[cross posting this from xnPlay as it has a sort of relevance here]
I’ll happily admit that when it comes to Earthshaker, it’d take a cataclysmic event to make me give it a bad review. Thing is, it may be a new game to the 360 but it’s a game that I’ve owned and enjoyed for the best part of 20 years now (oh god, I’m old) and having it brought to the XBLIG service is a super bonus as far as I’m concerned.
Oh sure, we’re used to old games being given a new lease of life on the big daddy service – unfortunately, often with little success.
It might be a case of a game designed for digital sticks suddenly finding itself becoming imprecise in the move to analogue control, it might be having the graphics pasted over with ugly new sprite work or pointless additions like “throttle monkey” mode (hands up who when playing an arcade game found themselves thinking “man, I really wish that I could let this game run at a really silly speed”. No-one? Quelle surprise!) or in the case of the XBLA port of Tempest, just having it fucked over totally.
On XBLIG? Well, we’ve certainly got our “tribute games with a twist”, we’ve got a couple of “designed to look a bit old” games but so far, only the one game that’s an honest to goodness port. Whilst it might not have been the ideal choice of game for me, I’ll welcome it as any avenue that lets an original author get their game a second lease of life is cool with me. When you factor in how much IP sits there, doing nothing, passed from company to company after takeovers, shutdowns and all those things the games industry just does and how many games were it not for emulation would be lost to the void then yes, I’m happy for this sort of think to exist. I don’t know about you, dear readers, but I care about our gaming heritage and it makes me sad that so much of it has been technically lost over the years.
So, Earthshaker then. A colourful take on Boulderdash originally appearing as one of the Your Sinclair Six Pack games (yes, in my day we used to get full new games on the front covers of magazines not shitty demos). It sort of worked like this. A magazine needed cover tape content. People sat at home and wrote games in their spare time. Tape lands at office, exchange of small funds occured, your game is on covertape and in the homes of peoplefolks. Everybody wins. Unless the game is crap, obviously, then umm someone’s just got a few quid for a load of rubbish and they win! Huzzah.
Regardless, it’s the sort of thing you just don’t see done now. I mean, there’s no need really is there? What with all these people making indie games or freeware and stuff, you can just ask them is it ok to bung them on the coverdisc to pad out the demos and no exclusive content needed. Unless you’re the person who asked me last week and I sent you an exclusive version of one of my games because y’know, I still value that sort of thing even if no-one else will ever know or notice when the disc goes straight into the bin or still hangs off the front of a magazine never to be removed or whatever.
And so it goes that 20 years on, people still remember that game they got on a covertape. I mentioned Earthshaker on Twitter last week and the first response was along the lines of “hey, I had that on a YS cover tape”. 20 years and y’know, that tape is still remembered. It’s a shame that we lost that sort of thing over time. I know I’m certainly not going to remember what game I got on Once Thriving PC Magazine Now Reduced To 20 Pages With A Skeleton Staff And Printed On Toilet Paper But At Least It Still Means People Who Write Can Do Some Writing And Get Paid For It Which Is Nice Issue 287 in 20 years time given that the featured content is probably Shootlord 6: The Demo You Can Get Off The Internet and The 6 Best MODS for Melvyn Bragg’s Justice Of History XII: Wheelchair Edition with a side order of Exclusive Dog Armour for Space Shuttle Simulator 2019: The Awakenorising.
It’s all a bit rubbish. Kids today. Tch. Get off my lawn.
Where was I? Sorry, the problem with old age is y’know, senility and all that and what was I just saying? Oh, hello there, handsome man. Earthshaker? Aaah, now I remember. Thank you.
Earthshaker is a pretty neat Boulderdash-styled game. I’m sure you all know the drill – collect the shiny things and get to the exit whilst trying to crush your meaty head under a rock. A problem I’m sure we all encounter on a day to day basis.
There’s a few additions to the formula, the timer can be replenished with jelly beans, there’s fire to burn your hair off (HINT: Don’t burn your hair off), bubbles to extinguish said fires (HINT: If hair is on fire, call an ambulance. Do not run bubble bath), monitors, forcefields, sticks of purest gravity and plenty to mix it all up. And it’s not an easy game at all. The levels present in the XBLIG version will keep you on your toes (HINT: Don’t stay on your toes. Feet are created special for a purpose) and if that’s not enough, no longer do you need to wait a few months then type in a BASIC program to create a level editor for the game, no sir, no sirree, there’s a level editor included so you can set up and create your own series of challenges, hand the controller over to the cat and watch him get his meaty head crushed by a rock for a change. (HINT: Do not crush a cats meaty head with rocks in real life, virtual world only please).
And that’s Earthshaker. There’s no fancy doodle-upgrade-o-tron applied, it still holds dear its Speccy roots and heck, why not? Sometimes just making something big enough to fit on a big screen does the job perfectly well and yes, folks, it is all about the game. And lo, the game is good.
Earthshaker. A game I approve of not just for existing as it does but because it’s a great game also. It’s $1 or 80 of your sillyfakecurrencies and it comes with the xnPlay seal of approval. We’d ask that you return the seal when you’re finished though as we’ve only got one and we need to make sure he’s not soiled before the next person has their turn.
