With a baby imminent, my wife and I have been sorting through some old stuff to make room for the impending flood of fluffy, pink and / or squeaky baby things. One of the oldest boxes - packed in 2008, lugged to our first apartment and then, still sealed, our current townhouse - contained this:
Note the unique spelling of the word 'Vengenance'
This game was the defining game of my childhood. My sister and I spent hours and hours playing and replaying it. Certain poorly documented features (like the ability to move diagonally by using the WASD keys instead of the arrow keys) just stretched out the enjoyment even further; we would use and reuse a random teleport spell until we ended up on the other side of the diagonal passageway.
The interface looked like this:
Good job, legless midriff-showing avatar!
I don't think I've ever enjoyed a game more, either before or since.
You can't see it in this picture, but many of Castle of the Wind's sprites were a little... difficult to interpret. Some high level enemies would leave behind these yellows mounds with some stuff - like swords and helmets - sticking out of it. It was only on replaying the game many years later that it occurred to me that these yellowish puddles might, in fact, be piles of gold coins and loot rather than a semi-viscous pile of melted yellow monster puss with some items embedded in it.
The message, I guess, is that things don't have to look like the things that they are meant to look like for a game to work. Which is reassuring, given some of the sprites I've worked on:
Moo!
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