Project Firestart (1989) | Origins of Survival Horror
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- Опубликовано: 16 июн 2024
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ORIGINS OF SURVIVAL HORROR: PROJECT FIRESTART
#ProjectFirestart #C64Review #SurvivalHorror #MonstersOfTheWeek #OriginsOfSurvivalHorror
In this mini-series, Origins of Survival Horror, we’re going to explore the games that preceded Resident Evil (the game that coined the term), but that were already full-blown survival horror games through and through.
Today, we’re covering the first fully-fledged survival horror title ever made, the 1989 Commodore 64 title Project Firestart, developed by Dynamix and published by Electronic Arts.
Project Firestart was in so many ways truly ahead of its time, not just in it being down to every little checkmark, a full-on survival horror game 6 years before Resident Evil saw the light of day.
How to get it running guide:
www.tumblr.com/ragnarrox/7413...
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Chapters
00:00 Intro
04:01 Sponsor: Nord VPN
05:39 Part 1: Games Back Then Were Built Different
09:51 Part 2: How to Play (And How to Learn to Play)
18:39 Part 3: A Coherent Horror
24:50 Part 4: Real-Time Before it was Cool
28:05 Part 5: True Surviv(al Horror)
32:11 Part 6: Thanks, EA!
35:57 Epilogue: How to Play (2024 Edition)
36:57 Thank you & Credits
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Script:
Ragnar Ulricson
Captions (en):
Mira Cox, Ragnar Ulricson
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Footage Credits:
System Shock (PC/DOS) "Level-1 Medical" 1994, Looking Glass, ORIGIN | Major Thriftwood
• System Shock (PC/DOS) ...
Amiga 500 Longplay [001] Another World | World of Longplays
Played by: Ironclaw
• Amiga 500 Longplay [00...
Project Firestart C64 Longplay [128] Full Playthrough / Walkthrough (no comment.) | Ludophiles
• Project Firestart C64 ...
PSX Longplay [005] Resident Evil 2 | World of Longplays
Played by: Spazbo4
• PSX Longplay [005] Res...
AX-2 for the NEC PC-6001 mkII | Highretrogamelord
• AX-2 for the NEC PC-60... 
Игры
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Have you ever considered opening a Kofi? It's like Patreon except they take a very small flat rate monthly fee (it's like $5 or less) instead of a percentage no matter how much support you get on there
Unrelated, but VPN's don't protect you from anything; their only use is making it appear like you're somewhere else for access to content. The people you don't want to see your activity (the ISP and thus the government) still see all of your activity regardless. I've got nothing against VPN's, but claiming they protect your data in some way is just blatantly false and extremely misleading to your audience (I know it's part of the script, but maybe you should reconsider having such a sponsor if you're required to falsely advertise their product to the people who put their trust in you). And to be clear, I 100% believe you have been misled about the benefits of using a VPN and that you're not intentionally misleading your audience)
I think this was the first video I ever watched where the add in the beginning was what made click the thumbs up.
Clearly, either you forgot what Nord did, or never knew in the first place. There's a (very good) reason all the big tech youtubers dropped their sponsorship deals with Nord. They can't be trusted.
Please consider trying to stop speaking in such a slow tempo and in such a monotone voice and maybe lighten up or cutting a bit down on the information dumps
@@HollowJacket please ignore this comment. Your tone and pace lend itself well to the dark and brooding theme.
Manuals could be rather special-I loved when there was more art, concept art or bespoke manual art.
I remember watching my dad play games and when he'd get stuck at a part he'd say, "Hey. Hand me the manual." 😂
As someone who considers the C64 a major part of their childhood this is blowing my mind, *today.* I can't imagine how it would have hit 35 years ago. Particularly the movie like presentation, which we didn't even see on the Amiga. Amazing.
It's is incredible that the C64 showing these amazing cutscenes here.
@@Mankey619 It's always been the case that early-launch games tend to be weak compared to later games. This came out seven years after the C64, so the devs had the better part of a decade to learn tricks and optimizations. Like how on the NES, SMB3 makes SMB1 look like pong. That's why new games for old consoles are usually amazing and manage to do things the devs of the time could never dream of (like James Lambert porting _Portal_ to the N64).
