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      Doom II RPG is what it says on the label, and it’s ready for PC 13 years later

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Tuesday, 9 May, 2023 - 17:00 · 1 minute

    Chainsaw held up by player character

    Enlarge / Doom II RPG isn't exactly like Doom , but you can't accuse it of lacking chainsaws. (credit: id Software)

    "Mobile games" were something else entirely in 2005, a time in which Windows Mobile was a viable platform, the only Apple phone was a Motorola ROKR , and none of them had a shot at running Doom , let alone its sequel. That's why id Software made Doom RPG , the weirdest official Doom game that is also still a bit fun. A group of fans known as GEC.Inc ported that game to modern PCs, and they've finally gotten around to its sequel.

    Doom II RPG , the iOS version from 2009, is playable the same way Doom RPG was: with an understanding that you, a person in 2023, will somehow have access to the original, potentially still copyrighted assets of the game. The instructions lead you through setting up OpenAL , then loading in an .ipa iOS file (the Internet Archive has a copy). You can use a touchscreen, most modern game controllers, or just your keyboard and mouse. You'll then get to play a Doom II that's not quite like what you're thinking of when you think of Doom II.

    How does it play? A bit awkwardly, unless you're used to the turn-based, grid-moving, RNG-dominated RPGs of earlier eras. With each turn, you can move in one of four directions, attack with a weapon, or perform some other action, like ripping a toilet fixture off the wall for later throwing (if you're strong enough). If you end up face to face with an imp, there's not much else to do except trade blows, hoping the random hit/miss mechanics are in your favor or that you have enough health packs or snacks to hold out.

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      Run over Nazis in this cathartic, free Wolf 3D/Monkey Ball mashup

      Kyle Orland · news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Tuesday, 12 January, 2021 - 20:03

    Back in 1992, id Software proved that it can be a lot of fun to shot virtual Nazis on your computer with Wolfenstein 3D . Back in 2001, Amusement Vision proved it can be a lot of fun to roll around in a sphere collecting bananas with Super Monkey Ball .

    This week, Itch.io game maker Nickireda proved that both of these concepts somehow fit perfectly together with Return to Castle Monkey Ball , a free fangame that you can play in an HTML5-compatible Web browser.

    Yes, famed one-man-army B.J. Blazkowicz has somehow found himself trapped in a translucent sphere and without his usual arsenal of weaponry. Thus, you have to help BJ by tilting the entire world to guide his ball through Nazi-infested corridors, picking up bananas and looted treasures along the way for a high score.

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      You can now play an ultra-rare Quake arcade cabinet at home

      Kyle Orland · news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Monday, 17 August, 2020 - 19:15 · 1 minute

    Video of Quake Arcade Tournament Edition , featuring the "Instaprize!" backpacks.

    Since its 1996 PC release, id's seminal shooter Quake has been ported to everything from flip phones and smartphones to game consoles and Web browsers . But even many serious fans of the series don't know about Quake Arcade Tournament Edition ( Quake ATE ), an officially licensed version of the game that ran on custom arcade cabinets.

    Even among those who know about it, few ever got a chance to play it during the brief time it was in arcades, and hardware-based DRM built into the cabinet meant the game wasn't playable on home emulators. That state of affairs now seems set to change thanks to the recent release of a Windows executable that can decrypt the data dumped from those aging arcade hard drives for play on a modern home computer.

    From PC to arcade

    First released in May 1998, Quake ATE featured a custom Quicksilver PC made by a little-known company called Quantum3D . That hardware—running Windows 95 on a blazing-fast 266 MHz Pentium II with 32MB of RAM—was squeezed into an arcade cabinet with a 27-inch or 33-inch CRT monitor, seven control buttons, and a trackball, all hooked up to the PC through a special connector called the Quantum3D Game Control Interface. Slap on a few AVI videos for the attract mode (which warns players of the coming "ANIMATED VIOLENCE STRONG") and some software to detect coin drops, and suddenly your PC shooter is an arcade game.

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