ADG Episode 14 - Thor's Hammer

[@mikemacdee6390]

Man, I wrote an article about this game for HG101, and I wish I'd known about that "hay i found yer lost throwin axes lol" thing. And here I thougth the npc's were useless.

[@jong2359]

This is like the worn-out grandfather to Amulets and Armor... A&A takes these concepts and refines them. A&A almost feels downright modern, in fact.

[@LanIost]

Oh man, it's about time that I found a new channel to subscribe to. Seriously.. this doesn't happen after like 8 years of using KZbin often. All I had to see was your intro (which HAS to be one of my favorite I've ever seen.. and I JUST saw it) and the list of games on the right in related videos.

[@Pixelmusement]

+LanIost Awesome! You've got a lot of video watching ahead of you! :D

[@MrBratkenSolov]

I remember playing this as kid. With Darker, Quake, interstate 76 etc etc

[@Kopoane]

It even is frustrating just watching the gameplay. And this was 1995 too, when 3D combat wasn't some crazy prototype thing anymore. A shame really because some technically simple tweaks would've made it at least bearable.

[@jasonc3a]

"...it doesn't work well for a game like this that happens in real time from a first person perspective!" I sure do wish you were on the dev team for Morrowind. Literally the same ridiculous combat setup, and the main aspect of the game that sucks out fun.

[@grahamwilson4053]

The time stop spell is reminiscent of the crystal hourglass from the Catacomb Adventure Trilogy

[@Maggerama]

As a fellow DOS aficionado, albeit of a much lesser level of expertise than you are, who had seen most of the games that you show (but only ever beaten a fraction of them), I confirm - this oddball completely flew under my radar, too. I also can't believe that I haven't seen it at least once before, nevermind its dubious quality. On an unrelated note, some of the music reminded me of Ultima Online.

[@thewhyzer]

"This is the type of game I should've heard of" - exactly my thoughts! I can't believe there was a mid 90s DOS FPP dungeon crawler I hadn't heard of! And it even had a shareware episode! I can only guess PC Gamer never included the shareware on its demo CD for some reason.

[@lordterra1377]

Always wanted to download this from the AOL games section, but it took way to long on my 14.4k modem. You should review all of the AOL games like Hera, Corncob 3d, and Gravity Well just to name a few!

[@Pixelmusement]

+Lord Terra Believe it or not... I have zero experience with AOL. Mom was online way before AOL was a thing due to her courses in university so we never used such services. But, if there's any particular games you want me to cover you can always send requests to my eMail! ;)

[@LegallyBlindGamer7926]

You know, Thor's hammer is actually called Mjolnir, With a name like that, this game might have gotten a little more attention.

[@WhiteRhinoPSO]

With the amount of time I've spent playing Morrowind in the past - with plans to do so again for my channel this coming January - I don't think I'm too keen on getting wrapped up in another 3D first person game that uses secret dice rolls to determine if your weapon is actually making contact or not. =P Great video, though!

[@JeremyLCrabtree]

The installer for the V1.77 Full Version requires 16bit Windows. Those of on 64bit systems are out of luck. :-/

[@Pixelmusement]

+Jeremy Crabtree An alternative is to run Windows 3.1 in DOSBox and install it from there. There's probably also a means to extract the files straight out of the installer, but I didn't look into how to do this as this was years back before I started scripting and doing my videos smartly. :P

[@andrewdupuis1151]

nice i never held of this game until now

[@realt.8779]

My childhood

[@MrEk0o]

that's true...back then the games weren't as easy as today's games..

[@smeagol1414]

but secret of monkey island and diablo had versions for DOS

[@adamjensen1716]

how do you play this on boxer and Mac

[@Pixelmusement]

+James Gillrie I don't know what you mean by "boxer", but to play it on a Mac you just need to grab a MacOS copy of DOSBox and set it up. I have a couple early videos on my channel about setting up DOSBox. However, just like with playing these games on real DOS hardware, you do need some basic filesystem knowhow to not get confused as to mounting drive letters and such.

[@adamjensen1716]

@@Pixelmusement ok how do I get it to work on mac

[@adamjensen1716]

And set the core to dynamic on Mac

[@christopherrohr3770]

This looks like Doom with elements of Dungeon Master. It looks very clunky.

[@White_Tiger93]

nah..it look more like Elder scrolls Daggerfall.

[@Bembel81]

Nope. Wolf3D mixed with Arena. Daggerfall looks worlds better than this crap.

[@smeagol1414]

you should make episodes on secret of o monkey island and Diablo

[@invghost]

"What fun is a game where you're running from your enemies than attacking". Thief? Assassins Creed? Mirrors Edge? :D Although I know what you're saying lol. It's a shame we'll never see you review thief, as it wasn't around until after the dos era.

[@ThisIsGamerLisD]

Diablo isn't a DOS game.

[@azrael1982PL]

0:55 Shamelessly copying Ultima's music ? Really ?

[@Pixelmusement]

+azrael1982PL I never noticed as I've only ever played the first Ultima game, but given this game's relative obscurity this wouldn't surprise me. :P

[@Pixelmusement]

+azrael1982PL They're similar for sure, but different enough that I think they could get away with it. The danger of course to making similar but different music is that people will notice the similarities and not be impressed, regardless of whether it's different enough to qualifies as legal or not.

[@azrael1982PL]

Well, in the music industry, some lawsuits were even based on more elusive grounds than this case. For instance, according to some lawyer(s), The Eagles did copy some parts of "We used to know" by Jethro Tull, and then incorporated them in their biggest hit - "Hotel California"... I'm really not sure about such lawsuits initiated in the gaming industry though - perhaps it might be interesting to check it out ? Oh wait, didn't Robert Prince base his tracks for Doom on some metal/rock songs ? doom.wikia.com/wiki/Doom_music

[@Pixelmusement]

+azrael1982PL Well, here's the thing with lawsuits: There's no point if you're not going to collect considerable amounts of money in the process in damages. Going after a small-time developer is pointless because you'll likely spend more trying to sue the guy than you'll get back in damages, and that's IF your lawsuit is successful, so most of the time game companies let this kind of stuff slide if it's not another well-known game company they're going after with deep pockets. As for games with music similar to tunes from the music industry, the music industry generally didn't care for much of the 90s since the music in the games often sounded like butchered versions of the real songs, and without the lyrics. There are exceptions and as music in games started to sound more and more accurate to real songs, the music industry took note and started being more careful about that sort of thing. :P

[@jeffbutterfield8541]

Oh, which Ultima game?

[@LilMalygos]

RPG elements and compass looks like something copied from some SSI games. I guess it is attempt of mixing FPS with RPG which was a lot of after Ultima Underworld, like Raven's Shadowcaster.