Where’s Our google Checkout?

It’s January 27, 2010, and google Checkout is still unavailable to Canadian and Australian sellers.  O RLY? SRSLY.

Still not available in Canada or Australia!

It seems like only yesterday that we were told that expansion of the service was “pending.”  A couple of years later, it’s still pending.  I realize that google has many irons in the fire, and not all projects get the green light, but, come on, what is the problem here?

Are Canadian banking laws getting in the way or is it a tax law issue?  If so, has anyone from google met with either the Minister or Deputy Minister of Finance to help clear the way?  (And the Australian equivalent down under!)

Or has google abandoned the project completely?

Won't google make this clown happy again?

So many good ideas come out of the google corporate headquarters: the incredibly sleek Chrome browser; the mindboggling google Earth; the powerful google Translate; and, of course, google Base, the best friend of many small to medium sized businesses, just to name a few.

So, I know that I speak for a plethora of Canadian (and Australian) sellers who would eagerly embrace the google Checkout service (assuming it launched with an industry-competitive rate structure).

Look, it’s only logical that the service should be immediately extended to Canadian and Australian sellers.  The torments we endure as we listen to our American and UK cousins tell us of the wonders of the service and the many sales they’ve processed is evil.  And google must do no evil…

So come on, google – get ‘er done!

The Best Classic Board Games – Scotland Yard

If you’re looking for a game that has a little more depth, but not to the point of needing to take a course from your local community college to play it, Scotland Yard is the game for you.  The object of the game is to capture a criminal who is on the lam from Scotland Yard, chasing him or her through the streets and subways of London, England.  One player takes the role of the fugitive, the rest work together as members of Scotland Yard’s finest.

The 1985 Milton Bradley Scotland Yard

The criminal, Mr. X, can hop on board the subway, take a transit bus, or grab a taxi as he attempts to elude his pursuers.  The police players are always attempting to move into the same space as Mr. X, thereby capturing him.  However, although they know what method of transportation Mr. X is currently using, they usually don’t know where on the game board he is, except during the five times in the game that Mr. X must reveal his location.  Even armed with this knowledge, the police players have only so many turns to capture Mr. X, as they each have a limited number of movement tokens they can use.  Once all players have used up their movement tokens, they cannot move again.  If Mr. X avoids Scotland Yard’s net until all the other players have used up their tokens, he wins the game; if any player lands on Mr. X’s current location, they win the game.

The 1991 Ravensburger version of Scotland Yard

Interestingly, two game companies published this game.  In the United States, Milton Bradley secured the rights to sell Scotland Yard.  In Canada and Europe, Ravensburger distributed the game.  Of the two versions, the Ravensburger game is a far superior product, with much better quality playing pieces.  The game play is exactly the same, though.

The 2000 Ravensburger version of Scotland Yard

This is a game for 3 to 6 players, ages 10 and up, and takes around 45 minutes to complete.  Although Scotland Yard is not a true 100% cooperative play game, it has cooperative play elements.  The more players there are, the more difficult the game becomes, as the police players need to coordinate their searches (which can lead to some spectacular fiascos worthy of the Keystone Cops!).  It is also an award-winning game, winning the 1983 Spiel des Jahres (the German Game of the Year).

If you and your children are seeking a slightly more challenging board game to sink your teeth into, I heartily recommend Scotland Yard. Pick up a copy – you won’t be sorry!

magisterrex Retro Game of the Week – King’s Quest

Any blog about classic retro gaming simply MUST include a homage to Roberta Williams’ King’s Quest series, originally published by Ken and Roberta Williams’ Sierra On-Line company in the 1980s.

King's Quest IBM PC Jr Version Front Cover

The story was a simple one: the Kingdom of Daventry is in trouble as three of its greatest treasures – a mirror that tells the future, a shield that protects its user from danger, and a chest that is always filled with gold – have been stolen.  The King sends Sir Graham, an honest and unpretentious young knight, on a quest to recover the treasures.  Should he succeed, he will become King.  Should he fail, he’ll become worm food.  Of course, how Graham accomplishes the task before him is up to the player!

