This edition of Weekend Download highlights some of my favorite entries in the recently-ended (and completely awesome) TIGSource Bootleg Demakes competition. Designers were challenged to remake a game for a system released before its time. So, for example, creating a Super Smash Bros. knockoff for the NES. Nearly 70 games were entered in the competition, so be sure to check out the competition page and try some more on for size.
Fable of Griselda (Windows, <1MB, free) - An extraordinarily accurate demake of the original Legend of Zelda game... using ASCII characters! There are rocks! There are *-shaped enemies! There's a sword to hit stuff with! What more can I say other than "dangerous take this"?
Hold Me Closer, Giant Dancer (Windows, <1MB, free) - A seriously demade demake of Shadow of the Colossus, the epic giant-climbing game for PlayStation 2. Scale gargantuan 2D pixel monsters one foothold at a time, using the [x] key to grab and hold onto the green tufts of moss on the giant's body. The controls are a bit complex, but once you get them down, you're in for a great game.
Thieving Raccoon (Mac/Windows, free, browser-based) - Remember the old Nintendo Game & Watch systems? Of course you do! These and other simple LCD games of yore are what inspired this Sly Cooper demake, cutting out everything except the most basic reflexive button pressing.
Squish (Windows, 3MB, free) - A demake of the PSP puzzle-platformer Crush. Collect all of the coins to open the door at the end of each level. The catch? You must switch between 2D and 3D perspectives in order to traverse the landscape! Similar to Super Paper Mario in style, though much simpler.
Gang Garrison 2 (Windows, 3.3MB, free) - A surprisingly faithful demake of Team Fortress 2, pared down to blocky sprites, a few colors, and a 2D world. All of the classes are present, from the ever-burning Fireman (Pyro) to the explosive-loving Detonator (Demo). And of course online multiplayer is part of the experience!
Little Girl in Underland (Windows, 7.3MB, free) - One of the most impressive bootleg demakes of the bunch, Little Girl in Underland both mocks and pays homage to American McGee's Alice. It's similar to the old adventure games, only this one's built around hilariousness, not puzzles.
I searched that competiton and you know what i found? A KATAMARI CLONE! YAY!
I forgot to mention, the song that plays is a remix of my favorite Katamari son, Lonely Rolling Star.
(I was only comenting on the colored KD clone.)
Katamaran is scaring me!
Six games and only one of them is Mac-compatible. This is why I hate Weekend Download.
I checked out that competition thing, checked some individual game links, and I couldn't find anywhere where it says if the games are compatible with Mac or only Windows. Of course I think 99.99% of them are going to be Windows-Only games, but I'd like to be able to see at least- anybody know how to find that out? Thanks!
Honestly, are we still complaining about Mac incompatibility? This is a given when you buy a Mac! Crossover games works wonders, and costs ~40 bucks. Bootcamp works better, and you only have to buy XP, which you can probably find for <$100 now, and the drivers come free in leopard. Anyway, I look forward to trying out all these when I choose to restart, and use the wonderful Google Chrome to surf the internets. I do hope that it comes to Mac soon.
My personal favorite is S.T.A.C.K.E.R., the Tetris/S.T.A.L.K.E.R. inventory-management mash-up. I woulda thought it would be right up JIG's alley!
My parents are radically anti-Windows. While I do own Leopard and Boot Camp did come with it, my parents won't let me own anything but a Macintosh OS. I think I already know what I'd hear if I brought this situation to them: "There are plenty of other games out there that do run on Macs, so just forget about those Windows-only ones."
Plenty of, my @#$^&! One out of six; you call that plenty?
This was sure a weird weekend download.
Hold Me Closer, Giant Dancer is quite nice, it feels a little slow, but I liked to play it through.
Gang Garrison 2 is sure a nice little game, too bad there isn't a team chat feature. But I can imagine it has not been added on purpose.
BTW: Hit 'q' to get the hidden 10th type of character
Fable of Griselda, I bet one must have played and remember well the matching Zelda game, I didn't so, so I guess thats why I might miss the joke of it.
Little Girl in Underland, Even saying "It's similar to the old adventure games, only this one's built around hilariousness, not puzzles." is daring IMHO. It's not adventure at all, except the typical Sierra start menu. You just hit through the enemies, that's even less than "an adventure without puzzles". I'd rather describe it as "interactive art experience". I'm no expert at art, so I cannot really judge its value there. On the matter of amusement, the only time I slightly smirked was when the queen described her agenda of society. But the rest, not quite my tonic that really makes me have fun.
And just to add insult to injury, the one game that's Mac-compatible isn't a download at all, it's an online playable! (Not that that's a bad thing, it just feels like punching me when I'm down.)
Oh about the Mac whining, I mean seriously guys, it *does* get old having this weekend after weekend staging the same show, playing this same "no Mac games violin". Who the heaven are you after all to *demand* games for your OS? I'm a dedicated linux user, do you hear us ever cry here? We just got dual boot, or wine, or a virtual machine like now the modern kvm in linux, or just not play this windows download games. Simple as that.
I don't have access to any of those things...
SonicLover this just isn't our problem, Sorry.
As a fellow Mac-user, SL, I feel your pain. But seriously, we do try our best to find Mac-compatible games...it's just kinda tough, considering the ratio of Win to Mac. :(
So where exactly is this Katamari clone? I could only find the black/white one.
Just for the record, I wasn't complaining. I just asked how to find out if they were Mac compatible on that other site. I already know there isn't much for Mac games out there, and I wasn't complaining.
