of doom fairly extensively I can hopefully get used to the controls, so I'l certainly give it a try. I must admit though, matters relating to both my Phd and the production I'm doing (I sing and perform on stage fairly seriously), are pretty heavy at the moment, so it might have to wait for a bit.

I've considdered downloading Dosbox for quite a while, sinse there are loads of programs, from old Interactive fiction to some Pc games that I'd love to try, I even think I can find a copy of turrican 2 for doss somewhere.
Speaking of turrican, I personally really like the panned sound effects, sinse their actually handy for knowing where canons and other enemies are that might not be in my immediate visual field, the Tfmx music is also as I said, fantastic, there are various ways to play the soundtracks (my favourite being an appropriate plug in for Winamp), but if you don't want to go to that much trouble, most of the soundtrack has been Mp3ifyed on this site:

http://www.nemmelheim.de/turrican/index2.php

Speaking of Music, generally I've had similar problems with seeing music symbols in Rythm games, particularly as most rythm games came out on later consoles with highly nasty 3D or over complex graphics.

If you can get it on emulation though, I'd highly recommend the Playstation game Vib ribbon. The graphics are symple, just a cute little white rabbit continuously walking along a single grey line, with a few sorts of obstacles on it each associated with a button on the controler, that the rabbit would need to get past in rythm with the music.

the really clever thing about the game is that it could generate levels from any wav file track on a Cd. Unfortunately, it had a very bad reception outside Japan, and is extremely rare (I've only played it because my brother is an Anime nut), though you might be able to get it on emulation.

As far as emulation goes, I've read up on various emulators and Zsnes actually looks pretty symple to use, however I'm not really sure how many games it would be worth my while playing with it being as I have quite an extensive collection of original snes cartriges. Sinse however it's becoming increasingly difficult to find original hardware, I might try the program out anyway just for the four or five games stil on my wanted list, which include Gods and Prince of Persia 2.

the Emulator I've always fancied using is Mame, sinse there were several highly playable original arcade titles like the Turtles and Simpsons walk along beat em up games, however even looking at a tutorial the program stil looks slightly difficult to run ----- particularly as I don't have a magnifyer and am entirely reliant on my screen reader's compatability with it. Any tips would certainly be appreciated here.

As to platformers, as I said originally, exploration is one of my absolute favourite aspects of gaming, therefore while something like Bubble Bobble, Ice climbers or even original Mario bross is fairly entertaining, I generally want a bit more out of my platformers (I have been knownto play those sorts of games whilst listening to books on tape).

I've therefore very much got into the exploration style games.

I agree with you that Metroid 1 is quite an irritating game, I think many game play issues weren't ironed out until the sequel, but I'm slightly surprised at what you say about Super Metroid not being accessible, I've always thought Sm was the absolute archetype of a visually accessible game.

All the backgrounds and even the map screen I find to be exelent for contrast, item equipping is totally automatic and there is almost no game text. Even the audio in the game is helpful, Sfx for selecting different weapons. I'd be glad to help with any accessibility questions you've got about the game, sinse that's one game I know absolutely backwards.

As to Mega man X, the original X game actually had slightly less sharp graphics than it's sequel, X2, which I played first. there are indeed a couple of nasty contrast moments in X1, such as some sections of Chill Penguin's stage and the begining ledge puzle of Storm Eagle's stage (I always hate ice or sky stages, even in the original Mega man games). However, there are various techniques for getting through these few problematic sections.

For one thing, Mega man can run and shoot at the same time, so going psycho with the gun can be helpful in sections like Chill Penguin's stage. There are also some great faqs for the game, i actually had to use one in the start of Storm Eagle's stage sinse I didn't realize the paths of the moving platforms until someone pointed it out to me. However, now I know where to look and what I'm looking at, I can hapily finish the game in one sitting.

Generally, if I play a game and something attacks me that I didn't previously see, i'll restart the level, and try varius methods of getting rid of it when i get to that section, standing stil and having it hit me so that I can see where it's coming from for instance. I couldn't do this for an entire game, but if it's just one or two screens in an otherwise quite playable game I don't mind at all.