It was amazing back in the day. Especially compared to the normal C64 games, you threw that in, and suddenly were like, “What?”
And sans internet, you just kept replaying it to figure out the story. So good.
It was every bit mind blowing back then to my 14-year-old self. I remember seeing it on the new arrivals shelf at Babbage's in Southridge Mall and deciding that I wanted to spend the $29.99 in 1989 dollars for this really fantastic looking game. I was not disappointed, matter of fact I had no idea what I was getting into. Changing the script in the middle of the game by doing different actions? WTF!? I swear I stayed up until the wee hours of the night playing this one, and it's blaring jump scare music.
This game was advanced in the context of the era, so much so that if you told me a time-traveler created that game, I wouldn't be surprised.
Right? I remember a couple of games that had a similar vibe around this time, games like Nexus or Survivor, but Project Firestart would have blown me away
As a kid, my parents strictly limited the amount of time I could play video games. Video game manuals were my way of interacting with the worlds I wanted to experience when I wasn't allowed to. I would read them cover to cover for hours and then build things with clay or Legos to recreate scenes from the game as best as I could. I miss game manuals and the nostalgia it triggers for me, and treasure the few games that include manuals in their physical release like Hollow Knight and Tunic.
Same here.
Yoooo! Same!
Absolutely. The same with video game magazines. I would read the solutions for games I didn't have back-to-back like stories!
@@Onomatopeizator yeees
Same here, i loved the jak and daxter manuals i remember one having a full fold out map. They were so charming I miss manuals 😮💨
The fact that there is only 6 years separating this game RE is mindblowing. At the time, game evolution felt fluid and natural, but looking at it now is astonishing
As a pre-teen and teen, between 1989 and 1997, a month felt like a very long time. As a SNES owner and reader of a Nintendo focused magazine, each new month (issue) showed me something that would blow my mind, from Mega Man X (wow, these graphics can't get any better) to Killer Instinct (wow, these graphics can't get any better) to the first Project Reality prototypes screenshots (wow, these graphics can't get any better) to the actual N64 games (wow, these games really look lame; I think I'll better get a Playstation). But I agree, the evolution felt natural, and it sure was, but only a few years were needed to make really big steps.
Seems so short but I suppose the C64 had been around since 1982.
@rattenkonig6303 WRONG. While the game may be 6 years older than RE but the hardware was from 1982. If this game would have been released in 82, would you say it'rs mindblowing for a 14 years gap? cos again, the hardware didn't change since1982.
@@CharlesLeCharles The PS was released in 94. So 12 years, not 14. Not much difference but still.
For another tech skip that we will never see again: Parasite Eve 2 came out one year before MGS2.
And we will never see that kind of tech progress leap ever again.
First thing I did, after going to Electronics Boutique and buying a game in the early 2000's, is going to the shopping mall's cafeteria courtyard and opening that game to pour through the instruction manual as I sipped on a nice, hot Tim Horton's double-double in the dead of a December winter snow flurry.
I read every. single. manual for a game I ever bought. They were great, not only was it nice for a quick reference of controls and even sometimes certain abilities, but it had some good lore. It's how I know all of the Covenant's races names.
I think they should bring them back.
I agree, but outside of digital I don't see it happening. Printing manuals is expensive, cuts into the publisher's bottom line.
Holy hell... Used to play this game religiously along side Nexus. Didn't really understand them as a child but something about them just captivated me. Thank you Ragnar for the unexpected nostalgia overload.
100% in support of you making a video on game manuals! I was just playing King's Quest VI and remembered I needed a poem from the manual to solve a puzzle. I ended up getting sucked in because the manual was also this charming little Guidebook to the lands in the game written in the perspective of a traveler. Seeing that made me wonder what creative and cool things other PC/DOS games were doing with their manuals at the time.
The recent appreciation for game manuals has been really fascinating to watch. Generally, it's kind of a low undercurrent through old game retrospectives like this one, but then you get games like Tunic. I haven't played it myself, but my understanding is that the idea of a game manuel is so integral to the game that pages of said manual are the primary in-game collectible.
I personally am a constantly vibrating, ADHD-riddled mess, so much of my experience with game manuals is limited to frantically reading them in the backseat of my parents car, on the way home from buying the game. You make a great argument for them, though! I think that as long as the game makes direct reference to the fact that it expects you to be using the guide (or takes into account that you may not be), ancillary material like that can be a great addition.
