"aliens aren't actually my favorite thing in the world, i mean they're ok, but its more like i just keep running into them" ross and freeman are melding together again
I always thought that the "dungeon" part of the Game Dungeon title referred to us, the audience, being in a dungeon displaying twisted horrors. But ever since the Veil Of Darkness episode I've slowly come to realize that we are in fact the dungeon masters, and Ross is the poor soul forced through the torture.
I always assumed Ross was imprisoned in the same facility as Civvie, just the wing decorated in more medieval rather than cyberpunk style. Crossover episode when?...
I was of the opinion that it was neither us nor Ross imprisoned within the dungeon, but the games themselves locked within the mind of Ross, and him being the *mostly* sane host taking us on a tour through the mysteries held within... the Game Dungeon.
@@T3sl4 I thought Ross was on the moon, unless that's where the Department of Special Corrections' facility actually is? Ross did briefly appear in Civvie's Half-Life video, so it's not entirely implausible.
For some context, this came out two years after Command and Conquer and Warcraft 2. Two YEARS after both. You can see it tried to crib elements from both games and yet somehow managed to brilliantly avoid copying any of the actual good parts of both. Truly a masterclass in how to not make a video game.
This reminds me of Golem, a weird Polish RTS/turn-based strategy which graphically was about on par with Conquest Earth except it came out in 2004, two years after Warcraft III. At least the gameplay seems a bit better.
The original Command & Conquer didn't have unit queuing either, but it's shocking that an RTS released a full two years after C&C didn't include an equivalent to the sidebar UI for quickly constructing units (instead that entire portion of the screen gets devoted to those bowling alley cutscenes lol)
Christ, I just want to jam this whole research-production layer into X-COM's geoscape from 1994. That UI, planet view, research, pretty much everything, was made so much better.
You know a game has to be special when most of it's publisher's back catalog has been on Steam and GoG for over a decade, but for some reason they skipped over it. Real, real special.
well.. it dont say that much , if its most of the major publishers i mean.. the underhanded crap half of them try to railroad you into buying or rebuying crap ;) but when places like G.O.G dont even have a single 'wish' thread or post for a title... when even things like thandor got a few ones.. yhee... thats sort of telling ;)
The idea that the aliens see a different spectrum of light, and their gas (sulphur dioxide?) is transparent to them, but our normal air is opaque, is kinda neat. But if it gets in the way of gameplay fun to this level... scrapping it would have been better.
Yeah... They really could have just used a typical Fog of War system. If they want to be thematic maybe have the air purifiers be like Oracles in Age of Mythology. Their line of sight increases as they stand still.
yee.. or well... it could worked fine IF ...the controls and unit behaviour not was such a train wreck i mean who the fk codes your turrets to shoot at ther own agenst hostiles.. but your soldiers to stand drooling as idiots when shoot at unless given direct orders ;) example i recall playing this and due to the train wreck of controls etc.... i ended up just building up a single city and then FROM there starting to retake all the others..but.. not by any actual control as i recall it mostly involved me setting it to easy and then fortifying the base and somehow sending a horde of soldiers on 'search and destroy' on ther own to win... but i also recall exausting the aliens resources agenst my turrets before doing so i think so.... maby this game breaks down extra hard on modern system and just cant be run properly for some hard coded reason ? hmm
I too played this game back in the day when I was a kid on our first PC and it was the most awkward RTS id ever played. Humans had no means of mining resources so what money you had, you needed to spend it wisely And playing it on easy mode meant you got so far then the game turns round and says "To get the rest of the missions play it on hard mode" I was really pissed
with reviewers like him and Sseth, most of their catalog consists of games I know I wouldn't have the patience for, but they're such good entertainers I watch basically everything they upload.
There will never be "WIld West" of gameing like PC gaming in the 90's. Everyone had a different pc specifications, developers where making literally whatever they wanted, dev teams could consist of 5 guys in a basement. You'd get a big box with some gameplay snap shots, a brief list of features, and some crazy art on the front. A lot of people didn't internet to discuss games, gaming mags varied so wildly in content and quality, some times you just rolled in with a hope and a prayer.
I dunno, there's still wacky indie games being made. Have you seen Vinesauce Vinny? He covers a lot of them, from "Cryptworlds" to "Alien Afterlife" to "Goblet Grotto." I'd say it's arguably gotten wilder as the tech has progressed.
I like to imagine the briefing around 33:05 with that moonshine shack. "We need you to go through heavily infested snowy mountains, risk frostbite, destroy an alien generator, kill various aliens along the way, and once you've killed all the aliens, if you could, cleetus is up there distilling untaxed moonshine. Make sure he learns his lesson once and for all" Poor cleetus.
11:25 I thought Ross said that RTSes could trace their gameplay back to _Doom_ 2. I didn't understand how that could work, but I was completely willing to accept it.
Oh the number of times I tried to get people to read dune. Only for them to think I was talking about doom the whole time...seriously this happens a lot
"That's one thing the game gets right. You go up against infinity, you're going to lose." Ross please don't give me flashbacks to the Marathon videos. I've still not fully recovered from those.
I miss the awards that Ross used to give, to me they felt like sort of a funny and ironic steam achievement haha. And whats more, for someone who usually listens to most of the video while doing something else, I found they were a nice summary of Ross's feelings toward the game!
As a college student aiming to get into working for the US National Archives, the thought of abandoned ware sites just disappearing genuinely kinda scares me. So many digital works erased in an instant without much hope of another source for them is as infuriating as it is scary. All useful information and creations deserve preservation, from the most influential art pieces known to man, to a manual for a PC strategy game that can't run on anything besides a Windows 98.
Unfortunately, it's a function of capitalist legal systems to "cull" unprofitable digital content. If you're playing old games, you're not buying new ones, and everyone in the industry is inclined towards you buying new ones.
@@greyfells2829 Yeah, we should be more like those communist systems, which famously never destroyed historical objects and documents, particularly those which proved embarassing to the leadership of oh wait
@Jotaro97 Funny you mention books, because if they're old and not popular enough that nobody bothers reprint them, and you pretty much have to rely on random folks scanning those books and posting them on the internet, wouldn't that be the same as the situation of old video games then?
I always felt that some day games would be taken seriously as an art form, but only when we've got 50 to 60 year old's running around who grew up playing them, and thus appreciate them. We are still living in the hump of that era where people think of video games in an out of touch, Siskel and Ebert, neophobic pearl clutching way just as people demonized Elvis and rock and roll as the scary new thing with no value that is destroying our great country. It'll inevitably happen though, hopefully not too much is lost waiting for it though...
Shame you're not doing the awards these days, because this feels like another recipient of the Old School PC Gaming award, same as Baldies. Cryptic gameplay, has heart, there's a lot of it, it's hard as nails, and there's a weak ending. 5 for 5.
