Windows Shareware Disk Showcase: Ultimate House of Games for Windows, Part 2

Here we go again, back with more shareware games to tear into!

Klotz:

Ooh, “Klotz”, huh? Sounds like a puzzle game. I wonder what new and exciting concept this will bring!

It’s another motherfucking Tetris clone.

Windows Shareware Disk Showcase: Ultimate House of Games for Windows, Part 1

It's been a while since my last vidya game post, hasn't it? Well, that's what happens when you write a blog where anything goes. You know, I think I should make that my blog's subtitle: The Blog of Anything Goes.

By now, I’m sure any 21st century Earthlings reading these posts have a few questions. Like, why do I have such a nostalgia for all this crap that became obsolete centuries before I was born? Let me explain.

See, in the aftermath of the Fusion, one of the ways the two worlds started getting to know each other was by trade. The most vital commodity we traded was knowledge.

As we grew to learn each other’s languages and cultures, we taught each other what we knew. It started, of course, with things like what was safe to eat, how to prepare it, and how to make antivenom for that nasty yophakhi sting.

Once we got that part down, we got technological. Earth taught us about things like electronics and rocket science, and we taught them what we know about medicine, biology, and how to use the Art of Change.

One convenient stepping-stone in our wrangling of Earth tech was to buy older, simpler examples of it and the documentation thereof in order to dissect and reconstruct it with our own methods.

Thus, over the next few decades, we began our climb when it came to melding the arts of electronics and transmutation. Our climb was much faster, for we had the shoulders of giants as footholds.

And that’s why my first computer was one of these fucking things.

Even the art of transmutation can’t make this thing less shitty. Photo belongs to one Clicsouris (CC BY-SA 3.0). https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Musee_de_l'Informatique_-_Exposition_25_ans_du_Mac_16.jpg

Back in the days when they were still replacing the old infrastructure for the internet, shareware disks got a new lease on life. Only ones I remember personally having as a ‘net were the eGames Galaxy ones, though.

Thankfully, since Archive.org’s servers weathered those decades like a champ, I can dig around and find some more of that good ol’ late 20th century crustiness. With a VM in tow, let’s take a trip back in time.

You’ve seen the Silver Surfer, now witness the might of the Silicon… uh, Sucker.

The one we’ll be looking at today is called Ultimate House of Games for Windows.

DRAGONET Mini-Reviews

So, while my other articles have been gestating, I noticed that the ones that seemed closest to realization weren’t game-related.

Two consecutive non-game-related articles in a row after joining Game & Love didn’t seem right, so I figured I’d throw together a few quickie reviews for pre-Fusion Earth games starring dragons in a new bit called:

Same rules as my “Dragons as Protagonists” (Prodragonists?) series apply:

1. The main player character must be a dragon (with exactly one exception I'll be getting to later). No dragon riders allowed.

2. NO SHIFTERS. Shifters do not count as dragons. To define a shifter: a shifter is a dragon that can take on human or mostly-human form. Dragons taking anthro form is fine, so long as it's an anthro dragon like in real life. Exceptions can be made for games where 100% of the actual gameplay loop is spent as a dragon (a la Dragon Spirit).

3. I must finish at least one round of gameplay before starting the review.

4. Given that these are video games, I'm not going to knock them for being inaccurate. Back then, there was no "inaccurate". As long as the game itself is solid, I will look over any breaks from reality.

For each of these, I’ve adapted The CRPG Addict’s [link: https://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/] GIMLET system, in my case called DRAGONET.

Categories 1-6 are given a score from 1 to 10.

Reviewing Pre-Fusion Earth Lit with Dragons as Protagonists

In what I'm assuming will be the first in a series of posts, I'll be reviewing some pre-Fusion Earth literature wherein the main character is a dragon. I have a bit of a fascination with pre-Fusion Earth fantasy and its history.

The reason I'm doing this is, in any list of "dragon books" or "books about dragons" from that time period, you seldom see us as the main characters. We may be a crucial plot point, but more often than not, the protagonist is a non-dragon, or worse.... a shifter.

So, I have taken it on myself to write reviews of books from the era wherein we're the protagonists.

If nothing else, it might be enlightening to think about how humans envisioned our fantasy counterparts at the time.