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davidspackage
May 16, 2007

Nap Ghost


Anachronox is really really great.





What're you looking at me like that for? What? Not convinced?

::sighs, puts on glasses. Ineffectually rustles some papers that are clearly blank::

Anachronox is the 2001 brainchild of Tom Hall, one of the legendary founders of ID Software, creative force behind Wolfenstein 3D, DOOM, Rise of the Triad, and the super awesome Commander Keen series. Based on a modified Quake II engine, Anachronox was produced by Ion Storm, the ill-fated John Romero studio eternally embarassed by Daikatana. Despite good reviews, Anachronox got largely overlooked and slipped into obscurity, then gradually became a bit of a cult hit.

Anachronox is many things. It is a third-person sci-fi RPG, inspired by old school SNES RPGs like Chrono Chross and Final Fantasy (games which I never played myself, so I won't be able to draw comparisons), but with the more tedious RPG elements simplified so even a doofus like me can make sense of it. It blends a very noir style plot with major stakes, save-the-universe sci-fi, and sharp comedy. It is a hilariously written game, chock full of genuinely funny humor (not just “funny for a game” funny), where every character you come across has something worthwhile to say, even if it's just one line. It can be an extremely buggy mess, prone to animation glitches, falling through the world, and items resetting. It is also one of the most fun, engaging, entertaining, wonderful videogame experience I've had, and I'm going to try and push it on you!

Anachronox was LPed before in 2007 in screenshot form. Being a game made up largely of text-based dialogue and somewhat repetitive combat, that's a good way to present the game. However, that would make you miss out on amusing cutscenes, excellent music, and cool battle animations, so I'm going with a commentated video format. To keep it digestable, I'll edit out long stretches of walking and zip through the battles when there's nothing new or interesting to see.

Anachronox is currently available on GOG.com and Steam. The original CD version of Anachronox is notably buggy, and exponentially so on a modern system. This is why Joey Liaw, programmer on the Anachronox team, wrote a set of patches (in his spare time) that fixed some major issues with the game. The GOG version of Anachronox has these patches and more applied to it, making it reasonably stable to play. I assume the Steam version, which showed up later, is the same.
























davidspackage fucked around with this message at 20:14 on Oct 19, 2017

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davidspackage
May 16, 2007

Nap Ghost

davidspackage
May 16, 2007

Nap Ghost

zeroskippy
Apr 10, 2016
Best game ever to have an entire system of government decide to arm their homeworld to the teeth, shrink themselves and join your party without your consent.

anilEhilated
Feb 17, 2014

But I say fuck the rain.

Grimey Drawer
Bugs aside this is still the best JRPG ever made. I mean, this genre, gameplay will suck no matter what so it's all about the writing and the whole noir meets Douglas Adams style works fantastically.

anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 00:02 on Mar 24, 2017

Dmar
Aug 19, 2004
yarg
Wow. I wasn't sure what to expect, but this game seems pretty neat. Wish I had played it in my childhood. The character models are sometimes kinda repulsive? Gives it some real charm :haw:

MaskedHuzzah
Mar 26, 2009

Come now! Look me in the eye and tell me - isn't this the face of a guy you can trust?
Lipstick Apathy
This was a favorite of mine - enough so to commit a name to memory. I'll keep up with this LP.

evilmiera
Dec 14, 2009

Status: Ravenously Rambunctious
Furthest I ever got in the game was around the mixed up identity plot point. At least as far as I recall. The game plays a bit too slow for me to get to the ending despite being awesome.

EponymousMrYar
Jan 4, 2015

The enemy of my enemy is my enemy.
I played the demo of this game way back when, then snagged a copy of the CD from a friend. Alas, it never booted up on the old parents computer because it was one of those games.

I got it for five bucks off of GoG a couple months back and it's been one of my best purchases ever. :colbert:

Dmar posted:

Wow. I wasn't sure what to expect, but this game seems pretty neat. Wish I had played it in my childhood. The character models are sometimes kinda repulsive? Gives it some real charm :haw:

They're both repulsive and surprisingly expressive considering the time period and engine used. This game is crazily hacked together from the Quake 2 Engine.

Seyser Koze
Dec 15, 2013

Mucho Mucho
Nap Ghost
I love this game to death but somehow never played it past the Verilent Hive. Which might mean I actually didn't love it that much. But I'm probably wrong about that.

