Hi I just want to let you guys know I consider you guys both living legends for having worked on the system shock games I have played both and thoroughly enjoy them still to this day
Thanks Cole. It's always great to know that people enjoyed playing games you made. I should clarify that I only worked on System Shock 2. Dorian worked on both of them!
System shock was before my time, I was a console gamer for Genesis and N64 so I never got to play these games. Were they good? Also where could I try these nowadays?
The Nintendo 64 was released in 1996, and the Sega Genesis all the way back in 1989-ish. Brief timeline of game releases: System Shock - 1994 Thief: The Dark Project - 1998 System Shock 2 - 1999 Thief II: The Metal Age - 2000 (Then a few more Thief things . . . ) Thus, I presume that you were playing those consoles while these other games were out in the wild, too. You probably just didn't have any reason to bump into them. It happens. And you ask "were they good?" . . . My first reaction at this point is to explode into a massive essay. These games, plus Bioshock, appear in "best games" lists to this day. Their awesomeness is why Cole Turner started this thread at all. Why are you even here, SurgeonFish, if you don't know how awesome these game developers are? (Oh, wait: because Card Hunter sounds awesome. That's a good reason, and I support it fully.) But okay. Trying to tone down the fan-fanaticism. Deep breaths . . . To my amazement, these games are still available today. I got a re-released version of Thief II: The Metal Age on Amazon just a couple months ago. There were some problems, though. One is that this version didn't include the classic materials like game booklets and stuff, so I had to magically know they were on the CD and find them--an issue that I imagine would have been avoided only by buying somebody's old version on eBay or something. The second is that any old program can fail to work properly on new computers. I ran into a problem with a dual-processor computer, as anything based on the Dark Engine sneezes when confronted with such. "Dark Engine games" would be everything other than the original System Shock in my list, and that's one big reason why I'm talking about Thief at all when you asked about System Shock. You have to do workarounds to have the games run, or pull an older machine out of storage. So yes, you can play these things if you're willing to put in a little effort. Be advised that "I recommend them" is an understatement, and I could just keep writing here if provoked.
Not saying i wasnt old enough to play them, i just wasnt as funded or knowledged at the time as i am now. I kinda stuck with what i had, thus i had 20 some games for genesis when i grew out of that and i have roughly 40 games for the N64 now. Well i played bioshock, 20 hours in I couldnt finish it. I'm not a first person shooter kinda guy, it kinda bored me after a while.
hey dude do you know where I could find some good mods for system shock 1 so it will work properly on my pc?
Do you have any idea how much I'd like to say "yes"? The thing is that it came from the era of DOS games. I once got the demo of System Shock to work on a Windows 98 computer by restarting in DOS mode and doing something-else-I-can't-remember, but that was it. Hopefully, people have gotten DOS emulation programs to work with the game, and posted their results somewhere on the internet for curious folk like us. I found the information for all the Dark Engine games conveniently together in one place because there's such a community for it; but the original System Shock is special. I haven't gone looking for help on this, as I don't have a version of the original. If you find any information, please let me know too.
DOSBox is always the first one I try. Don't know if it works with System Shock. Works with One Must Fall though.
Cole, thanks for the kind words! I did work on the original System Shock, though in a junior-designer capacity; I learned a great deal about game design from such luminaries as Doug Church and Tim Stellmach. As for System Shock 2, Jon (along with Rob "Xemu" Fermier and Ken Levine) were the driving forces of its creativity and success. But it's been nice to be along for such great rides! Like Jon, I'm always pleased to hear from folks who played and enjoyed the games I've helped create.
