Editor's Note: Here's one I prepared in late August. --PS3D
Cyan Worlds (formerly Cyan) is a fairly mysterious company. We talked about Cosmic Osmo months ago, but Cyan Worlds is still an intriguing company.
1. The Mysterious Color Cosmic Osmo
I'm still wondering about the real "color" Cosmic Osmo. A full page is what I remember, and oddly enough, some of the most vivid things (like Queen Osmo, the radio tower) later resurfaced years later when I finally managed to get my hands on a Cosmic Osmo and the Worlds Beyond the Mackerel disk image. I tried visiting the 1997 version of Cyan to get my hands on that elusive page, but the links to the Site Map and Other Worlds was down.
2. Sunsoft
Sunsoft, a Japanese company, helped finance Myst, but Sunsoft's intent was to gain the exclusive rights for consoles. Specifically, the SNES CD-ROM add-on. No real screenshots of what the SNES CD would've looked like, but it's likely that it would look more like the grotesquely underpowered Sega CD. However, while we never saw Myst or Cosmic Osmo on the Super Nintendo, years later, Sunsoft helped bring Myst (and later, "The Manhole: Masterpiece Edition") to the iOS. Was Sunsoft always with Cyan, or did they re-join forces? And if it was the latter, why?
3. Three and Four
We know why Ubisoft is the publisher of the latter Myst series. A deal was inked with Brøderbund, but Brøderbund changed hands, as The Learning Company bought it, Mattel bought The Learning Company, Mattel sold The Learning Company to Gores Technology Group, and the entertainment holdings were sold to Ubisoft...but that doesn't explain why Myst III: Exile and Myst IV: Revelations were not developed by Cyan Worlds. The answer supposedly was that they were working on Uru: Ages Beyond Myst, but that ran into delays, cutbacks, cancellations, and reopenings. Not exactly as intended.
4. That Bad, Huh?
In 2005, Cyan laid off almost everyone and appeared like they would totally die, and was only saved after a deal with Turner Broadcasting and GameTap. But how did Cyan get to that position, anyway? Did they burn through all the cash reserves of original Myst and Riven sales, as well as later Myst licensing that fast? One theory is the changing of hands of Brøderbund's entertainment holdings caused losses for Cyan (Mattel Interactive was a big money-loser) but that's pretty vague. You'd think that the changing hands would allow them to bail out.
Comment Discussion: What are your memories of playing Cyan games?
Showing posts with label Video Games. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Video Games. Show all posts
Friday, October 8, 2010
Friday, July 23, 2010
PCfx!
First off, let's get one thing straight. This is NOT about the PC-FX, the Japan-only sequel to the TurboGrafx-16. This is about something ENTIRELY different.
When I was younger, my family only used Macs. I didn't mind it...the graceful Macintosh was a lot cooler looking than the Windows flavors available at the time, except with one minor difficulty.
Most games were available on PCs.
By the time I actually came to this sad truth, there was only one option other than getting a full PC. It was a product called Connectix Virtual PC with a promise to put a virtual PC in your Mac. It had previously made the Virtual Game Station (a commercial PlayStation emulator) that seemed to run OK, so why couldn't VPC open a world of games I never knew? Unfortunately, my family never bought it, and one of the reasons became painfully clear: it was much slower than an actual PC. Unless I really wanted to play Minesweeper or some early DOS game, let's face it...I was out of luck.
But I found out a far more awesome example...things called PC cards. Sadly, despite being faster than VPC, they were discontinued as expansion slot-less computers (like the iMac) took over (and more Mac ports of PC games became available). So I gave up. Years passed. Eventually OS 9 was completely obliterated and Boot Camp appeared, which although being a great solution, rendered OS 9 in a position of emulators. However, during that time, I found out that PC cards were not only super-expensive, but also not as fast a PC.
In late 1998/early 1999 Mac magazines (such as MacAddict) published ads for Orange Micro's "PCfx!", a card designed for game playing.
