| 2005 Me!, 2000 | |||||||
| User rating: No rating | Freeware | No screenshot yet | |||||
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Inspired by an ASCII lunar lander program I played on my Kaypro 4, I decided to make my own version as a project for my high school computer class. The story is gratuitously graphic and features subject matter that is not suitable for younger gamers, which can be skipped. Why did I make it so gruesome? I have no idea. It is the year 2005, and your mission is to land on Mars. I didn't really think that man would land on Mars by 2005 – I just wanted to write "It is the year 2005" in my game, inspired by Victor Caroli's awesome narration at the beginning of Transformers: The Movie. The gravity is randomly determined at the beginning of each game, and the amount of fuel you have is derived from the gravity to keep it fair. Each turn, you must decide how much fuel to burn in order to reduce your velocity. A graph on the right side of the screen plots your descent (the red "I" represents the surface of Mars). You can land, kind of land, or get splattered all over the Martian surface. This game absolutely must be played from DOS, or DOSBox, or all of the bells and whistles will play ridiculously fast.
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| Mines James L. Dean, 2006 | |||||||
| User rating: No rating | Freeware | No screenshot yet | |||||
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Mines is a text adventure in the tradition of Adventure (Colossal Caves) and Zork. Written in 1979 in BASIC for the TANO Corporation Outpost (with 64K of memory and a 6800 processor), the author rewrote the game for modern computers in 2005. At the beginning of the game you choose a mine number from which the layout of the mine is algorithmically derived. This means that the game can be played again and again using a different layout, but it's not random because the map will be laid out the same way every time you use the same mine number (making it possible to map the mine). The computer describes what you see and carries out your instructions. Your goal is to visit every room and bring all of the treasures back to the entrance. Some items are necessary to overcome obstacles, and you receive points for achieving goals.
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| Multiplex Aestan Games, 2007 | |||||||
| User rating: No rating | Freeware | No screenshot yet | |||||
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Multiplex is an action adventure game that features some of the most impressive ASCII graphics I have ever seen. Inspired by Pyro II, it was created with the Microsoft QuickBasic 4.5 compiler. By the time you see the letters spiraling onto the title screen, you'll realize that this is no ordinary text-based game. The game uses the ASCII box drawing symbols as a form of dithering to simulate up to four shades of each of the 16 colors available in text mode. Your goal is to navigate brilliantly colored levels and destroy all of the monsters with impressive explosions. The monsters are killed by either crushing them with movable blocks located throughout the map, or getting close enough to make them self-destruct. The latter is more dangerous because you can be killed by the explosions, and the screen can easily fill with flames when monsters set each other off in chain reactions. Even hiding behind blocks is hazardous because the environment is fully destructible. An eye-opening demonstration of what it's possible to do with an ASCII game using the unlimited power of modern computers. Multiplex v1.0.1 (74k)
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