Escape from Hell via Abandonware Dos

Think of Diablo, in reverse, with really, really low-fi graphics. That might still not be an accurate description of Escape from Hell, but it's as close as I can get to a modern comparison. It's an RPG, and you'll have to fight your way out of Hell, meeting up with all kinds of evil nasties along the way.

Watch out, there's even a (very) little CG nudity (!) in this one.

Everyone loves free games. Everyone knows ninjas are cool. And Flash with physics is pretty sweet, too.

Roll it all together, and you've got N: a simple but addictive platformer that is very reminiscent of the old Loderunner games. You mission is to navigate 2-D levels and collect all the gold you can. You'll have to be careful, however, because the game's ragdoll physics can play havoc with your tiny ninja self.

The controls couldn't be simpler: left and right arrows to move, shift to jump. Hold shift to jump higher.

The environment seems fairly tame at first, but some rooms contain I Wanna be The Guy -style booby traps. You've got to keep your Ninja wits sharp, or some springy block will shoot out and trampoline you to your doom. There are tons of rooms to explore - including a number of user-created levels - and it's insanely addictive.

N is Flash-based, and downloads are available for Windows, Mac, and Linux so everyone can enjoy the updated old-school action. Hell, you can even get versions for Xbox Arcade or your Nintendo DS and Sony PSP. Awesome!

If N's not enough to quench your thirst for gaming, don't forget to check out some of our previous posts!

Enough of this practical advice and useful downloads! I know you've been working hard, and you're probably itching for some fun and excitement. If you've read some of my previous Time Wasters, you'll know that I've got a soft spot for old school gaming.

Grab your browser, and get ready for some classic, low-fi action!

Neave Games specializes in making flash remakes of classic games, and has a few tasty selections for you. Among them are Frogger, Space Invaders, Tetris, and the old Nokia cellphone game Snake (pictured). Rad.

c64s.com is dedicated to my first computer and gaming system, the Commodore 64. It's been on DS before, but they've added a lot of great new games over the years. Packacuda, Wizard's Lair, Crystal Castles. It's hard to believe how good some of the games were for the trusty old c64.

Ok, I filed this under "fun," but once you give it a shot you might disagree with me.

I Wanna Be The Guy may be the most frustrating, hair-pulling game you ever play. As the developer states on one of his Zazzle shirts, it's "The game where everything kills you. Even the moon."

Within the first couple of minutes, I'd died more times than I cared to count, and that's the point. My poor keyboard nearly got smashed across the edge of my workbench. The game is so difficult (and addictive in a masochistic way) that you want to beat it just to say you did.

Levels have an old-school feel to them and borrow certain elements from some of your favorite classic games, like Bullet Bill and Zangief.

What makes it so hard? Anything can pop out from anywhere and kill you. Keep your eye on that wall, it'll start chasing you and then impale your unsuspecting butt.

IWBTG is kind enough to let you turn down the amount of splatter from your death, as well as music and sound effects - which can get a little irritating during an extended session.

This little baby is freeware, Windows only. If you're not ready for the full dose of insanity, grab the demo download and try the first few levels before taking the plunge.

Aw snap, someone get the holy water. Open Source Zombies!

Grab whatever you can - pitchfork, chainsaw, hatchet, or a shotgun for those of you who can't be bothered to "finesse" a zombie into submission. Your goal in this addictive little game is to save as many of the humans as you can from a horrible fate no doubt involving their brains being eaten.

It's set up kind of like a chessboard, with humans and zombies randomly placed. Set your difficulty and gore level, and go to it. Use the right and left arrows to turn your character around, then walk them with up and down (preferably over a weapon). Next to a zombie? Turn to face it, move towards it, and you automatically attack - you may miss, of course, so make it count. Grab a shotgun if you can, they've got phenomenal stopping power (read: one blast and you've got yourself a heaping pile of zombie slaw).

The graphics aren't great, but who cares? Zombies is ridiculously fun, only 7MB to download, doesn't require an install, and runs on Windows and Mac. Everybody wins! Linux users can play too, you've just got to compile the included RealBasic source code yourself.

What do Linux gaming, jumbo shrimp, and government intelligence have in common with each other? Think back to your English classes. (We're not responsible for any traumatic memories that surface from this exercise.) Got it yet? Anyone?

Oxymorons. No, no, wait, we're not insulting you. Those little phrases are all oxymorons. If the memories of your English classes were too painful to bear, the quick and dirty explanation of an oxymoron is two words placed together to describe something that seemingly contradict each other.

We're reasonably sure you see the oxymoron in jumbo shrimp, and government intelligence. Linux gaming? Well, we guess it all depends on how you define Linux... and gaming.

As we covered earlier this week, game researcher DRX is set to release his collection of rare SEGA prototypes this afternoon. Our last article got a lot of people's attention, and it caused some big problems for the Sonic Retro servers, so rather than linking you to relavent forum topic, we've posted a mirror of the proto FAQ after the jump, as prepared by forum member Skaarg.

