ROSS'S GAME DUNGEON: TERROR TRAX

[Ross Scott]

New Game Dungeon!  More coming!

This is a blog post. To read the original post, please click here »

[aitap]

Very vampire, I approve! BRB, going to re-read The Rhesus Chart.

 

P.S. Please release us from the suspense of the Freeman's gassing. Unless Word of God is that Mossman didn't want to bother reviving him.

[Im_CIA]

lol I can't believe Range 15 got mentioned. From what i could dig up, that movie was a produced as a veteran rebuttal to Hollywood military soap boxes like the Hurt Locker

The creators also made a pretty well written but rather short-lived animated series. I think I got a lot more out of this. 

They also run an Onion-y weekly news show called BNN that has an old-school Rockefeller conservative edge to it. I don't agree with everything they say, but it's refreshing to get a different take in an ocean of left leaning influncers with similar content formats. Just don't read the comments.

[Cargo Commando]

Awards are back!

[Erasmus Roterodamnsus]

The floating head was much more engaging this time around compared to Cybermorph.

[Steve the Pocket]

Hang on, did that readout when Graves died say his skeleton failed? How does that even work??? And how did it happen from getting attacked by vampires?

 

Now I'm imagining a type of monster that's like a vampire except instead of blood, they suck out your entire skeleton and leave you as just a living flesh sack. That's gotta be a thing already, right?

[StrixLiterata]

On 10/27/2021 at 9:29 AM, Steve the Pocket said:

Hang on, did that readout when Graves died say his skeleton failed? How does that even work??? And how did it happen from getting attacked by vampires?

 

Now I'm imagining a type of monster that's like a vampire except instead of blood, they suck out your entire skeleton and leave you as just a living flesh sack. That's gotta be a thing already, right?

Futurama featured an alien Bone Vampire

[ultrayoba]

After that video people on ScummVM server started to talk about this game and its possible support. Funny enough, game itself without videos and related stuff to them is very very tiny. A quote about thst
 

Quote

About a month ago, I actually took a quick look at seeing if ScummVM could support Terror TRAX. It's basically a 480kb engine .EXE (the engine is called "TERROR" according to the files) and a 600 MB .CIN file (a custom format, as best I can tell). The disk includes a QuickTime Windows installer and I did find some QuickTime headers in the .CIN file, but haven't quite figured out the full extent of it. My guess is it's mostly just all the videos smashed into one file with the engine pointing to the byte offsets for where each video should start. (edited)

Game itself is 480kb in size, yea lol. Not surprising since whole game is just videos with simplest "choose A or B" screen

[RocketDude]

That figures, most of the CD space must have went towards the compressed video.

 

I kinda miss this 90's FMV cheese. I remember reading a comment, probably on Ross's Phantasmagoria 2 video, that said that the acting in these games often had to be exaggerated because of the low res and high compression subtracting details.

[Generic-User]

On 10/27/2021 at 5:49 PM, ultrayoba said:

Not surprising since whole game is just videos with simplest "choose A or B" screen

 

Yeah honestly it felt like a video version of one of those "choose your own adventure" books, but with classic cheesy 90's video acting.

 

I think things could have been better without the floating head. My assumption is it was purely there to show off computing hardware/abilities for the time. A lot of it's dialogue just seemed to be "you have done A, B, and C which has led to X, Y, and Z". Like, no kidding computer head lady, I saw which button got pressed and the guy getting mauled for it.

[Cheemsburbger]

Still amazed Ross didn't comment on the fact Otis Lee Suggs was played by the descendant of Edgar Allan Poe

[ScumCoder]

At first I was baffled by the complete absence of logic in the actions that you are supposed to make, but then it hit me.

It probably was the same motivation as nowadays: in order for the game to be profitable, 99% of players should see 99% of content. If you make the sensible decision to be the right one, people will just beeline to the “right” ending and all work on the alternate dead-end paths will go to trash. So instead let’s ensure that the player trying to apply common sense will stumble into every dead end instead, every f*cking one, before he finally brute-forces his way to the true ending. Brilliant.

[HQDefault]

Was Ross taking a jab at Civvie's recent halloween episode at the beginning there?

 

Civvie covers a game where you spend the whole time in a spooky house and then it turns out to be a subversion of expectations and there wasn't actually anything supernatural... 

and then like a week later Ross makes a video where he's like "I don't want to make a video where you spend the whole game in a house and it turns out there wasn't even a ghost".

 

Even though I liked Civvie's video that's pretty friggin funny if it was intended as a reference.

Edited October 28, 2021 by HQDefault (see edit history)

[kerdios]

Credits say there's a character called "Candy Striper(sic)". Did Ross miss a scene in a strip club or something?

 

Also has anyone else noticed that the death wale of one of the vampires was the same sound for the wyverns from warcraft2?

Edited October 29, 2021 by kerdios (see edit history)

[Generic-User]

On 10/28/2021 at 4:33 PM, kerdios said:

Credits say there's a character called "Candy Striper(sic)". Did Ross miss a scene in a strip club or something?

 

Also has anyone else noticed that the death wale of one of the vampires was the same sound for the wyverns from warcraft2?

 

 

Candy Stripers were the term for female hospital volunteers in the US. The name came from the red and white striping of their uniforms that resembled candy canes.

[kerdios]

On 10/29/2021 at 12:36 PM, Generic-User said:

 

Candy Stripers were the term for female hospital volunteers in the US. The name came from the red and white striping of their uniforms that resembled candy canes.

So that woman wasn't even a nurse?! and she was complaining about the possibility of getting fired? an even stronger testament to the lack of narrative cohesiveness :)

 

So - I was looking a little in imdb about the game and turns out the director/writer of it was also the director/writer for the animated Mr. T show.

https://www.imdb.com/list/ls099832878/?ref_=tt_rls_3

This explains a lot...

[Generic-User]

On 10/29/2021 at 3:49 PM, kerdios said:

So - I was looking a little in imdb about the game and turns out the director/writer of it was also the director/writer for the animated Mr. T show.

https://www.imdb.com/list/ls099832878/?ref_=tt_rls_3

This explains a lot...

 

I went and clicked the link and the description for the first episode listed:

 

"Mr. T and his friends battle smugglers in a plot involving industrial piracy of video games hidden in gold medallions."

 

Whelp, that was not a sentence I expected to read today.

[Steve the Pocket]

On 10/28/2021 at 12:49 PM, HQDefault said:

Civvie covers a game where you spend the whole time in a spooky house and then it turns out to be a subversion of expectations and there wasn't actually anything supernatural...

Civvie did a video on Gone Home?