I would also add Doesn't Respect Your Time. The mechanics are vague even when they do work, research is frustrating, and there is often only one intended method to complete a mission, which hinders variety.
For those people wondering, this is the same Data Design Interactive that would go on to make some of the worst shovelware for the WII. Good to know they started as they meant to move on.
I do kind of love the idea that the alien side is overpowered in one of these Xcom-like games, but then you can play as the aliens and get access to that same OPness.
Yeah, usually when there's one overpowered side and one weaker one, the overpowered one usually is "not the one you're playing" instead of a fixed one, so the moment you'd play as the side that's kicked your ass all game, suddenly they're nerfed to uselessness, and suddenly your side gets much better stuff much sooner.
Devs had to be actual aliens to design such a bad interface, damn. It's like they never interacted with anything (not just software, literally anything) in their lives.
This game looks like what would happen if the recycle bins from the developers for Command & Conquer and XCOM reluctantly got together and made a baby.
“Reluctantly” got together and made a baby. I’m just imagining love making where there’s no pleasure and both parties would rather be anywhere else, it’s pure obligation. I freaking love it.
I remember playing and dropping this thing. Then I forgot what it was called and was kicking myself for never beating it. Glad to know I wasnt missing much.
I once bought it for equivalent of $15 from a computer fair in 1999 thinking it looked good and was prepared for some good stuff Turns out there was a REAL GOOD REASON why they had so many boxes of these fucking things all over
(Alien shooting at soldier) Soldier: "Resistance is futile. Guess I'll die." (Soldier ordered to stand his ground, no enemies in sight) Soldier: "I'm gonna go all Rambo on enemy base and nothing will stop me."
So, 25 years after ruining my afternoons, Conquest Earth finally did something good for me: leading me to discover this wonderful channel! Thanks for suffering through this game, so that after so much time we can finally see the ending with the humans victorious. By the way, you can get the other ending quite easily by starting the human campaign and letting the aliens win (just set the time acceleration to max and do nothing). If I remember correctly, the video in that case was quite graphic, showing a human corpse consumed by insects.
...holy shit. The ending clip of the screensaver puts the whole game into perspective. It was made by fucking Data Design Interactive all along. OF COURSE it was a nightmare.
the AI problem could be because of the tick value. if game expects to work at a certain tick value and you mess with that, things might break or not work as intended.
Yup. Wouldn't be surprised if that's why the enemy spawns units so fast too. It's really important to get original hardware/emulation for these older games for this reason, trying to speed things up an have big consequences. This happened in that game where you play as a child angel doing possession stuff, altering the speed caused enemies to not be stunned long enough and to track you too well, and then Ross blamed the game for being too hard.
@@Shenaldrac I really don't get how some devs back then didn't think to just add a damn framerate cap. It's not like they couldn't, either; if you throw a Pentium at Doom, it'll run just fine because the guys at id did exactly that.
Some games become so outdated they're essentially unplayable. This game chases down so many evolutionary dead-ends that in order to play it you have to unteach yourself how a RTS works in order to understand basic aspects of it.
51:15 "I am confused how that wouldn't poison the Earth?" This line reminded me of a stray line from Freeman's Mind related to nukes. "They thought they were gonna light the whole atmosphere on fire, and they did it anyway. That's badass."
When I was a kid, we had a CD rental shop (all pirated games, ofc), and Empire Earth or Earth 2150 had come out recently. Being the 8-ish-year old that I was, I was hyped as heck. However, the guy running the place had no idea what I was talking about and said "maybe this is what you're talking about". I think you can guess how far I got into the game in a manual-less pirated copy IN RUSSIAN (which I still have zero knowledge of)! So, what I wanted to say: thanks for demistifying this game for me after so many years, Ross.
Its kinda fascinating that XCom UFO Defense did the overworld R&D and troop maneuvers, better and with more elegance. And everything else really. What with the difficulty bug failing safe and instead of defaulting to the hardest difficulty it defaults to the easiest difficulty for an already tough game.
@@adenowirus exact thought! Unnecessary animated visual where as a "paperpusher"-commander you are to deliver orders, not watch the scientists running around the lab
@Jotaro97 sorry, X-COM: UFO Defense (1993) Yeah, it's confusing, similar organizations, similar names But loading difficulty bug was in the original one
@Jotaro97 Sorry I meant the Original Xcom, XCom UFO defense. I'm used to talking about the original in the European context. I'll fix that in my original post.
It had two names depending on where you were. In the UK/EU it was UFO: Enemy Unknown. In the US it was XCOM: UFO Defense. Of course, the reimagining decided to be confusing and so called itself a mixture of the two: XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Both are great games though!
Fun Fact: Data Design Interactive, the developers of this game, aside from later creating LEGO games of dubious quality (I don't know, I never played them), would later go on to create pure shovelware titles for neumerous consoles and PC - *especially* the Nintendo Wii, with one of their later games being the infamous Ninjabread Man. Seeing the issues Conquest Earth has, I can't help but feel creating bad games was in DDI's blood.
I thought this game reminded me a ton of Lego Rock Raiders, turns out it was by the same developer. That game was actually a lot of fun.. Or maybe it's just nostalgia.
Interesting because Conquest Earth does actually try not to be shovelware. The production value is quite high (high quality backgrounds, rendered sprites and cutscenes, licenced music).
Dude .. how much of a PoS you have to be to open a lawsuit against an internet archive ...i mean .. cmon dafuq. I cant count the times i thought i imagined a game as a child only to later discover it was actually real (quite a few i saw here, ty ross ). There is something magical about that period that i cant point my finger on. Anyway iam happy that there are ppl helping preserve it and for ppl like ross, a crazy dude makin his content the way he wants, never change man . Much love
Ross, the only man in the world who do videos because he likes it, talks about stuff he likes, and puts so much love in his videos you can't help but enjoy the journey draws you in. in other words, he's the best CZcamsr.
I give this the following awards. +USER HOSTILE INTERFACE -This game hates you for daring to think you are good enough to play it. +LOST LAND -This game apparently remembers New Zealand exists. +FIST-FIGHTING THE FUTURE -Improvements? QOL improvements? Self Defence? Sorry? I can't hear you over the sound of my gas-clearing troops. +FOG -Fog!
The second level in Burning Rangers took place in a underwater theme park in New Zealand! I also think Terranigma remembered New Zealand exists, but you can't visit it.
@@marcellosilva9286I should really look into Burning Rangers one of these days. Never even seen a second of gameplay, but the homage quests in PSO were awesome.
I appreciate this as always, but man, dude, you gotta play a game you're hyped about pretty soon. I love seeing never-before-seen endings but I like seeing the cool things you find enjoyable even more.
