I got this crazy idea to test how the old Finnish freeware DOS games would work in DOSBox.

Note that these games are not exactly the most shining examples of free/shareware games that were produced in Finland in the MS-DOS era. Pet, they clearly are an indication of the fact that Finns have traditionally been pretty keen on making games on their own! Hobbyist gamemaking scene is something quite out of ordinary here. If you want some high-quality freeware action, try Tapan Kaikki instead =)

Ryssän Kauhu

My machine is a Pentium III 600MHz, which doesn't seem to have enough horsepower to run any 486 or Pentium era games in DOSBox at an acceptable speed.

So, I was kind of surprised to find out that Ryssän Kauhu works perfectly in DOSBox, at full speed! Amazing! High quality Finnish game design! Er... or something like that. You need to disable the GUS emulation though, and only enable SoundBlaster. And not use any scalers either, or at least on my machine.

The game is quite simple: Soviet soldiers march from the horizon and your job is to kill them with a Minigun (well, this is set in World War II, and I'm pretty sure Finns used Maxims or stuff like that, not Miniguns - but I don't think the game is entirely historically correct anyway...)

The game is simply remarkable for one reason: The sound acting is hilarious. Specifically, hilariously bad. I could easily get to Level 3 in the game before I got the sound working, and after the sound worked, I couldn't get past level 2...

Oikeutta Eläimille

Too bad Oikeutta Eläimille doesn't work as well. The game is sluggish, sometimes crashes DosBox, and sometimes makes DosBox completely freeze (fortunately it doesn't freeze X11). Otherwise, it's perfect.

The idea of the game is to kill animal rights activists who are trying to release the foxes from your fur farm. Completely crazy stuff.

I'm playing through Ultima VII again, this time not cheating in any way... The following is a list of my savegames so far, in Doug the Eagle Dragon's style...

00bg: We have a suspect
01bg: Who Framed the Poor Guy?
02bg: Open and shut

(Some random sherlockholmesing in Trinsic and Paws)

03bg: Mr. Nose
04bg: Visited Mr. Nose

(Lord British was happy to see me)

05bg: We have the Cart!

(In which we get a cart from Trinsic, only to note that such clumsy vehicles only slow things down...)

06bg: Good that it's east wind

(Lock Lake isn't too clean)

07bg: Some Minoc fortune telling
08bg: Visited Minoc, Hoe be Fun

(Minoc's got some murders too. But I have the Hoe of Destruction!...)

09bg: A piece of history
10bg: Transmute Stone to Stone
11bg: Then comes the tricky part
12bg: That was a lot of spiders
13bg: Well that was tough

(My first attempt at going through Forge of Virtue. Stone golems? Pshaw. Easy to cure in Test of Love, easy to kill in Test of Courage. But the slime-filled corridor in the Test of Courage was too damn difficult!)

14bg: Batlin is a complete Destard

(Okay, in this game, I didn't open the box. But Batlin still sends me to that death-trap...)

15bg: Waiting for the Black Mass
16bg: First morning as a F-shipper
17bg: I Fed the Nation

(Made approximately 80 loaves of bread to get some initial funding...)

18bg: Toward the House of Richitude
19bg: Feeding the Robbery Habit

(...for some gambling, specifically, making something to the tune of 2600gp.)

20bg: And then, oral sex
21bg: Leaving the fun place

(..."All right! Wenches!"...)

22bg: Let's buy some Spells
23bg: Enough money? Not quite.
24bg: Gamblery part 2 done

(Bought almost everything from Nystul before I ran out of money again. Well, got something like over 4000gp this time.)

25bg: LeetSwordQuest Continueth...
26bg: Forgining of the Leetsword
27bg: The Leetsword is mine!
28bg: Virtues have been forged

(...and as I got back to the Test of Courage, I noted the mass-invisibility or massive-global-death spells just don't work! Oh well, at least I could kill the slimes this time without getting everyone killed in the process.)

29bg: Towards the Bush
30bg: I know what I'm doing. OUCH!
31bg: Take the honey and run
32bg: Rimsky-Korsakov? *BANG*

(Yew and the Bee Cave)

33bg: All spells but not quite mad
34bg: Iolo's Sty

(And not just any sty. A Disco-Sty.)

35bg: Empathical Instruments
36bg: Reached the Spankamiah Fort

(Wisps...)

37bg: Mister Mystery

(Met Alagner)

38bg: Bushiness is Unquestionable
39bg: A lesson in astronomy

(Frank the Fox and the Moonglow Observatory)

40bg: Heading to the Goth Opera
41bg: A cage most desolate
42bg: Let's make Love Potion
43bg: The Other Long Wait of the Gam
44bg: Ghosts shall open the Doors

(Skara Brae. God I love this part of the game.)

45bg: Mr. Mystery's Mystery House
46bg: That's a lot of boxes!
47bg: Them balls love good readin'
48bg: Timedaddy!
49bg: Mr. Mystery seems quite late

(Seems like Alagner doesn't need the book returned. Again.)

