http://roguebasin.roguelikedevelopment.org/index.php?title=JauntTrooper_serieshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_2000_(video_game)
Hi folks. I'm Brian. I aim to become much more involved in the Roguelike community in a variety of strange and majestic ways in the times ahead, so at the suggestion of a certain Roguelike fan I'm beseeching you lot as I harassed him last night.
Prior or a day or so ago, I'd not ever heard of JauntTrooper or anything of that ilk. I was randomly pouring through the list of stables in the first link and voraciously downloading and saving faves whenever I came across what I thought to be a piece of graphical and/or tiled goodness.
After much digging around, I came across this JauntTrooper series...one that has 3 games to it with all 3 being impossible to find thus far. As I missed out on them through all these years, so too would it seem the outstanding majority of the Roguelike community missed out on them as well.
In this modern, silver age of Roguelikes...where there is more dev activity and vibrant projects being made and improved out there across the world thanks to so many talented enthusiasts that have come into the scene within the last several years---this can't stand. These games, from what limited info is contained within these links, their cups overfloweth with sheer GENIUS. To this day, some of these features are ones I've not encountered in any other prior or proceeding Roguelike---that is insane.
I shot off an email on a single longshot lead to a site that conducted an email interview some time ago with one of the people responsible for the series in terms of design and development. While I wait for that to amount to what it will, I put out the call:
-There must be somewhere left to download at least the first 2 games. HOTU apparently had them, at some point, but these days they seem all but gone and the links are void. I want to think the 3rd game is out there somewhere as well out of a shuddering fear that it may well be lost forever if that is not the case barring some incredible personal stash a few people in this world might still have sitting around.
-If it can be found, it needs to get in the hands of as many fans as possible---ideally somehow with the source code. Nothing I have come across thus far, and especially all that ISN'T mentioned, leads me to stongly suspect that the game would have a place among Rogue, Crawl, NetHack, ADOM, etc as a Major. We're talking a full fledged graphical Roguelike here people...retail that went horribly under the radar...that is lauded for incredible depth on the one hand and also that most of the secrets still remain for it as a consequence of the latter---just THINK about that for a second...let it sink in. Imagine one of the "known" Watershed Roguelikes we all know and love suddenly being out there...yet despite everything there's no Spoilers, big time gudebooks, nada----for lack of players and oppourtunity.
-Take all this good, and by hack or open sourcing, imagine how it could be built upon, exapanded, fixed up, tweaked as was the case with Rogue, 'Bands, and so on all through these last several years especially with our leaps in technology and proliferation of knowledge. The potential here is staggering...like finding a rare mythic ore deep in a forgotten mountain. If luck and wit holds, this could be a "Rogue" springboard of sorts to join with the other great, fresh upcoming Roguelikes that future generations will have available to them for further expression.
Sorry for the rant, but this whole episode has stuck a rather unexpected chord with me---lit a fire if you will. An entire Roguelike SERIES so niche that the Roguelike niche itself largely seems to have missed it and/or forgotten about it---while the gestalt of all 3 games in it seems to meet or even at times exceed the best that is currently and has been out there for years on the frontlines of the scene.
I can't be the only one with wheels turning, perhaps ever so slowly, in my head now with all this said in the above links and hopefully communicated earnestly in my typings. We can surely do something about this if we can just manage to be in time to snatch this away from the oblivion of time and esoteric machinery.
Only thing I can think left at the moment is this thought: Imagine 5-10 years from now you can only occasionally tell people about Crawl: Stone Soup or Nethack...but none further shall be able to play and enjoy it due to "something" going horribly awry perhaps on the level of the worst of luck that can be found at times in many a game of any given Roguelike. With all we now know THOSE games to be, that would be a travesty upon human achievement in the virtual realm.
I'll shut up now...hopefully this can at least spark some discussion.
