It’s Marathon Time Again

Yes, the Game Show Marathon is back, starting on Saturday. Twenty-four games back-to-back, once again raising money for Child’s Play. Last year they raised more than $10,000, so it’ll be interesting to see if they can match or even surpass that this time.

You’ll be able to watch and/or donate here. I’m sure they’ll be available on YouTube afterwards, if you are that way inclined.

It looks like they’re trying several new ones this time around. Here’s the line-up in BST:

5 PM – America Says
6 PM – Split Second
7 PM – Person Place or Thing
8 PM – Switch
9 PM – Talk About
10 PM – Jeopardy!
11 PM – Moneybags
12 AM – Win Dave Mattingly’s Money
1 AM – The Wheel
2 AM – The Weakest Link
3 AM – 1000 Heartbeats
4 AM – Mock the Week
5 AM – Mastermind
6 AM – Match Game (Blankety Blank)
7 AM – Countdown
8 AM – Press Your Luck
9 AM – Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?
10 AM – Quizmania
11 AM – Tic Tac Dough
12 PM – Super Dice Q
1 PM – Wheel of Fortune
2 PM – All Clued Up
3 PM – Concentration
4 PM – Deal or No Deal

Here’s Countdown from last year, featuring snazzy graphics co-created by yours truly:

And a momentous finale in Deal or No Deal!

Top-Doom Game

What if Doom looked a bit different?

The idea for this just came to me while watching a review of a top-down, maze-style Batman for the TurboGrafx-16 (PC Engine), based on the 1989 film. Other than some impressive cutscenes between levels, the game, while not terrible, wasn’t anything amazing; these days, it appears to be remembered as an “interesting” novelty – if it’s remembered at all.

So, why not take one of the most popular games of all time and see how it looks that way?

I cut a screenshot of Batman into a grid and used this as the basis for my graphics, with the addition of diagonal walls for some added “wow” factor – it’s 1993, guys, Wolfenstein is so last year! It was quite fun trying to make smaller, more pixelated counterparts of famous Doom textures and I like how some of them translate to the smaller scale. Seasoned players may note the lack of the tan wall textures that were ever-present in the game’s first episode; I did attempt them, as you can see below, but I don’t think I did it justice. Too wide.

The monsters themselves were admittedly just scaled down versions of the original sprites, cleaned up a little.

Next, I made a “maze” using the base walls (those yellow ones at the top) before layering over with texture. Shadows and lighting were then layered over that to create the final image. I’ll let you decide whether a working game in such a style would have been a success.

Here’s how it would crop on the actual console, depicted at twice the native resolution, and without consideration for any kind of HUD or status bar:

Finally, here’s a review of the Batman game that inspired me: