Talk:Alternate Reality (series)

NPOV Tag

This article is in need of clean-up. Phrases such as 'effectively swindled' are rather obviously NPOV. Michaelbusch 20:06, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it was the poor financial shape Datasoft was already in that closed the book on AR. Gary Gilbertson

Link to Atarimania

@Pak21: Do you try to wipe out all Atarimania links on Wikipedia? Why? I absolutely see no reason for doing this. Or has it to do with your affilition with World of Spectrum? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.83.86.14 (talk) 08:58, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

1. Your first point is clearly false; I have removed only those links added by you. Links added by other editors were left.
2. Please assume good faith.
3. Another editor has characterised your addition of these links as spam.
4. Having raised this subject at WP:CVG, a third editor has suggested these links should be removed. Please do not re-add them without discussing this; any further additions without obtaining consensus will be treated as vandalism and dealt with appropriately. --Pak21 13:24, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

ARO or something along those lines

Does anyone know if there's any reasonable chance that the Alternate Reality Online idea might eventually be officially revived or revisited? The hardware technology is certainly up to it and there seem to be no shortage of die-hard Alternate Reality fans out there these days. Here's a link to a YouTube video of a mock-up in MineCraft (with mods) of Alternate Reality's city and dungeon... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stv4aTsg7UY And here's a link to a YouTube video of another AR City mock-up which appears to be an alpha version of a game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfwWkARbvlE

Perhaps some day it will end up as an open source project, if Gary and Phil decide to just give it to the people. I know there has been some talk of that, a long time ago, but I do think it would be nice if they finally got some reasonable compensation for their contribution to the evolution of video games.

DonaldKronos (talk) 03:30, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Reception

Isn't the "reception" of a game reflected in reviews that were written around the time a game was released? Scorpia's one paragraph blurb referenced from 1993 can hardly be considered a review and this little paragraph was written eight years after Alternate Reality was released, which is a lifetime in the quickly advancing gaming industry.

I played this game after release on the Atari 800 and it was one of the most impressive and technologically advanced games I'd ever seen with amazing graphics that exceeded the Atari's specified capabilities with novel coding techniques, spanning multiple disks at a time when most games fit on a single disk side and introducing many novel game designs and technologies like a ray casting engine to render the 3D graphics and provide fluid and incremental movement, hidden stats and alignment, use based skill advancement, blood alcohol levels and loss of control of movement when drunk, haggling and reputation with vendors and npcs, variable npc prices, npc time schedules, various disease incubation periods and even things like variable banking rates and failures. At the time this game came out nothing else even came close to comparing to it in scope, design and technology.

And yet, the one paragraph Scorpia "review" is deceptively presented in the Wikipedia article as the first source of the game's reception. I don't think this should be classified as a review nor should it be misrepresented as a valid reception of the game and it should be pointed out that it was only a paragraph written 8 years after release for a horribly inferior Apple II conversion.

The Dragon review was also written three years after the release of the game, long past any actual reception of the game. Legitimate game reviews should review and compare the original game in it's time against the competitors of that time. Even three years is a lifetime in the quickly evolving world of computer technology and games. This "review" is also not a fair representation of the reception of the game.

The only two reviews referenced that could fairly be claimed as representative of the game's reception are the two written a year after the game's release in 1986, the Computer Gamer and Casus Belli reviews. Sempi (talk) 15:25, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

Looking at the reference for Casus Belli, I don't see any mention of Alternate Reality on the cover nor table of contents. https://rpggeek.com/rpgissue/137486/casus-belli-issue-33-jun-1986 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sempi (talk • contribs) 15:39, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

No, there's no rule that reviews have to be contemporaneous. Reviews also don't need to have a minimum word count. There are lots of places one could look for additional reviews. Digitized magazines at Archive.org are where I usually find reviews for 1980s games. I don't get why people become so bent out of shape when some reviewer dislikes something they liked. I liked the game, too. What do I care if Wikipedia quotes someone who didn't like it? It doesn't impact my life any. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 02:45, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

Nobody is "bent out of shape," but I am disappointed to see Wikipedia featuring and misrepresenting such an insignificant blurb of a paragraph written eight years after the game was released as wrongly representative of the reception of this amazing game. Overall, this is a highly misunderstood and underappreciated game with ground breaking features and technology and more opinionated disinformation written far past the game's release and time isn't helping people understand its place in history better. If I was a more experienced Wikipedia editor I'd correct it.

And let's be clear, "reception" for games is in fact how a game is received shortly upon release, not eight years later. Sempi (talk) 11:53, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

The Computer Gamer reference is an actual full review published near the time of release and therefore gives a far more accurate representation of the reception of Alternate Reality compared to other games in its time. Here is the conclusion of that March 1986 review:

"Alternate Reality - the city will be available from the beginning of March and is highly recommended," concluding the review with "Undoubtedly it is a massive game giving you a seemingly unlimited collection of buildings to explore, characters to meet and treasures to find. The graphics are effective and add to the atmosphere of the game which is created by the eerie sound effects that follow you around the city."

• Storyline 4/5
• Atmosphere 5/5
• Difficulty 4/5
• Value for money 5/5

"Massive game," from the above review is actually a good example of what I'm talking about. Because computer technology advances so quickly, what would impress people and be received one year as relatively "massive," may even seem small the very next year as larger games come out. This is why it's important to use reviews from the time period a game is released to understand the true "reception" of any game. The 1993 Scorpia and 1988 Dragon "review" references are out of date and not applicable to the actual reception of the game.Sempi (talk) 17:08, 27 September 2024 (UTC)

I have since learned that Scorpia reviewed the game on the Apple II, which was a horribly inferior conversion of the original Atari 800 game. The Atari 800 was a 256 color computer with 4 channel sound, while the Apple II was only 16 color with only 1 bit sound. Since this game was a simulation or virtual reality, much of the atmosphere was created visually and audibly from the varying weather of the seasons like wind, lightening and thunderstorms to all the different wonderful tavern songs. All of the conversions for different systems were cheaply produced by different developers than the original and are inferior. Therefore reviews based upon the inferior conversions on other systems would not be representative of the original game either.Sempi (talk) 17:19, 27 September 2024 (UTC)