ROSS'S GAME DUNGEON: ETERNAM

[jallewalle]

I sure hope you will cover Nfs3 (1997 or 1998). The soundtrack is amazing and so is the gameplay. I'd be supriced if you haven't played it, first racegame with police, what else can you say?

[danielsangeo]

If you're referring to Need for Speed 3, Ross did say that he was mostly going to be covering obscure games. I don't think Need for Speed 3 qualifies as an obscure game.

[Jsor]

I really like this series, I'd like to see it become more regular (especially since I imagine they're easier to do than your normal stuff).

 

If you want another good semi-obscure old adventure game there's Lighthouse: The Dark Being. It's not the same brand of weirdness as Eternam, but it's certainly something. It's an old Sierra game and kind of Myst-like. First person, with other characters and interactive doodads in 3D. (Though prerendered screens, not much exploration). One interesting thing about it is that while you can die, some of the situations in the game let you fail or do stupid shit, and it merely means you have to find a different way to accomplish the task. You can get a key item stolen from you and have to find a way to retrieve it when you encounter the thief in a later part of the game, for instance.

 

Not sure how much there is to go off on tangents about, though. Overall the setting of the game is pretty weird. The story itself is fairly straightforward, but the history of the world that they hint at is rather interesting. I can see why it never became as big as, say, Myst, but it is good enough (and by a big enough company) that I'm not sure why it's as obscure as it is.

[Commander Shepard]

Did anyone else notice that at the end of the Pizza Hut commercial, Ross added his voice saying "Hail Gorbachev" ? (Yes, I know this is an older video and hasn't seen much comment action in a while)

[ajcv]

This might sound a little bit random, but could anyone confirm that the characters (and some animations) that appear in this game in the island of Dorsalis (the French Revolution one) are blatantly copied from "Charles Dickens: A tale of two cities - An Animated Classic" ?? I accidentally saw that cartoon movie on TV one day in the morning and I couldn't believe my eyes. I was partially hangover, so I cannot say I'm 100% sure, but maybe 99%.

[Woah_G!]

so I cannot say I'm 100% sure, but maybe 99%.

I'd gamble with those odds.

[ScottD.Betson]

Did anyone else notice that at the end of the Pizza Hut commercial, Ross added his voice saying "Hail Gorbachev" ? (Yes, I know this is an older video and hasn't seen much comment action in a while)

yeah i heard it

[Chrisfratz]

Can somebody give me the copy protection sheet that I need to play the game? please?

[Selfsurprise]

Seattleite's thread regarding his total conversion mod got me wondering. Could you imagine a Fallout 3/FNV/Fallout 4/etc recreation of Eternam?

 

Maybe I've just got Fallout on the brain lately, but for a laugh and to keep my brain occupied whilst at work I've been imagining all the game reviewed in Ross's Gaming Dungeon. For Eternam, you could find enough room in FNV's map (or both exterior and interior locations) to cram interpretations of Eternam's various anachronistic zones. The environmental colour and lights could probably be altered to appear more lurid and unreal, though seeing bits of the vanilla game awkwardly sticking out amongst all the cod-medieval/French revolution paraphernalia would sort of work in the games favour. I also guess you have to edit and repurpose the Cazador, Eyebot and Mister Gutsy models a great deal, to recreate all of Eternam's floating enemies.

[ajcv]

wow it's been a while since I posted about this! but I've finally found the movie, looks like it's a obscure reference:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rj4-C41J0SA

of course you don't need to watch the full movie -- just skip to the final 10 minutes. You will find everything in there: the dungeon, the palace, the court, the knitting lady... even the guillotine! Dorsalis was indeed "inspired" by this movie!

[Chrisfratz]

hey ross can you review Alone in the Dark (92)? It's on dos

[Steve the Pocket]

wow it's been a while since I posted about this! but I've finally found the movie, looks like it's a obscure reference:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rj4-C41J0SA

of course you don't need to watch the full movie -- just skip to the final 10 minutes. You will find everything in there: the dungeon, the palace, the court, the knitting lady... even the guillotine! Dorsalis was indeed "inspired" by this movie!