Also, new Spackage LP! :toot:

coleman francis
Aug 8, 2007

Tap tap
The ketchup bottle
None will come
Then axolotl
Hair Elf
Really looking forward to watching this unfold.

Someone remind where we are on davidspackage canon? Is he still dead, is his mom still in the LP business??

radintorov
Feb 18, 2011
I played this game all the way back when it originally came out and after it was released on GoG I immediately bought it again.
It's great that this game is getting the LP treatment because more people need to learn of it.

Bobbin Threadbare
Jan 2, 2009

I'm looking for a flock of urbanmechs.

evilmiera posted:

Furthest I ever got in the game was around the mixed up identity plot point. At least as far as I recall. The game plays a bit too slow for me to get to the ending despite being awesome.

Yeah, I remember hearing that even the developers realize the game takes too long to get off the starting planet and getting the plot moving. It gets pretty awesome once you get through the first third, though.

Inferior
Oct 19, 2012

Anachrononx is a great game, except for the combat. And the plot. And most of the environments. The sense of humor saves it, I think.

It'd be great to see a modern big budget RPG as playful as Anachronox was.

davidspackage
May 16, 2007

Nap Ghost

Bobbin Threadbare posted:

Yeah, I remember hearing that even the developers realize the game takes too long to get off the starting planet and getting the plot moving. It gets pretty awesome once you get through the first third, though.

I never had much of a problem with this, but I'm also the type of player who exhausts all possible sidepaths before trying to make progress. So I can see how it would turn off other players.

Deceitful Penguin
Feb 16, 2011
This is literally my favourite game ever (With maaaaybbee Morrowind competing with it) and I will always be sad that they will, well, spoilers maybe but y'all know what I mean if you finished it.

Bobbin Threadbare
Jan 2, 2009

I'm looking for a flock of urbanmechs.

davidspackage posted:

I never had much of a problem with this, but I'm also the type of player who exhausts all possible sidepaths before trying to make progress. So I can see how it would turn off other players.

Well, my biggest problem with the beginning is that, if it weren't so long and involved, the developers might have had some time to spend on the ending.

Plus it kind of sucks how long NRG sits there just looking pretty and not doing anything.

anilEhilated
Feb 17, 2014

But I say fuck the rain.

Grimey Drawer

davidspackage posted:

I never had much of a problem with this, but I'm also the type of player who exhausts all possible sidepaths before trying to make progress. So I can see how it would turn off other players.
Speaking of, how are you going to handle the different scenarios at the party split? That is a bit of a dick move by the game given the poor pacing and lack of replayability.

Xander77
Apr 6, 2009

Fuck it then. For another pit sandwich and some 'tater salad, I'll post a few more.



Like I said - it hasn't been so long since I tried to play through Anachronox (resorting to speedup and battle skips in the end, and still failing to complete the final boss fight) but I still don't remember a lot of the stuff in your trailers.

Also - the game still looks good. Not like "oh, the amazing graphics" good, but it doesn't seem as dated as later games that went for more realistic graphics. (Then again, I still don't see the problem with Deus Ex character models, so maybe I'm not much of an expert)

Xander77 fucked around with this message at 18:57 on Mar 25, 2017

davidspackage
May 16, 2007

Nap Ghost

anilEhilated posted:

Speaking of, how are you going to handle the different scenarios at the party split? That is a bit of a dick move by the game given the poor pacing and lack of replayability.

Oh, I'll definitely cover all three possible options. It's a little annoying having to replay the preceding part every time, but all three are worth seeing.

anilEhilated
Feb 17, 2014

But I say fuck the rain.

Grimey Drawer
Awesome. I admit that despite having finished this multiple times, I never really found the will to do PAL18's path.

Stabbey_the_Clown
Sep 21, 2002

Are... are you quite sure you really want to say that?
Taco Defender
Question: have you done a test run of the game before launching this LP? Because I played the GoG version and I was unable to finish the game because the final boss was "bugged" - it moved too fast, getting far too many turns, so I was unable to do the thing I needed to do to win. It would really suck if you were unable to finish the LP because of that.

Genocyber
Jun 4, 2012

Inferior posted:

Anachrononx is a great game, except for the combat. And the plot. And most of the environments. The sense of humor saves it, I think.

