ROSS'S GAME DUNGEON: THE JOURNEYMAN PROJECT

[Ross Scott]

New Game Dungeon!  Once again, this took way longer than it should have, but a lot of this was time getting diverted to other projects that should manifest themselves later this year.  This episode may be a little too long too, but I'm still figuring out how this show works.  Next few Game Dungeons will probably be shorter!

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[Schneider]

"Caldoria" - Reminds me of "caldorian" from the "Book of Veldoor", which I just noticed I seem to have deleted from gdrive. I hope I still have a copy on my other ssd. 

 

Edit: I did! :) https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1r52oDdEPqdJwt-Vqx0sCSw-D_HmnQGZa?usp=sharing

 

As for invisibility by moonwalking - I don't know about that, but in "The Hobbit" by Inevitable Entertainment/Sierra, you are immune to all damage except poison when walking backwards.

Edited August 24, 2021 by Schneider (see edit history)

[Inglonias]

Redoing my YouTube comment over here, so it doesn't get drowned out.

 

I have a very, very strange memory of this game. I actually had a copy of Journeyman Project at one time. My dad sat me down to play it with him, and there was some sort of bug that turned the volume on the Mac up as loud as it could go when the game started. The intro started playing and blasting through the speakers and I got so scared that I didn't touch the disk again for years. I must have been four years old at MOST when this happened.

 

Years later, I did try the game again, but didn't have the manual at that point, so failed the copy protection.

 

Later still, when I was around fifteen, I started watching Let's Plays of the series, but they didn't catch every nook and cranny of the games, so I bought all three games from eBay. This was in the WinXP era, so uh... The first two didn't work. The third one did, and I played that. It was good. A friend of mine happened to have a Win98 PC that DID run the first two games, so I left those disks with him. Around this time, someone was trying to remake the series in 3D. They even made a snazzy trailer, but damned if I can find that now. As you can probably guess, they did not remake the trilogy in 3D.

 

You are right. The whole idea of protecting history in this way makes no sense. They fix things a little in the sequels, but... Ehhh. It's a vehicle for going to cool times/places.

 

It seems from the end of your video that you haven't played the sequels, but they fix many of the problems that you're complaining about (and are advanced enough that you can't screw yourself over). You go to real historical sites in the second game with an AI that gives you trivia, jokes, and references. In the third game, you go to... less real historical sites... but the places you get to see have enough verisimilitude that there is still history you can learn from the AI companion. Not to mention you can go back to each timezone and keep some or all of the progress you have made when you do. In the third game, you even get a special spacesuit that can disguise you as someone relevant to each timezone you're in, so you can have actual conversations with the denizens of each time period.

Edited August 24, 2021 by Inglonias (see edit history)

[ScumCoder]

Quote

Kind of reminds me of something

I'm missing the reference... Usually I check the credits as a hint, but this time Ross did not include the timestamps there

Edited August 24, 2021 by ScumCoder (see edit history)

[Trar]

I was planning on buying and playing this game on GOG at some point, but I think I'll watch this first anyway.

[Frantic Adder]

OOOH! Now I have some new music to download!

 

This is another Game Dungeon that hasn't ended with awards. I guess he had to deal with two games here, but I haven't seen the awards since the "Aida's Strange Christmas" episode. I miss them. 

[ultrayoba]

Invincible moonwalking is present in might and magic 3 and 4-5. If you not seen an enemy, the enemy will not see you. I guess it was they way to make AI in gird based games.

Btw original macintosh game version is supported by Scummvm, later re-releases use "director" if I not mistaken? If so they might be supported by Scummvm in near future, they doing big progress on it there is a list to follow https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?title=Director/Games

And some very fresh news https://www.scummvm.org/news/20210817/

"We are actively working on deepening Director 3 compatibility, particularly the original Journeyman Project and advancing with Director 4 support, having Meet MediaBand and Chop Suey as our primary test targets."

 

 

Also bonus points for mars atmosphere. People don't realise that mars is small, light rock closer to the moon than to Earth.

[Erasmus Roterodamnsus]

Huh. The environments remind me a little bit of the "Timeline" mods for Half-Life. Especially part 3 with its extreme exoticism.

[ScumCoder]

On 8/25/2021 at 2:31 AM, Frantic Adder said:

This is another Game Dungeon that hasn't ended with awards. I guess he had to deal with two games here, but I haven't seen the awards since the "Aida's Strange Christmas" episode. I miss them. 

I second this, please bring awards back Ross.

[Kaiosama TLJ]

Maybe it's just me, but the TSA logo reminds me of Reboot:

 

 

[bharber]

Made an account after years because of this vid. Is there a list of all the music mentioned in ross's vids? Looking to make a personal lightscribe CD mixtape

[The Screw]

54:36 - "What the hell kind of puzzle is this? It's pretending to use logic, but it's just guess the button to press."
Sounds like a typical adventure game puzzle.

[Mira]

On 8/25/2021 at 7:31 AM, ScumCoder said:

I second this, please bring awards back Ross.

