dubiouslog

Yesterday morning, I was peacefully doing my business on the computer when my sister stormed in with a triumphant expression on her face and a CD in one hand. “Look at what I found!”.
The CD with the green label which she was now waving in front of me was a compilation of PC games from the mid-nineties; an old friend which introduced me to classics such as Duke Nukem II, and many other games whose names had been long forgotten. As I opened the small leaflet that came with the case, I began reading the contents, and stopped at a name.
“Mystic Towers”.

Mystic Towers falls right in the category of the incredibly obscure PC games from the early nineties. It’s kind of amazing how many games were produced in that era and how little we remember of them - I guess it’s the fate of most things that happened in the immediate pre-internet. As such, it should come as no surprise that, except for a few download links and a handful of screenshots, googling this game brings very few interesting results.
Undeservingly so: Mystic Towers is one damn good game.

Mystic Towers

Genre: Adventure
Platform: PC (DOS)
Released in: 1994
Developer: Animation F/X, Apogee (current 3DRealms)
Publisher: Apogee

Mystic Towers’ star is an elderly wizard in retirement by the name of Baron Baldric (”a Baron Baldric game”, reads the subtitle in the intro screen) who is sent on a quest to free the Lazarine Towers from monsters using the magic of his ancestors. Although he’s the good guy, he’s miles away from being an archetypal hero. I mean, among his idle animations we have him picking his nose or scratching his package. And since we’re already talking about it, this must be said: other than having a variety of amusing quirks, he’s also amazingly well animated for the time; in fact, everything that moves in this game does it with style, and what doesn’t is still very pretty to look at -  even fifteen years later.

The game’s premise is that, every time Baron Baldric enters a tower, he has to destroy all monsters and the monster generator in each tower in order to collect the red exit key and progress to the next level. There are 12 towers in total; each one of them has 15 monsters living in it distributed through 5 floors with 9 rooms each. Easy enough, one would think. Of course, this is just the top layer underneath which we have an amazing gameplay depth. Although most rooms look very similar to each other, the puzzles they offer are always different. For example, some rooms have teleport panels which, if activated with the proper spell, allow Baron Baldric to jump to another place in the tower. However, the spell itself may not be in the same room as the panel. Another room may have a switch for a door that’s out of reach; you’ll then want to look for an item on which to climb, or alternatively for a Levitate spell. Some rooms have coin-operated machines which will power up your weapons or give you some more to use; others have power-ups such as a magical shield or an invisibility cloak, while others yet are marked by runes that indicate the presence of something hidden in that room.

Another part of the exploration is keeping Baron Baldric alive and in good health. There are three life bars on screen: one health bar that is affected by damage from monsters and traps, one hunger bar and one thirst bar. Were Baron Baldric left without eating or drinking for long enough, his health bar would begin to deplete and he’d eventually die. Of course. Luckily, food and drinks aren’t hard to find; however, there are some you’d better off not touching - picking up a poisonous mushroom will cause instant death. There are also some beverages which will make Baron Baldric drunk and that you may not want to drink if a monster is nearby (if you’re alone, though, go for it - the result will be priceless).

As for the monsters, there are dozens of different creatures to be found. Each monster has its own area which won’t leave and, even before entering its domain, its presence is signaled by a portrait of said monster in the top right corner of the screen. All these warnings are justified by the fact that monsters in Mystic Towers are really more like area bosses, and fighting them consumes a lot of spells and energy; so, if you feel like you aren’t ready to face a monster, you can just walk away. Most early levels monsters can damage the player only when coming close to Baron Baldric; as you progress, you will find more and more monsters with ranged attacks.
On a related note, the designs of the monsters are amazingly creative. For example, look at the little blue guy in the screenshot here. It’s called an Azurblast, and it’s…a duck robot on a wheel? How cute is that?

In spite of the game being very slow-paced, it never comes to the point of being boring, and even though there’s a lot to look for in each room, completing a tower doesn’t take more than 20-30 minutes. It’s kind of amazing, actually - most jprgs turn me off because they’re so slow, and this game manages to keep my interest perked while being slower by several orders of magnitude.

When I first played this game, I thought it had no soundtrack except for the sound effects. Replaying it now, I found out that it does have a soundtrack, so I think it was just my audio card that was not supported. It was either that or the version of the game I had. Whichever my problem, it makes me sad that I couldn’t get to listen to the soundtrack before, because it’s gorgeous. It has only a few pieces, but they are all beautiful. The two exploration themes are especially interesting in which they loop only after 12-13 minutes and have an amazing variety. If you’re curious, the soundtracks are here and the one I like most is this one. If it weren’t for the sound quality, I would have never guessed it was videogame music. It doesn’t sound like something that’s made to be in the background - it goes from slow and atmospheric to fast and intense and has a serious drums line in some parts. Definitely not what you’d expect from videogame music, and especially not from such an old game.