This is why I gave up after a few hours. Way too plodding of a game, even by JRPG standards.

davidspackage
May 16, 2007

Nap Ghost

Stabbey_the_Clown posted:

Question: have you done a test run of the game before launching this LP? Because I played the GoG version and I was unable to finish the game because the final boss was "bugged" - it moved too fast, getting far too many turns, so I was unable to do the thing I needed to do to win. It would really suck if you were unable to finish the LP because of that.

Thanks, someone warned me for this in the Sandcastle. I tested it, and was able to complete the game. The game's pretty affected by processor speed, so you might have a better PC than me :D

Stabbey_the_Clown
Sep 21, 2002

Are... are you quite sure you really want to say that?
Taco Defender

davidspackage posted:

Thanks, someone warned me for this in the Sandcastle. I tested it, and was able to complete the game. The game's pretty affected by processor speed, so you might have a better PC than me :D

Oh. That was me too.

Loxbourne
Apr 6, 2011

Tomorrow, doom!
But now, tea.
Poor, poor Tom Hall. The guy is an excellent comedy writer with some decent game design ideas, but he has an amazing knack for hitching himself to stars just before those stars burn out or go supernova.

He was a key man in the early days of ID Software but got thrown out by his business partners because he kept pushing to give Doom more story elements. Masters of Doom outright states the famous hanging Commander Keens in Doom 2 were a parting gently caress you to the guy because the ID in-house artist wanted to revel in being able to draw blood and gore.

He injected his trademark brand of humour into Duke Nukem 3D (and DNF later showed us what the game would have been like without it, holy crap). Then he worked on the first version of Prey while that got stuck in development hell.

So Romero drags him (somehow, given his past firing) into Ion Storm and he's caught up in that clusterfuck. The leaked Ion internal emails pretty much paint him as a struggling yes-man caught between a wannabe rock god and a predatory con artist. But he finally got given the resources to make the game he wanted.

And at least he got Anachronox out - or rather, a third of the intended game. After it was gutted by having most of the devs transferred off the project to get Daikatana finished.

He tried and failed a few Kickstarter retro projects, and was last seen making Facebook games. A tragic figure who probably had some serious masterwork in him if he hadn't kept signing on with delusional arseholes and letting them handle "the biz stuff".

Seyser Koze
Dec 15, 2013

Mucho Mucho
Nap Ghost

Loxbourne posted:

Poor, poor Tom Hall. The guy is an excellent comedy writer with some decent game design ideas, but he has an amazing knack for hitching himself to stars just before those stars burn out or go supernova.

He was a key man in the early days of ID Software but got thrown out by his business partners because he kept pushing to give Doom more story elements. Masters of Doom outright states the famous hanging Commander Keens in Doom 2 were a parting gently caress you to the guy because the ID in-house artist wanted to revel in being able to draw blood and gore.

He injected his trademark brand of humour into Duke Nukem 3D (and DNF later showed us what the game would have been like without it, holy crap). Then he worked on the first version of Prey while that got stuck in development hell.

So Romero drags him (somehow, given his past firing) into Ion Storm and he's caught up in that clusterfuck. The leaked Ion internal emails pretty much paint him as a struggling yes-man caught between a wannabe rock god and a predatory con artist. But he finally got given the resources to make the game he wanted.

And at least he got Anachronox out - or rather, a third of the intended game. After it was gutted by having most of the devs transferred off the project to get Daikatana finished.

He tried and failed a few Kickstarter retro projects, and was last seen making Facebook games. A tragic figure who probably had some serious masterwork in him if he hadn't kept signing on with delusional arseholes and letting them handle "the biz stuff".

UW Milwaukee hosted an indie game developers' conference a few years ago, and they had Hall (Wisconsin native) as a keynote speaker. He focused on the early days at what would become Id, where the founding members worked for one of those 1980s-early '90s-era computer hobbyist 'zines. They had an NES in their office, and spent some late nights playing Mario 3 when that came out, until one night they said "hey, you know... we could do this on a PC, couldn't we?"

Over a few nights they came up with a mockup of the first level of Mario 3 and pitched it to Nintendo. Apparently it made it all the way up to the top echelons of the company before they said "this is cool and all, but we're not really interested in moving into the home computer market." But the guys already had the basics for a workable platformer, so Commander Keen was born.

He pretty much glossed over Wolf 3D, Doom, etc, and I didn't even know he'd worked on Anachronox until now. Nice guy.

anilEhilated
Feb 17, 2014

But I say fuck the rain.

