Because of the Logan Paul incident Youtube has brought in rules that ruin things for all us harmless legit small time creators. 😦 If you’ve enjoyed visiting my website & blog, watching my videos, or playing my Star Trek Doom 2 & Quest for Glory 4 3D Hexen levels then please help me get to the required 1000 subscribers fellow retro fans!
Civilization Call To Power 25th Anniversary Celebration – Communities, Fan Mods & Ports, 4K AI Upscale, Multiplayer Server, & More!
Through CivFanatics I’ve put together a big tribute for the Civilization Call To Power‘s 25th anniversary (similar to the recent Alpha Centauri one) covering some of the fan projects going on at the moment including new CTP fan communities, a stunning 4K AI upscale of the CTP1 cutscenes, a new stable fan CTP2 port, and a new CTP1&2 mod manager & multiplayer server in the making. Be warned it’s a big read, but a nice one for CTP fans! 🙂
Videos, pictures, links & more info: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/attention-civilization-call-to-power-25th-anniversary-celebration.689243/
CTP1 in HD
CTP1 Cutscenes 4K AI upscale
Civilization Call To Power Intro & all Wonder Videos 4K upscale from rare DVD version
This fellow has a done a 4K AI upscale of the rarely seen DVD version of the Civilization Call To Power 1 cutscenes converting the intro & all wonder videos. Like with most AI upscales it’s not perfect but the results are pretty darn good!
Colonization Bonus Episode Video – FreeMars HD Tour
This bonus video showcases in HD the amazing FreeMars fan game inspired by Sid Meier’s Colonization, Alpha Centauri and Civilization Mars scenarios. This episode is part of a special bonus series where I play Civilization and Colonization fan games. This fan game video series is a bonus sub series to my main how to play classic Civ and Col genre games in HD video series. As part of this series I’ll also be playing Civilization Mars Colonization scenarios too! To see more awesome Civilization Series / Colonization / Master of Magic / Call to Power / Alpha Centauri videos showing some of their best scenarios & mods, how to play each of them in HD, and how to play as Barbarians, check out the playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZqnaGtTZxFbq3F5R6lqzyVvYzg9tRBPY
VIDEO:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuUMmh82ROo&list=PLZqnaGtTZxFbq3F5R6lqzyVvYzg9tRBPY
CONTENTS:
00:00 Video Series Introduction
00:49 FreeMars Tour Introduction
02:04 Civ Mars scenarios, Alpha Centauri & Colonization influences
02:48 FreeCol similarities
03:14 Starting and customizing a new FreeMars Game
06:53 New FreeMars game begins!
14:17 Mid game example & advisors tour
26:45 Late game example tour (with EF combat)
31:17 Final thoughts & future video series plans
Global Conflagration (new indie Command & Conquer and Red Alert like game)
Looks like it’s not just Tempest Rising trying to fill the retro ‘Command & Conquer and Red Alert like’ void. There’s an indie game project called Global Conflagration that looks rather promising too! From the outside I’d say it probably has more of a C&C Generals feel to it with a bit of Red Alert thrown in too. They recently did a public demo period leading to lots of feedback that will keep them busy for a while but apparently they plan to do an early access release later this year. Dunno about that name lol, but it looks pretty cool!
Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/908770/Global_Conflagration/
Screenshots:
Trailer:
Betrayed Alliance 1 & 2 update (Sierra Quest for Glory like game)
Been a while since I last posted about this cool retro game project inspired by the classic Quest For Glory series I grew up playing, but Ryan recently posted some nice updates on his retro remaster of Betrayed Alliance 1 and his up & coming sequel Betrayed Alliance 2.
Firstly Ryan posted a 2023 Retrospective summary post covering all the recent work on both projects with lots of lovely screenshots.
https://rjslattery.com/2023/12/29/betrayed-alliance-2023-retrospective/
Book1:
Book2:
Secondly and more recently he’s also posted a new trailer for the Book 1 remaster and announced a release date of May 2024!
More Freaky Homebrew Games & Ports (A Pig Quest, Wild Wood, Wolfenstein Maze 3D)
As you guys know I’m always on the lookout for cool homebrew games and ports/demakes for retro consoles and recently I’ve come a across a few more excellent ones.
Firstly is A Pig Quest for the Commodore 64 that uses some clever colour cycling tricks to force more colours than you normally can into the gameplay area resulting in it looking better than most c64 games. It’s cool environment effects are equally impressive with detailed moving backgrounds, leaves falling, rain, lightning and monsters that change more due to some animation compression tricks too. It’s full of so much crazy stuff they’re apparently having problems putting together the physical cart for real Commodore 64s lol!