Every time Ross uploads one of these I feel like I owe him a big thank you. Thank you for half-suffering, half-playing these bizarre, broken-on-modern-system games that none of us would've known about otherwise!
I have the greatest respect for you documenting the rather lengthy steps you take to figure out why emulator hardware, real hardware, or software doesn't work properly.
Oh wow, I finally noticed the developer was Data Design Interactive when you started showing the screensaver at the end. That company is something else, their catalog of games is... basically bad across the board, especially during the Wii era, with shameless shovelware like "Ninja Bread Man". One exception was their game Lego Rock Raiders in 1999, which, while kinda weird and janky, was somehow still decent and charming enough to earn a cult following. It probably helped that it was a Lego property. I have fond memories of that game, and was almost shocked to learn years later how shlocky all the rest of DDI's offerings were. It makes a lot of sense how bad and (rightfully) forgotten this game was.
I let out an audible "oh no" when the Data Design Interactive logo came up at the start. For people who don't know, they're the company that made such illustrious classics like Ninjabread Man and ...about a thousand reskins of Ninjabread Man. No matter what game it is, if you see that name you're in for some absolute SHIT.
Now when i will come to bowling someday, i will be subconsciously expecting to see a short movie of badass alien manta spaceship blowing the big factory or something as a follow-up for doing strike. Many thanks Ross! Awesome game archeology effort made again!
I feel like the immense curiosity and perseverance that drives you through these games that openly despise you might be an undiagnosed medical disorder.
Arnold Schwarzenegger once gave an interview admitting he was a fundamentally unbalanced person who was so obsessed with certain things that happened to bring him success, like working out and being in action movies. His particular brain cocktail just happened to work great for him, and Ross here has used his to build a mighty channel online.
2:39 It pisses me off when companies go after abandonware stuff so god damned much, and copyright hoarding on this scale is one of the reasons why modern copyright law needs an abandonware clause. Consuming and sharing media is a natural human behavior and creative works have a right to exist. All being tyrannical about media consumption does is make everyone worse off, and if you're the kind of company who's worried about "competing with themselves", then maybe you should spend less time trying to cheat the system and more time focusing on being a good business.
And to think that when this came out, game press was anxious to see what this game was all about, and Total Annihilation really seemed more of an afterthought. Only for TA to end up blowing people away, and everybody forgetting that Conquest Earth even existed.
59:30 "I thought it wouldn't be so bad, then it was so bad I thought I wouldn't make it, then I did and it wasn't worth it." Now how best to save this quote for when it's fitting? Desktop background? Wood-burned plaque, à la 'Live Laugh Love'? Tattoo?
BTW - the sound effect used to "alienate" the solider voice lines is vibrato, not flanger (minor detail, but as a sound guy I couldn't resist to not mention this).
Just wanted to say: I love your content mate. There are some of your game dungeon vids I have watched 3 or 4 time. They are that good! Thanks for making them and I hope for many more to come.
Hop to it, my guy... Earth needs new leadership, and literally anyone else will do. Earth's invaders cannot possibly be worse at running the planet than we humans are...
The Dos version runs much better (in Dosbox-X), looks identical and the savestates do work as long as you load the game first. You could've saved yourself a lot of trouble. ~97000 cycles seems like a reasonable speed.
@@Lefiath Well nobody knows anything about this game except you two and Ross I guess. Plus complaining about that for a popular CZcamsr's comment section is like complaining that touching the lit stove was hot
Catharsis seeing this monstrosity beaten 20 years after I tried and failed to. Ross, if you see this, please go and play the vastly superior yet equally obscure Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds RTS. In essence they're very similar games, time slider overworld campaign and all, but Rage did it right.
Regarding the game speed issues - I have a theory that the developers all had different CPUs and couldn't find a way to make the game work the same on all of them, so everyone has been doing their part in a way that it works properly on their machine, but not others. This would also explain why they can't agree on a CPU speed this game needs. No speed will work good!
Okay, but "I have seen the future, and I cannot see much" is kind of an amazing line, actually? I feel like that could be the thought-provoking quote at the beginning of a big budget historical drama or something
I've watched my older brother playing this game during the '90s. I still like the design of units and buildings, despite looking cartoonish and toyish.
At the start of this series, I thought the games were the ones being subjected to the "dungeon", pilloried for all to see. Now I understand that the true victim was Ross all along.
I still have the game disk for this one, haven't checked to see if it still works... but I do remember as a young child getting suckered by that giant trapezoid box and its advertisement of "transparent explosions for unparalleled graphic realism!" You know you're dealing with low budgets when opacity is considered a high end graphical feature.
Honestly? I think the whole "both sides have their own atmospheres they need" has potential. Sort of like Splatoon's ink mechanic, but for RTS games. The ways I'd change it to not be garbage would be to make them mostly transparent, have units/buildings that both spread and remove it (basically, you have a unit that has an area around them that spreads gas A and turns gas B into gas A, but if a unit that spreads gas A overlaps a unit that spreads gas B, then nothing changes) and have it that units can fire into the gas, but they take damage if they're in it. Sort of an extension of zerg creep and tiberium fields.
@@EvilDoresh scouts with thin hazmat suits that puncture if they take any damage, and assault troops in heavy armor that only puncture if they lose 50% health.
Maybe it's just me, but it seems like you've been covering a lot of frustrating games that aren't as fun to play lately. It's of course up to you what to do for the show, but it's genuinely nice to see you enjoy yourself with this.
yeah, I guess it's been said before but the last videos seem like hour long struggles with bad games, whereas earlier GDs used to be about flawed gems or interesting takes on lesser known titles hope i don't sound like an entitled whiner, i've watched every GD there is multiple times so i'm really grateful to ross on the many hours of entertainment (:
I remember seeing this previewed and hyped up in magazines as a kid, then paying full price from my meager saturday job wages. I enjoyed it kind of, but yeah, but I knew back then I'd been had. One of the first times I realised I'd been had by magazines.
So I found out this was actually made by Data Design Interactive, which basically flips this entire game around from "why is it bad?" to "why is any part of this game any good by even the loosest standards of good?"
@Zoomer Stasi I believe the only game that has done this concept well, albeit not to your extent, is Creeper World. In it, the fog of war is your enemy, depicted as an alien, corrosive blue liquid oozing from spores with you piloting and defending the last city of Humankind from it with a network of power nodes and turrets as you make your way to the center of the galaxy. I remember playing it as a kid via a cracked version from some website and being fascinated with the gameplay.