There was something magical about reading them on the way home
I love that the set up is just Solaris. Important space facility goes dark, so one guy gets sent to check it out.
Obviously original new ideas are king... But there is something to this era were so much of creativity could just come from taking the pieces of things you liked and smooshing them together.
"Ok so the player is the guy from Solaris, except he's being sent to investigate the Nostromo..."
Fun stuff. Also literally never heard of this game before. You're killing it sir.
"this era were so much of creativity could just come from taking the pieces of things you liked and smooshing them together."
You just described any sort of creative process ever😊 It's not exclusive to that era.
Its exclusive to that era in that you could just mine 1979 movies and get something that hadn't been a game before. Or not since we've had near infinite Alien games, multiple Stalker, Escape From Alcatraz, Apocalypse Now, Mad Max and even a liscensed version of The Warriors but still no Quadrophenia the game or a second attempt at Kramer vs Kramer.
Now unoriginal on purpose model kits like Warhammer which were created to be about personal artistic expression that wasn't available in competing historical wargames only survives by selling its decades old Dune meets LotR stolen IP, Lego sets that would have been been generic versions of archetypes thirty years ago are all properties owned by super conglomorates, games like Uncharted which was just Tomb Raider with a guy so its technically a new IP even though Tomb Raider was just Indiana Jones with a woman so it would be technically different has a pointless film version and everything with any budget is just a ripoff of a ripoff.
Genre pastiches make great games and toys since genre conventions are basically just toys anyway but audiences that just want genre retreads and companies that just want to manage IP are a disaster. Art can't thrive without influence from outside of the arts. @@JC-kl3uc
As a fan of Flashback and og Alone in the Dark, this looks like ZE genuine hidden gem for me.
So thanks man, I would never have heard of that game without your video and the passion that created it.
Try 7 days a stranger. 6 days a skeptic and 5 days
A damn good game series like this
@RagnaRoxShow You should also check out a curious little French game called 'Zombi' which was released back in the 80's, basically a re-enactment of the 1970s film Dawn of the Dead, where you had to secure a shopping mall and survive against zombie hordes and biker gangs, I had a lot of fun with it.
Is that the game that was referenced on the ZombiU game on wii U?
When an old game gave you manuals featuring in-game documents and maps, it always gave me that feeling of when you play table-top RPG's, and the game master passes out detailed hand drawn maps and in-game documents/props for the players to look at and inspect.
You can't help but to appreciate it.
I liked doing stuff like that as a game master too. Like even to the point where I would rip, fray and age maps, notes and letters, and staining the paper with tea and coffee to make them look worn and authentic to the players.
Everyone always loved that attention to detail.
I played an old Sierra game as a kid called Sorcerian, which had an in-depth enchantment/spell system which the manual covered. I cannot imagine how you could fit all that in the game and have it be intuitive.
And yes, I would love a video about games with great manuals as you mentioned. Been loving those kinds of topics nowadays
RE: Manuals
I fondly remember the old Infocom packages that included little game-related items that sort of expanded the game world. Sometimes they had something that directly related tot he game mechanics, but most of the time, it was just fun stuff.
I also remember some of the old copy protection which would refer to something in the game manual, but it wouldn't be a flat out code, it would be referring to something like the "Plants of The World" or "Gemstones and their Meanings". Those manuals often had nice sections expanding the world beyond the game itself and would be a fun read.
Those are called "feelies." Like the maps, ankhs, or moonstones in an Ultima game.
I am also saddened, that game manuals is a lost art. While now games can tutorial you, it's limited by the amount of information the game can reasonably present to you. Then you have to resort to online wikis to get more details, not covered by basic tutorials. On the other hand manuals were not limited by the amount of information, while at the same time if being done artfully and creatively could have enriched the overall experience from the game. There are many examples of great manuals, for example Fallout 1 and 2 come to mind.
I remember the one for Secret of Mana where they had the character art in the manual done in claymation style.
And no cookie recipes!
The legendary Jeff Tunnell- you had Project Firestart, ArcticFox, Stellar 7, The Incredible Machine, Rise Of The Dragon, Betrayal At Krondor, Tribes.