For good measure, you can also watch this video DRX just released of "Sonic 3 C" Also, don't forget to come back this evening. We'll be live-blogging the release event!

DRX, a member of the Sonic Retro Forums, has done something unprecedented in the gaming community. After years of research and detective work, he has gotten his hands on a treasure trove of materials from the golden age of SEGA, including hundreds of prototypes, documentation, and possibly other things as well.

It's not currently known how much of the material he plans to make public, but he has confirmed that he is going to release the Sonic the Hedgehog prototypes this coming Saturday, the 23rd. A large community of Sonic fans have been searching for prototypes and lost levels in the games for many years now, and to document their accomplishments so far would be beyond the scope of this article. Suffice it to say that there are a lot of people looking forward to this release.

The Playstation Portable is a jack of all trades. It plays music, videos, browses the Internet, and plays games. However, for an increasing number of people, this still isn't enough. With its powerful dual-processor configuration and Memory Stick Pro Duo slot, the PSP is a pocket powerhouse, capable of much more than just gaming and multimedia.

This is where the homebrew community comes in. With some modifications to its system software, the PSP can run 3rd party software, just like an ordinary computer. A massive community has sprung up online that is dedicated to these modifications. Read on to find out more.

There's talk all over the web of the U.K. getting iTunes Movies and T.V. shows "by the end of the month" - something us Brits are long overdue. Here at Download Squad we decided to see whether it truly is a matter of "flipping the switches" on this rumoured store, and dug into the iTunes localisation strings. Whilst we admittedly couldn't find any strings directly related to the implementation of a U.K. iTunes Video store, two strings certainly caught our eyes:

/* ===== iPhone Game Item Strings ===== */
"4329.001" = "Are you sure you want to remove the selected game from your iPhone?";
"4329.002" = "Are you sure you want to remove the selected games from your iPhone?";

Given that there are currently no games shipping with the iPhone to remove, and certainly none available on the iTunes Store to add, that hit us like a bombshell: Apple seems to be readying games for the iPhone. Whilst purely speculation at the moment, if it proves to be anything more than simply pre-emptive software strings, you'll hear about it here on Download Squad.

Still pondering whether or not to get Windows Vista on Tuesday? I'll give you 10 reasons why you shouldn't from APC Magazine. Expensive! Lousy drivers! UAC! DRM! Case closed! Er, not quite. Here's 10 reasons why you should... also from APC Magazine. Multimedia! Better drivers! Search! Undelete! DirectX 10! Case closed! Uhhh... I'm not making this any easier for you, am I?

While you ponder that imponderable, I'm going to move on. It seems that government officials in South Korea--one of the most wired nations on Earth--are recommending that the citizenry not upgrade to Vista. Why? Because, apparently, South Korea is mad for ActiveX, the proprietary browser plug-in technology that powers much of the country's web services, from online banking to stock trading, shopping, and gaming, and apparently many of those services cease to work in Windows Vista (presumably because of UAC). More than a reason not to upgrade to Vista, this seems like a fantastic demonstration of how stupid it is to build web services on proprietary technologies. The irony, of course, is that ActiveX is Microsoft's own proprietary invention.

In gaming news, FPS luminary John Carmack--you know, the Doom and Quake guy--says he's not exactly chomping at the bit after Vista or DirectX 10 just yet. "Personally, I wouldn't jump at something like DX10 right now," he says. "I would let things settle out a little bit and wait until there's a really strong need for it." For now he's quite satisfied with Windows XP and accuses Microsoft of "artificially" forcing gamers to upgrade with DX10. "Nothing is going to help a new game by going to a new operating system. There were some clear wins going from Windows 95 to Windows XP for games, but there really aren't any for Vista. They're artificially doing that by tying DX10 so close it, which is really nothing about the OS ... They're really grasping at straws for reasons to upgrade the operating system. I suspect I could run XP for a great many more years without having a problem with it." He calls DirectX 9 "quite good" and also praises the Xbox 360's graphics API.

Phew. To catch up on the previous four days of our Vista Countdown, hit the archive.

Want to lose weight by playing video games? Not coordinated enough to play DDR? Tim Tucker has the solution for you: Tetris Weightlifting. It's a version of Tetris that you control with a pair of handles each attached to a set of weights. You pull the right handle to move the piece right and vice versa for the left, and press a button on either handle to rotate the piece. Tucker built the Tetris Weightlifting machine out of an open source version of Tetris and a Phidgets electronic sensor. "Users expressed high satisfaction with the system," says this promotional poster. "They focused more on game-play than on exercise, setting goals based on in-game cues rather than traditional metrics such as number of repetitions." It sounds like my kind of workout, but Tucker doesn't say how many calories players can actually burn. You can download the Java source for his customized version of Tetris as well as the C# code for his sensor controller.

[Via Waxy.org]