Atmospheric Scientist here. What Ross is describing at 50:30 is a process known as Stratospheric Aerosol Injection, or SAI. The idea here is to release small particles (aerosols) or gases which will turn into aerosols, from planes or balloons in the stratosphere (the layer of the atmosphere above 10-20km). These particles will then scatter some sunlight back into space, cooling the planet. Ross is right that the leading candidate is Sulfur Dioxide (SO2). When this is released into the stratosphere, it will combine with oxygen and water vapor to produce sulfuric acid (H2SO4). That sounds bad, but it will primarily remain in the stratosphere (above where we and all other life and weather occur). This sulfuric acid condenses on dust or other aerosols, forming particles which reflect some of the sun's light back into space. The lifetime of H2SO4 in the stratosphere depends the latitude at which it's injected. Some of my colleagues are researching where it's most effective to release these aerosols. Eventually, some of the H2SO4 will mix down into the troposphere (the part of the atmosphere where we live), but its lifetime is very short (
Making the air filtration troops and the enemy troops sound the same is a hilarious way for the developers to just fuck with the player. Kudos to them, I respect it.
THANK YOU ROSS! Early Birthday present for me! (It's tomorrow. The 4th!) Always happy to see another glorious game dungeon! 💜 thank you for your hard work
"well, it's actually more complicated than this but come back to that in a bit" I have a feeling a technical rant lasting about 10 minutes will be somewhere in this episode
The satellite taking that weird curvy orbit around a globe is breaking my brain.. U have those curvy lines at NASA control room cus normal elliptical orbits just look curvy when shown on mercator projection maps
Wait, is the next one Dark Colony? That's one of my favorite old school RTS games. And I DON'T KNOW WHY. The first cutscene is just so badass and I love every bit of that game. From the cheesy robotic voice in the briefing, to the campy dialogue and really great cutscenes.
"aliens aren't actually my favorite thing in the world, i mean they're ok, but its more like i just keep running into them" ross and freeman are melding together again
Top shelf comment
I see no issue
Wait, they aren't the same person?
ross and freeman aren't melding together, you're just being paranoid
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
I always thought that the "dungeon" part of the Game Dungeon title referred to us, the audience, being in a dungeon displaying twisted horrors. But ever since the Veil Of Darkness episode I've slowly come to realize that we are in fact the dungeon masters, and Ross is the poor soul forced through the torture.
I always assumed Ross was imprisoned in the same facility as Civvie, just the wing decorated in more medieval rather than cyberpunk style. Crossover episode when?...
The visual of Ross slaving away in a medieval dungeon playing obscure and sometimes shitty games for our entertainment is so funny for some reason.
I was of the opinion that it was neither us nor Ross imprisoned within the dungeon, but the games themselves locked within the mind of Ross, and him being the *mostly* sane host taking us on a tour through the mysteries held within... the Game Dungeon.
@@T3sl4 I thought Ross was on the moon, unless that's where the Department of Special Corrections' facility actually is?
Ross did briefly appear in Civvie's Half-Life video, so it's not entirely implausible.
@@T3sl4 they recently made cameos in the same video. Not the same but still.
For some context, this came out two years after Command and Conquer and Warcraft 2.
Two YEARS after both.
You can see it tried to crib elements from both games and yet somehow managed to brilliantly avoid copying any of the actual good parts of both.
Truly a masterclass in how to not make a video game.
It's like their intention was to create the worst possible interface for an rts.
This reminds me of Golem, a weird Polish RTS/turn-based strategy which graphically was about on par with Conquest Earth except it came out in 2004, two years after Warcraft III. At least the gameplay seems a bit better.
there's some XCOM thrown in too. they missed the mark on that as well.
The original Command & Conquer didn't have unit queuing either, but it's shocking that an RTS released a full two years after C&C didn't include an equivalent to the sidebar UI for quickly constructing units (instead that entire portion of the screen gets devoted to those bowling alley cutscenes lol)
Christ, I just want to jam this whole research-production layer into X-COM's geoscape from 1994. That UI, planet view, research, pretty much everything, was made so much better.
Look at that subtle off-color commentary, the tasteful editing of it. My god, it even has an end credits
Thanks for coming to make sense of this Admiral. Will there be more later?
Is something wrong Admiral? You're sweating.
TJ! We need you defending us with the MG42!
American Admiral
You don't sound yourself Admiral, maybe you should go home; spend some time with your family, read a book, play a game - more later.
You know a game has to be special when most of it's publisher's back catalog has been on Steam and GoG for over a decade, but for some reason they skipped over it. Real, real special.
"Special" is one way to describe it.
Have fun with this one, Embracer Group.
Yeah, "special" spelled starting with "r"
well.. it dont say that much , if its most of the major publishers i mean.. the underhanded crap half of them try to railroad you into buying or rebuying crap ;)
but when places like G.O.G dont even have a single 'wish' thread or post for a title... when even things like thandor got a few ones.. yhee... thats sort of telling ;)
'for some reason'
The idea that the aliens see a different spectrum of light, and their gas (sulphur dioxide?) is transparent to them, but our normal air is opaque, is kinda neat. But if it gets in the way of gameplay fun to this level... scrapping it would have been better.
Yeah... They really could have just used a typical Fog of War system.
If they want to be thematic maybe have the air purifiers be like Oracles in Age of Mythology. Their line of sight increases as they stand still.
@St. Haborym I don't think the aliens are blind without the gas; they are just able to see through it.
Why not have cameras with right wavelengths for soldiers tho, both sides
yee.. or well... it could worked fine IF ...the controls and unit behaviour not was such a train wreck i mean who the fk codes your turrets to shoot at ther own agenst hostiles.. but your soldiers to stand drooling as idiots when shoot at unless given direct orders ;)
example i recall playing this and due to the train wreck of controls etc.... i ended up just building up a single city and then FROM there starting to retake all the others..but.. not by any actual control as i recall it mostly involved me setting it to easy and then fortifying the base and somehow sending a horde of soldiers on 'search and destroy' on ther own to win... but i also recall exausting the aliens resources agenst my turrets before doing so i think so.... maby this game breaks down extra hard on modern system and just cant be run properly for some hard coded reason ? hmm
@@deadpope66 There's fog in their missions as well, so they are.
I too played this game back in the day when I was a kid on our first PC and it was the most awkward RTS id ever played.
Humans had no means of mining resources so what money you had, you needed to spend it wisely
And playing it on easy mode meant you got so far then the game turns round and says "To get the rest of the missions play it on hard mode"
I was really pissed
Yeah, not telling players that upfront is outright abuse.
Games that do this are so dumb. Why even have an easy difficulty then?
Hot damn, only Ross Scott could make a bad game with a disappointing ending into an hour of pure entertainment.
Thats the magic of the game dungeon.
Id never think Captain Zapp would be worth looking at, let alone play, but its one of my favorite episodes
with reviewers like him and Sseth, most of their catalog consists of games I know I wouldn't have the patience for, but they're such good entertainers I watch basically everything they upload.
