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Episode 10 – Descent

August 2, 2012

Hey hey Blockers!

Welcome to episode 10! This time around we go deep into the mines with Parallax Software’s amazing 1995 FPS, Descent.

As usual, before we get into that, a bit of news:

Descent Box ArtFirst of all, I joined the GoG.com affiliate program. So, if you were planning to pick up any of the games I talk about on the show, I’d really appreciate it if you went to GoG via the show site as it gives me a small kickback that I can use to cover some of the show’s expenses. You can get there by clicking the GoG banners in the right hand column!

Aside from that, last week’s Red Baron show led me to check out some current games in the flight sim genre and I came across Microsoft Flight. It’s free to play so I’ll definitely be giving it a whirl in the near future.

Finally, I blogged about a really cool article earlier in the week. In it, one of the original developers of Warcraft: Orcs vs. Humans talks about the very beginnings of that seminal game. It’s a great read!

I read an email from BJ, where he provides a bit of additional info on emulation, which I talked about back in episode 6.

Then, on to the main topic, 1995’s Descent. I cover the usual suspects and talk about some cool and different ways to play it today ending off with some listener voicemails.

Buy Descent from GoG.com

Descent source port downloads: DXX-Rebirth and D2X-XL.

Next time, I’ll be talking about the unique LucasArts adventure game from 1990, Loom. Hope to see you then!

Stream the show live:

Direct download:
http://umbcast.com/podcast/010-UMBCast-Descent.mp3

4 comments

  1. Decent was (and still is) a amazing game! When this first came out played it with the joystick and thottle and was great to manuver. You said you are going to try the xbox controller, did that work? Going to pick this game up now from gog cuz of the podcast lol


  2. I picked up Descent in 1998 for a ridiculously cheap price at a computer games store. My son loved it so much that he bought a copy for his friend so they could play over the phone line.

    The free movement in space was awesome, but led to getting lost a lot. the in game map helped, but still was quite the irritant. The later games in the series had this little bot which would lead you to the next checkpoint, for when you didn’t feel like mapping the entire monstrous level.

    I quit after level seven, which was way harder than I ever wanted to play. Later on I heard that the shareware version was the first seven levels, which was why sales weren’t as good as they might have been.

    I’m surprised you didn’t mention a game called “Descent To Undermountain”. It was made with the Descent engine, and was widely hailed as a terrible game.


  3. Oh wow, Descent, I remember that one. Particularly the freedom of movement in the mines, which led to getting hopeless disoriented. I played with a joystick at the time, and it was fun enough, but… I was terrible at it!
    I’m curious, did you ever manage the feat of mapping the key bindings to your XBox controller? That’s really an intriguing thought!


    • I haven’t gotten around to doing it, but I’m pretty certain there are 3rd party tools to do it with. A project for the coming weeks I think.



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