Pretty awesome, huh? And where'd those list of PC games come from? They stopped at F, but I'd like to see the whole list. If I was a bit older in 1998, that would've been the coolest-looking thing since sliced bread, and I would beg that Mom and Dad order it off a catalog (MacPowerhaus was one such catalog vendor, not the maker of the product) so we could install it in our Mac clone PowerWave tower right away. $650 for an awesome thing would run all the games we wanted, right? Wrong!
As you can see (click it to make it larger), the "PCfx!" would've been a disappointment in many aspects. You could play 1997-era games and 2D games, but it wasn't enough to run the latest games of 1998, and certainly not of 1999. At that rate, a little more could pay for a much faster actual PC. Given that the PCfx! was one of Orange Micro's last PC cards (the OrangePC 660 was faster, but more expensive), it was no surprise that PC cards fizzled by 1999 (the fruit-colored iMacs had no expansion of any kind). Orange Micro made other peripherals after the PC cards died, but it too perished in 2003. And that's the end of the story.
Anyway, since I'm back, it's full speed ahead for my other blogging and type pursuits. Webpages will be created, BATs will be produced. Blog posts will pick up. Already, in the schedule, there's two webpages, a little less than half a dozen Spirit of 2005 posts, and "Meijer vs. Walmart".
When I was younger, my family only used Macs. I didn't mind it...the graceful Macintosh was a lot cooler looking than the Windows flavors available at the time, except with one minor difficulty.
Most games were available on PCs.
By the time I actually came to this sad truth, there was only one option other than getting a full PC. It was a product called Connectix Virtual PC with a promise to put a virtual PC in your Mac. It had previously made the Virtual Game Station (a commercial PlayStation emulator) that seemed to run OK, so why couldn't VPC open a world of games I never knew? Unfortunately, my family never bought it, and one of the reasons became painfully clear: it was much slower than an actual PC. Unless I really wanted to play Minesweeper or some early DOS game, let's face it...I was out of luck.
But I found out a far more awesome example...things called PC cards. Sadly, despite being faster than VPC, they were discontinued as expansion slot-less computers (like the iMac) took over (and more Mac ports of PC games became available). So I gave up. Years passed. Eventually OS 9 was completely obliterated and Boot Camp appeared, which although being a great solution, rendered OS 9 in a position of emulators. However, during that time, I found out that PC cards were not only super-expensive, but also not as fast a PC.
In late 1998/early 1999 Mac magazines (such as MacAddict) published ads for Orange Micro's "PCfx!", a card designed for game playing.
Pretty awesome, huh? And where'd those list of PC games come from? They stopped at F, but I'd like to see the whole list. If I was a bit older in 1998, that would've been the coolest-looking thing since sliced bread, and I would beg that Mom and Dad order it off a catalog (MacPowerhaus was one such catalog vendor, not the maker of the product) so we could install it in our Mac clone PowerWave tower right away. $650 for an awesome thing would run all the games we wanted, right? Wrong!
As you can see (click it to make it larger), the "PCfx!" would've been a disappointment in many aspects. You could play 1997-era games and 2D games, but it wasn't enough to run the latest games of 1998, and certainly not of 1999. At that rate, a little more could pay for a much faster actual PC. Given that the PCfx! was one of Orange Micro's last PC cards (the OrangePC 660 was faster, but more expensive), it was no surprise that PC cards fizzled by 1999 (the fruit-colored iMacs had no expansion of any kind). Orange Micro made other peripherals after the PC cards died, but it too perished in 2003. And that's the end of the story.
Anyway, since I'm back, it's full speed ahead for my other blogging and type pursuits. Webpages will be created, BATs will be produced. Blog posts will pick up. Already, in the schedule, there's two webpages, a little less than half a dozen Spirit of 2005 posts, and "Meijer vs. Walmart".
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Mother Guide Scan (EB Zero)
Some people over at Starmen.net translated a guide for the Japanese game Mother, unofficially known here in the States (and for you TWR readers across the pond) as EarthBound Zero.
Here's the thread.