As for the other options, as I've said before, playing casual games is the only thing I have any use for Windows for, and it's not something I want to spend "<$100" on. Closer to $100, that I found anyways. I got other uses for my time and money and casual games is not it.
-hey, it cut off my comment-
to finish: "less than $100" on. It was closer to $100 that I found, and I have other uses for my time and money than casual games.
[Edit: You can't just type angle brackets ("<" or ">") in comments as they signal the begin (or end) of an HTML tag. If you want to type an angle bracket, you must use its HTML entity: < for "less than" and > for "greater than". I've fixed your previous comment accordingly. -Jay]
I agree the Mac complaining is getting really tired here, and this coming from a Mac user myself.
In the future we will likely delete complaints such as these as spam. They add nothing to the discussion, and there is certainly nothing we can do about the state of the games industry with respect to the platforms being developed for.
Ohhhh- I see :-) I shoulda guessed! Thank you Jay!!!
@Thempark,
The colored one (which is the more Katamari-like one and not scary one) is right by Katamaran, the B&W one. it's the one with the 4 bushes, 2 bikes, and an alarm clock.
Nevermind, the other Katamari Damacy demake is Let's Roll Up.
The Shadow of the Colossus demake is FRUSTRATING AS HECK. Fun, though.
Downloader beware.
I LOVE protobyte! it just needs the option to play a level with no time limit or stopping point after you beat the game.
Just a thought on the Mac complaints...I think two reasons that the Linux users aren't complaining like the Mac owners are because a) as far as I can tell, there *are* more modern games being ported to Linux than there are to Max, and b) Linux users have access to the entire library of Unix games (granted, since OSX is built on top of a *nix flavor, this *should* be true of Mac as well in theory, so YMMV there).
I'm interested in this alice game, how would you guys rate it in terms of content? (From the standard ESRB E for everyfone to A for adult.)
Does anyone know how to complete the 4th Level in Squish (In 'The Shore' levels)?
I can get all the little coins but the leap from the bottom green platform to the door is too far.
James, you don't leap from the bottom green platform you
get all the coins then squish, stand where you'll re-emerge on blue blocks and squish again, now you can go stand on the green button. Squish one more time then move slightly to the left and un-squish, this should put you on the blue ledge that's higher than the door. Just jump from there.
Hi there! I created the "Shadow of the Colossus" demake called "Hold me closer, Giant Dancer". Thanks for the shout out! Hummus says it's "FRUSTRATING AS HECK", which is unfortunately accurate since that's what the original game was like. If it helps change your mind, my 2D camera is better than the original :)
With regards to the lack of a MAC version, believe me no-one does that on purpose. Unfortunately, until recently, many of the easiest game development tools were found on the PC, and many of the easy/default graphic libraries were PC only. I use Visual Basic 6.0 + direct Windows API calls, which are extremely hard to translate to the MAC. Further complicating things is the fact I don't own a MAC. Just wanted to let MAC people know they're not being picked on.
bigpants, can you tell the maker of protobyte to make another version of it with the suggestion above by me?
bigpants: I found SDL http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_DirectMedia_Layer to be pretty comfortable to create games with, and its pretty much portable across OSes with this.
And get rid of Basic, Basic is a sickness not a language. Go for anyhting but basic, be it C++, java or even, *gosh that I say it* .net. Everything better than basic.
To everyone who wants to try a Mac/OSX compatible demake - we have a Mac build of Smaze available here! Feel free to give it a whirl! :)
Thanks for the Squish mention! Regarding the mac thing - I'd be quite happy to make a mac version of all my games; I used cross platform libraries so it shouldn't be a problem - but I don't have a mac to compile them on :(
If there are any D users on a Mac here: source to my entry has been released, and I'd love to be able to provide an OSX binary is somebody is willing to compile it.
Awesome! In gang garrison 2
if you press Q in the character select menu you get the main character of Cave Story with his rocket launcher! But unfortunately he has no alt fire...
Michael: I would say Little Girl in Underland would be suitable for older children, so E10+.
The page linked for "Fable of Griselda" above doesn't seem to have the download for the game. As far as I can tell, this is the actual download link:
http://mythicant.com/files/106397-99209/Fable_of_Griselda___final.zip
I'll have to wait til tomorrow to try it out though, as it's way past my bedtime.
Also, michael -- I agree with JohnB's rating, but if you download the game and screen for appropriateness, it'll take you 10 minutes or less to play through.
Thanks for the Griselda mention! I'm amazed as many people like it as they do. ASCII graphics aren't usually a big bragging point. :)
As FuzzyFace mentioned, Griselda will probably be a lot more meaningful for people who played the original Legend of Zelda. It's intentionally supposed to look a lot like it.
In case you couldn't tell, Griselda requires .NET 2.0 or higher. I did make sure to target .NET 2.0 instead of 3.5 so that more people could play it. I was also hoping that our Mac and Linux using friends would be able to play it via Mono. I haven't looked recently, but last I checked (1-2 years ago) Mono's 2.0 support was looking pretty good. Of course, getting Mono installed could be another matter (I haven't tried it recently). So dear Mac and Linux using friends, please know that even though I didn't specifically make Griselda cross platform, I was thinking of you. Honest I was! And I did what I could for you in the amount of time I had. I hope you don't feel too discriminated against.
P.S. I made Fable of Griselda in case you couldn't tell from the rest of my post. :)
P.P.S. Would it be possible to request another Captcha if one is too hard to read?
[Edit: I'll look into the captcha issue. Thanks for the feedback! -Jay]
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