The Sierra On-Line/Dynamix partrnership sure produced a ton of classics.
I'm not sure if you caught it but there's a small flub in the intro to the video. You said Konami was the developer behind Sweet Home, it's blink and you'll miss it I know. Just wanted to point it out in case you missed it in the edit.
Oh yeah I never noticed this one despite watching it so many times while editing. Thanks for pointing it out!
Come now, clearly Ragna did that on purpose so we would watch Sweet Home. There's no way anyone could make an easy mistake like that.
That deserves a ban, Ragnar-sensei!
I almost took it as an ancient joke meme where people used to swap Konami with capcom on msg boards for the laughs
I've been hoping for a detailed, professional-level review of old-school video games and all their wacky accoutrements since The Spoony Experiment went under. I'd really like to see you check some of those out.
My best memory for manuals in games was that whenever I got a new game, my dad would make me read the whole manual before I could play it. It was super fun and really got me excited to actually play it
Mark my words on this. Sometime in the next 5, perhaps 10 years there will be an extremely successful mainstream video game that brings back "feelies" as part of the game experience. Big manuals with lore, maps, diagrams, etc. and will incorporate these into the experience of the game and it will be hailed as "revolutionary" by the games media. I could easily see this happening with a VR game, but I wouldn't be surprised if it happened on one of the big consoles, either.
Man, it would be crazy. Maps, manuals, spell guides, whoever would include crazy stuff like that? Madness, I say!
I miss the manuals, I have fond memories of reading Kotor s manual over and over again. I only started buying digital content when it was clear I couldn't collect and read the manuals any more. Now I fill the void left by this in my gaming experience by reading all the in game sources and watching lore videos, while theory crafting my own head canon. or consuming very well made retrospective content like what Ragnar and aesir aesthetics produce. I really love your content my friend. These retrospectives are better researched and narrated than most content you can find anywhere. Truly top notch.
I forgot how much i liked manuals untill recently.
Ive been gaming PC for years but got an Xbox for christmas n ended up getting cyberpunk 2077 and rdr2.
The nostalgia i experienced when cyberpunk came with a mini lore book was so fun! Ended up sitting on my floor n just reading the entire thing!
Same with rdr2! It came with a full sized map and i ended up using it for most of my playthru instead of using the in game map, circled areas i wanted to check out, wrote where plot points happened, ect. Ended up turning into my own version of arthurs journal!
Oh, boy, the nostalgia...
My cousin and I played the hell out of Project Firestart back in the day! It certainly was different from the other C64 games but that was what we loved about it. I remember recording my playthrough on our VHS and watching it like a movie afterwards!
So, yeah - I'm an 80s kid and I miss manuals. Sid Meier's Pirates (which you showed a short clip from) had this great map of the Caribbean I had over my tv. I always loved when a game manual gave you small little trinkets and in-universe stuff.
Good old times.
I often cite Alien Syndrome in 1987 as the first game you could classify as "horror" with a straight face, but it's still just a top-down arcade action shooter. This, this is where horror games truly got the ball rolling and laid down all the design standards central to the genre. It's like how there were "stealth" games before Metal Gear, but none of them had nailed it quite so perfectly yet.
Alien Breed is the first game I remember being scared by.. the aesthetic, the sounds, the colour palette, all of it.. granted, I was about 7 but yeah 😂
I'm reminded of my favorite manual from the alternate history dieselpunk flight sim, Crimson Skies. Set in a 1930s where the US broke apart from the Great Depression, the manual was designed to look like a magazine for aviation hobbyists - including interviews with main characters, reviews of new planes you get to fly, and full ads for fictional in-setting products. The whole things is available on Internet Archive, and it is still delightful to read through.
I love the texture on the walls of the station. Excellent sci-fi hallways!
Noticed the doors are very similar to the Aliens Computer Game!
Tunic does a phenomenal job at integrating the manual as part of the game's story and puzzles, being an indy game the manual is virtual and within the game itself, but it teaches you an entire languages and is filled with secrets, including multiple endings, when done right manuals can enhance the experience just as much as a game teaching you through gameplay
THE horror game that got me started on my journey through them. Thankyou for giving this some love and recognition.
