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Elok
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Land of Ramen Dragons
Mar 2003
time: 00:30
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I've mentioned it many a time before: Mail Order Monsters, Electronic Arts's 1984(5?) masterpiece for the Commodore 64. You buy a monster, genetically enhance it to boost its abilities, give it an assault rifle, flame thrower or laser pistol(among other things) and sic it on another monster in a battle to the death. It was like Quake only it required some form of long-term planning, and came a decade and a half earlier. Also the graphics and sound sucked. One of my favorite games back in the day, along with Archon and Gyruss. I just picked up an emulator and started playing all three of 'em again. I have learned several things:
1. Gyruss is just as awesome as I remember, but it's a lot harder when you're using the arrow keys instead of a joystick and a lot less exciting without the music(my computer doesn't have sound).
2. EA is either insane or doesn't have the copyright, as they have not remade MOM in nearly twenty years.
3. MOM is just as hard as I remember due to the bad controls. Having only a button and a joystick to work with, controls were by necessity cramped. Pressing the button twice opens a menu(without pausing the fight), so you can change attack types, surrender, or activate your special gear. Pressing it once, combined with a direction, makes you attack, but it takes a while to reload/recover after every attack. Needless to say, I spend half of my fights either opening the menu while trying to attack or wasting an attack while trying to open the menu. GAH! I know at least one other person on this board played MOM. Does anyone know how the devil they compensated for this back then? Is there an emulator that lets you attribute keys to button combos as well as pressing the button once? I was like seven or so the last time I played it, and I attributed my badness to my age...looks like that wasn't it.
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22-08-2003 01:34
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