Realms of Chaos - ADG Episode 330

[@MM.]

10:46 There's a devilish twist on needing to know what's about to happen, which your commentary just reminded me of. A platformer I played years ago had an extremely difficult passage filled with crushing blocks with proximity detection that would move into new positions and remain in those, i.e. they wouldn't self-reset after a timer had run out. I discovered rather quickly that those blocks also wouldn't reset upon losing a life and returning to the last checkpoint (you could only see a small part of the passage at any given time). Worse still, depending on which precise path you took through the passage, you could trigger some blocks and not others. This meant that on each run through the passage, which was continuous at high speed without any platforms along the way to rest on, I had to memorize the precise configuration the blocks were in if I wanted to stand any chance the next time around. I had to devote some runs exclusively to getting the blocks back into a combination that wasn't completely impossible to survive and train myself to rotate through multiple strategies for the configurations I saw as remotely survivable. It felt like simultaneously doing time-sensitive precision platforming and solving a combination lock. To make things worse, every death cost a little bit of energy (across checkpoint resets), of which one had plenty of this far into the game, but eventually, it would begin to run out, increasing the pressure further, because losing it all meant backtracking and grinding to get it back up. Probably the most difficult thing I've ever experienced in any game, and I've played some hard ones.

[@Pixelmusement]

Yeah, that sounds VERY poorly designed. :P

[@nazgulsenpai]

What game was it O.o

[@lilwyvern4]

Ah this game. It's got that "I should love this, but I don't." feeling to it. All the pieces are in place, but they don't fit together. But it still lingers in my ever-emptying mind. I have a vague memory of the higher difficulties also turning the game into an auto-scroller. Perhaps that's on a per-level basis?

[@Pixelmusement]

There's a handful of auto-scroller levels in the game, as you can see in the footage, but most are not and would be impossible if they were due to the winding paths. :P

[@JomasterTheSecond]

I dunno why but this game aesthetically feels like one of those really low-rent EA Mega Drive games you'd see in those wonky looking cartridges. It's a vibe I guess.

[@Pixelmusement]

...it really does, doesn't it? :o

[@EdmondDantes224]

@@Pixelmusement Yeah this game always gave me that vibe too. Dark Ages kinda also had a Genesis vibe but not as much so.

[@arboris]

which is honestly weird they didn't. This honestly looks like a lot more fun and playable then some other games they put on the Mega Drive / Genesis

[@lupinzar]

The art style reminds me of Blades of Vengeance a little bit.

[@nazgulsenpai]

I was thinking the same thing. Also that it would have probably translated really well to console

[@XanthinZarda]

The way this game scrolls seems sinister somehow. Like if you didn't escape the scrolling, it'd crush you on the edge.

[@Rabbitlord108]

You mean like it feels like a victim of Contra Syndrome? AKA games where the ground below becomes a bottomless pit.

[@XanthinZarda]

@@Rabbitlord108 No, not quite. More that the camera is flanked on either edge by a bulldozer.

[@Rabbitlord108]

@@XanthinZarda Okay.

[@Pixelmusement]

I mean, it technically HAPPENS in the video, though it's more a moving platform squishing Endrick against the open side of the screen. :P

[@Rabbitlord108]

@@Pixelmusement OOF!

[@ADarkandStormyNight]

I love it when Gemini is mad at games haha

[@Pixelmusement]

I was REALLY interested in the Bayonetta story but it did not take long to start getting SEVERELY overpowered and when I tried to figure out what I was doing wrong by watching videos online those people were WAY more powered up and I was like, "What the...?!" ...and then I watched some proper playthroughs and realized I was about 1/4 the level of power I was supposed to be because I wasn't finding EVERY LITTLE SECRET, some of which are hidden in plain sight in spots you have to visit TWICE to get the secret to show up and I suddenly lost all interest in playing the game. :P

[@ADarkandStormyNight]

@@Pixelmusement Oh I absolutely get it, as I am sure all your fans do. It's just fun when you get really mad at a game, I guess because we all know what that is like

[@BBHood217]

I too fell for the "mandatory secrets" trap in Megazeux; I made a game where if you didn't do the optional areas, the final area would be harder than it needed to be. The lesson I learned is that just because you fully know where all the secrets are because you made them doesn't mean everyone else can read your mind and instantly also know.

[@Pixelmusement]

Well, generally speaking, a game WILL be harder the fewer extra things you find. The problem is if you make the difficulty without finding those secrets TOO hard. Game balance is a surprisingly tricky thing to do right since if you make the game too unbalanced then you end up with worthless aspects people will avoid, which leads to boredom from constantly using the same strategies every time, yet if you make the game too balanced then players will feel like nothing they do matters and they will lose interest that way instead.