Here's the thread.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
...and the Worlds Beyond the Mackerel
Apologies if you've seen this before, but previously the date was wrong, so...
Ask me to talk about Maxis and my memories of their products, and I will. The great games, catalogs and manuals in the early days, along with early SC2K cities were fun...but then, inevitably, things got a little sketchy there with 1996-1997, yet since none of those games produced in the lost era (read this for the full story) nothing really "touched" me, with the exception of SimSafari (NOT fun), and even that (and SimTown) were post-acquisition shovelware (I remember getting SimTown in the late 1990s at Sam's Club...I wonder how that got there....;o;)
But other companies, like Brøderbund, continue to elude me. Our focus is on Cyan (Worlds), more specifically, Cosmic Osmo and the Worlds Beyond the Mackerel. I won't explain the plot of Cosmic Osmo, but basically you explore around a cartoon-like universe and click on everything. It's kind of for kids, but no one should feel embarrassed by it.
Prior to my "rediscovery" of Cosmic Osmo, trying to remember Osmo was like a bad drug trip (in fact, Osmo has been likened to mind-altering substances. After piecing together some facts, I discovered a few things.
1. The first versions were HyperCard stacks with an overlay plug-in that let it play Director videos. Unfortunately, this didn't work past System 6. It was also published through Activision.
2. The later versions were made by Cyan and were directly Director-made products. Activision was going through some...financial problems.
3. There were two versions of the game made: Cosmic Osmo and Cosmic Osmo and the Worlds Beyond the Mackerel. The "Beyond the Mackerel" version was made post-Activision. The CD-ROM (big deal in 1990) version featured additional planets (three extras, making seven). Obviously, I never had the CD-ROM version: CD-ROM drives were expensive (and slow) in the early 1990s.
4. Curiously, I remember a website that my brother printed out for me that showed Osmo-like characters in a strange world with a TV station and an observatory and I think a professor...except they were in full color! I tried looking for the scenes but I couldn't find them until...
5. I find Cosmic Osmo and the Worlds Beyond the Mackerel at Macintosh Garden. All is awesome again.
So, then, where is color Cosmic Osmo? An abysmal "sequel" that made Osmo profoundly ugly and in a bland puzzle environment was released a few years ago...
I found this one picture which looks quite different than the pictures I remember seeing, this one looks like they just took a snapshot and colored it in...
...and we found this segment on a comment list somewhere recently...
There was a time when Cyan released DVDs of both Cosmic Osmo and The Manhole. When I bought them, in the late 90s, a nice lady at Cyan told me they were slowly working on a color version of Cosmic Osmo. I wish...
posted by thejoshu at 9:37 AM on November 3, 2005
Do you remember any real snapshots of a color Cosmic Osmo? Write in comments, below...
Ask me to talk about Maxis and my memories of their products, and I will. The great games, catalogs and manuals in the early days, along with early SC2K cities were fun...but then, inevitably, things got a little sketchy there with 1996-1997, yet since none of those games produced in the lost era (read this for the full story) nothing really "touched" me, with the exception of SimSafari (NOT fun), and even that (and SimTown) were post-acquisition shovelware (I remember getting SimTown in the late 1990s at Sam's Club...I wonder how that got there....;o;)
But other companies, like Brøderbund, continue to elude me. Our focus is on Cyan (Worlds), more specifically, Cosmic Osmo and the Worlds Beyond the Mackerel. I won't explain the plot of Cosmic Osmo, but basically you explore around a cartoon-like universe and click on everything. It's kind of for kids, but no one should feel embarrassed by it.
Prior to my "rediscovery" of Cosmic Osmo, trying to remember Osmo was like a bad drug trip (in fact, Osmo has been likened to mind-altering substances. After piecing together some facts, I discovered a few things.
1. The first versions were HyperCard stacks with an overlay plug-in that let it play Director videos. Unfortunately, this didn't work past System 6. It was also published through Activision.
2. The later versions were made by Cyan and were directly Director-made products. Activision was going through some...financial problems.