King's Quest Tandy 1000 Release

This was the original “big-game” release.  The industry was still very new, and it was not unusual for games to be coded by a single person over a couple of weeks for a low budget.  King’s Quest was coded by six people with Roberta Williams as the project leader, with a cost of $700,000, for an 18-month period.  This was completely unheard of, and was a very risky gamble that ultimately paid off, fueling an entire line of games from Sierra On-Line.

King's Quest Screenshot

King’s Quest was a huge leap forward for gaming.  In a time when games either were completely text-based or with the occasional static graphic, King’s Quest provided character interaction with the game environment.  By pressing the arrow keys, Sir Graham could walk across the screen and could cross in front of or behind objects, making the game the first 3-D adventure.  And even though the interface was still text-based (you typed in what action you wanted to do), seeing the result of what you typed made for classic gaming.

King's Quest classic "gold box" edition

Like any good adventure game, the puzzles in King’s Quest were varied and fun.  The Sierra team programmed puzzles to have more than one solution, and points were awarded to the player depending on what actions they took.  And unlike many of the action, destroy-everything-you-see games of the time, King’s Quest rewarded players with a higher score if they found non-violent solutions.

King's Quest EGA 1990 Release

There have been several releases of King’s Quest over the years, starting with the original version in 1983, which was packaged up in the IBM PC Jr series of computers.  Fortunately, poor sales of the computer did not result in the termination of the King’s Quest franchise, as it was released in Apple II, PC (boot disk) and Tandy format in 1984 to general fanfare, and around 500,000 copies sold.  The game sold well enough that it was re-released in 1987 in the Amiga, Atari ST, Macintosh and MS-DOS formats, which sent it back up the sales charts.  (It was at that time that the second part of the title, “Quest For The Crown,” was added.)  It even crossed over into the console video game charts with a version for the Sega Master System in 1989.

King's Quest EGA Screenshot

King’s Quest was remade in 1990 with much better graphics and music card support.  The quest points were changed slightly, which meant that the game itself played somewhat differently from the original.  A fan-made King’s Quest was released in 2001 by AGD Interactive, which has seen many updates right up to 2009.  You can find it here: http://www.agdinteractive.com/games/kq1/

King's Quest 2001 Fan Re-Release

King’s Quest was such a solid game that it spawned an entire genre, the 3-D animated adventure.  Sierra shot to the top of the gaming industry with hit after hit, including an entire King’s Quest series, Space Quest, Quest for Glory, Police Quest, and so forth.  If you haven’t played any of the original games, give them a try.  Yes, they’re incredibly simple and crude versus the immersive gaming environments we play in today, but they’re an important part of gaming history.  Be a retro gamer and Quest for the Crown today!

King's Quest for the Sega Master System (SMS)

magisterrex Retro Game of the Week – ZORK

One of my earliest gaming memories involves spending long nights playing Infocom’s flagship game, Zork on my family’s Circle II – an Apple II clone – computer.  This was a text-based adventure: no graphics, no digitized speech, no musical score; just vivid descriptions of another world that still resonate in my memories today.

Zork I: The Great Underground Empire

Gaming history tidbit! Zork was originally entitled, “Dungeon,” but as soon as the lawyers at TSR, Inc. found out, a quick “thou shalt not” trademark violation letter convinced its creators to call it “Zork” after a MIT slang for an unfinished program. I doubt if anyone would associate the word “zork” with anything but text-based gaming today, so perhaps this is an example of how gaming language changes over time.  But I digress…

Who could forget Zork’s opening: “You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.  There is a small mailbox here.”  The text-based parser would respond to your directions, such as “Open mailbox” or even just “open”.   Actually, the parser was quite advanced for the genre, as it was able to handle conjunctions and prepositions, such as “open the mailbox and read the leaflet,” and had a wide array of verbs and nouns that it recognized.  Of course, if you tried a command that it didn’t know, the parser would just respond with, “I don’t understand that” or a pre-programmed witty response if you tried something the programmers anticipated you would, like typing in “jump” and getting “Wheeee!!!” as a response.  For fun, type in any of the following: zork, win, repent, yell, and see what the parser says back.