[@phonepunk7888]

This game looks awesome. Wish I had known about this when I was DOS gaming in the 90s.

[@ianeborn6823]

Ah, this game I actually have a bit of nostalgia for! ^_^ If I'm not much mistaken, the demo version of it came with my copy of Duke Nukem 3D (along with a few other things), and I fondly recall playing it from there. Not that I recall it being a great time--just that it's a memory from a nostalgic period in my life, and not a bad one. And your video does make me glad that I never got the full version! :P One nice touch that I noticed during the video: When the player has the shield powerup, and is crouched within a low corridor, the shield-orbs respect the size of the corridor, altering their movements to follow the walls and ceilings. As to the jumping issue, my guess would be that jumps are mathematically simulated, using the delta-time between frames--meaning that small variances in frame-times can result in small variances in maximum jump-height. Which isn't to say that the jump shown was okay--I agree that it's a really bad idea. Just a guess as to the underlying cause of the variability.

[@Erpy80]

I remember this game and I also remember enjoying playing it at the time although I definitely remember the difficulty spike as well as that ludicrous golem boss. I also remember the part you mentioned in the third episode where your character just loses control and is "pulled" into a pit of spikes. There were two spots in that level where that could happen and I didn't even notice the glowing orb, although I did find out eventually that you could resist its "hypnosis" by crouch-walking away until you were out of its area of influence. Still not sure what that was about since it didn't even guard any treasure or powerups. The ending was a bit weird in how blatant a reference it was (and I did catch the shoutout in the level name of the penultimate level) and I was among those people who played and finished the Paganitzu games. How often does a game's ending have a blurb from the lead designer outright saying "yes, this is a reference to my earlier games and the reason I put it in was to give players who played those games a little wink"?

[@iAmCodeMonkey]

My childhood all over again.

[@captaincrazyhat]

I remember this game! I got it on a shareware compilation as a kid.

[@EdmondDantes224]

Fun fact: Chocolate as we know it didn't really exist in the medieval times. Also that rock boss you had trouble with for some reason reminded me of another NES classic. Like seriously it was like they took multiple Mega Man bosses and made them one boss.

[@Cyberbrickmaster1986]

I know before there was chocolate, there was some kind of choco drink that had to be made by hand. Both that and chocolate takes about 2 days to make.

[@Maggerama]

Thanks for shattering my delusions. I got tricked by the shareware trap, then haven't played the full game for long enough to get disappointed. For decades, I remembered it with love... well, not anymore, I can see your point clearly.

[@Pixelmusement]

Well let's be fair here: If you remember the game fondly then given that the level design is the main failing you must've gotten those levels memorized. You could probably go back and play this and still enjoy it just fine. As stated at the end, all the bad level design does really is make the game far more antagonistic towards new players than it needs to be. :P

[@Maggerama]

@@Pixelmusement Still, bad design is bad design - my nostalgia isn't an excuse. Besides, do I really trust a boy I once was to make a rational assessment? No. Also, do people really say you suck at games? They must be new here. I've seen you going through enough unimaginable [often self-imposed] challenges to laugh at the ridiculousness of such statements.

[@Pixelmusement]

@@Maggerama Not a lot of people, but a handful. Mind you, that's THEIR problem if they want to be judgemental without seeing the bigger picture. :P

[@hemangchauhan2864]

One look and I thought it was from Apogee. Because it looked like Fantasy Bio Menace (a bit). I was spot on.

[@Pixelmusement]

"Fantasy Bio Menace" is kind of an apt description of this game. :B

[@hanselmanryanjames]

Congrats on a video getting a fair amount of views (relatively). You deserve so much more views than you get

[@iangriffithsguitarist]

Wow, memory unlocked. I think I found this on an early forray into abandonware sites as a kid... never did get past the big rat though and if gets much harder I'd have had no hope!!!

[@Pixelmusement]

Yeah, the big rat had me stumped at first until I realized it had different attacks depending on what side of the screen it was on and that the only attack I COULDN'T dodge was its lunge which it only did from the left side, thus the trick was to stay on the right side for the entire fight. :B

[@klauskillski3881]

this is a game where you definitely need a walkthrough which were quite common then

[@JanPospisilArt]

This game could be really neat with a remaster that would address the problems. It looks so nice!

[@Pixelmusement]

Actually, I think a sequel would do this game better than a remake. :B

[@TheSektor13]

Graphics are really nice. Old arcade game levels were normally made like this, not seeing where you jump. I really hated that. But those were the times when i had the nerves and the time to beat such a games :) .