3. There were two versions of the game made: Cosmic Osmo and Cosmic Osmo and the Worlds Beyond the Mackerel. The "Beyond the Mackerel" version was made post-Activision. The CD-ROM (big deal in 1990) version featured additional planets (three extras, making seven). Obviously, I never had the CD-ROM version: CD-ROM drives were expensive (and slow) in the early 1990s.
4. Curiously, I remember a website that my brother printed out for me that showed Osmo-like characters in a strange world with a TV station and an observatory and I think a professor...except they were in full color! I tried looking for the scenes but I couldn't find them until...
5. I find Cosmic Osmo and the Worlds Beyond the Mackerel at Macintosh Garden. All is awesome again.
So, then, where is color Cosmic Osmo? An abysmal "sequel" that made Osmo profoundly ugly and in a bland puzzle environment was released a few years ago...
I found this one picture which looks quite different than the pictures I remember seeing, this one looks like they just took a snapshot and colored it in...
...and we found this segment on a comment list somewhere recently...
There was a time when Cyan released DVDs of both Cosmic Osmo and The Manhole. When I bought them, in the late 90s, a nice lady at Cyan told me they were slowly working on a color version of Cosmic Osmo. I wish...
posted by thejoshu at 9:37 AM on November 3, 2005
Do you remember any real snapshots of a color Cosmic Osmo? Write in comments, below...
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Saturday Night Blogging Episode 2
Welcome back to Saturday Night Blogging.
Miss Episode 1?
==VIDEO GAMES==
Two bugs in my favorite computer games have really gotten me annoyed.
The first is Yoot Tower, which started behaving oddly after a clean reinstall of Mac OS 9. Actually, it was not behaving badly, but the background is not rendering with the correct colors. We (as in, my brother and I) think its an extension conflict, but we don't know and it could lie with QuickTime itself.
The second is Monkey Island II: LeChuck's Revenge. In Hard mode, staying too long in Booty Island causes the music to endlessly loop and override any other sound track (as in, play over it). Yours faithful posted in a subject regarding this and was not able to get an answer yet. It did prove one thing...it wasn't ScummVM's fault. Bad news is the commercial version doesn't have a handy keystroke for killing the iMuse tracks.
Anyway, this week, watch for "Why I Hate the Wii", a three (or four?) part series of my distrust of the once-hopeful console.
==WEBSITES==
TVTropes is for the win this week. Exploring common "tropes" (plot elements) of fiction is very fun. You can jump right in with one of my favorite (but ended) TV shows or go for the jugular. Freaky things can be seen, or the funny side of things that should be not-so-great. Wrap your head around how Disney villains die or what could've been. But be careful, TVTropes can potentially ruin your life. And remember, it's all subjective.
==NEWS==
On January 21, 2010, the campus of A&M Consolidated High School was vandalized.
The local newspaper published it two days late (it happened on Friday)
CS student accused of painting graffiti
Eagle Staff Report
A student at A&M Consolidated High School is accused of spray-painting several areas of campus.
Chuck Glenewinkel, a spokesman for College Station schools, said the student painted graffiti on the outside walls of the school and on the Tiger statue outside the building.
"It's all been cleaned up and they know who the person is," he said. "The police are handling it now."
The student's name wasn't released and it wasn't clear whether the school planned to discipline the student. It also wasn't clear how school administrators identified the student responsible.
Lt. Rodney Sigler, a spokesman for College Station police, said those caught spray-painting public property are typically charged with criminal mischief -- a state jail felony punishable by up to two years behind bars. But, Sigler said, if the student is a minor, he may not be charged, and if he is charged, the punishment could vary because he is a juvenile.
Sigler said he wasn't familiar with the specifics of the case.
Glenewinkel said the student wrote "Vikings," among other words, on one part of the building and it was possible that he wanted it to look like the graffiti was done by a Bryan High School student.
"It's hard to speculate what he was trying to do," he said.
----
The perpetrator had written many things on the outside (I didn't see most of it, but HA HA HA was written near the cafeteria) in several areas but misspelled "Vikings". It was only because of a tip that a woman called in to name him and Principal Buddy Reed was "disturbed" by the incident.