You really pulled off the "in Minecraft" at the end of the sentence in the sponsered segment lmao
Kudos for the manual bit dude, there are manuals that I've kept and read to this day and I don't play the game at all. They were an intrinsic part of the gaming experience and I mourn the loss. A good manual added so much to the game, lore, depth, concept art... a well done manual arguably would inspire the imagination more than the game itself, and gaming as a whole, while it has grown and advanced in myriad ways, is worse for not including them anymore.
Anyway, just my take as an older gamer who grew up on the classics, and is now trying to appreciate modern gaming on its own terms as well.
I love old PC games. I love the feelies, the manuals. I liked how the books and manuals were used as a way not just to learn how the play, but to immerse yourself in the lore.
Also I love how you're seeding us with that Bioforge box. There's a lot of overlap between us at the moment and Bioforge is definitely on my list. Can't wait to see how we both cover that one! 😊
Love your take on manuals! The building anticipation and excitement reading them before starting the game, there was something almost ritualistic about it
i miss game manuals so much. every time i got a game as a kid, i'd scour through its manual until the moment i could actually play it. i loved the art, the lore, being able to easily reference controls and hints, the artistry of it all. it's why i fell in love with GOG as a platform, so many of the old games come with pdfs of all the feelies the physical game would come with, so you could still get a taste of that experience. i actually ended up printing out copies of the fallout 1 & 2 manuals to reference when i only had one monitor and i felt like a kid again (even if i hadn't actually played fallout as a kid). i love all your videos, but i'd love one on manuals especially. great vid! im gonna find firestart and give it a go.
A two year development cycle for a game pre-2000 is absolutely insane.
Even during the PS1, many studios were pumping out games made in a year or less.
I totally agree with you.. I miss manuals! I loved reading the storyline set up in the manuals and learning little things about the enemies, the characters, the setup. There was so much detail and story building in there most of the time! And I would love to see a video on the history of complex manuals being integrated with the game🙏👍✌️
amazing! I remember seeing this game in a magazine back in the day, at that time I was obsessed with all things 'alien' and desperately wanted to play it, unfortunately, I had a speccy.
I love manuals for old games. I remember having to look up stuff in the manual for the old Zork games. Like days of the week and stuff. Return to Zork had a lot of that. Also maps. Having a printed map was cool. Old games were so charming. Figuring stuff out instead of having in ruined in a RUclips spoiler or just a quick Google search was so satisfying. I think that's part of why I can learn game mechanics so quick now tho b/c I always just had to pay attention to so many small things and learn as I went. Trying stuff to see what worked.
As for you wanting to make different types of videos - make what you want. I love watching you break down old stuff and the interest you show in it. I haven't played any of the stuff you've talked about nor plan to but I still like watching the videos. I'm not really into horror but you make it cool to watch.
I can recognize command and conquer ost in your video.
good taste
What can I say, I'm a Mechanical Man.
This artwork is so good! Thank you for showcasing this. I have never heard of this before
Commenting for the algorithm to start giving Ragnar the love they deserve!!!!!!
Yeah.
Comment.
Finally the father of the genre gets some due!
I recently read through the Alpha Centauri manual, it's crazy how in-depth it is. It explains the details of game mechanics so well I don't even need to google for how things work.
I'd actually love to hear you talk about old manuals! I grew up during a time when manuals still had colour printing, but they were definitely shorter, less necessary, and on the way to being phased out. I know about some older titles having mandatory maps inside but I'd be really interested to hear more about other ways they integrated with the games they were for.
I've also heard in passing about old floppy disk or cassette titles being packaged with not just manuals but also "feelies" - physical objects that tied into the game in some way. If you know of any horror/"spooky" games from that era that did that, I'd be very interested in hearing about them if you'd be so inclined to include that sort of thing in a manual video.
Thanks so much for putting games like this on my radar! I don't have the skillset to play certain kinds of horror games but I find the history of them fascinating. I really appreciate you taking the time to break them down like this and put them in the context of titles that came out before and since.
Great work as always, and I for one would LOVE a deeper dive into manuals that tied into the games narrative!