I'm not sure precisely how the Mega man collections would work on the Wii, because of the hole region business (I'd have to investigate whether the Freeloader disk would also work for the wii), though sinse I don't believe nintendo is releasing a Gameboy player for the wii, i'll stil be hanging onto my Gamecube even if the Wii would play Gc games.

the mouse on the Wii is indeed a pest, and I very much doubt I could use it in games. but once you start an emulated game, it works just as it would on the original system, therefore the only trouble is starting the games. Any games that are downloaded come up as fairly large icons on the wii's main menue, therefore if I can find a way through that menue I should be fine to play emulated games, which is really all i'm interested in the wii for.

true, I'll stil have to ask somebody with working vision to download games for me, which I'd rather not do, but at least I can play them once their downloaded, which is the important thing, and I can always do my downloading in great long batches whenever one of my friends happens to pop round for coffee.

Now, this post is most deffinately getting to cosmic proportions, so before it opens up into a gigantic jump gate and releases loads of freaky shaddow ships (yes,i'm a B5 fan as well).

I'm really sorry for the lateness of this reply, as I said, the performance I'm in is looming and rehearsals, serious singing practice and script learning are eating up my time, not to mention the tiredness induced by all of those things.

Well to get onto things, a copy of Mame would be great. Not only are there some original arcade games like The Simpsons, toki and Metal slug that I'd quite like to play, but also there have been several games where I've only played the console ports, which are usually inferior, for example, while I used to love Amigar Golden axe because of the large sprites and great music, now I'm stuck with the Mega drive version which has horribly bad audio, much smaller charactors and graphics that are a good deal less clear. I'd also like to try some Beat -em ups like original Mortal Kombat and Streetfighter 2, though I think playing those on curser keys might be a litle difficult (another reason I like joysticks so much).

i'd also agree with you about game plot and atmosphere (one of the reasons I like the Mega man X series), but sinse as soon as a game becomes overloaded with text it becomes almost impossible for me to play, quite often I have to balance different factors against each other. I'd love to play complex Rpg type games, but sinse I can't, large exploration style platformers are sort of a second, which is probably why i've got so much into those sorts of games, and found ways round bits of them that cause me difficulties.

As far as memorization goes, I don't tend to memorize hole stages, just occasionally tricky enemy placements, or bits that I can't just charge through like a tank (a stratogy I've used myself on several occasions). For example, most enemies in the first stage of Mega man X 1 I don't find too difficult to deal with, however just after you cross some falling platforms there is an extremely nasty couple of bat attacks, which is a pest sinse the bats attack from above, are small, and get lost in the background. However, through a bit of experience and losing quite a few lives when I first played the game, I've found that jumping and firing one fully charged shot just infront of that blue box shaped building thing in the background, and one just after will take care of them nicely. It's a very similar process to learning a complex quick reaction area, like learning the paths of the forcebeams in Quickman's stage.

Speaking of Mega man 2, you cheating person for using save states! ;D, though I think if the option was available to use them on the gamecube I would've probably done it myself, especially in stages that provide contrast issues like Airman's stage, I certainly make use of them in Rocks -n- diamonds. thinking about Airman's stage, that is one other thing I like about the Mm games, you can change your charactor's colour to stand out from the background, very handy in those annoying sky stages.

I think mega man 2 is probably also my favourite of the Nes Mega man's, though four does come fairly close to it Imho. In general though, I prefer the X series, sinse the charactors are bigger, there is a great deal of music, and the story (especially in the later games), is extremely interesting. it does just rather irritate me that when X7 came out they had to run the series streight into highly complex 3D, grrrrrr!

As to multitasking, there are only a few games that I'd actually try it with, usually games that either have no music such as rick dangerous, or games who's music and audio I've become very familiar with like bubble bobble, original marrio or Ice climbers. Also, they must be fairly symple games that don't require really fast reactions or thinking out stratogies (I could never play even original Mega man like that). then, I couldn't play with no audio at all, so I generally just balance the volume of the game against the book's volume, so that I can here the important game effects (like stomping enemies in original Marrio).

It's funny, when I was younger I always went for the hyper complex or huge area based games, whereas now I've come to enjoy fairly symple games as well, ----- perhaps I'm just becoming more relaxed.