Every game has its flaws, and Mystic Towers isn’t immune from flaws. The biggest one is probably that, after a few towers, the room layouts begins to get repetitive. Not the puzzles, just the graphics. Things get confusing when everything looks alike. In the few reviews I managed to find for this game I’ve also found some criticism towards the fact that fighting monsters is underwhelming and requires no strategy - and it’s true, but I can’t find anything bad in that. I think this game is really more about solving puzzles and exploring the towers than fighting the monsters. That could be just me, though.

Mystic Towers’ greatest charm is its unique feeling. Once you’re acquainted with it, you can’t mistake this game for anything else. It belongs to its own genre. It’s sad that it never left the obscure status - it could have been a classic.

If this is the first time you learn of the existence of this game, go play it now. It can be downloaded here (for free, since so many years have passed) and runs just fine with DOSbox.

Other reads on Mystic Towers (lol, who am I kidding, these are probably ALL of them):

• Answers
  
• Wikipedia
• Mobygames
• This blog post

This concludes my review for this game. Now I can stop pretending I’m a srs bzns blogger. No, wait, I’m making a new tag just for this kind of posts.
In any case, goodnight.

It IS a faraway region, just as I thought! :D though the name reminds me of a sneeze, lol.

The starters…well, usually my reaction to all first-stages is “meh” but this time I really like the Grass first stage. I bet its final evo will kick ass. The Fire swine is also cute. What’s that thing on the right? It looks like a Piplup and a Bidoof really loved each other.

The playable characters ROCK
but I think they both look like girls! a girly girl and a tomboy. This makes me want to play as the male character. I’m not sure though - I really like the girl’s design too, especially her hairdo. If I pushed all my hair through that hat they’d look exactly like hers, down to the same exact shade of brown :o what should I do aaaa aaaaaaaaa

I AM VERY EXCITED ABOUT BLACK AND WHITE

also in other news I NOW OWN FLINT’S PANTS LOL
they arrived in the mail a few minutes ago! I found them on a catalogue a few weeks ago and went all LOL THEY’RE PERFECT
They look almost identical to his except for some details on the back and two additional pouches on the bottom, but it’s fine, they’re almost unnoticeable and I love extra pouches anyway. It’s already on the comfy side, it will become baggy in a few weeks of usage.

To clarify some things: I’d cosplay him, but mostly for my personal amusement. I’d go to a con if someone else was going with me dressed up as another character, though. If that’s not going to be the case, then I can always go around wearing Flint’s pants for the luls. They are my kind of everyday clothing, after all.

Now I need to get the other parts of his outfit :> The sandals are easy to get and I will be able to use them this summer anyway as I currently own only one pair of shoes and they’re army boots, not the best choice for going to the beach XD The belt and the wig are not an issue, now I don’t know about the armbands and the collar but they look like something I can just go and buy.
The t-shirt should be easy to find, but…my sister allowed me to try out her yellow shirt just to see how I’d look and omg. omg. I just got reminded of why I never wear anything under men’s large. D8 However, Flint’s shirt IS clingy…what should I do?

I spent the last three days making a fanlisting for the flash game Luminara. I’m dead serious.

currently in Mahogany, team around lv. 24-28
the Sandslash in the photo is a girl, and her name is Synthsand.

Yesterday I had an incredible meeting. Entei appeared in the Route before Olivine…
just in the same spot where I met it for the first time ten years ago.
I couldn’t believe my eyes. And the music, oh the music.
These games give me such a great joy.

Now I have to go to the Lake of Rage, where I will meet Lance. It’s a return to birth. You’re going to see a lot of Pokémon drawings in the next weeks.

Anyway, I think I’m falling in love with Sableye. I always liked it, but never considered training one up until now, and Quartz is so adorable it’s wrong. All of you “it’s weak! just choose another Pokémon!” should just fuck off.

Have a Pokémon meme I stole from Kayla.

I love these memes

Two hours and half in, I’ve got this to say: if you hate Pokémon Heart Gold and Soul Silver, you clearly have no soul, therefore you should not be playing Pokémon in the first place.

This aside, it’s weird how all of my second generation favorites are found so late in the game. So, I made some eggs in Platinum and traded them over. Currently at Violent Violet City, ready to beat Falkner.