I don't think it's that big a deal; it's not like he's handed out awards for every episode since he first introduced them anyway. I'd rather he include them when he actually has ideas for them rather than divert time towards them by default.

 

On another note, from the samples shown in the video I think the Pegasus Prime version of the Mars Maze theme sounds slightly better. The mix of the original sounds pretty sparse and has a lot of empty spots; adding droning noises is a bit of a cheap way to fix that, but I think it basically works in giving the music sound more "full" and giving it a more flowing, legato feel (not to mention distracting a bit from the dated samples)

[smilr]

On 8/24/2021 at 2:12 PM, ScumCoder said:

I'm missing the reference... Usually I check the credits as a hint, but this time Ross did not include the timestamps there

 

I think Ross mentioned the Where in <blank> is Carmen San Diego series at least once in this video? (or was that my imagination?)

There was a Where in the World is Carmen San Diego TV game show. One of the challenges in the show was to run  around a big map on the floor, placing markers on geographic locations that were called out while under a time limit. Example:

 

In case the embed didn't work, this link takes you to the start of the section in question:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ImLfvgPJd8&t=1388s

 

Edited August 26, 2021 by smilr (see edit history)

[ScumCoder]

On 8/26/2021 at 5:21 AM, smilr said:

There was a Where in the World is Carmen San Diego TV game show. One of the challenges in the show was to run  around a big map on the floor, placing markers on geographic locations that were called out while under a time limit.

Thanks

[StrixLiterata]

I think Caldoria is a good example of why every utopia is a distopia for someone

[Schneider]

I misremembered - "caldorian" could have appeared in the translation but didn't. I just used "caldors" as the name of the people.

 

About the backwards walking in The Hobbit: I forgot to mention that the reason I found that remarkable was that it wasn't a glitch but actually the way you parry attacks by design.

[Steve the Pocket]

Incidentally if anyone wanted to know more about that Carmen Sandiego show, this guy did a really thorough retrospective of it:

 

 

[Tom]

I, also, miss the awards; they've always been consistently hilarious and apt to the game - I would love to see them again as long as they aren't forced.

I know comedy apparently runs on "threes," and Ross mostly gives three awards per game, but I distinctly recall at least one instance where he only gave the game a single award (for Go To Hell, I think) because, quite clearly, one was quite sufficient in that case, and a couple of others where there was a surprise fourth award added on, and I didn't think the reviews suffered at all for these changes, it was all great - so I guess one could easily extrapolate from that trend to say that it's always been possible that some games simply didn't merit an award at all, and we shouldn't be shocked when it doesn't happen.

It would probably avoid confusion and just generally be a nice cap to each episode to at least get a brief remark from Ross acknowledging why a particular game doesn't get any awards, though, if I may suggest that - even if it's just a simple "nothing really stood out enough in this game to make me think of any."  I guess that could be some kind of "Meh" award, a la Yahtzee's "top five blandest games" in his end-of-year vids?  But then again, if a game is truly that unremarkable, one begins to wonder why it got featured in Game Dungeon in the first place, given Ross' apparent criteria for actually covering a game in the first place.

I think "Echo" very clearly qualified for at least one award - the good ol' "Love and Hate" - so maybe Ross's production schedule was just too tight on that one and he had to shave things a bit.  He's mentioned before that even just the credits are a lot of work to produce and edit into the videos, so perhaps the awards are also a lot more work to produce than meets the eye?  I mean, they all seem to have custom artwork, in a consistent and distinctive style, that has to be both funny and succinctly illustrative whilst still fitting into a tiny little space that will only be seen for a couple of seconds.  That certainly can't be a quick or easy thing to do, especially if one cares about quality.  Really, taking that into consideration, it's very impressive they kept going for so long - but that also means they kind of feel like a beloved trademark of the series to me by now, so it is rather jarring for them to suddenly vanish without a word!

At the end of the day, though, Ross blesses us with his hilarious and insightful videos for free.  Our amusement is not more important than his health and well-being, so please, Ross, if I don't miss my guess and the awards are indeed becoming just too much effort, then don't work yourself into an early grave just to bring them back.  Your videos still ooze quality at every pore, and I love 'em.  Maybe you could just re-use older awards with the same artwork, as and when they apply?  I, for one, wouldn't mind such an approach; it's always fun to see the old favourites pop up again (I live for the day when you find another "Dog Monarchy" game...)

Edited August 29, 2021 by Tom (see edit history)

[RocketDude]

I think if I had to give awards for this game, it'd probably be like this (also taking some inspiration from the YT comments):

 

-Soft Utopia: Caldoria seems like a perfect society, but mimics our current one quite a lot, which takes away those important Utopia Points.

-No True Timeline: Choosing between Turbo and Pegasus Prime is not the easiest choice, as Turbo's age and remaining technical flaws makes it the technically inferior version, but Pegasus Prime's additions and changes causes the game to lose that same mysterious early-90's vibe the original had, in addition to the added challenge in some spots.

-Future's Past: While the lack of visits to pre-21st-century times are regrettable, the degree to which Journeyman commits to its sci-fi worldbuilding is impressive.