Recently, a Final Fantasy VII sequel (titled "Dirge of Cerberus") for PS2 was announced by Square Enix. So far, the only thing that has been confirmed is that the story will follow Vincent Valentine, which would be completely okay by me, except that I don't have a PS2. =) Anyway, I have somehow obtained a transcript of the game's intro. Here is a transcript of the intro movie:

Scene: A dark autumn day over a shack village, with heavy rain and thunderstorm. Dateline appears on the bottom: "North Corel. 18 months after Jenova's defeat and destruction of Sephiroth."

Barrett walks in one of the well-furnished shacks, where other characters from FF7 are already hanging around. "Yo, homes", he says, waving around cheerfully.

Cloud is sitting on the sofa, and looks up at Tifa, who apparently just arrived before Barrett, carrying some papers. "Hello Barrett. So, are there any news about these Cerberus things?" he asks.

Tifa shows Cloud one of the papers, apparently a map of some previously unknown island. "All I found among Sephiroth's belongings was a map showing the way to a place called the Isle of Cerberus, and this letter."

Barrett, impatient as usual, demands action. "Okay! Slap it down there!", motioning toward the table in the center of the room.

As Tifa opens the letter, something glowing rushes out of the envelope, and the whole letter mysteriously turns into a glowing magical thing that gets a life of its own and hovers above the table.

Barrett gets alarmed, barely managing to say, "Jump back!", as he does so, pointing his guns at the glowing ball.

The ball of light emits some of brilliant magical energy that swirls around for a while quietly. Then, without warning, a huge holographic projection fills the space above the table. Everyone is momentarily paralysed with fear as they recognize the creature as Jenova.

Then, the Jenova projection speaks, in calm, emotionless voice that chills every listener to the bone. "Sephiroth! Know that my face is most goth-like! While it's unlikely that this ludicruous gang that you spoke of manages to ruin our plans, you must send a clone of you to the Isle of Cerberus, to learn the secret of Acne Medication! Soon I and my horde of puppets will destroy the Planet!"

Then Jenova projection, along with the ball of energy that projected it, disappears, without sound or much other ceremony or flashiness. All of the friends look at the now-vacant space, completely stunned.

Then, Cloud dares to speak. "We must send Vincent to the Isle of Cerberus", he says, matter-of-factly.

Vincent looks at Cloud puzzledly, raising his eyebrows in non-human fashion. "Hm? Why me?", he says, his voice betraying his utter confusion.

But before Vincent even notices to react, Tifa and Cloud have already grabbed his hands, Barrett has grabbed his legs, and he's promptly heaved outside, where Cid quickly ties him to the back of a gold chocobo. As Cloud slaps the chocobo's behind, the bird panics and begins to run like wind out to the ocean, zig-zagging wildly.

Then, as the bird reaches outer sea, it mysteriously disappears out of view with a silly "Zot!" effect, as if affected by some sort of transdimensional teleportation spell.

And thus begin Vincent's journeys in the Isle of Cerberus...

...

(And here's an obscure hint for those who don't get the joke. =)

Well, I got back playing Breath of Fire on GBA. Now I have all of the characters in the party. Whee. Just bounced through two of the Most Annoying Dungeons Ever (one with disappearing walls and one with... um... invisible walls that do damage).

Well, this game at least has something which FF7 direly lacks, namely, the Mrbl3. Whatever that is supposed to be.

And a while ago I got something really cool for GBA...
(Cue stupid hiphop background) It's the Legend of Zelda and it's really rad... (fixes eyeglasses with tape) Aaw-sum! In-tense!
In other words, the NES Classics version of The Legend of Zelda.

Which is a pretty good game. I was never able to get the cart for NES - I got my own NES used after its sad twilight - but now I finally have the game on a very interesting form.

One bad thing though: The translation is revised. The legendary wisdom found in-game is intact ("Eastern penninsula is the secret", "Dodongo dislikes smoke", and other such cryptic stuff...) but the intro text and some item names have been de-typoed. And most notably, which infuriated me to no end, the manual has been re-translated to Finnish by the new Finnish Nintendo importer. Those bad translations of the manuals sure added to the charm...

(And even further damns: While the new importer's manual translations are better and that's a good thing ... There's no bad translations in the whole package! GameCube games used to come with extremely awfully translated "consumer information and precautions booklet", but this game's booklet was apparently retranslated and is now quite legible! DAMN!)

Speaking of which: In the weekend, I read through some of the old Nintendo magazines from early 1990s. Some 12-year-olds had sent awful ideas for game advertisement poems. A non-rhyming, free translation of one particularly hideous thingy: "The game has average difficulty / good music, great graphics." I'm not exactly a marketing expert, but I wouldn't advertise a game as having "average difficulty". Or average anything. =) And even further annoyment? The game this snippet was describing was Zelda 2. Zelda 2 sure didn't have an "average difficulty" level, it was a goddamned killer and complete non-fun compared to Zelda 1. (Yeah, I have had pretty much fun with Zelda 1 now...)

Oh, and my sister had found a rather interesting used NES game which I played in the weekend - Werewolf: The Last Warrior. (Review from the local Nintendo Magazine: "This game is probably very good for those people who like, for example, ninja games. And in this game, you also have a tail..." Now that's a review that concentrates on the essential facts, specifically, ninjas and tails =)