Mon, 13th Jul 2009 by Alfie.

Bethesda Softworks have just released Daggerfall for free to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the Elder Scrolls series (Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind, and Oblivion).

I remember that Daggerfall was released just before my birthday in September 1996, and I was still playing it over a year later, having completely missed all the fuss about Diablo (which came out at the end of 1996). Daggerfall was one of the first successful 3D first person sandbox RPGs with a huge game world, massive random-generated dungeons, huge populated towns, and an involving back story (told mostly through the books that you find). It was the first RPG game I played that did not railroad you down the main quest line, in fact I don’t think I even did the main quest until a second visit to the game some years later.

It’s worth a look at where Morrowind and Oblivion came from, and if you enjoyed Morrowind you’ll likely enjoy Daggerfall as well (bear in mind the 15 year old game engine tech though). You’ll need to run it under DOSBox, but Bethesda have provided full install instructions to get you up and running quickly.

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Fri, 10th Jul 2009 by Alfie.

Well, I was playing Air Attack on Friday, lot’s of players on, mucho fun, but then disaster! During a rather violent stall turn, with me leaning into the turn as if it could somehow influence the game, my ancient office chair finally gave up the ghost and the mount cracked, spilling me sideways whilst my subsequent flailing to stay upright both broke my joystick and injured my hand.

This puts an end to my flying for a while…just as I was starting to get the feel for flight back

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Tue, 7th Jul 2009 by Alfie.

Most of my games are in storage at the moment, so I was looking through my HDD archives of old game installs and came across Air Attack.

This was a game that I came across about 12 years ago (1997) on BT Wireplay, but lost track of when BT Wireplay had issues with viruses in 1998. Since then I had assumed that Air Attack had died off with BT Wireplay in 2001. Rather than just deleting it, I did a quick check on-line and found that it has been resurrected by the original game creators, Ketsujin Studios (who also created Fighter Ace), and made available free to all.

There is also a UK Air Attack Club willing to give assistance to ‘Rooks’ (Rookies) to get into the game, along with GEAA (German), USAAC, and ANZAAC clubs, and regular league events.

I used to be a sucker for Combat Flight Sims, and I recall happy times playing Air Attack, so I’m going to give this one a try (again).

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