After a brief search of the area you find a way to enter the house, and from there, the entrance to the Great Underground Empire.  (Incidentally, this game is responsible for teaching gamers that although a sword is wonderful to have, a lantern is even better.  Lose your lamp and expect a grue to feast your poor lost soul.)  Many of the locations in the Great Underground Empire (G.U.E.) found their way into other games, such as the spectacular Flood Control Dam #3.  Did I already mention the magnificent prose used in this game?  These locations were described in such a manner that gamers could close their eyes and visualize their environs…and the danger they were in.

By the way, you’re not alone down there in the remnants of the G.U.E.  Besides the ever-present danger of a grue coming across you, there’s a troll blocking your access, and a damn Thief randomly appears throughout the game.  He’s looking for treasure, and considers you a nice low-level random encounter.  In other words, run into the Thief and he’ll steal you blind.  He might even take your lantern (and that’s a bit of a problem).  A winning strategy is to avoid him until you’re armed and dangerous with the nasty knife, and then take him out (but not before saving the game first; he’s a tough guy to take down).

Finding the original disks is a serious challenge these days, thirty years later, but there are several emulations available to anyone looking to play this classic retro game.  You can download the first three games here: http://www.infocom-if.org/downloads/downloads.html or just jump right into a game here: http://thcnet.net/error/index.php You can also play the original Dungeon game complete with a game map, here: http://almy.us/dungeon.html

Go on – enjoy a little classic oldschool gaming with one of the games that started it all!

magisterrex Retro Game of the Week – Links 386 Pro

Links 386 Pro was a game-changer when it arrived back in 1992.  Long before Tiger Woods was winning championships and wooing pretty birdies, Access Software had been making golf games.  Their first, Leader Board Golf for the Commodore 64, came out in 1984, so they had quite a bit of experience already under their belt.  But this golf game was different; not only was Links 386 Pro a technological marvel, it was also an amazing game to play.

Links 386 Pro Front Cover

The graphics were absolutely stunning with amazing detail.  The trees and bushes along the fairway, scenic backgrounds, even the clouds in the sky – this was an unbelievable game to play.  It felt like you were actually golfing these courses.  Compared to the cartoonish and blocky graphics that gamers were subjected to over the years, Links 386 Pro was the pinnacle of the computer golfing experience.

But this game had more than just great graphics. The sound quality was outstanding: the whoosh of the club, the smack of the ball, the glorious sound of the ball entering the cup, all this and more enhanced the experience of and the illusion of actually “being there” on the links.  Players could mulligan their shots (but it would show up on their scorecard). You could preview the course and analyze the grade of the shot.  You could even split the screen to watch the ball coming and going from different angles!  So many features added to the enjoyment of the game.

Links 386 Pro Game Play Screenshot

All those features had a cost; at the time of its release, Links 386 Pro pushed the technological envelope.  This game can be run on a 80386SX-25 MHz with 2 MB of RAM, but the slow screen redraws made an upgrade to a minimum of a 80486DX-50 MHz with 4 MB of RAM required.  To access the graphics a Super VGA card capable of 640×400 resolution was needed, which helped spur on SVGA card sales.  Many computer salespeople loved Links 386 Pro for the easy sales it produced (all they needed to do was make a comparison demo and the newer, more expensive computer found its way into the buyer’s shopping cart!).

Links 386 Pro also satisfied gamers’ needs to trumpet how good they were.  A recording mode allowed the player to share that perfect game with all your closest gamer friends – and post it on the bulletin boards to brag to everyone else.  Whole competitions erupted between golf simulation aficionados seeking to become the world’s best golfer (simulated golfer, that is!).

There were many add-on courses for Links 386 Pro, which gave the game a longer shelf life.  You could golf in Hawaii, challenge the pros at Pebble Beach, enjoy the majestic view of Banff, take on the pride of the British Isles at the Belfry, even experience the terror of the Bermuda Triangle.  There was a course for everyone!

Devil's Island Links 386 Pro Expansion Screen Shot

All in all, this game is an important piece of retro gaming history.  Anyone who experienced its sheer epic gameplay back in the day will remember the joy of shooting a low score, and, ever so rarely, the Links 386 Pro version of Caddyshack’s, “It’s in the hole!”: YES!!! YES!!!