I think my favorite manual design from back in the day was Mechwarrior 4: Vengeance. The manual was diagetically a technical Battlemech manual, and it had entries for all of the Mechs you encountered in the game. The cool bit was that it had been handed down to the player character from their father, and so the Mech models that had been produced in the interim years were all represented as pen drawings--because obviously the player character had had to hand-add the models that weren't in the original printing. It was a little thing but it was really neat.
I had no idea about this game, mindblown! I hope you can continue with this series, if there's not enough material for a video on an individual game, you could talk about a couple, but if you bring on obscure gems like this one, it will be worth it. Love whatever videos you release anyway!
I love your videos man. Keep showing me games that I would have never known about otherwise
I was just searching you up to see if there was anything new yesterday. Perfect timing
I still remember fondly how the manual of Jagged Alliance: Deadly Games explained the rules on how action points are calculated in the game very thoroughly.
Game manuals We're one of the best parts about buying games when you were a kid. You could open the game up on the way back home and read through the manual to further your excitement and to prepare for the game
Ragnar says “I’d love to make a video about manuals integrated into the game” and I immediately started salivating.
Ragnar! Thanks so much for that guide. That worked so well. I couldn't believe how bad the other instructions I've seen were. You rock!
I had no idea anything this cinematic existed on the C64. Great video as ever 👍🏽
I do miss manuals, as a kid one of the best parts of getting a new game was unwrapping it in the car and reading the manual on the way home. It always felt like a wonderful way to slide into the mindset that each individual game was trying to inspire -- by the time I would get home I would be completely ready to dive into whatever digital world awaited. It makes me sad that nowadays this just doesn't really happen, or if it does, it's usually a digital pdf of a manual included with the game and while I appreciate it, it's not the same. Also, manuals had blank pages in the back for note taking!! One of the reasons I became so in love with Signalis as a game was that it encouraged me to take notes!
This was fantastic, thanks. This series is great --- it's so good to see a bigger spread of "ancestors" than other Histories Of Horror Games I've seen. Well done.
Inspecting the box and reading the game manual in the car on the way home from buying a new game was part of the experience
I've never heard of this game before. Thanks for putting a spotlight on such an interesting piece of gaming history. Also, to possible videos on both other, smaller survival horror progenitors, as well as game manuals, yes. I'd watch either in a heart beat. I use to love reading the manuals and back of box copy on the car ride home from the story, and can remember being actually saddened when game manuals started to decline, from great, full colour booklets containing store, controls, and illustrations to one staple, black and white pamphlets that basically told me how to void my warranty in seven different languages...
As always, love your work. Cheers!
It's funny you are posting this just now, cause I just hit credits on the cryostasis video. I want more ice horror!!!
Reading a game's manual would build so much anticipation! I miss reading the manual whilst a game took 45 minutes to download on our old family PC. Simpler times 😭
Well now we know where Damon Lindelof and Ridley Scott got the idea of PROMETHEUS.
Yeah, the story of Prometheus the titan? The basic premise of the film is pretty good but it has been thoroughly fucked by Aliens fans and the fact that Scott can't recognise a good script from a bad one. One of the earlier scripts is much better than the retardium-fueled script we got. At least Scott always make beautiful films to watch.
I never played many games where game manuals were all that necessary, but always appreciated when there was one. My memory isn't the greatest, so having something to reference controls or other important information *within reach* and *without* having to search online, ask others, or comb through game menus is a godsend. They also tended to have tips, game balance info, lore, and so much else that's just completely absent from the game itself.
Also, as a kid that loved to draw, having clear pictures of characters, items, etc to reference was always great. As an adult that loves learning about game design and settings, all that art and extra info scratches a different itch.
Basically, I miss game manuals.
DUDE YES! Please experiment! I know you put so much love and care into these videos that I can only see good things come of that!
Game manuals from the great companies were amazing, the tsr gold box dungeons and dragons games, the jagged alliance games, the microprose games like Sid Meier’s pirates or airborne ranger or civilization or darklands (you showed in this video) - game manuals were then what dungeons and dragons players and monsters guides are today; namely FANTASTIC 👏🇨🇦. My friends and I would read the manuals in class, at recess, during lunch …, basically any time we weren’t playing the game (I read through the jagged alliance manual until the cover fell off, my other favourite was the sierra game ‘colonel’s bequest), it was great time to be young and into computer games!
Yes, manuals is something I miss to this day. It was something I loved to read. Its such a shame that they have vanished.