I'm glad you like turrican and it's music, I think it's been one of the things that's had a very big impact on my life, sinse it was the first computer game that really! grabbed my attention back when I was about 8 years old, and also my first introduction to really interesting cord sequences and changes of key.

You can find the Tfmx plug here:

http://listen.to/tfmx#

Pressing alt 3 when playing a Tfmx brings up the plug's configuration bit, where you can muck about with settings like loop and sterrio filtering, but also (and most importantly), play Subsongs.

the plug isn't a perfect solution, sinse it's rather quiet, and the loading themes in Turrican2 and 3 don't seem to play properly in it. Personally though, the volume doesn't matter (not when I've got five logitec speakers hooked up to my Pc), and the two tracks that don't play properly don't mean much (I believe there are Mp3 versions of them available anyway).

the other alternative is the game music player Deliplayer. The old version used to have a fairly accessible layout, however once the software upgraded to version 2 it became incredibly unfriendly to Screen readers (useable, but not very easily), and when I found that there was a winamp plug in available for Tfmx format stuff I switched to that. However, if you want to give Deliplayer a try, you can get it here:

http://www.deliplayer.com/

As reguards Gods and Prince of Persia, there is a section on the Turrican seta website called search for turrican alternatives. as This manages to list almost all of my favourite games, the Mega man series, first Samurai, Super metroid etc, I've been basing a lot of my game acquisition on it, and Gods is one of the titles I haven't yet got my hands on.

I have heard however from friends and other places, that Gods is also similar to First Samurai, which is a great game if rather short (I even tried writing a faq for the game, when Gamefaqs were stil being reasonable).

As to Prince of Persia 2, sinse I certainly like the first game, I'm thinking that I'll like the second. the only thing I find visually particularly hard in Prince of Persia are the tile switches. On most backgrounds I can't see these at all. However trial and error, the fact that there's a very clear door opening sound, and a very good faq on Gamebfaqs all help to get around this problem.

I think in deciding about how to play genres of games, it's a fairly subjective process, heavily based upon experience, learning and personal preference. As I said, I became extremely familiar with turrican and similar games back on the Amigar, so making the move to games like Super Metroid, mega man X and eventurally games liek Astro boy Omega factor and Mega man Zero was a gradual process. I expect when I get around to trying Wolf 3D, it'll take me quite a while to learn my way around the game and familiarize myself with the style, and it'll probably take a good bit of practice and experience for me to become as good as you at such things, ----- I've actually seen Halflife and doom 3 at a friends, but I would have no idea what to do with the games visually at the moment, particularly when it comes to object recognition. I think this is one of the advantages to using faqs, especially the ones written with interminable amounts of detail. Not to mention of course, the help they can provide in reading game text and understanding menues, as I've said, there's many a game that would be unplayable for me if it weren't for various faqs.

As far as music goes, I'm having a couple of difficulties in transferring stuf from my keyboard and other instruments, onto my boss multitrack recorder, and off that into Mp3 format. However, I've recently acquired a very nice litle Rowland digital recorder that should help this process, I just need to set aside a great big wodge of time to actually do it.

As to my music style, I suppose it's sort of a mix betwene Broadway musicals, psudo orchestral rpg game soundtracks and Anime. I've done several atmospheric orchestral pieces which I might end up using if I get around to creating an audio Rpg with audio game maker, as well as a few very weerd songs.

As to the Phd, it's actually in philosophy. While I'm not %100 sure of my final title, it's going to be something involving empathy, and the day to day classification and treatment of disabled people, sinse this is an area I don't think has recieved anything like enough work, and also I have disagreements with the litle work that has been done.

I was originally going to write on disability and equality, but looking around, it seems that a lot of the basic theoretical work on disability and it's everyday relations just hasn't been done, so I've had to change my focus a bit. also, I do have an interest in everyday questions of ethics.

Practically speaking (yes! I believe there is such a thing as practical philosophy), I want to deal with matters like precisely why people can attempt to help, and yet treat disabled people in a less than pleasant way, how assumptions about disability effect people's ethical outlook, and how to work out a clear distinction betwene facts and assumptions about disability.

Now, this long and rambling post has lead streight into the swamps of offtopicitude, so I'd better stop before I sink.

Last edited by Dark (2007-02-21 08:45:57)