Pokémon team

• Avantgarde (female Scizor)
• Wind-up (male Skarmory)
• Mann (male Houndour)
• Squidwards (female Remoraid)
• Quartz (male Sableye)

ABUSE OF DARK AND STEEL TYPES FTW
The line-up will be complete as soon as I catch a Sandshrew, which was also in my original Crystal team about ten years ago. So many fond memories.

Avantgarde seems to be the affectionate kind. She’s always trying to get physical interaction, like tickling my feet, leaping in my arms - she’s adorable, except I can’t say I want a Scizor to wrestle with me. She’s going to rip my limbs off by accident! D8 Skarmory has quite a temper, huh. But he’s a nice guy, all considered. Mann is a quiet one, and so seems Squidwards…Quartz is constantly getting scared of noises in the tall grass.
THE GRASS
IT MAKES SOUNDS!!!

aaaa I’m at Jacopo’s
he just came back
so I’m going

Tonight I wanted to make fan art for games which don’t receive enough attention. At first I thought about tackling Borderlands or Dead Space, but I ended up with a Xivilai from Oblivion. I have spent about one hour trying to find a dynamic pose for him without messing up the anatomy or going too overboard with perspective, and I got a good starting point for a watercolor painting which I hope to finish later today or maybe tomorrow.

After finishing the sketch, I took a break and wanted to read some books from Oblivion. Some of them are really beautiful. I came across Spirit of the Daedra, which should be a book written by the Daedra themselves. One passage left me amazed:

“We do not die. We do not fear death.
Destroy the Body, and the Animus is cast into The Darkness. But the Animus returns.
But we are not all brave.
We feel pain, and fear it. We feel shame, and fear it. We feel loss, and fear it. We hate the Darkness, and fear it.
The Scamps have small thoughts, and cannot fear greatly.
The Vermai have no thoughts, and cannot fear.
The Dremora have deep thoughts, and must master fear to overcome it.”

I feel better about myself.

A big thanks to the anonymous guy who sent me that lovely clap message on 11/09. It looks like it ended up in the Spam folder because Gmail is conspiring against my happiness. If you’re out there reading, thank you!

I accidentally a bunch of user pictures. Do whatever you want with them (except claiming them as yours and selling them).

Introducing Daevion. Born under the stars of the Ritual and therefore blessed by the goddess Mara, he belongs to the ancient race of the Altmer, the cultured, tall, magicka-gifted elves from Summerset Island.

Unlike many of his kin, he doesn’t think of himself as belonging to a superior race; while he’s certainly proud of his cultural heritage, he’s also well aware that it was the same advanced society that sent his mother in permanent exile on the mainland for being the offspring of an illegitimate union of her Altmer mother with an Imperial man, thus making her of impure blood and unworthy of living on Summerset. Daevion himself was born and spent his childhood in the Imperial City, considers himself like a citizen of the Empire to all extents, and believes that his kinsmen should begin to seriously rethink their core values instead of acting all haughty and collecting distrust from the other races.

Like all elves, Altmer can live longer than a thousand years. Daevion is 257 years old, which would make him about 26 in human years. He is always seen wearing a red vest which he took care in enchanting so to grant him greater magicka resources; one might say it’s his signature item of clothing, and it comes as no surprise that people in Cyrodiil have come to refer to him as “the crimson mage”.

Calm and of pleasant disposition, Daevion is well loved among gents and rulers alike; as an adventurer he’s always the first to lend a hand with dangerous jobs, and he has fame of being selfless and heroic. Even though he genuinely likes to be helpful, it must also be noted that he genuinely likes to go on adventure and get his hands on a good loot, so those claims are not completely true. Anyway, he is a sworn enemy of everything evil and believes in purging the world from wretchedness. He is especially concerned with freeing the world from the ones who live off harming other people, since they’re a hazard to society; he has no pity for bandits, necromancers, assassins and vampires.
Apart from these strong opinions, he tends to be a mild and forgiving person. He is cheerful in a quiet way - he greets people with a smile, but is never overly jumpy. It’s funny, cause even though he dislikes his stuck-up kinsmen, he can’t help but keep a certain Altmer poise.

Very spiritual, Daevion worships the Aedra in the Altmeri ways; most of his worship goes to Mara, who’s been protecting him since his birth, but he’s also devout to Zenithar, Kynareth, and - of course - Auriel. He also worships some Daedra princes; he is especially fascinated with the powers of Vaermina and Sheogorath. He thinks that sanity and madness are actually often overlapping, and he wishes to know more about this subtle balance. One of Daevion’s strongest motives is his unquenchable thirst for knowledge; this has often led him to follow the orders of some deities to better understand their sphere of influence and position in this world. However, he will not just blindly go on any quest: if there is evil, there must be deities connected to evilness, and he’s not going against his principles in exchange for knowledge which is best not to have.