[@Pixelmusement]

Also arcade games were INTENTIONALLY designed to munch down your quarters with unfair segments. Arcade games are actually the worst when it comes to difficulty being illegitimate; Heck, some arcade games run a timer in the background which keeps track of how long it's been since you've died or used a continue and jacks up the difficulty the longer that timer goes for! It actually becomes EASIER to beat those games if you just intentionally die and burn continues on a regular basis, which may be free emulated but cost REAL MONEY back when the game was brand new in arcades! D:

[@burstdragon3233]

I remember this, it was on my old “Game Empire 250” demo CD

[@fernandopenalva2680]

That scream in the intro lol.

[@wardrich]

I remember kinda liking this game as a kid. I only had the demo that came on the Duke3D Atomic Disc, but I used to play the crap out of it lol

[@slipcurve1410]

I like the hand drawn style of it.

[@KrunoslavSaho]

I kind of feel that a lot of these kinds of games by Apogee and Epic were experiments rather than solid commercial products.

[@jaysistar2711]

Being that all of the consoles and arcade machines were limited by the number of sprites, size and pallete of sprites, and background tile pallete and size, and these weren't, since almost everything was by the CPU, I consider these commercial products, and pretty good ones.

[@AlexeiVoronin]

Many of these experiments became timeless classics, though. Or spawned very famous sequels (Duke Nukem, especially).

[@Pixelmusement]

Very little "successful" shareware came from solo devs in the 80s and 90s. Not that there was none but most successful shareware came from small dev teams. Even now, few people work solo and hit a measure of success. It's not impossible, just rare. (Which I say knowing full-well that solo-dev is the path I'm following with my own stuff; I don't want to be solo-deving forever, I just lack the money to pay others to help.)

[@WhiteRhinoPSO]

Wing Commander in two dimensions? For some reason Solar Winds springs to mind..

[@JennyTheNerdBat]

21:25 As someone who completed Bayonetta a few times, I don't remember it being all that reliant on secrets, since you can buy all the mandatory upgrades at the in-game store. I actually agree with the larger points of bad level design (mainly the instakill QTEs the game is plagued with), just for different reasons.

[@Pixelmusement]

So... I was going to go into detail about what exactly ended my run through Bayonetta but was having trouble remembering some details so I went to look up some playthroughs again just now to try and remember and noticed there were people doing WORSE than I was and yet not running into the same troubles which were causing my demise...??? Like, their attacks were actually doing decent damage and they weren't getting obliterated from just a couple hits of damage... I'm tempted to give it a second chance at this point once I'm done with the current game I'm playing in my spare time just to try and figure out what the heck I was doing wrong if it wasn't related to secrets... :o

[@SevenCompleted]

perfect a video to fall asleep to 🙏

[@Pixelmusement]

Except maybe the screams of the main characters when they die... and the bat flurries... and MASSIVE BOSS EXPLOSIONS... and...

[@TheMoogleMaster]

I think I heard of this game somewhere before, didn't know it had THOSE Super Mario World blocks.

[@LukeValentino]

Thank you for making all these videos. I really appreciate it! Always enjoy watching and thinking back to my childhood.

[@thewhyzer]

I actually played this one through for the first time just earlier this year. Gotta say, not one of my favorite Apogee games by a loong shot, and I found it hard to believe that it came out in 1995 rather than 1992-1993. The graphics looked worse (to my eyes at least) than Jazz Jackrabbit's, and the controls just didn't feel good to ... control. I honestly enjoyed Arctic Adventure, Pharaoh's Tomb, and Monuments of Mars more when I played them last year, though of course those games also felt like they had been made at least half a decade earlier than they really had been. Regarding some of the criticism you layered at the game though, I noticed straight away, probably in the very first level, that the female character jumped higher than the male one did, and I actually appreciated the respawning enemies as I farmed them for drops in a bunch of places. But man, that disappearing/moving block trail really was brutal! Took me a LOT of attempts and saves/loads before I finally got it! I also had a really tough time with jumping off ropes, for some reason.

[@Pixelmusement]

Yeah the ropes can be a bit weird but they're not random at least, they just require way more precision than most other things in the game. :P

[@thewhyzer]

@@Pixelmusement In that vertically scrolling level where you had to descend while avoiding being crushed by moving walls, the ropes certainly felt random to me. I felt like I was doing the same thing, but sometimes I'd jump way further from the ropes than at other times. (And sometimes I'd just fall off).

[@querpmuerp]

Yeah, it always reminded me a bit of Castlevania. I like this game, even if the level design is a bit flawed.