There will never be "WIld West" of gameing like PC gaming in the 90's. Everyone had a different pc specifications, developers where making literally whatever they wanted, dev teams could consist of 5 guys in a basement. You'd get a big box with some gameplay snap shots, a brief list of features, and some crazy art on the front. A lot of people didn't internet to discuss games, gaming mags varied so wildly in content and quality, some times you just rolled in with a hope and a prayer.
don't forget about flash games during the 2000s. Those were some REALLY wild stuff too
I dunno, there's still wacky indie games being made. Have you seen Vinesauce Vinny? He covers a lot of them, from "Cryptworlds" to "Alien Afterlife" to "Goblet Grotto." I'd say it's arguably gotten wilder as the tech has progressed.
It's like movies in the 70s. Fortunately, there are still tons of smaller studios putting out brilliant games today.
@@AbandonedVoid most of them are pretentious copycats or just nostalgia bait
That's what things were like in the UK in the 80s, I'm both sorry we exported it to everyone and glad everyone got to share in it.
I like to imagine the briefing around 33:05 with that moonshine shack.
"We need you to go through heavily infested snowy mountains, risk frostbite, destroy an alien generator, kill various aliens along the way, and once you've killed all the aliens, if you could, cleetus is up there distilling untaxed moonshine. Make sure he learns his lesson once and for all"
Poor cleetus.
11:25 I thought Ross said that RTSes could trace their gameplay back to _Doom_ 2. I didn't understand how that could work, but I was completely willing to accept it.
lmao same
Yeah I can see the confusion, its Dune 2.
Well DOOM itself traces its gameplay back to Gauntlet, so it'd just be an additional layer of cross-genre pollination.
@@LonelySpaceDetective And, like every other game ever made, Gauntlet can be traced back to Heiankyo Alien!
Oh the number of times I tried to get people to read dune. Only for them to think I was talking about doom the whole time...seriously this happens a lot
"Yellow clouds of sulphur covering everything" isn't really a future phenomenon. It was a regular occurance in England until around 1956.
"It's just a guy getting shot in the face, but I appreciate that."
-Ross, 2022
"That's one thing the game gets right. You go up against infinity, you're going to lose."
Ross please don't give me flashbacks to the Marathon videos. I've still not fully recovered from those.
There is no escape
@Jesse Upton Ross had a cameo on Mandaloregaming's Marathon retrospective recently.
@Jesse Upton there is no escape.
@Zoomer Stasi ???
@Zoomer Stasi Like your name? lol
I miss the awards that Ross used to give, to me they felt like sort of a funny and ironic steam achievement haha. And whats more, for someone who usually listens to most of the video while doing something else, I found they were a nice summary of Ross's feelings toward the game!
It's like an RTS designed by someone who has never seen an RTS but had one vaguely described to them.
It's an RTS that a tv show would have a character play on screen for about 5 seconds to get across they are infact a nerd.
Ross is one of those uploaders that I dont care what I'm doing. The moment he uploads I'm dropping everything to watch it.
Same here
Ditto guys
I usually try to save his uploads for when I really need something.
Same goes for RLM.
I know, right? And like 10 minutes after its uploaded, no less...
Absolutely - should go to sleep... nah! Game Dungeon Time!
As a college student aiming to get into working for the US National Archives, the thought of abandoned ware sites just disappearing genuinely kinda scares me. So many digital works erased in an instant without much hope of another source for them is as infuriating as it is scary.
All useful information and creations deserve preservation, from the most influential art pieces known to man, to a manual for a PC strategy game that can't run on anything besides a Windows 98.
Unfortunately, it's a function of capitalist legal systems to "cull" unprofitable digital content. If you're playing old games, you're not buying new ones, and everyone in the industry is inclined towards you buying new ones.
@@greyfells2829 Yeah, we should be more like those communist systems, which famously never destroyed historical objects and documents, particularly those which proved embarassing to the leadership of oh wait
@Jotaro97 Funny you mention books, because if they're old and not popular enough that nobody bothers reprint them, and you pretty much have to rely on random folks scanning those books and posting them on the internet, wouldn't that be the same as the situation of old video games then?
Most of humanity's cultural works have been lost. How many texts of the predigital age did we preserve?
I always felt that some day games would be taken seriously as an art form, but only when we've got 50 to 60 year old's running around who grew up playing them, and thus appreciate them.
We are still living in the hump of that era where people think of video games in an out of touch, Siskel and Ebert, neophobic pearl clutching way just as people demonized Elvis and rock and roll as the scary new thing with no value that is destroying our great country. It'll inevitably happen though, hopefully not too much is lost waiting for it though...
Shame you're not doing the awards these days, because this feels like another recipient of the Old School PC Gaming award, same as Baldies. Cryptic gameplay, has heart, there's a lot of it, it's hard as nails, and there's a weak ending. 5 for 5.
he stopped awards?!
@@iamme2739 he only gives them now if something really really earns it, rather than giving everything a few (unfortunately)
I would also add Doesn't Respect Your Time. The mechanics are vague even when they do work, research is frustrating, and there is often only one intended method to complete a mission, which hinders variety.
@@Sahuagin I wish he'd give them out to everything again, those were always a fun way to cap off every video.
@@Henskelion Agreed. It was always fun to see what he'll come up with.
For those people wondering, this is the same Data Design Interactive that would go on to make some of the worst shovelware for the WII. Good to know they started as they meant to move on.
31:33 Air Support was a single Harrier... Thanks, Command, really helpful.
Ace Combat tier support this was not
Aha! I've read it with Ross's voice. 😁
@@Brunosky_Inc Ace Combat would still send in a single Harrier, but that Harrier would be piloted by Jesus Christ himself
"Aliens aren't actually my favorite thing in the world. I mean, they're okay, but it's more like I just keep running into them."
-Gordon Freeman
Yeah
I do kind of love the idea that the alien side is overpowered in one of these Xcom-like games, but then you can play as the aliens and get access to that same OPness.
OPness. Say it out loud to yourself.
this whole game is like you wanted to make xcom but couldn't.
@@KdogPrime ohpeeniz
@@lasskinn474 XCOM at Home:
Yeah, usually when there's one overpowered side and one weaker one, the overpowered one usually is "not the one you're playing" instead of a fixed one, so the moment you'd play as the side that's kicked your ass all game, suddenly they're nerfed to uselessness, and suddenly your side gets much better stuff much sooner.
Devs had to be actual aliens to design such a bad interface, damn. It's like they never interacted with anything (not just software, literally anything) in their lives.
This game looks like what would happen if the recycle bins from the developers for Command & Conquer and XCOM reluctantly got together and made a baby.
