Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!apple!chuq From: chuq@Apple.COM (The Bounty Hunter) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.games Subject: Game Survey Results Message-ID: <40720@apple.Apple.COM> Date: 4 May 90 00:26:08 GMT Organization: Dotty Eye's PI's Lines: 109 Here's the results of the survey on favorite mac games. my thanks to all who participated. I got 70 responses to the survey with a total of 440 different game recommendations (or unrecommendations). The winners didn't surprise me a bit. What I did was this: if a game was recommended as one of the 'top five' it got five points. If it was an honorable mention it got 1 point. A 'turkey' got -1 points. (I'll cover turkeys in more detail later) This is a list of the games that got 5 or more recommendations and the number of total points (and number of disrecommendations, if any): 28 Tetris 120 26 SimCity 117 (1) 22 Strategic Conquest 85 (1) 16 Dark Castle 67 (1) 15 Crystal Quest 62 (1) 13 Fool's Errand 60 (1) 10 Falcon 34 9 Reach for the Stars 37 8 Uninvited 32 8 Solarian II 35 (1) 8 Shadowgate 31 (1) 8 Seahaven Towers 28 8 Risk 20 8 Colony 32 8 Beyond Dark Castle (see note 1) 32 8 Balance of Power 35 (1) 7 Pool of Radiance 29 (2) 7 Deja Vu 30 (1) 6 Shanghai 30 6 Pirates! 22 6 Might and Magic I 25 (1) 5 Klondike 17 5 Arkanoid 21 5 Ancient Art of War 12 (1) [note 1: Most of the folks mentioned "both dark castles" or something of that sort, but they were only counted under "dark castle" -- so this number is lower than it should otherwise be. Only a couple mentioned Beyond and didn't mention "Dark Castle" so they really ought to be ranked as a two-part single game] The winner is Tetris, although SimCity gave it a run for its money. Strategic Conquest is a distant third. What are the turkeys? I got 60 separate turkey nominations and as you can see from above, even the best games have their detractors. Only two real turkeys stood out: Universal Military Simulator, which got four turkey nominations and no recommendations, and Microsoft Flight Simulator which was 3 thumbs down out of three. Others with more than one disrecommendation include: Ancient Art of War at Sea (4+, 2-), Crazy Cars (0+,2-), Gauntlet (3+,3-), Pool of Radiance (7+,2-), Quarterstaff (4+,2-), and Star Flight (2+, 3-). ---- My thoughts on various games. I didn't include my ratings here because I knew I'd be kibbitzing at the end of the article. If you don't care what I think, hit 'n' now. I'm personally not a big arcade game fan: I enjoy Crystal Quest but don't play it a lot. Same with Solarian II: it wasted about a week and a half of my life and then I didn't feel like playing it any more. Dark Castle is nice but not my cup of tea. Tetris, on the other hand, got banished from the disk (a fate mentioned by a number of respondents on one game or another). I found myself sitting down "for just a minute" to look up hours later. ugh. Same with Pool of Radiance: I loved it despite the bugs -- it could have been a much better game, but flakes and typos, it was still something that I hacked on until I beat. Hopefully SSI's next release will be cleaner and more of a blow-away. On the other hand, I hated Shadowgate: there is a fine difference between being difficult and being obscure, and Shadowgate passed over many times. I grew up with Adventure and Zork type games, so difficult challenges aren't necessarily a problem, but this one just made me give up in indifference. Bard's Tale is another adventure game I like: I haven't finished it and probably won't any time soon because I find the way saved games are handled more inconvenient than the game is interesting: having to go back to the Inn to stop play is just too much hassle, especially when (like me) you like to hack on a game for 10 minutes or so and then go back to work. The games on my hard disk currently are: Shanghai, Forty Thieves and Montana (both solitaire), Solitaire Royale, MacMoria, Go Master and Might & Magic I (which I bought last night and am just starting; next is Fool's Errand). Over time, other things I've grabbed and put away include Lode Runner (great, but I'm not an arcade game fan), Archon (chess on drugs: okay, but nothing special), Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (fun if you think like Douglas Adams, boring if you don't -- not challenging, just arbitrary), Wizardry (there's more to life than bashing orcs and mapping mazes, although you wouldn't know from games like this -- give me some real strategy), Colony (another game with lots of arbitrary stuff; I'm not as impressed as many), Strategic Conquest (neat game. I hate it, but that's a personal feeling, not a complaint about the game) and ShufflePuck (oh, boy. yawn). chuq -- Chuq Von Rospach <+> chuq@apple.com <+> [This is myself speaking] I regret to announce that--though, as I said, eleventy-one years is far too short a time to spend among you--this is the end. I am going. Good-bye. -- Bilbo