[@querpmuerp]

Argh, the jump at around 13:30 was a bugger. I had to look up where to progress.

[@AlexeiVoronin]

BTW, in the case of Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure, I think there are at least 1 or 2 enemy types that only appear in the registered episodes... so, it's not really another typical case of a "level pack" like Duke Nukum was.

[@Pixelmusement]

True, nor did I say it was like the extremes Apogee titles could reach, I was just pointing out the particular uniqueness that game had, whereby this game was giving me those same vibes. :B

[@negirno]

I can't help thinking that these shareware titles in the mid-nineties were supposed to bring the console/arcade look and feel to the PC, but they somehow failed to do so despite the average PC being more than capable for the task. Maybe because of how sprites are designed, how falling objects move, etc. Basically, some kind of uncanny valley feeling. It made me less proud as a PC kid back then opposed to the 16-bit consoles and the Amiga. It seemed like the PC hit its stride with first person shooters and real time strategies.

[@Pixelmusement]

I would argue many games actually succeeded at this, though to be fair the PC was a very different beast in terms of gaming for the longest time so the kinds of games which turned out best differed wildly between the PC and consoles, especially where 3D is involved. :o

[@DookNookim]

@22:38 Realms of Chaos is a Real mode game instead of a Protected mode game. DOSBox doesn't set the cycles automatically for Real mode games. I've tried this game in 86Box emulating a 286, but it hangs just after showing the Apogee logo. The game uses XMS and EMS, which is a hint it uses Real mode. The beta version of Realms of Chaos has PC speaker sound effects and it uses the same file format as Monster Bash and ScubaVenture. There's speculation Realms of Chaos uses the same engine as the cancelled Monster Bash VGA game.

[@Pixelmusement]

It shouldn't be possible to use XMS from real mode though, at least as far as I understand how XMS works, so the fact that it's detecting it at all suggests it may be doing something weird internally. :P

[@DookNookim]

@@Pixelmusement Wolfenstein 3-D also uses XMS and is a real mode game. You access extended memory on a 286 and higher through HIMEM.SYS. It's like a virtual file system and the operations are basically: get this many bytes from extended memory/file into this chunk of conventional memory and save this many bytes from this part of conventional memory into extended memory/file.

[@mouthmw]

The beta version of the game looks like an EGA game slowly transitioning into VGA. I'd probably even prefer the look (sucker for 90s EGA), but there's no gore in the beta version unfortunately.

[@Pixelmusement]

@@DookNookim I don't... think that's right? To be fair, there's a massive amount of conflicting data online, even on freaking Wikipedia, about how XMS is accessed, so it may not be possible to know anymore how possible/impossible it is on various flavours of DOS with various quantities of memory. The only thing that seems to be agreed on is that access to XMS from real mode is TECHNICALLY possible, but how to do it and how much you get access to, no one seems to have a definitive answer. Or correction, people THINK they have definitive answers, get into heated debates, and everyone loses. :P

[@DookNookim]

Realms of Chaos does work on a 286 if you run EMU386 first.

[@ala21964]

Yeah alright, that 2nd episode end boss is hard. Probably the hardest Apogee boss fight. It´s been a while since I played RoC, maybe I should give it a go again

[@wardrich]

1:46 "One of the last games to use the Apogee name..." Apogee are still putting out games. though I guess now they're a publisher.

[@Pixelmusement]

I guess I should've clarified "one of the last DOS games to use the Apogee name", though really, Apogee Software now is a different beast run by different people... it's all semantics really. :P

[@wardrich]

@@Pixelmusement yeah, I never looked too far into what they are now but I was surprised to see they're still kicking and that games are still being released under their name

[@DookNookim]

@@Pixelmusement It's still Scott Miller.

[@Pixelmusement]

@@DookNookim No it's not, although Miller IS a member of the new Apogee as of 2021 though I believe his roll is specifically in publishing.

[@FiggsNeughton]

13:40 The game measures your confidence level. You should have believed in yourself.

[@ubza1234]

Something about this reminds me of vinyl goddess of Mars 🤔

[@ubza1234]

It's such a shame it's a bad game. Is so pretty

[@mattj2217]

"Are there any spots you cannot survive without knowing ahead of time what's going to happen" - This is what disappointed me about Descent when I actually tried to play it for the first time recently

[@Pixelmusement]

Descent has spots that will "hurt" if you don't know what's coming, but does not technically have spots which will "kill" under those conditions; It kinda depends on how well you keep your shields going. Descent is definitely not a cakewalk though; I would say it's harder than even this game when set to the same middle level of difficulty. :P

[@simplyhard]

I've not played many of these kinds of dos games, but it looks somewhat like 'Völgar the Viking', albeit a bit easier.