Reminds me a little of XCOM
a crackbaby with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome
“Reluctantly” got together and made a baby. I’m just imagining love making where there’s no pleasure and both parties would rather be anywhere else, it’s pure obligation. I freaking love it.
I remember playing and dropping this thing. Then I forgot what it was called and was kicking myself for never beating it. Glad to know I wasnt missing much.
I think I've played this but it has fallen from my memory, if it is the game I'm thinking of I definitely dropped it as unplayable jank
I once bought it for equivalent of $15 from a computer fair in 1999 thinking it looked good and was prepared for some good stuff
Turns out there was a REAL GOOD REASON why they had so many boxes of these fucking things all over
(Alien shooting at soldier)
Soldier: "Resistance is futile. Guess I'll die."
(Soldier ordered to stand his ground, no enemies in sight)
Soldier: "I'm gonna go all Rambo on enemy base and nothing will stop me."
"Nothing will stop me."
(three seconds later...)
"I can't believe an entire alien base concentrating fire on one lone grunt was enough to stop me."
So, 25 years after ruining my afternoons, Conquest Earth finally did something good for me: leading me to discover this wonderful channel!
Thanks for suffering through this game, so that after so much time we can finally see the ending with the humans victorious. By the way, you can get the other ending quite easily by starting the human campaign and letting the aliens win (just set the time acceleration to max and do nothing). If I remember correctly, the video in that case was quite graphic, showing a human corpse consumed by insects.
Man, the Quadraliens look sick in 3D!
...holy shit. The ending clip of the screensaver puts the whole game into perspective. It was made by fucking Data Design Interactive all along. OF COURSE it was a nightmare.
the AI problem could be because of the tick value. if game expects to work at a certain tick value and you mess with that, things might break or not work as intended.
since he had fully emulated the game's native environment and specs, that would make this game ludicrously finicky if that was the problem
Yup. Wouldn't be surprised if that's why the enemy spawns units so fast too. It's really important to get original hardware/emulation for these older games for this reason, trying to speed things up an have big consequences. This happened in that game where you play as a child angel doing possession stuff, altering the speed caused enemies to not be stunned long enough and to track you too well, and then Ross blamed the game for being too hard.
@@Shenaldrac I really don't get how some devs back then didn't think to just add a damn framerate cap. It's not like they couldn't, either; if you throw a Pentium at Doom, it'll run just fine because the guys at id did exactly that.
@@Shenaldrac if you read reviews for this game, even people playing it back in the day had tons of problems. Ross isn't the one causing problems.
@@ArvelDreth Good to know.
Some games become so outdated they're essentially unplayable. This game chases down so many evolutionary dead-ends that in order to play it you have to unteach yourself how a RTS works in order to understand basic aspects of it.
It's like someone slapped Babylon 5's CG onto a hybrid of Command and Conquer and classic X-Com!
Which sounds like the coolest thing it's possible to conceive of, sadly there's a reason this one was lost to history.
@@RoyalFusilier Yeah. I wouldn't really a shed a tear if this game was actually lost.
To be fair, only season 1 of Babylon 5 had eye burning CGI...
51:15 "I am confused how that wouldn't poison the Earth?"
This line reminded me of a stray line from Freeman's Mind related to nukes. "They thought they were gonna light the whole atmosphere on fire, and they did it anyway. That's badass."
When I was a kid, we had a CD rental shop (all pirated games, ofc), and Empire Earth or Earth 2150 had come out recently. Being the 8-ish-year old that I was, I was hyped as heck. However, the guy running the place had no idea what I was talking about and said "maybe this is what you're talking about". I think you can guess how far I got into the game in a manual-less pirated copy IN RUSSIAN (which I still have zero knowledge of)! So, what I wanted to say: thanks for demistifying this game for me after so many years, Ross.
Man, you were straight up subject to child abuse.
I'm Russian. I will download that copy you're taking about and try to play it. You mystified me.
@@KOTYAR0 was it any good?
Its kinda fascinating that XCom UFO Defense did the overworld R&D and troop maneuvers, better and with more elegance. And everything else really. What with the difficulty bug failing safe and instead of defaulting to the hardest difficulty it defaults to the easiest difficulty for an already tough game.
As soon as I saw the footage of the campaign mode, I've got the feeling I was looking at X-Com's shunned cousin.
@@adenowirus exact thought! Unnecessary animated visual where as a "paperpusher"-commander you are to deliver orders, not watch the scientists running around the lab
@Jotaro97 sorry, X-COM: UFO Defense (1993)
Yeah, it's confusing, similar organizations, similar names
But loading difficulty bug was in the original one
@Jotaro97 Sorry I meant the Original Xcom, XCom UFO defense. I'm used to talking about the original in the European context. I'll fix that in my original post.
It had two names depending on where you were. In the UK/EU it was UFO: Enemy Unknown. In the US it was XCOM: UFO Defense. Of course, the reimagining decided to be confusing and so called itself a mixture of the two: XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Both are great games though!
Fun Fact: Data Design Interactive, the developers of this game, aside from later creating LEGO games of dubious quality (I don't know, I never played them), would later go on to create pure shovelware titles for neumerous consoles and PC - *especially* the Nintendo Wii, with one of their later games being the infamous Ninjabread Man.
Seeing the issues Conquest Earth has, I can't help but feel creating bad games was in DDI's blood.
Good to know Data Design interactive was shit even before their wii shovelware days.
Oh god, they made the Ninja Bread Man and clone games...
I thought this game reminded me a ton of Lego Rock Raiders, turns out it was by the same developer. That game was actually a lot of fun.. Or maybe it's just nostalgia.
@@recon_p there is an open source version of that game called Manic Miners
Interesting because Conquest Earth does actually try not to be shovelware. The production value is quite high (high quality backgrounds, rendered sprites and cutscenes, licenced music).
Dude .. how much of a PoS you have to be to open a lawsuit against an internet archive ...i mean .. cmon dafuq.
I cant count the times i thought i imagined a game as a child only to later discover it was actually real (quite a few i saw here, ty ross ).
There is something magical about that period that i cant point my finger on.
Anyway iam happy that there are ppl helping preserve it and for ppl like ross, a crazy dude makin his content the way he wants, never change man . Much love
Yeah imagine being that asshole that reports sites hosting abandonware... People suck.
Ross, the only man in the world who do videos because he likes it, talks about stuff he likes, and puts so much love in his videos you can't help but enjoy the journey draws you in.
in other words, he's the best CZcamsr.
These guys clearly blew most of their budget on the fancy menu animations
I give this the following awards.
+USER HOSTILE INTERFACE
-This game hates you for daring to think you are good enough to play it.
+LOST LAND
-This game apparently remembers New Zealand exists.