To be fair, A Tale of Two Cities — the book — is the most famous work of fiction about the French Revolution ever, and "the knitting lady" is a well-known character from it. So well known, in fact, that there was a story in Reader's Digest (I think) about an American who was visiting France and for some reason happened to need knitting supplies, but didn't know how to ask in French. So she made knitting motions with her hands (I tried just now and you wouldn't know what it's supposed to be by looking) and saying "Madame Defarge." It worked.

[CARRiON]

Brought back from the dead and now available for purchase!

 

http://store.steampowered.com/app/781250/Eternam/

 

Edit: Not sure if it's the CD version or the Floppy version however...

[Keighn]

GoG has this as well.  I think before that I found it on myabandonware (probably not now).  Seems there are no youtube OST of the disk version nor the CD version. 

[Kaiosama TLJ]

Sorry for the necro, but I was rewatching this episode and I wanted to comment about something that Ross said about point-and-click adventure games, especially about the part of people thinking that the genre is dead. I will not disagree with everything that Ross said, but I want to mention another factor that may had lead to this sentiment.

 

While Ross said that games in the genre has the potential to have better writing than most games, "potential" is the key word here. I don't know all of them, but I know that the genre also has a lot of stinkers, like Hopkins FBI, Mystery of the Druids, and even Jack Orlando. And when I say "stinker", I don't mean just the puzzles, I mean on the writing department. Having a game with bad writing and amazing gameplay can still leave a bad impression, but will not be the end of the world, but a game that relies on writing to keep you invested and it be bad is a death sentence. (except if the game is "so bad, it's good" like Hopkins FBI and Mystery of the Druids, but it still proves this point)

[JudasPhysicist]

Is there a way to get the soundtrack for this game apart from directly recording from the game itself?

That intro music is pretty amazing, I think Ross has a new rendition of that he used on the Dream Software video.

 

Searching for Eternam soundtrack brings up Doom Eternal soundtrack, while it's also pretty metal, that's not what I want

Edited January 9, 2021 by JudasPhysicist (see edit history)

[kakafarm]

Dead link alert!

 

In the video description the following link is dead:

 

https://www.accursedfarms.com/downloads/ETERNAM-ANGRISH.zip

 

And while the first translation link still works on mediafire, I would also recommend dumping the translations onto https://archive.org/ for backup.

[b14ckm4g1c]

Ok after having seen this video like a billion times(I use videos I know and like as sleep aid), I have a theory about the whole James Bones "joke".

Get ready, this is what 4 years of french class in school have amounted to:

If you slur your words a bit, "James Bones" sounds like the french word "jambon", meaning ham. I don't know how that's supposed to be funny either, but I thought I'd drop this thought here and maybe someone else can work with this.

[qptain Nemo]

On 1/9/2021 at 2:24 PM, JudasPhysicist said:

Is there a way to get the soundtrack for this game apart from directly recording from the game itself?

That intro music is pretty amazing, I think Ross has a new rendition of that he used on the Dream Software video.

 

Searching for Eternam soundtrack brings up Doom Eternal soundtrack, while it's also pretty metal, that's not what I want

 

Dunno if you still care about this but there are two ways to get the CD soundtrack of the game. One is to download it from here https://archive.org/details/eternam-cd-rom-ost

Another is to get the game on steam, browse the game files and in the /-game/cd folder there is an image of the game CD in the bin+cue format. It contains standard CD audio tracks which you can rip yourself.

[JudasPhysicist]

On 1/14/2023 at 12:19 PM, qptain Nemo said:

Dunno if you still care about this but there are two ways to get the CD soundtrack of the game. One is to download it from here https://archive.org/details/eternam-cd-rom-ost

Another is to get the game on steam, browse the game files and in the /-game/cd folder there is an image of the game CD in the bin+cue format. It contains standard CD audio tracks which you can rip yourself.

Oh thanks!

Never realized Ross saved this game from abandonware status :D