==MOVIES==
I recently watched "Santa Claus", MST3K-edition on YouTube. The first part is here. The movie is very odd...it was made in Mexico and dubbed into English (which creates voice-mismatches). The film is very odd because no real "Santa" figure was common in Mexico and involves way-creepy toy reindeer pulling Santa's sleigh, Santa's home being a floating castle in the sky and instead of elves, Santa hasenslaved children child helpers from around the world (and highly stereotyped, at that). Oh, and there's Merlin, too. And devils. And, at least in the MST3K cut, not a clear distinction if Santa is God, Santa is under God, or completely independent of God altogether. Very odd.
==SCAN TIME!==
A rare menu from the short-lived Travis' Soul Food of College Station, TX.
That's it.
Miss Episode 1?
==VIDEO GAMES==
Two bugs in my favorite computer games have really gotten me annoyed.
The first is Yoot Tower, which started behaving oddly after a clean reinstall of Mac OS 9. Actually, it was not behaving badly, but the background is not rendering with the correct colors. We (as in, my brother and I) think its an extension conflict, but we don't know and it could lie with QuickTime itself.
The second is Monkey Island II: LeChuck's Revenge. In Hard mode, staying too long in Booty Island causes the music to endlessly loop and override any other sound track (as in, play over it). Yours faithful posted in a subject regarding this and was not able to get an answer yet. It did prove one thing...it wasn't ScummVM's fault. Bad news is the commercial version doesn't have a handy keystroke for killing the iMuse tracks.
Anyway, this week, watch for "Why I Hate the Wii", a three (or four?) part series of my distrust of the once-hopeful console.
==WEBSITES==
TVTropes is for the win this week. Exploring common "tropes" (plot elements) of fiction is very fun. You can jump right in with one of my favorite (but ended) TV shows or go for the jugular. Freaky things can be seen, or the funny side of things that should be not-so-great. Wrap your head around how Disney villains die or what could've been. But be careful, TVTropes can potentially ruin your life. And remember, it's all subjective.
==NEWS==
On January 21, 2010, the campus of A&M Consolidated High School was vandalized.
The local newspaper published it two days late (it happened on Friday)
CS student accused of painting graffiti
Eagle Staff Report
A student at A&M Consolidated High School is accused of spray-painting several areas of campus.
Chuck Glenewinkel, a spokesman for College Station schools, said the student painted graffiti on the outside walls of the school and on the Tiger statue outside the building.
"It's all been cleaned up and they know who the person is," he said. "The police are handling it now."
The student's name wasn't released and it wasn't clear whether the school planned to discipline the student. It also wasn't clear how school administrators identified the student responsible.
Lt. Rodney Sigler, a spokesman for College Station police, said those caught spray-painting public property are typically charged with criminal mischief -- a state jail felony punishable by up to two years behind bars. But, Sigler said, if the student is a minor, he may not be charged, and if he is charged, the punishment could vary because he is a juvenile.
Sigler said he wasn't familiar with the specifics of the case.
Glenewinkel said the student wrote "Vikings," among other words, on one part of the building and it was possible that he wanted it to look like the graffiti was done by a Bryan High School student.
"It's hard to speculate what he was trying to do," he said.
----
The perpetrator had written many things on the outside (I didn't see most of it, but HA HA HA was written near the cafeteria) in several areas but misspelled "Vikings". It was only because of a tip that a woman called in to name him and Principal Buddy Reed was "disturbed" by the incident.
==MOVIES==
I recently watched "Santa Claus", MST3K-edition on YouTube. The first part is here. The movie is very odd...it was made in Mexico and dubbed into English (which creates voice-mismatches). The film is very odd because no real "Santa" figure was common in Mexico and involves way-creepy toy reindeer pulling Santa's sleigh, Santa's home being a floating castle in the sky and instead of elves, Santa has
==SCAN TIME!==
A rare menu from the short-lived Travis' Soul Food of College Station, TX.
That's it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)