When I was younger I had an iPad with Jet Ball 2. It was an Araknoid clone like this game, but with really fancy graphics, many powerups, and many types of "bricks" including circles, bumpers, bombs, invincible, etc. And all the bricks move in patterns.
It was a really cool game. Unfortunately it looks like it's gone from the App store, though there are pirated downloads (I haven't tested).
Wow, this really takes me back. I wonder how much of it is to support Chrome OS specifically. It was supposed to be a general purpose tool for using this program.
DX-Ball 2 (and Jump 'n' Bump, an unrelated game) introduced me to MOD/tracker music. It indirectly led me to the demoscene, game modding, and probably accelerated my career. I've been listening to DustRaiders, Seasons, and Elemental since :) I wonder what modern games are currently inspiring the next generation of technologists? Minecraft, perhaps? Valve franchises? Valve in particular seems pretty on board with modding tools, what with the steam workshop, their welcoming attitude towards Black Mesa, etc.
Valve is a pretty open company. However I feel they could totally and completely crush the competition by adopting a DRM-Free approach, or at least their own one and allow us to backup a « steam-free » version of the purchased games. GOG is already doing this and they are not agonizing under piracy (and anyway they sell the same games as steam).
To get back on topic, could we have the opportunity to play DX-Ball nowadays if it was full of today-standard DRMs? Well, tbh, probably yes, but only by adding a useless cracking procedure.
Nonetheless, I totally agree with you and I myself have a « DX-Ball (2) Mods » folder on my PC for the last two decades :)
Steam is pretty DRM free. Games have Steam integration which checks if your account owns the game, but they don't attempt to prevent tampering like true DRM does. If Steam were to disappear you could easily un-steam your games.
GOG also bans third party DRM software. It's great, but big publishers don't like that which is why GOG is mostly indie.
It's a big list because there are a lot of games on Steam. However, the chance that any given Steam game in your library will be DRM Free is very small. I've also had cases in the past where I bought a game because it was on this list, but the list was seemingly wrong because the game had DRM.
I've actually had much better luck with the Epic Game Store, although it's seemingly not as good as it used to be.
> If Steam were to disappear you could easily un-steam your games.
Speaking as someone who actually does this (because I despise the Steam client), it’s not easy. Different games need different Steam emulators to work, and titles that seem to run initially will break in weird ways mid-game.
Sometimes DRM, like Denuvo, gets removed with a post-patch after it got broken because it has a performance impact and the pirated version runs better than the DRM one, while the initial purpose of the DRM (ensure no piracy right after launch) has been fulfilled. I call that pragmatic.
Similar path for me! My entry point was Epic Pinball, then the works of Future Crew, and then further into the demoscene. I was more interested in the art than the coding however, so my next deep dive was into the artscene: ANSI and BBS modding. Soon after it was to the web!
You have to be careful sometimes with nostalgia but man, that was a great time to explore.
Really love those arcade-style games. I still have a giant MAME collection and mostly play these kinds of games even though I was born in the 90s (born too late etc...)
I recently found the games that I had back in the day on some demo disk: PLBM Pong and Gravity Well (iirc—if it's not Lunar Lander instead). Both are obviously not too original, but Pong had a bunch of parameters, so you can have minuscule pads, and start very slowly but with gradual acceleration and go until you really aren't fast enough. And the other is just a good implementation of the rocket-landing game, requiring tight control and fuel management (also somehow had a very similar one for Palm).
21 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 60.3 ms ] threadIt was a really cool game. Unfortunately it looks like it's gone from the App store, though there are pirated downloads (I haven't tested).
https://appadvice.com/app/jet-ball-2/1173048900 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHyDNetiLbE
To get back on topic, could we have the opportunity to play DX-Ball nowadays if it was full of today-standard DRMs? Well, tbh, probably yes, but only by adding a useless cracking procedure.
Nonetheless, I totally agree with you and I myself have a « DX-Ball (2) Mods » folder on my PC for the last two decades :)
GOG also bans third party DRM software. It's great, but big publishers don't like that which is why GOG is mostly indie.
While not huge, it is a pretty big list.
I've actually had much better luck with the Epic Game Store, although it's seemingly not as good as it used to be.
Speaking as someone who actually does this (because I despise the Steam client), it’s not easy. Different games need different Steam emulators to work, and titles that seem to run initially will break in weird ways mid-game.
Are they not totally and completely crushing the competition already?
You have to be careful sometimes with nostalgia but man, that was a great time to explore.
They are playable in Dosbox on archive.org, though you'll need a keyboard. Pong: https://archive.org/details/PLBMPongOut_1020
Gravity Well: https://archive.org/details/GravityWell_1020
Lunar Lander just in case: https://archive.org/details/msdos_Lunar_Landing_1995
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DX-Ball