Festive Remasters: BioMenace Remastered and Blood: Refreshed Supply out in December
Blogartikel geschreven door MrFlibble
This year's holiday season brought us 2 major enhanced releases of 90's DOS classics. Although separated by just 4 years (having originally come out in 1993 and 1997, respectively), they belong to distinctly different eras of PC gaming technology and design.
Without further ado, let's enjoy these new updated versions of the beloved classics.
BioMenace Remastered
The original Bio Menace might have not been the most popular side-scrolling platform game of its time, but, as part of the Apogee Software catalogue, it enjoys a dedicated fan base following, and a good selection of user-made content was created over the years, with mods and level packs such as Mangle is back from the dead coming out long after the original game. Apogee officially declared Bio Menace freeware exactly 20 years ago, in December 2005.
The remastered version is a true labour of love, with all the art carefully updated from the original 16-colour EGA graphics to richer palettes, and making the overall game more balanced than its original release. As with the previous Apogee game remasters, this release also includes a brand new episode to complement the original trilogy.
BioMenace Remastered is available from Steam and GOG.
Blood: Refreshed Supply
Monolith's Blood (which started as a 3D Realms in-house project called Horror 3D) is regarded as one of the best Build engine games by first-person shooter fans, topping Duke Nukem 3D and even DOOM in some players' lists of favourites. Nevertheless, it became one of the very few major 90's titles in the genre to not have its source code released, with no proper source port available for decades. Nightdive Studios' Fresh Supply (2019) only partially alleviated the problem, as it was not based directly on the original source code and had many issues upon release.
The current port of Blood is intended to be the definitive comeback of the iconic game to modern platforms, with source-port accurate gameplay, controller support, updated CGI cutscenes and two community-made episodes in addition to the classic chapters of Caleb's saga.
Get Blood: Refreshed Supply from Steam and GOG.
Other news
In other news, there were recent releases of updates to several other classic 90's DOS games.
Heretic + HeXen
Raven's classic titles Heretic and its sequel HeXen need no introduction. It's pure dark fantasy running on the DOOM engine, in distinct Raven visual style. Nightdive Studios updated these games in an all-in-one source port, being very accurate to the originals and also boasting new content for each game, made by the mapping community talent.
The built-in Vault also showcases unused assets from both games, found in Raven Software's archives.
Heretic + HeXen may be purchased from Steam and GOG.
Dethrace
This is a fan project to port Carmageddon and Splat Pack to modern systems, based on reverse-engineering of the original game. The port is already fully functional and pretty accurate, with the most recent version dating to September this year.
Download the latest build from GitHub.
Also check out Splat Pack's special Yule demo that is fully compatible with the port.
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis Special Edition
This is a very professional-looking fan-made enhanced remake of the classic LucasArts adventure, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. Everything in the game is updated to beautiful high-resolution art that nonetheless captures the feel of the original (which was already pretty advanced for its time, but still VGA).
Download the project demo from itch.io.