In spite of being so intelligent and wise, Daevion is also very possessive as for what concerns his belongings and always looking for more to own and more money to make. He says that he likes to surround himself with beautiful things; the obvious truth is that he’s just plain avid. Also, because of his ability to talk himself out of any situation, he’s considered by some to have a manipulative streak - which is not entirely wrong, even though this is something that’s probably beyond his control.

Most Altmer are powerful sorcerers, and Daevion is no exception. He is especially skilled in bending reality with Alteration magic; he can open chests without even touching the lock, make heavy equipment weigh less than a feather, and transform his body at will so he can run across lakes or breathe underwater. His other specialty is using elemental Destruction magic to scorch, freeze, or electrocute his enemies. He’s also good at Illusion magic; however, he won’t use it for tricking people into following his orders - he just likes to use magical Light to illuminate dungeons and other dark places, and he has enough confidence in his skills that he just doesn’t care about giving away his position to enemies. Should things go wrong, he can anyway use his knowledge in matters of Restoration magic to heal himself and get back up. He is also good at Alchemy, a decent Mysticism scholar and knows the basics of Conjuration.

While his crimson robe is his most prominent piece of equipment, Daevion also wears a few enchanted pieces of jewelry that help him overcome the Altmeri weakness against elemental magic and grant him the ability to reflect spells and physical damage to the attacker.
When adventuring, he will usually keep a balance between charging in and taking his enemies down from a distance. When facing enemies wielding a blade or a blunt weapon, he will get very close so to cast spell directly at them while taking in hits to reflect right back at them; spellcasters are taken care of from a distance, because this way he can dodge their attacks with ease.

Daevion’s mount is a unicorn. Cliché much? It may seem so; the truth, however, is different. As ridiculous as it may sound, Daevion was exploring the Heartlands and just sort of stumbled upon him. Unicorns are aggressive creatures and will think of anyone in sight as a possible threat and will proceed to impale them; however, this one seemed to be friendly towards Daevion and let him jump on. Maybe it was because only a pure of heart can ride a unicorn, or maybe it was because Daevion wasn’t carrying any weapon besides his own magic; in either case, the two have been sharing a close bond since then.

The unicorn seems to be a wandering soul, as it will often walk away when Daevion dismounts. This causes him to be easily attacked by creatures or bandits, case in which his elven friend will hear his cries and come to the rescue. Sometimes the unicorn will run after deers and Daevion will play along and join him in the hunt. Why not? Venison tastes good.

As a result of his adventuring combined with his fine bartering skills, Daevion is very wealthy. He owns a large house in Cheydinhal, and even though he rarely stays indoors for more than a day he sure likes it there. He filled up his place with interesting items he happened to come across during his travels.

His calm expression. I noticed that the playing character in Oblivion can have an array of other facial expressions, but you will probably never notice since you’ll either be playing in a first-person perspective or only seeing your character’s back. In my experience, they can frown, yawn, look grave (like in the second screencap in this page) and smile.
Taking a guess, I’d say the frown is for when your character is in battle. The yawn may either be random or an idle pose, since I spotted Daevion yawning while he was waiting for Count Hassildor in Skingrad’s castle hall. The grave look…the only time I saw it was at the time of that screencap: at the end of Vaermina’s quest, looking at Arkved drowning in his nightmare. I’m sure it’s a separate expression and not the default face, but why should that even exist anyway? I’m not sure about the smile either, it may have something to do with disposition but I’ve not noticed any consistent behavior. Oh well.

fireballs are so good

his amulet
(this is totally not an excuse to draw him half-naked)

what
I-I think I like my own character, is that a bad thing?

woah that was a massive post :o as a side note, I think I may suffer from the blank page syndrome. I could go on writing forever when no one cares, but when I want to write a lot I get stuck and end up procrastinating. The worst part is that this happens no matter how much I actually want to write, and this may also be why I don’t write stuff for ATP as often as I’d like. I should find a way around this.

on other news I moved to an apartment and I’m loving it :D well, except for the current lack of internet connection, but this is only a temporary issue
I think I’ll post pictures when we’ll be finished with assembling the furniture! we chose some freakin awesome stuff. our living room table is white with black chairs with white cushions and looks fantastic; the table for the room, on the other hand, is going to be plain badass. black with red legs. the best part being that it was my roommate to suggest the color combination, figure that.
BUT LOOK AT ME, GETTING ALL EXCITED ABOUT FURNITURE soon I’ll find myself going nuts over new curtains and I’ll get in the news as the first person to become an elderly at nineteen years of age

then after all the rage I come to learn Sugimori’s got a blog in which he posted the concept artworks for the Pokémon movies 10 and 11 characters and I must say that they really are gorgeous. Why won’t he use that lineart style with all of his other work I will never know, but by now you’ll all know I’m a sucker for sketchy linearts so my opinion may be somehow biased. Oh Sugimori why you do this to me, I loved you and hated you and loved you again. :(

