Cholo: A ancient classic, remade

[Durandel]

Showing my age now, but one of the first games I ever played was Cholo, which was a very early 3D sci-fi game. It was a forerunner for 3D environment games, and was well ahead of its time.

The game is set in a post-nuclear war city called Cholo, where the radiation levels have now become safe for people again. However, the human population is trapped in a bunker while the city above is guarded by robots. At the start of the game you have control over a small robot of your own. Your job it to take control of additional robots within the city and discover a way to destroy the bunker seal.

Cholo has just been remade by a team called Ovine, and released as freeware. Because it's a remake they've kept to the original robot designs, but in all other respects it has been completely updated. Nostagia value aside, it's a great little game. Try it out!

Cholo Website
Ovine Forum

[Retroboy]

Website's REALLY hard on the eyes, in addition to difficult to navigate. Got hooks to any screenshots or such, Dur?

-- Retro

[Durandel]

Here are a few quick shots. The styling is sort of Tron-like, in keeping with the original wireframe game. You're seeing the world through a robots eyes. Much of the detailing is very subtle, and doesn't really come across that well in the small images below.

[troff]

Reminds me of a spectrum game called Quazatron, same thing (ie. robot in control to subvert an enemy city of robots) except it was isometric, way ahead of its time I guess...

but I guess I am digressing, as our time period is much too modern for 4 bit and 8 bit game talk... :worm:

[SquidDNA]

Reminds me of the original Elite.

[nuriel_xavier]

what are you talking about 'much too modern.' that's exactly what's wrong with kids these days, they don't have the correct roots in gaming. we grew up on this stuff, to an extant - some more than others, cause we do gots some young'uns around here. hence our appreciation for games with insane graphics, such as are coming out nowadays. we still require story, plot, character development, all that good stuff that makes a game good, such as FF6, Chrono Trigger, some others i can't think of at the moment, and Duck Hunt. the kiddies running around playing Halo and whatnot have no idea what makes a game good, and unfortunately, they buy more games than we do, cause their parents buy for them. that's causing alot of trouble - Jack Thompson, for one, and game developers are deciding to spend less effort on the actual game, and more on graphics, cuase that's what sells games. therefore, fewer and fewer good games are coming out.

in closing, my point was that we should still play games like this, to remind us and all the little kiddies where we came from, and maybe we can still save the video game industry.


gawrsh, i dont know how soul and them do this hugemongous post thing all the time,,,,

[Tails]

Is "Spectre" a genre of its own? I remember "Spectre Challenge" followed by "Specture Supreme", which seems very similar to this game.

[HunterX]

story, plot, and character development in Duck Hunt? Can I have the number of your dealer because you're smoking waaaayyyyy better stuff than I am. On a more serious note, I do agree with you though. We need to remind ourselves and those little punk bastards that think graphics are the only thing that matters where we came from. There's nothing funnier than playing a game like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (the frist game) with some little kid watching, calling it primative and easy, then handing him the controler and watching him getting his ass handed to him by a Mouser. Or completely missing the concept of pin point control and not making it past the training round in Marble Madness.

[nuriel_xavier]

story, plot, and character development in Duck Hunt?

hey, that dog was my favorite character in that game... just kidding, i had to come up with another title, and why not try and be funny, right? the TMNT series was pretty blame good too, specially the arcade version (was it 3 on the SNES?), or the Star Wars series, if you want an impossible game....

[Alliance]

I sucked at marble madness.

IMHO, doom is the best old FPS, and dune 2 is the best RTS. I have both on my computer. only reason i still keep a flopy disc ready.

anyway, I dont really like most old games, because, yes, the graphics suck. I can imagine a story for myself while playing strike at karkland, but trying to convince myself that wolfensitein is pretty is just imposible.

[nuriel_xavier]

im more a Duke Nukem 3D fan than a Doom fan, myself. don't quite know why. never played Dune 2, but Dune 2k wasn't bad. Starcraft, AoE II and DoW are my favorite rts's.

im a huge fan of sprite graphics. as mentioned earlier, FF6 and CT ftw!

although, the cel shading stuff they're starting to do is nice.... very nice....

[severijn]

Mind if I ask if you got your nickname DurandAl from the game marathon? Or did you get it from the myth about Roland?

Nice find by the way...time to get nostalgic.

[Durandel]

I know about the legendary sword, but my forum name is from the Marathon game (now that was fun) with a personal twist. An old nickname of mine was Del-boy, so instead of Durandal it became Durandel. Childish really, but I liked it.

[severijn]

Marathon is still fun...you can even play it for free nowadays now that the sourcecode was released, giving birth to aleph one, the only way to play it on linux or windows.
You can get the necessary files here:
http://source.bungie.org/

Click on "get marathon" and download aleph one and the game content of all three games.

[BmB]

the kiddies running around playing Halo and whatnot

Whats wrong with Halo? Imho it's one of the last fortresses of proper games. I know it's not revolutionizing or anything but at least it has gameplay... a dying feat.

Anyways gaming really are dying into better graphics of what is basically the same game over and over again.

luckily... we have lionhead and maxis...

[nuriel_xavier]

Whats wrong with Halo?

oh, nothing's really wrong with Halo. Halo 2, on the other hand....

it's just that there have been other games that the little tykes should've played. although it is a fairly good shooter, i will give it that much...

[HunterX]

Yeah, because little tykes shouldn't be playing games like Halo in the first place. They should be playing games with Mario in them or something.

[nuriel_xavier]

exactly. leave the grown-up games to the grown-ups...

that way, the gta thing wouldna happened, and we wouldn't have to worry about games getting ever more violent and 'childish' so quickly, because you would graduate to different 'tiers' as you get older... just like we did. i think....

[Akranadas]

except you get parents that let their young kid play said games.

[Dimension]

played cholo

I must say, it gave me motion sickness. games with repetitive surroundings tend to do that to me, had the same thing happening in the original Doom. haven't experienced it since Unreal however...