Things about non-Doom video games you just found out

[Wadmodder Shalton]

An infamous joke program called JepRuss was distributed in around 1997 or 1998 that was part of an advertising/marketing campaign for an obscure game called Virus: The Game.

 

As a publicity stunt, the UK publisher Telstar Electronic Studios sent a mock virus email to a couple of users across the globe. When the program was opened the contents of the hard drive was displayed, which then appears to delete all the files before a fake shutdown prompt appears and then it goes black, and slowly types "Thank God This Is Only A Game...", followed by information about the game itself, no damage was otherwise done on the user's computer.

This infamous advertising/marketing campaign immediately backfired, and many antivirus software started deleting the joke program from the users PC shortly after it first appeared.

Edited December 2, 2023 by Wadmodder Shalton

[BrutalDoomisAwesome]

I never knew this existend in the game Grim Fandango. The Song Rusty Anchor.

 

 

[Aaron Blain]

I've been playing the Dreamcast version of Gunlord for a few weeks now and I fully assumed that it was 1. A Turrican sequel in all but name, perhaps for licensing reasons, and 2. Released in the late 90s. Turns out this is not the case at all. Great freakin game.

[Rudolph]

So I notice this being showcased on ModDB today, Huncraft: Genocide, an unofficial second expansion to StarCraft!

 

It was produced by the same Hungarian team that unofficially localized StarCraft: Brood War, so they were able to get the same voice cast to dub the returning characters. Aside from the amateurish-looking CG cutscenes, it looks quite professionally made and even features three new units!

 

It is just a shame that it was never fully localized for an English audience. Fans these days certainly would have had the means to do so!

Edited November 16, 2023 by Rudolph

[Li'l devil]

I've just learned that Wolfenstein games aren't really historically accurate.

[Lila Feuer]

3 hours ago, Li'l devil said:

I've just learned that Wolfenstein games aren't really historically accurate.

 

You mean to tell me that one man didn't break out of a heavily fortified Nazi prison, resuming his top secret mission to stop a mad doctor from using a corpse reanimating serum in a desperate attempt to create expendable supersoldiers and then underwent the bold operation of infiltrating Hitler's bunker so he could face him down with a man portable minigun?

 

I've been living a lie!

[Maximum Matt]

This is how it went down.

[Wadmodder Shalton]

In RCT1 & RCT2, guests won't buy either Ice Cream or Cotton Candy when it rains, so in the rain they will still walk up to them but then they'll refuse to buy it and select a different food stall a bit later.

[Wadmodder Shalton]

Apparently, the Dingo Pictures games released on the PS1 and PS2 by both Midas Interactive and Phoenix Games, you know the way many people were introduced to Dingo's low-budget animations, weren't actually properly licensed by them.

 

They were probably licensed out by one of their distributors, that being Dutch company T.R.S. Media B.V., which probably published Dingo movies through CD-ROM games on Windows PCs sometime around 1999 (or maybe earlier), though so far regarding the Windows PC ports of Dingo's films, nobody has found them as of now. What the direct connection and relation between T.R.S Media B.V. and Dingo Pictures was is as of now, currently unknown.

[Async Unicorn]

Somehow Riva Tuner can break various versions of Minecraft.

 

Yep, it can be unbelievable at first glance, but I had a lot of headaches trying to figure out what causes big artifacts in old versions.

 

I tried various iGPU settings, various Java versions, I even tried Beta Craft launcher - it didn't help, so I almost gave up, cause I thought it was my PC and broken tesselator problem, so all I need is to pray that somebody would make fixes for all old versions, but yesterday miracle happened ! Yesterday, when I installed Minecraft 1.20.4 with Sodium and it crashed, it turned out that Sodium doesn't support Riva Tuner at all cause it's problematic app to work with, so I disabled RT and Minecraft launched, then I thought "Maybe old versions are also incompatible?", I disabled RT (then uninstalled cause I use RT rarely) and, take a breathe, there were no artifacts and crashes at all!

I don't know how, in the name of the Lord, it break Minecraft, it was the last thing on my mind cause other versions worked and launched fine (even with Sodium!), but here's my little advice:

DO NOT EVER USE RIVA TUNER WHEN PLAYING MINECRAFT!

Edited December 15, 2023 by Vanilla+Unicorn

[Wadmodder Shalton]

Five of the games that Phoenix Games published on the PlayStation 2 in 2006-2007 that were developed by Aqua Pacific were actually crappy pirated ports of five games from the Familijny CD-Romek series of edutainment PC games released exclusively in Poland.

 

These titles are:

 

Jaś i Małgosia (Hansel and Gretel)

Kopciuszek (Cinderella)

Królewna Śnieżka i Siedmiu Wspaniałych (Snow White and the Magnificient Seven, the English version's title was renamed to Snow White and the Seven Clever Boys probably to avoid a lawsuit from MGM.)

Pinokio (Pinocchio)

Piotruś Pan (Peter Pan)

 

In otherwords, yes that was not their own original product. Hence I've found the original source material for five of Phoenix Games' PS2 released.

[Individualised]

Nintendo manufactured the Famicom (more specifically the AV Famicom) until 2003; they weren't just selling old stock but were continuing to manufacture the system and chipset.

Edited February 25 by Individualised

[Taw Tu'lki]

Duke Nukem was a name of vilian from Captain Planet show

[Wadmodder Shalton]

The Windows 95 port of Hexen was developed by a company called WildTangent, which later developed many Windows in the late-1990s to early-2010s, many of which were pre-installed on many PCs during the Windows XP-era to the early Windows 10-era.