[@HighwayMule]

I love sword'n'sorcery style, so I was always drawn to this game but trying to play it, given how bad I am at platformers, was a serious knockback to me, every time.

[@HomsarWho]

I've been watching since episode 0.

[@Pixelmusement]

I hope I've gotten better at all of this since then! ^_^

[@SteveMacSticky]

Nice pixel art

[@lasskinn474]

I dunno I asked before, but have you thought of rick dangerous, has it been up for vote? 11:00 in the vid. because that game is a memory game disguised as a platformer. basically every screen has at least 1 thing you must just know, sometimes 4+ per "screen"(the engine does vertical scrolling) and in later levels it gets even crazier in that you have to start moving as you enter a screen. still got a cult following tho, maybe just due to how it is, it burrows into your brain if you keep playing it - and the level design isn't accidental on that one but very much on purpose introduces a/b choices that you have to just take a chance at the first time you encounter that screen, but also so that you do feel like you made some progress in an usual play session. (don't bother trying the pooky or whatever cheat that would give you unlimited lives on a c64 if typed into high scores in that game, it doesn't work on pc)

[@Rabbitlord108]

14:51 Oh dear lord. This is reminding me of the infamous Yoku Blocks from the Mega Man series (Yes. That's the official name of the disappearing blocks in that series) and that's NOT a good thing. And yeah. I think this qualifies as a guide game in one way shape or form. Given that you NEED to find the secrets.

[@carlcouture1023]

They should bring this IP back as a soulslike with the high difficulty and trial/error it has.

[@Pixelmusement]

Dark Souls is not technically trial-and-error based, it's pure skill. Exceptionally hard sure, but the game gives you all of the tools and information you need to survive, you just have to make it all happen. Trial-and-error gameplay is when you are NOT given the tools/info you need to discern how to survive and have to GUESS. At least in Dark Souls enemies telegraph what they're going to do so you watch and learn, then dodge, counter, and strike when it makes sense to do those things. :B

[@AlexeiVoronin]

12:32 - Elandra being able to jump higher is actually mentioned in the game's Help section. Perhaps you should have read it...

[@Pixelmusement]

Right, but it doesn't become a necessary aspect of the gameplay until halfway through the entire experience and because it's such a subtle difference you kinda forget it's even happening. :P

[@simovihinen875]

Liking chocolate an hating poodles are two of the minimal criteria for me to date someone! Oh, the orb might have been a will-o-the-wisp?

[@SmeddyTooBestChannel]

joke: listing chun-li's measurements woke: **HATES POODLES**

[@MaximilienNoal]

Inner Worlds was amazing ! ❤

[@Cyberbrickmaster1986]

The only 2D space flight sim for MS-DOS I can think of is Solar Winds. But that's probably not what you're referring to, is it?

[@Pixelmusement]

I mean, it's not impossible, but I will neither confirm nor deny that is the game in question at this time! ;)

[@thewhyzer]

I thought of Solar Winds as well, but I really don't see what it has in common with Wing Commander besides being a space flight combat game of course. To my recollection, Solar Winds was an open world where you fly around doing missions, perhaps closer to Privateer than Wing Commander (though I never played Privateer.)

[@Cyberbrickmaster1986]

@@thewhyzer I think the hint was meant to be emphasized in quotation marks, specifically at the 2D part. Whatever that means.

[@trevorc4413]

@@thewhyzer Solar Winds was technically open world, but had a pretty obvious main path. It does fit, but where my mind immediately went was Star Hammer.

[@shioq.]

ChaosRealm01

[@mikewolf78]

3:22 rtx on

[@SomeOrangeCat]

I really grew to hate this game over time.

[@Pixelmusement]

Curious. Given that level design is something players adapt to over time I would've expected the opposite...? :o

[@dinitroacetylen]

I didn't realise this game exists. And for goodness' sake, this is an embarrassment on Apogee's name. A mediocre platformer in 320x200 VGA in 1995? There was _Crusader No Remorse_ in the same year, being lightyears ahead in graphics and overall fun.

[@Pixelmusement]

That's kinda not a fair comparison mind you. Crusader: No Remorse was a full-priced commercial product, whereas Realms of Chaos, despite having a box, was a lower-priced shareware product. :P

[@thewhyzer]

Apogee platformers, except when publishing Id's Keen games, were ALWAYS far behind the times tech-wise. They were still doing CGA-only games in 1990-1991. Their first (IIRC) VGA platformer, Duke Nukem II in 1993, ran at like 15 fps.