50 Mission Crush

I started writing today's blog post, but as often happens it morphed into something else, this time a nostalgic homage to my favorite computer game company from the 1980's: Strategic Simulations Inc (SSI).

Way back in 1984 when I was a young 21 years old, I purchased one of my favorite SSI computer games: 50 Mission Crush. Back then, I had a heavily modded Atari 400 computer with extra memory (48K) and a custom keyboard. So of course I got the Atari version of the game.

50 Mission Crush bills itself as a role-playing game, with your pilot improving his skills after each successful mission, which took several to ten minutes to play. You had to survive 50 missions to successfully beat the game and go home to America. I played this game so many times I lost count. I never survived 50 missions, though I did pretty well at times from what I remember. Those were good times back then!

By today's standard, the game is crude with basic graphics and lots of text with numbers. But what it lacked in graphics, it made up for it in tension and addiction for an early computer war game.

Moby Games has a nice section devoted to 50 Mission Crush. A quick Google search will also turn up abandonware sites where you can download the game (only 102k in size!), as long as you don't have Windows 7 64-bit installed.

Desktop Dungeons: I Love This Game!

Jeremy knows that I love small games I can play in fifteen minutes instead of fifteen hours. You know, those time killers to take our minds off our problems right before dinner. (I needed one of those games after today's problems!) Solitaire and the like do not work for me. Nor do I like those little arcade games either. Too much hyper-action or too much thinking.

Well, tonight I found a perfect little time killers: Desktop Dungeons. It's a small, free game based on random dungeon crawls. Jeremy suggested I download it and give it a try. I love it. Just what I was looking for. Of course, some game did last minutes before I died. Since the game is random, being surrounded by high-level monsters on turn one was possible and happened to me on my second game! Nothing to do but swipe at one of them, die, and load up a new game--all within 10 seconds. Awesome!

Desktop Dungeons reminds me of an old LucasArts game from 1997--Star Wars: Yoda Stories. I also liked playing this game and its Indiana Jones brother. Unfortunately, the games went stale quickly. The stories had no connection to each other and became repetitious. The games weren't free like Desktop Dungeons, but I paid nearly nothing for them on clearance. So I got my money's worth.

Anyway, check out Desktop Dungeons. I bet you'll like it.

Adventures In Windows 7: Talonsoft Games

The past week in my spare time the I have been loading my game collection onto my new computer, which runs the 64-bit version of Windows 7. It has been a real treat, I say sarcastically. Before installing a game, I have gotten into the habit of searching the web for info on it and Windows 7 64-bit. That has saved me some headaches, learning how to avoid problems and learn tricks to get older 32-bit games to install and work. Or just plain give up before I try because no one can get the game to install (Beyond God & Evil for example).

Sadly, my rather large collection of old Talonsoft wargames from the 1990's will not install under the 64-bit version. The startup.exe file is not compatible, regardless of compatibility mode. This is becoming a problem with nearly all my 1990s games, such as those from Lucas Arts and others.

While these Talonsoft games are old, I always enjoyed them because they are based on miniature gaming principles and became foundational for my current gaming interests. I played Shiloh to death, obsessed on Prairie Grove for some odd reason. I also enjoyed scouring thrift stores for them, usually paying only $1 each. Only a few months before my old system died last November, I bought a large stack of "new" Talonsoft titles off a fellow on TMP for only $1 each. I finally got Antietam and Gettysburg, which I always wanted. Plus Napoleonic, WWII, and modern warfare titles. None of them install. Quite depressing. (Ok, I lost only several dollars but that is not the point! :-)

The solution? I could have installed the 32-bit version of Win7 to avoid all these problems, but that wouldn't have been very forward thinking just to play some of my favorite old games. I'm assuming here that it would work on 32-bit.

The other solution is to rig together a cheaper box using less powerful (and cheaper) components, like less memory, slower processor, and weaker graphics card since older games don't need bleeding edge components. Then install Windows XP. So create an "XP box." I am considering this. Not just because my Talonsoft games don't work, but my favorite game of all time--SimCity 4--will not work with my GTS250 graphics card. You can't even begin to understand my obsession with that game! But that is another article for another day...

So bottom line is farewell to Talonsoft games for now. On a brighter note, I can still access all the OOB data on the disks. That always comes in handy for miniature games. Right? Ah nuts. Even that glimmer of optimism doesn't cut it. Dang, I loved those games!