Hell, some were full books in their own right.
Awesome video! I love learning about horror games I've never heard of. If you have more games to talk about, I personally would love to see them. Great work!
absolutely brilliantly done video as always. It's honestly saddening to see these relics not get the attention they deserve. beautiful game and I loved the in-depth look at it.
Reminds me of 7 days a stranger. A homage to this. And its a whole series
I grew up a lot of dos games, so I don't have a lot of personal nostalgia over manuals, but they are something I treasure now in my retro games collecting. ps1 and 2 are my eras of choice most often, and so many of those manuals are packed with general tips and it was the only place you could see some of the original character art. I do miss that, basically getting a free art book with every game
As someone whose first gaming station was a C64 II, I can attest that this game would have blown me away. It is every bit as revolutionary and irregular and astonishing as you made it out to be. This kind of storytelling simply wasn't around and I, for one, was starving for something like that. Though sadly I never heard of it.
And not just the gameplay, the whole thing with being able to go everywhere you can see in the whole ship, the graphics in general, all this would have been almost unbelievable for me.
Thank you for adding tracks from the CnC Covert Operations in this vid
Thanks for this great retrospective! In case anyone is interested, the C64 also hosts two seminal games for the cinematic action games genre: Forbidden Forest (1983) and Beyond Forbidden Forest (1985). They a similarity with Firestarter, in that their author (Paul Norman) was a complete outsider to the game development scene, and was free of many preconceptions: as such, the games are pioneers of many staples of the horror and cinematic genres, and they struggle against some of the platform limitations. They are well worth a try and some research if you're so inclined - I heavily recommend it!
It looks crazy epic this game. It seems so strange to see big detailed backgrounds and cut scenes on a C64 game. Trying to squeeze that on 2 disks must have taken a serious amount of effort. Great video. :)
Yes I loved manuals, it used to be where you would get your lore, and character art, it’s what started me drawing. the gulf between detailed off-model art in the book and streamlined in-game art sparked my imagination
Going to Electronics Boutique with my mate, a tenner between us, digging through the trade-in/reduced bins and finding 2 or 3 *gems* - then excitedly reading the manuals on the bus home, drinking in _every_ single word and image, every enemy, every item..
I'm so SO happy I was a child when I was
1985 - 2001 RIP ❤🙏🏻
Many thanks Ragnar, I am always amazed of the work youy put into the videos that never cease to improve over time. PF was one of the very first games I played via VM, I certainly didn't know much of this information.
Dragon Warrior's Explorer's handbook was always in my lap when playing. I had rented StarTropics and we got to the point where you needed to wet the letter, since it was a rental the manual and letter was a photocopy. I'll never forget 747MHz.
90s American kid here. Game manuals didn’t matter to me as a console gamer. It wasn’t until my teenage years going into unregulated abandonware sites that the actual beauty of manuals struck me.
I can assure you, if/when I make a game, there will either be a phys/pdf or in-game “classic” manual. Especially if it is going to be on a memory tight medium that uses floppy/cartridges.
The comparison to star tropics with the whole "you gotta dip this letter in water" thing was there. I was expecting to hear that.
I love(d) game manuals! I used to read through them all the time when my parents would drive me home from the shopping center. Buying a new game was an event and so was reading the manual. Because my first experience with games was accidentally saving over my brother's Pokemon Yellow file (yes, I was that sibling; but to be fair, we had been told videogames had multiple save files), I would always immediately look up the "how to save" section of every manual. I did this all the way until manuals slowly faded away.
Some of my favorite memories include learning Olimar's exact size from an in-manual size chart, reading up on all the special moves for Smash Melee's characters, and, way later, learning retroactively how the US manual for Final Fantasy Legend hilariously tried to cover up the outlandish story of that game with muscular DnD-esque costumed actors in its manual. I also saw the manuals for some PC games at the time at a friend's house. Heroes of Might and Magic's manuals were bigger than some of my fasvorite books!
I have been obsessed with this game over last couple years, due to it being an origin of survival horror, developed by dynamic which was acquired by Sierra 1 year after this and there aren't any good in depth YT videos on this title. This was such an amazing surprise to see a 40 min video dropped by you, it shocked me in a positive way
Super happy to hear! Yeah Dynamix made some amazing games.