Website: https://piggy18.itch.io/a-pig-quest
Second is another new game in the making called Wild Wood that’s also pushing the Commodore 64 to it’s limits with colour tricks and extra layers of parallax scrolling resulting on a lot of background movement! The artwork is truly incredible and the game just looks utterly amazing for a c64 game.
Website: https://www.wildwoodgame.co.uk/
Alpha Centauri and Command & Conquer series have finally arrived on Steam!
Civfanatics & I recently celebrated the Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri 25th Anniversary at CivFanatics talking about some of the amazing Alpha Centauri fan projects such as the very realistic fan film, the new fan game remake, some of the best fan patches out there, and of course where you could get the game from which for some strange reason was only Good Old Games and not Steam.
However EA is making the news this weekend as they’ve released a huge amount of classic games in their catalog including Sim City 3000, Dungeon Keeper, Populous, the entire Command & Conquer Ultimate Collection which is great for classic C&C and Red Alert fans like me, and sure enough Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri is included too and finally on steam, on sale, and it appears to be the same as the Planetary Pack that’s on GoG too meaning the expansion pack is included. Hopefully this will bring a fresh injection of fans back into the SMAC fan communities. Now if we could just get 2K to do the same thing with Civ1 & Civ2 we’d be really set!
SMAC:Â https://store.steampowered.com/app/2204130/Sid_Meiers_Alpha_Centauri_Planetary_Pack/
C&C: https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/39394/Command__Conquer_The_Ultimate_Collection/
Getting Sid Meier’s Civilization 1&2 + Test of Time back into digital stores – 2 Year Update
Well it’s been 2 years now since I started a campaign of sorts to get the classic Microprose 90s Sid Meier’s Civilization 1 & 2 (+Test of Time) back into digital stores like GoG & Steam and ensure these great old games are not forgotten to time. Since I last posted here about it all the GoG vote threads have accumulated roughly 6,650 more votes since the start which is great work (thank you everyone!!! 🙂 )! I got a tip last year that companies have been contacting the licence holder 2K trying to get this sorted but that these things take time and nothing was certain. Well considering another year has gone by it looks like more work is needed to get the message through to 2K that they can still make money off Civ1&2, it would be a nice addition to their upcoming Civ7 marketing, and that the classic Civ fans want this fixed, so let’s get busy! GoG voting is probably the easiest way as it pushes them to contact rights holders so if you haven’t already voted please check out the link below!
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/vote-for-civ1-and-2-to-be-added-to-gog.675301
Disclaimer: Yes there’s probably little chance of this working, yes many of us still have our CDs, yes many ‘interesting’ sites offer free copies of them, yes there are similar alternatives like FreeCiv & C-Evo, and yes maybe you like one of the sequels more. However none of that means Civ1 & Civ2 should not be brought back from exile and sold in modern digital stores like Civ3-6 are, like plenty of other formerly lost Microprose games are, and like many other games from that mid 90s era are that were FAR less successful. This is about getting these great old games back out into the world, getting them out of exile and the lost backwaters of the internet, injecting a bit of fresh life back into their fan communities, and also making them easier to get working. A lot of people struggle to get Civ2 in particular working on modern machines (with the CD based vids & music) so pre-packaged versions on GoG & Steam with 64bit fan patches applied and CD content included all in easy to use installers would help a lot. More info on the situation and the various technical issues & existing workarounds can be found in the thread’s expandable ‘full pitch’ section of the thread linked to above.
Bio Evil: Resident Evil 1 ‘Demake’ for SEGA Genesis / Megadrive Update
For any fellow Resident Evil fans reading it’s been a while since my last post about the Resident Evil 1 ‘Demake’ for SEGA Genesis/Mega drive project called Bio Evil so I thought I’d check in and see how they’re doing. PSCD Games been mostly focuses on their other commercial games (Alien Cat 2, Hunter Girls, Black Jewel Reborn etc) over the last few years but I’m happy to see they’ve been more active on the Bio Evil project again more recently. They also released a much newer Demo 2 on their Itch page too!
Itch page:
https://pscdgames.itch.io/bio-evil
Gifs:
Videos:
New intro cutscene:
Testing tank controls and collision detection:
Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri 25th Anniversary Fan Film Series, Game Remake & More!
Through CivFanatics I’ve put together a big tribute for the Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri‘s 25th anniversary this week covering some of the best fan projects going on at the moment including a stunning short film series, a fan remake of the game itself, and much more.
Videos, pictures, links & more info: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/sid-meiers-alpha-centauri-25th-anniversary-celebration-fan-film-series-game-remake-more.688050/
SMAC Fan film:
GLSMAC Fan remake:
Blake's Sanctum - News 