Galactic Gladiators and Galactic Adventures

...are two strategy/RPG games from the early 80's, designed and programmed by Tom Reamy (he only made these two games afaik).

The player(s) assumes command over a band of alien adventurers armed with things like disruptors and laser swords. Like in most RPGs, the characters all have names, stats, XP and equipment. Both games uses single screen arenas/sites where two teams of 1-7 characters or so can duke out. In Galactic Adventures you can travel between different planets, exploring new locations for treasure. As I understand it, there's no final goal, other than what you may set up yourself.



During combat, the players (human or AI) first take turns to give orders to their characters (perhaps in secret), and then watch the action play out in a real time segment, one character at a time. If everyone moved and fired at the same time, it would be more difficult to follow events that unfold on multiple fronts (although it would be more realistic and cooler to watch).

I think the intent of the author was to capture the freeform adventure feel that early Flash Gordon, Doctor Who and Star Trek TOS had... and perhaps their newer incarnations lack.

I have only tried Galactic Gladiators (using DosBox of course). The interface is very primitive, but you can make the AI play against itself and just watch.



Reference:
The manual for Galactic Adventures (I can't find the one for Gladiators).

Videos (Apple II versions):
Galactic Gladiators
Galactic Adventures


Other random finds:
Mother Brain Has Been Aliving!
Too cute. Sad end.
Hero Quest music, ZX Spectrum

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

could you make some tutorial about your drawing style? at least couple of paragraphs

Anonymous said...

He already has some at:
http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/

Having said that, I'd love to see more, too.

bm said...

A video would be nice, though... :)

Anonymous said...

Here are a couple of Cortex Command pixel-art video tutorials.

http://www.youtube.com/user/androidarts

Arne said...

Hmm, the YouTube time limit was upped to 15-16m wasn't it? I could probably draw a simple character in that time. The worst part is uploading. I have a very slow upload speed so it takes me half a day.

Daniel said...

That would be great! Your other tutorials are good, but they are very specific. Seeing a process of a character drawing would be very enlightening.
When faced with slow uploads/downloads, I usually just leave the PC going overnight - don't know if you are in the position to do that.