 

On a side note, many of WildTangent's early Windows game catalog are lost media though.

[Individualised]

The version of Comix Zone released on the Wii Virtual Console is a prototype build dating a few months before release.

Edited February 18 by Individualised

[Individualised]

There's an early version of Quake's E1M1 with the name "jrbase1.map" in the QuakeEd source code release. This version of the map seems to be later than the version seen in pre-release footage (which probably is from around the same time as Qtest1, if not the uncut version of that build) but still earlier than the final. Notable differences include:

• The name of the map is "Entering the Military Base" instead of The Slipgate Complex (or "the Slipgate Complex"; bet you never noticed that mistake before).
• No music track or worldtype is set; those fields don't even exist in the map file.
• There's little to no ambient noise placed anywhere in the level.
• There's no co-op starts.
• The "guard rails" that appear in deathmatch around the level exit aren't present.
• The quad damage secret still contains yellow armor like the pre-release footage version, however the quad damage is now present and is placed at the end of the level before the level exit, and the invulnerability for deathmatch is now present.
• Crates use incorrect textures like the Beta3 and pre-release footage versions.
• Like Beta3 and the pre-release footage, the bridge across the poison in the middle of the level only extends temporarily, and there's switches on both sides to extend it instead of only one.
• The secret teleporter uses the sky texture, like all teleporters in the pre-release footage and Qtest1.
• There's no info_intermission entities, so the intermission screen was probably not implemented yet, likely dating the map sometime before late May 1996 according to Carmack's .plans.
• The changelevel trigger takes you to a map called "tim6".

Edited February 24 by Individualised

[Individualised]

Sandy Petersen claims to have made maps for Quake 2, but all of his work was removed when he left id Software. Would love to see those.

[houston]

The Counter-Strike guy is a fucking Half-Life Lambda (I don't have Global Offense or CS2 installed)

 

[Wadmodder Shalton]

In RCT1 & RCT2, if you name a park or a ride a single dash or up to 32 dashes, it looks either your park or ride doesn't have a name at all.

[nathanB404]

I found out that the beta for mario sunshine was alot different compared to its final release.

 

It's very, uncanny..

 

 

Video game betas used to be alot creepy back then 0_0

Edited March 16 by nathanB404
Grammatical error

[ETTiNGRiNDER]

On 2/25/2024 at 12:39 AM, Individualised said:

Sandy Petersen claims to have made maps for Quake 2, but all of his work was removed when he left id Software. Would love to see those.

I thought the claim was that they used his work uncredited after he left?  If so it was probably (parts of) Makron's castle just going by style, but I'm speculating.

[Individualised]

Quake 3 was originally meant to be a more direct sequel to Quake 2. According to Carmack's .plans, the decision to refocus the game as a multiplayer-focused game was made in June 1998.

Edited March 18 by Individualised

[OniriA]

When finding out something new about a game that you played for a long time.

 

Edited March 18 by OniriA

[ETTiNGRiNDER]

On 8/11/2023 at 9:13 AM, Mr. Freeze said:

And the reason why it's called "Resident Evil" in America in the first place is because the American hardcore band Biohazard owned the trademark to the name.

Same reason why Bio Menace is called that and not Bio Hazard, as I understand.

 

On 7/29/2023 at 10:28 PM, Individualised said:

Turns out these pre-date QTest1 and are actually from a September 28th, 1995 build!

Have modders been able to get their hands on that horned axe ogre, or is it a lost media type deal?

[Individualised]

32 minutes ago, ETTiNGRiNDER said:

Have modders been able to get their hands on that horned axe ogre, or is it a lost media type deal?

Sadly not. The Qtest1 ogre is a bit closer but doesn't have the horns or the axe. It does shoot nails instead of grenades which is interesting.

On 3/17/2024 at 2:02 PM, ETTiNGRiNDER said:

I thought the claim was that they used his work uncredited after he left?  If so it was probably (parts of) Makron's castle just going by style, but I'm speculating.

Perhaps, but Sandy claims that his work was removed before release.

[Wadmodder Shalton]

SimCity 3000 was originally a completely different game than what was released. It was originally going to be all 3D like what SimCopter and Streets of SimCity did before, and a few brief images were released.

However, the developers at Maxis knew it would be infeasible with late-90s PC hardware, and the Electronics Arts buyout in 1997 resulted in this version being scrapped and the game became the same SC2K gameplay with better graphics.

Edited March 21 by Wadmodder Shalton

[Individualised]

This early footage of Donkey Kong Country 2 uses a different music track for the mine levels.

[Wadmodder Shalton]

The characters in Postal 1 are actually, contrary to popular belief, flat-textured polygon models as opposed to sprites.

Edited April 1 by Wadmodder Shalton

[Major Arlene]

You can ride the rollercoaster in Pacifica with Johnny in Cyberpunk 2077. Gotta try this on my current playthrough

[Wadmodder Shalton]

The release date Apocalypse Weekend expansion for Postal 2. Many people think that the release date of it is May 31st 2005, but it was actually released first in Russia by Akella on August 1st 2004.

 

Also, there was once an early version of the intro movie, in which there was a Matrix-Styled fight between the Postal Dude and Gary Coleman. According to Mike J, the server holding the cutscene died sometime around 2005 or so, effectively making it lost media. Given that Akella published the Apocalypse Weekend expansion in Russia a year before the rest of the world got it, perhaps a former Akella employee has the cutscene on some old hard drive, CD-R or DVD-R backup somewhere. One could only dream that it will resurface.

Edited April 2 by Wadmodder Shalton