Grimey Drawer
Ion Storm basically had a "celebrity" dev producing each of their releases (probably with the exception of that godawful RTS they bought unfinished) - Romero did Daikatana, Warren Spector did Deus Ex and Tom Hall did Anachronox.

Loxbourne
Apr 6, 2011

Tomorrow, doom!
But now, tea.

anilEhilated posted:

probably with the exception of that godawful RTS they bought unfinished

Oh, Dominion: Storm Over Gift 3 had a name attached too, Todd Porter just thought he was a big celebrity.

davidspackage
May 16, 2007

Nap Ghost


This is one to kind of get through because I'm a completionist; the combat tutorial. Unskippable and kind of tedious. If you find yourself getting bored, I have a link in the description (and an annotation) to jump past it. Combat concepts will be explained when they come up, anyway.

Also, in the commentary for this one, I question whether Anachronox started out as a more hardcore RPG and got scaled back, or whether it was always going to be like this. I've since found out that it's the latter; it was always meant to be kind of a dressed-down RPG. Or at least, dressed down from what I'm used to seeing in RPGs, like picking how to distribute your stats, dealing with character classes, armor types, etc.



Bobbin Threadbare posted:

I think you can safely drop the annotation link after the first minute or so. It doesn't need to sit there the whole time.

Yeah, you're right. Fixed that.

davidspackage fucked around with this message at 20:35 on Mar 28, 2017

anilEhilated
Feb 17, 2014

But I say fuck the rain.

Grimey Drawer
The "scaling back" is one of the things that come from the inspiration by Japanese games - JRPGs have been doing this for ages.

Bobbin Threadbare
Jan 2, 2009

I'm looking for a flock of urbanmechs.

I think you can safely drop the annotation link after the first minute or so. It doesn't need to sit there the whole time.

davidspackage
May 16, 2007

Nap Ghost


In which Boots crosses more of Anachronox's colorful locale and finds the object of his latest 'case.'

Loxbourne
Apr 6, 2011

Tomorrow, doom!
But now, tea.
I can see why the designers felt they should have cut back on the opening. This draaaaaaaaaaags and we have no real objectives right now beyond wandering around.

Stabbey_the_Clown
Sep 21, 2002

Are... are you quite sure you really want to say that?
Taco Defender
Will you be using the fast-forward button to speed up the game? It's something which quickly becomes very sanity-saving to speed up all the elevator animations, as well as combat.

Bobbin Threadbare
Jan 2, 2009

I'm looking for a flock of urbanmechs.

Man, I forgot just how many collectibles there are for such a (relatively) short game.

davidspackage
May 16, 2007

Nap Ghost

Stabbey_the_Clown posted:

Will you be using the fast-forward button to speed up the game? It's something which quickly becomes very sanity-saving to speed up all the elevator animations, as well as combat.

I looked at a few options to speed through the repetitive stuff, but I'm going to use short fade-overs to skip the frequent backtracking through areas already seen, and quick cuts to rush through the fights.

anilEhilated
Feb 17, 2014

But I say fuck the rain.

Grimey Drawer

Loxbourne posted:

I can see why the designers felt they should have cut back on the opening. This draaaaaaaaaaags and we have no real objectives right now beyond wandering around.
This is kind of interesting to me since I think it shows they didn't really know what to do with their game mechanics. In a western RPG, you'd be happy to wander around, grab sidequests and use every opportunity to tune up your character a bit; but in JRPGs you can't do that so you want to get into the story as soon as possible. Bit of conflicting mentalities there.

Stabbey_the_Clown
Sep 21, 2002

Are... are you quite sure you really want to say that?
Taco Defender

davidspackage posted:

I looked at a few options to speed through the repetitive stuff, but I'm going to use short fade-overs to skip the frequent backtracking through areas already seen, and quick cuts to rush through the fights.

I mean the actual in-game fast-forward button to save any remnants of YOUR sanity.


Bobbin Threadbare posted:

Man, I forgot just how many collectibles there are for such a (relatively) short game.

I don't think I would call this game short, there's quite a good chunk of stuff.

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davidspackage
May 16, 2007

Nap Ghost

Stabbey_the_Clown posted:

I mean the actual in-game fast-forward button to save any remnants of YOUR sanity.

Heh, I always use it when I'm playing just for myself, I just don't really want to use it on-camera.

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