+FIST-FIGHTING THE FUTURE
-Improvements? QOL improvements? Self Defence? Sorry? I can't hear you over the sound of my gas-clearing troops.
+FOG
-Fog!
The second level in Burning Rangers took place in a underwater theme park in New Zealand!
I also think Terranigma remembered New Zealand exists, but you can't visit it.
This was decent except for the lame Reddit tier New Zealand joke.
@@justind4448 Found the New Zealander
@@marcellosilva9286I should really look into Burning Rangers one of these days. Never even seen a second of gameplay, but the homage quests in PSO were awesome.
I appreciate this as always, but man, dude, you gotta play a game you're hyped about pretty soon. I love seeing never-before-seen endings but I like seeing the cool things you find enjoyable even more.
Every time Ross uploads one of these I feel like I owe him a big thank you. Thank you for half-suffering, half-playing these bizarre, broken-on-modern-system games that none of us would've known about otherwise!
I have the greatest respect for you documenting the rather lengthy steps you take to figure out why emulator hardware, real hardware, or software doesn't work properly.
Oh wow, I finally noticed the developer was Data Design Interactive when you started showing the screensaver at the end. That company is something else, their catalog of games is... basically bad across the board, especially during the Wii era, with shameless shovelware like "Ninja Bread Man". One exception was their game Lego Rock Raiders in 1999, which, while kinda weird and janky, was somehow still decent and charming enough to earn a cult following. It probably helped that it was a Lego property. I have fond memories of that game, and was almost shocked to learn years later how shlocky all the rest of DDI's offerings were. It makes a lot of sense how bad and (rightfully) forgotten this game was.
I let out an audible "oh no" when the Data Design Interactive logo came up at the start. For people who don't know, they're the company that made such illustrious classics like Ninjabread Man and ...about a thousand reskins of Ninjabread Man. No matter what game it is, if you see that name you're in for some absolute SHIT.
I think their only half-decent games were console ports of Amiga games like Xenon 2 or Rise of the Robots.
@@joe--cool Rise of the Robots is a real stinker of a fighting game though
@@vOddy75 True for all versions of it. The intro disk is the best thing about the game, lol.
Now when i will come to bowling someday, i will be subconsciously expecting to see a short movie of badass alien manta spaceship blowing the big factory or something as a follow-up for doing strike.
Many thanks Ross! Awesome game archeology effort made again!
I feel like the immense curiosity and perseverance that drives you through these games that openly despise you might be an undiagnosed medical disorder.
Arnold Schwarzenegger once gave an interview admitting he was a fundamentally unbalanced person who was so obsessed with certain things that happened to bring him success, like working out and being in action movies. His particular brain cocktail just happened to work great for him, and Ross here has used his to build a mighty channel online.
17:20 The direct control of your troops reminds me of classic *CANNON FODDER* games.
War never been so much fun!
2:39 It pisses me off when companies go after abandonware stuff so god damned much, and copyright hoarding on this scale is one of the reasons why modern copyright law needs an abandonware clause. Consuming and sharing media is a natural human behavior and creative works have a right to exist. All being tyrannical about media consumption does is make everyone worse off, and if you're the kind of company who's worried about "competing with themselves", then maybe you should spend less time trying to cheat the system and more time focusing on being a good business.
And to think that when this came out, game press was anxious to see what this game was all about, and Total Annihilation really seemed more of an afterthought. Only for TA to end up blowing people away, and everybody forgetting that Conquest Earth even existed.
"I have seen the future, and I can not see much" is such a good line.
Love that you never know when these will drop, makes them feel extra special when they finally do! Keep up the good work ross
I feel like I could almost feel your pain in this one. You're doing god's work, Ross. One of my favorite history channels.
I feel like he has been in pain since 13 dungeons ago, lol
59:30 "I thought it wouldn't be so bad, then it was so bad I thought I wouldn't make it, then I did and it wasn't worth it."
Now how best to save this quote for when it's fitting? Desktop background? Wood-burned plaque, à la 'Live Laugh Love'? Tattoo?
A tombstone?
BTW - the sound effect used to "alienate" the solider voice lines is vibrato, not flanger (minor detail, but as a sound guy I couldn't resist to not mention this).
Finally a new game dungeon now things are starting to make sense
I'm going to be with my family
@@MrMrsirr I’m sorry admiral😢
The notification has not yet reached the Admiral. Graham is getting a battlefield promotion for showing initiative.
where's the other feller that says this
That's my line!
Just wanted to say: I love your content mate. There are some of your game dungeon vids I have watched 3 or 4 time. They are that good! Thanks for making them and I hope for many more to come.
After ten thousand years I'm free! It's time to Conquest Earth!
Hop to it, my guy... Earth needs new leadership, and literally anyone else will do. Earth's invaders cannot possibly be worse at running the planet than we humans are...
@@jamesduncan6729 I'm half convinced that we already live in V but the lizard overlords are both somehow more malicious and criminally incompetent.
Go-go Accursed Rangers
@@patchmoulton5438 I'm pretty much on board with that theory 👍🏻
@@jamesduncan6729 I'd rather take Abyssals or the Grimm at this point...
"I'm not an ambiturner. I can't turn left"
"That's nothing to be ashamed of"
Ross Scott: "NO, SHE'S WRONG, THAT IS SHAMEFUL"
He calls "em like he sees "em.
The Dos version runs much better (in Dosbox-X), looks identical and the savestates do work as long as you load the game first. You could've saved yourself a lot of trouble. ~97000 cycles seems like a reasonable speed.
Thank you! It's near impossible to find a comment from someone that has something to say about the game and not just mindlessly praising Ross.
@@Lefiath Well nobody knows anything about this game except you two and Ross I guess. Plus complaining about that for a popular CZcamsr's comment section is like complaining that touching the lit stove was hot
Man, Ross you are a hero. It hurt me just looking at you play this piece of jank, can't imagine how painful it must have been to play trough it.
As an RTS fan I couldn't stop watching.
Thank you for your blood sweat and tears for this one. Perhaps in youtube you've given it another decade.
Catharsis seeing this monstrosity beaten 20 years after I tried and failed to. Ross, if you see this, please go and play the vastly superior yet equally obscure Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds RTS. In essence they're very similar games, time slider overworld campaign and all, but Rage did it right.
"this is the control scheme timeline that didnt happen"
this is too accurate for most games of that era lol
Ross you're saving my life over here! Thanks so much for this well-timed upload.
Regarding the game speed issues - I have a theory that the developers all had different CPUs and couldn't find a way to make the game work the same on all of them, so everyone has been doing their part in a way that it works properly on their machine, but not others. This would also explain why they can't agree on a CPU speed this game needs. No speed will work good!