@RagnarRoxShow I find it mind boggling how this monumental masterpiece of the late 80s has basically gone unnoticed, yet sweet home has been addressed over and over for years now. Great content as always, thanks again for this treat
The goldbox games were ones that required the manuals (and journals) for any progress. Text seemed to take a lot of space and it seemed easier just to print it out, and it also kind of encouraged you to map the gameworld for events and such, even if you had a rudimentary map in-game.
Omg, man! This is freaking terrific video! I'm truly amazed! Thanks for such important history lesson.
I remember visiting my neighbour and playing this one as a kid. Not too long into it I was too scared to continue, but it left a huge impression on me.
Hey Ragnar, just wanted to leave you a few words in regards to your section on the importance of manuals. I was born in 2003, and it seems like I entered the world pretty much right on the cusp of manuals dying out. For me, manuals filled a very unique niche, less so as guides, and more as an extension of the game's world. I'd usually read them cover to cover when my Mom said I couldn't play that night, or on the car ride home after visiting my local game store. About a year ago, I had a conversation with a friend about manuals and box art, and she told me that she just threw those away after buying a game, because "the game was all that mattered. If I want to look at the boxart or read the manual, I'll just download it." Hearing that broke my heart and helped me to remember how important the physical component of video games is to me. The game Tunic puts a really interesting spin on the idea of manuals by feeding you individual pages of one throughout the game, acting as tutorials, maps, hints, and lore. If you do ever look at game manuals in a separate video, I'd recommend checking that out as a contemporary example of how developers are trying to keep the art from alive. Thanks for making cool videos. Cheers!
I think Maniac Mansion was an inspiration for this game. The adventure game elements, the graphics, the cut-scenes - it all just screams MM to me. Can anyone else see that?
Text and point adventures in general, yes absolutely.
Interesting. I enjoyed the recent System Shock reboot,
Perhaps they could re do this one as well.
I love the idea of the rogue agent running around sabotaging things while your trying to get through your mission.
I actually enjoy slow pace games that let you explore freely, so I would not be bored playing it before the mutants start attacking. 😊
Great mini series,really amazing video.
King stuff to give us guides on how to get it running. Thanks, buddy!
This trilogy was really awesome and i got excited everytime i saw that blue dot by your icon.
It's very intriguing that EA made a survival horror game on the C64, and the visuals and presentation is well made for a home computer. Strange no one has talked about this game, and I'm glad that you're giving the recognition it deserves.
i so wish more games today included manuals that you could at least print out - i loved flipping through them so much, seeing all the illustrations and world-building, hints and sometimes easter eggs. also wish for manuals again because the in-game tutorializing, when not done well, is very........ annoying to me, LOL. i would absolutely LOVE to see a vid from you about video game manuals more specifically!! great vid as always :)
For some reason, I find the idea of interplanetary, orbital fax messaging to be strangely compelling.
I used to love game manuals. I thibk sometimes I was almost more excited by the manual than the game, because the manual still let me imagine how amazing the game would be.
And I used to pin game maps to my walls as a kid.
One of the reasons why games on the C64 tended to throw the player immediately into the action, was that the _sheer loading_ of the game could take up to 5 or even 10 minutes. My father often joked that he could most often stand up and make himself a coffee after the floopy started loading
Yes! Please do a follow-up bits and bob's for the origins of horror series!
Also, I loved manuals the best part of renting games was reading the manual on the ride home! I now have to hope special editions of games come with a manual and, though not often, I love it when they do!
I know it has been mentioned by other people but anyone who loves game manuals should definitely check out Tunic, because that game does an exceptional job at incorporating the concept of an old school manual in its actual gameplay and progressive world building. It's truly something else. Also it's worth getting the physical version of the game, since it comes with an actual printed version of a manual. Although you probably shouldn't read or even look at that before finishing the game, because of various spoilers.
Thanks so much for filling in these gaps in gaming history! I always learn a lot from them 😃.
❤ Great video. Also I noticed some tunes from Bad Mojo in the background! So glad I am not the only one still listening and remembering that game 😊
Love Bad Mojo. Made a video on it a good while ago, too:
ruclips.net/video/BtXiqfRno-c/видео.html