#old games

[sifya]

Help with brutal legends!

I can't pass the level when i need to defend the bus from monkey demon bikers! Help! i put easier game but i am terrible on driving and use the weapon! Some advice?

[pinkyypieee]

Does anyone remember this??

[romisis]

She's so strong, I wish I were her!!

[romisis]

I'm finally playing this masterpiece and I'm obsessed!!

[literallylaurapalmer]

can we genuinely stop making video games into shows/movies . like they are always either doo doo shit or are nothing like the promotion. shows based in the same universe tho.. now that i can get behind

[lavenderoffline]

i started playing hollywood u and highschool story again

[cirgaydian-rhythm]

When I was younger, I played these games, "Catz" and "Dogz" (collectively known as "Petz"). They were relatively "simple" insofar as the titular animals were created essentially via balls on a frame, which allowed for both joint-like movement and 3-dimensional movement. Each "ball" carried its own color/pattern, texture, and size, which created a canvas for seemingly infinite variations (especially since the frame itself also had its own size data).

Moreover, the simplicity of this setup meant that you could get REAL wacky with it. See, part of the objective of the game was to raise these animals and breed them. Because of the relatively basic layout, it was easy enough for this game to run simple Mendelian inheritance codes and produce varied offspring regardless of the disparity between the parents (so long as the game recognized them as being compatible (ie two adult catz/dogz, one male and one female)).

Some people took the base breeds and did a lot of cross-breeding to create new breeds that would reproduce as consistently as the base breeds did. There were whole-ass communities online dedicated to this practice, showing off their 100% authentic breed lines and shit.

Then there were people who went the other direction and asked: what sort of ungodly creature can I create if I mess with the code? How far can we stretch this? I have a memory of I think a "miniature dachshund" that was likely the result of somebody asking, "how many pieces of this creature actually need to be present to be viable?" And finding out the answer was "not all of them, apparently." I remember this because when I bred that micro-puppy with a normal breed, the resulting offspring were actually missing pieces!

And yeah, sometimes you ended up with freaky abominations that had pieces much too large for their frame and made their animations all kinds of wonky, but! They were still considered viable by the game. Usually. (Sometimes they could cause glitches that crashed the game.)

I'm bringing this up because I MISS those games. I have yet to find literally anything like them. If a game has 3D animations and movement, the "breeding" system has pre-set offspring. If the breeding is of the mix'n'match(+mutations) variety, the creatures are largely, if not wholly, 2D and static (or else have very simple Flash-type animations). It feels like the general push for things to "look good" has resulted in the death of creative randomization.

Did the Petz have stunning or realistic graphics? Fuck no. These games were developed in the fucking '90s. The animals legitimately could be recreated with wire and craft cotton balls, and they moved like marionettes. That didn't MATTER. It wasn't ABOUT the graphics, it was about taking care of silly little creatures and maybe creating some real wacky babies with them. That was the whole fucking appeal.

And because they're so old at this point, I can't imagine those games would be that difficult to replicate at this point. But nobody has, as far as I can find. And that makes me sad. Because I really am itching to create some real wacky digital babies rn and none of these "breeding games" are scratching that itch.