Fancy seeing you here, unfa!
@@somebonehead Hi! :)
I don't normally realize how much work Ross puts into simply running a game. Now i do.
I need all game dungeons to be this long. More of stuff this good is always better
Okay, but "I have seen the future, and I cannot see much" is kind of an amazing line, actually? I feel like that could be the thought-provoking quote at the beginning of a big budget historical drama or something
I've watched my older brother playing this game during the '90s. I still like the design of units and buildings, despite looking cartoonish and toyish.
"Yeah, it's aliens again."
This is going to be an entertaining hour.
At the start of this series, I thought the games were the ones being subjected to the "dungeon", pilloried for all to see. Now I understand that the true victim was Ross all along.
Every time Ross make a video about a game that noone knows about it feels so educational and cozy.
I still have the game disk for this one, haven't checked to see if it still works... but I do remember as a young child getting suckered by that giant trapezoid box and its advertisement of "transparent explosions for unparalleled graphic realism!" You know you're dealing with low budgets when opacity is considered a high end graphical feature.
Honestly? I think the whole "both sides have their own atmospheres they need" has potential. Sort of like Splatoon's ink mechanic, but for RTS games. The ways I'd change it to not be garbage would be to make them mostly transparent, have units/buildings that both spread and remove it (basically, you have a unit that has an area around them that spreads gas A and turns gas B into gas A, but if a unit that spreads gas A overlaps a unit that spreads gas B, then nothing changes) and have it that units can fire into the gas, but they take damage if they're in it. Sort of an extension of zerg creep and tiberium fields.
You could also have units in hazmat suits who start taking damage-over-time if their armor is too damaged.
@@EvilDoresh scouts with thin hazmat suits that puncture if they take any damage, and assault troops in heavy armor that only puncture if they lose 50% health.
I miss the awards, though I'm sure I already know the ones for this one.
Old School Gaming
Doesn't Respect Your Time
Fog
This is a revelation. I have been trying to remember the name of this game for YEARS.
_"It's actually more complicated than that, but we'll come back in a bit"_
That's the first warning sign, run! run! now!
Maybe it's just me, but it seems like you've been covering a lot of frustrating games that aren't as fun to play lately. It's of course up to you what to do for the show, but it's genuinely nice to see you enjoy yourself with this.
enjoying games is not fun at all
you will understand once you hit 30 and 10k games
@@tsartomato I wish this wasn't true
@@badplaysdeadmeems6489 now that's a human who gets it
@@tsartomato Oh shut up
yeah, I guess it's been said before but the last videos seem like hour long struggles with bad games, whereas earlier GDs used to be about flawed gems or interesting takes on lesser known titles
hope i don't sound like an entitled whiner, i've watched every GD there is multiple times so i'm really grateful to ross on the many hours of entertainment (:
I honestly feel like God himself is smiling on us all as each Game Dungeon is uploaded!
I remember seeing this previewed and hyped up in magazines as a kid, then paying full price from my meager saturday job wages. I enjoyed it kind of, but yeah, but I knew back then I'd been had. One of the first times I realised I'd been had by magazines.
Man I legit get all happy when Ross drops a new video. Thank you man!
The only CZcams page where I actually get super excited and pumped to see a new upload/game dungeon. Game dungeon is my favorite series on CZcams.
So I found out this was actually made by Data Design Interactive, which basically flips this entire game around from "why is it bad?" to "why is any part of this game any good by even the loosest standards of good?"
This is probably the closest we’ll ever get to an X-Com game dungeon.
This game takes the "Fog of War" thing way too far. Thanks for another awesome Dungeon Ross!
Smog of War.
smeaaauuug of war
@Zoomer Stasi I believe the only game that has done this concept well, albeit not to your extent, is Creeper World. In it, the fog of war is your enemy, depicted as an alien, corrosive blue liquid oozing from spores with you piloting and defending the last city of Humankind from it with a network of power nodes and turrets as you make your way to the center of the galaxy. I remember playing it as a kid via a cracked version from some website and being fascinated with the gameplay.
Oh my god dude, you just unearthed a memory in my brain with the dirty mouse ball from back when I was a kid, holy shit.
I really checked your channel just like two hours ago because I was like “man where is Ross I need me some Accursed Farms” and here you are. Godspeed.
I would like to have a talk with a guy who thought that making you manually remove fog of war is a good idea.
Atmospheric Scientist here. What Ross is describing at 50:30 is a process known as Stratospheric Aerosol Injection, or SAI. The idea here is to release small particles (aerosols) or gases which will turn into aerosols, from planes or balloons in the stratosphere (the layer of the atmosphere above 10-20km). These particles will then scatter some sunlight back into space, cooling the planet.
Ross is right that the leading candidate is Sulfur Dioxide (SO2). When this is released into the stratosphere, it will combine with oxygen and water vapor to produce sulfuric acid (H2SO4). That sounds bad, but it will primarily remain in the stratosphere (above where we and all other life and weather occur). This sulfuric acid condenses on dust or other aerosols, forming particles which reflect some of the sun's light back into space.
The lifetime of H2SO4 in the stratosphere depends the latitude at which it's injected. Some of my colleagues are researching where it's most effective to release these aerosols. Eventually, some of the H2SO4 will mix down into the troposphere (the part of the atmosphere where we live), but its lifetime is very short (
Making the air filtration troops and the enemy troops sound the same is a hilarious way for the developers to just fuck with the player. Kudos to them, I respect it.
I have to know now if they actually did that just to save space.
@@amentco8445 It's a PC game from 1997, there's no way they couldn't have added another half a second long sound file.
Ross' last game also had a mooing cow in the soundtrack. If the third also has strange cows, we know something is up.
THANK YOU ROSS! Early Birthday present for me! (It's tomorrow. The 4th!) Always happy to see another glorious game dungeon! 💜 thank you for your hard work
"well, it's actually more complicated than this but come back to that in a bit"
I have a feeling a technical rant lasting about 10 minutes will be somewhere in this episode
One of my all time favorite Ross quotes “NOOO!!! Nooo, they can’t do this to me!” 55:06
There are a lot of interesting ideas in this game tbh, I'd like to see it done by, like, a studio that knew how to make RTS games
The satellite taking that weird curvy orbit around a globe is breaking my brain.. U have those curvy lines at NASA control room cus normal elliptical orbits just look curvy when shown on mercator projection maps
Oh yeah, lol, that's a great observation
Wait, is the next one Dark Colony? That's one of my favorite old school RTS games. And I DON'T KNOW WHY. The first cutscene is just so badass and I love every bit of that game. From the cheesy robotic voice in the briefing, to the campy dialogue and really great cutscenes.
Ross always comes back when the world needs him most. Thanks for the vid!