So I recently broke out an old laptop I've had floating around in storage for a few years after having been taken by a sudden flight of nostalgia. Windows XP on this bad boy, from back in my undergrad days. Between it's still-working-by-some-act-from-on-high hard drive, and a few backups I've taken over the years of other drives and devices, I've managed to put together a few classic games that can't really run on modern computers. I've really been having a blast going through and replaying some of the classics, some of which have been around even longer than the portal.
Anyway, this brought me to the sudden unalienable fact that I am apparently now a jaded old geezer. Instead of yelling at the new kids on the block to keep off my lawn, I figured . . . why not wax nostalgic and talk about the old days, and games that many around here may have either never been able to play, or never heard of before.
So! Fellow walking anachronisms of the community! Let's begin, shall we? I suppose I'll put together a quick listing, which may or may not be maintained or formatted. Let's be real, this is more of a whim than a real undertaking.
Duamutef's Glorious Vore RPG: Wow this is pretty much the granddaddy of them all. My personal reckoning places it at roundabout 2000 for it's initial release. Has always been a bit of a monster to get running, especially since it was originally written to be run on Windows 98, maybe 95, even. I'll be honest, this game sucked up a LOT of my time, and really impacted my development as a creator, developer, and writer. It was unwieldy, but with a little effort you could crack it open, take a look under the hood and really get into some modding and customization. I know of at least two mods that were floating around that really ramped up the conversation and RPG part of the game, but even the vanilla was a crazy eye opening experience back then. At the time, Vore existed almost entirely in the written word, maybe some hard to find, questionable quality images, or very tightly knit groups that were not nearly as accessible as the portal. Getting this up and running was simply exhilarating, opening up entirely new avenues of possibility and really getting the creative juices going.
Cartovore (1 and 2): Another of Duamutef's contributions, Cartovore was something entirely different. The first game was pretty fast and loose, not much going on beyond some silly card mechanics, some static images, and barely knowing what was going on. That said, each of the cards had touches of flavor text that I even today find myself recalling with no small amount of relish. The second game was quite a bit more robust, and again, extremely customizable. Those of us who played probably had our own favorites (Jenica Gurglemeister = BestGirl) whom we may have cracked into the game's files to break beyond any pretension of balance.
krishna3ca's VGame: This one was a blast, and a bit more modern than Duam's games. That said, this was an exceedingly long project, with 7 chapters to play through. This one was built on an old version of Java, with an Access database backend, which was unfortunately broken by Java Updates locking down outside resource calls. The vanilla game in here was spectacular. Art assets were from all over the place, but there was a certain layer of homogeneity given by krishna3ca's painstaking edits with their own style, gloriously full bellies for each sprite, with imprints of struggling prey within. The sound assets were myriad, and the features just kept growing with each installation. As above, this game could be cracked open and customized, modded, and tweaked, but it was pretty difficult to get all the syntax down. Unfortunately it was pretty difficult to share and combine mods, so in my experience, this one was mostly customized for personal copies, and not really redistributed. That said, Seifens put together an amazing front end mod for the game which made some great QoL changes, raising the overall accessibility of the game by leaps and bounds.
So there's my list of recent rediscoveries down my traipse down memory lane. Does anybody else have any games that time may have forgotten? Thoughts on the above? Fond memories of games which may still be playable, but made a big impact on you, either as a fan of vore game or a creator? Please chime in, I'd love to see some lively discussion in here!
--Erecant