Anyway, have a drawing of me in a cyber armor. The finished work and the base sketch are actually the same thing in this case, as I only had to work on top of the sketch and add details and shading without ever erasing it - I only cleaned up some areas in the end, like the leg on the left and so. It was inked with a Japanese brush pen I bought a few months ago but never quite figured out how to put to good use. Guess I’ll have to explore this technique more then.

On another news, guess who’s been playing Oblivion instead of doing something productive for a change? Next post will have pictures of the two characters I’ve been playing as and maybe some drawings too, who knows.

I played The Sims 3 too, and uninstalled it after a day. What a waste of my time. It’s almost impossible to make a sim who’s at least decent looking and doesn’t have that soulless doll face. The body type sliders are stupid and a thin woman will also be as flat as a sheet, which is just wrong. Men tend to look like they’re sixteen unless they have a beard, case in which they look like they’re sixteen and have a fake beard. Making a house is a pain in the ass, too. The Sims for me has always been about making a beautiful house with beautiful characters, I’ve been doing that since forever, why does it have to be that frustrating now?

I really miss the magic of the original The Sims. Anyone who played that will remember the dauntingly beautiful building mode soundtracks, like this one. Because of these pieces now I can’t help but feel there’s something grave and solemn about building a house. Like dreams are taking a shape and ceasing to be dreams.
It’s incredible to think that such quality came from a game which gained so much popularity that “true gamers” labelled it as marketed to casuals and not worth their time. Sure, The Sims brought many casual gamers to gaming, but it was no Wii Sports. It was fun, but it was also inspired and, ultimately, a work of art. It earned its place in history.

That’s how I see it at least.

Megaman II has got some of the best soundtracks from the NES era. Today I checked VGmusic for some good midi remixes of its greatest tracks, and found much more than what I was looking for. Search this page for “Mega Man II” and follow me from there, as I don’t want to direct link the midis but I don’t want to host them here without asking the sequencers first.

Airman’s Stage (5) by Starbug - upbeat, feels like the original track, and generally works
Airman’s Stage (9) by Sword-Bolt - slower and featuring a cool electric piano
Airman’s Stage (XG) by Blue Fox Verse & MaliceX - an interesting take with guitar riffs and a BASS

Boss by Trevor Kuprel - it has echoes

Bubbleman’s Stage (5) by Seth Wilson - listen to it from the beginning to the end. this is just beautiful. beautiful I say
Bubbleman’s Stage (9) by Sword-Bolt - it’s funny how it feels like you’ve been listening to this since forever
Bubbleman’s Stage (2) by Tom Kim - these tiny distorted sounds

Heatman’s Stage (2) by Trevor Kuprel - just like the original

Flashman’s Stage by Trevor Kuprel - BADASS

Opening & Title (Rock Remix) by FailureChild - THE WAY IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN
Opening & Title (Arranged) by Steven C. King - it’s good but it’s missing the peeeeeow
Opening & Title (2) by Trevor Kuprel - on the other hand, this has got the best peeeeow ever

Dr. Wily Stage 1 (11) by Sword-Bolt - just…gorgeous. there are no words for this.

After listening to these I looked for some other tracks:

Ninja Gaiden - Act 2 Stage 1 by Deuce - Is there somebody other than me out there who thinks that Ninja Gaiden had a great soundtrack?
Ninja Gaiden - Act 2 Stage 2 by Deuce - same as before

(page change)
Castlevania - Stage 1 - “Vampire Killer” by Jorge D. Fuentes - shut up I love Vampire Killer
Castlevania - Stage 1 - “Vampire Killer” (Arranged) (3) by Esposito - weird piano for the win

(another page change)
Bubsy the Bobcat - Title Screen and Bonus Stage (sequencer unknown) - someone please play this one with real instruments
Bubsy the Bobcat - Cheese Wheels of Doom (sequencer unknown) - du du du du du du du du
Bubsy the Bobcat - Invincible Bubsy (sequencer unknown) - RUN BUBSY, RUN TILL YOU CAN

Donkey Kong Country - Aquatic Ambiance (Orchestrated) by Dave Phaneuf - Let’s close this post with one of the most beautiful video game remixes I’ve ever listened to. I want to get asleep listening to this.