Viridian Games

This one is fascinating. I’d never heard of it until I read a recent article about the history of open-world gaming. This game was released in 1989 for the Amiga, Atari ST and the PC. It featured an open world with over thirty vehicles to use. Unfortunately most of the vehicles were difficult to use and it was also difficult to figure out exactly what you needed to do to win.

Name and developer, please!

This game was an unusual departure for the company that made it.

While both the art style and overal concept had promise, the game was simply way too complex to play without a strategy guide, and suffered from the fact that…well, there was no way to “win” the game, although there were several ways you could lose.

Name and developer, please! If you win, I’ll give you a pony. (Note: Pony not included.)

Oooh, we’re getting close to 50! Will Viridian do something special for the 50th Name That Game?!

Um, no. No, he probably won’t. Sorry.

ANYway, today’s game is a fairly generic RPG…one so generic that (gasp! shock! horror!) it didn’t grab me and I never got very far into it.

Name and developer, please! If you win, I’ll give you a No-Prize!

This game was kind of a big deal when it came out because of its use of semi-famous actors in its full-motion video, but the gameplay looked awful so I never gave it a shot.

Name and developer, please! Your reward will be to be cast as the lead in the next game I make that uses full-motion video!

This one will be easy.

This was one of my favorite RPGs. It’s light, fun, and doesn’t take a thousand hours to complete. I swear, when I hear some RPG designers touting the huge number of hours of gameplay their games allegedly have, I just don’t know where I’m going to find the strength…

Name and developer, please. If you win, your reward will be the satisfaction of knowing you are right!

And, with a sickening crunch of metal, we change gears again. I really need to get that transmission looked at.

This screenshot is from a game released during the heyday of graphic adventure games, and is considered very good - but it didn’t break through and become a classic like a lot of its peers did.

Name and developer, please! If you’re right, I’ll use the giant laser I’ve been building in my secret underground lair to write your name on the moon! Or rather, I’ll do the best I can…to be honest, it would be a big help if the first three letters in your name are “CHA”.

And now we’re on a completely different kind of roll - that of British-made games where you build rooms of specific types and have little people live and work in them, whom you must keep happy. I wonder why the British seem to love games like that so much. I wonder if this means I’m secretly British, since I love games like that too.

Name and developer please! Your prize will be as much Phlebotinum as you can carry!

Shock! Gasp! It’s a game released AFTER 1996!

This game was made by a studio that had garnered a bit of a bad reputation after the Ph.D.s who staffed it claimed they could write an infinite polygon engine. Unfortunately their first game didn’t impress anyone with its graphics. This was the second and last game they made.

Name and developer, please!

If you’ll recall, I mentioned that last week’s game failed because it was released before the PC was capable of doing arcade games. Now let’s look at a game from the golden era of PC arcade games!

After the success of Commander Keen the shareware scene was just flooded with platformers, most of which weren’t nearly as good. I really liked this one myself, though.

Name and developer, please! If you win I’ll tell you what the secret game I’m working on is!

Whoa! It’s not a space RPG! Heck, it’s not an RPG at all! Whiplash, dude!

This game was supposed to be a sort of Mario Party-style game, with lots of different minigames. Unfortunately, most of them weren’t very fun - the controls tended to be sluggish. This was possibly due to the developers trying to make arcade-style games on the PC before the PC was really ready for it.

Name and developer, please! If you’re the first to get it right, I’ll give you my Time Magazine “Person of the Year” Award that I won in 2006.