Multiplayer on one Keyboard 7: Triumph War 2099
Posted by Jordan Magnuson Wed, 11 Jun 2008 21:06:00 GMT
Triumph War 2099 is up there with Gladiator as one of the best cooperative multiplayer on one keyboard games ever made. You and up to three other players take control of 1-4 commandos with legions of troops at your disposal, and one goal in mind: retrieve the Plasma Cannon Energy Crystal from the clutches of an infestation of alien bugs! Easier said than done.
Basically what we have here is a top-down shoot-’em-up/strategy hybrid with a fantastic cooperative element. Pick up a machine gun, flame thrower, plasma cannon and a few grenades, call in some air support, let your troops know what you want from them, and head into the swarm guns blazing with your friends at your sides.
Sounds epic? It is. Do yourself a favor, and download this free gem now from Home of the Underdogs (sadly-or fortunately-one of the few sites still hosting the game).
Edit:
This game is only good when played multiplayer. I should have mentioned that before.
Also, if you’d like to check out another game in this vein, take a look at Planet Wars: http://www.winsite.com/bin/Info?21000000036522. Poor graphics, and full of bugs, the game can, nonetheless, be more fun than Triumph at times. Again, only multiplayer.
Wooowww… I remember when this came out.
Yeah… Man, this is pretty ancient.
Great, great game though. Absolutely worth the ridiculous difficulty.
This game is one of the most fun games you can play on a keyboard with someone.
(also on WinSite - slightly faster maybe?) http://www.winsite.com/bin/Info?4000000037369
That art is terrible.
The art is the best thing. :P I remember this… It’s not the best. Although a great effort for a click game, it’s clunky and unpolished. I guess I’m just playing it single player… The AI is pretty rancid (once again in terms of a click game it’s pretty good).
damn, certainly not an easy game single player, just got my ass handed to me on level 2 about a hundred times.
I think it’s mostly due to the poor control interface combined with my squaddies refusal to shoot at the enemy, preffering random bursts of fire in a random direction
Apparently the Konami code works on the title screen, for those interested.
Awesome awesome awesome. That game… was awesome. But you can’t play it alone, you need at least two… sigh
Now I’m all emo. x.x
There’s a “spiritual sequel” (It uses the same art iirc) called Walkover that has online play and uses the same gameplay. The community was dying out last time I checked, so maybe we can pep it up a little?
That sounds like a plan, Tantan D=
I played this game about 4 years ago!
That was awesome with friend to play in cooperative.
Tchernoborg do you know the game “Friendly Strike 2”? very cool on multiplayer with 1 keyboard too!
@crackers: I actually like the artwork, but perhaps I’m just being nostalgic?
@Trotim: agreed. I should have emphasized more in the original post that this game–like so many of the one keyboard games–really needs to be played with at least 2 (preferably 3 or 4) players: the experience is exponentially more awesome.
Oh man, I played this a bunch with my brother back in the day! Good times.
I’ve been thinking about this game recently. Working on some squad stuff and trying to think of a game to put it in.
With better squad AI, that would rule so much. As it is, it’s fun at times, but too often frustrating. Granted, I have only played alone so far.
great game. My Experience was, that we couldn’t beat the game, so we visited another friend, to reinforce us, and of course because he had a joystic. With three players the game was possible.
I like this guys later works.
I think a big reason for the AI being as weak as it is has to do with the limitations of Multimedia Fusion at the time the game was made. These days with the Core 2 processors and whatnot it’s easy enough to strong arm a heavily scripted MMF game, but a few years back a game like this, with good AI written in MMF, would have run like molasses on most computers.
Again: the magic is in the multiplayer co-op.
It’s still not particularly easy to do decent AI, and I think that has a lot more to do with it than processing power or whatever. Coding anything complex in MMF is a puzzle game in itself.
The thing that pissed me off was that the enemy had substantially better AI than my allies. And you actually spend more time collecting those damn reinforcement powerups than you do actually shooting stuff. It’s a collect-em-up disguised as a shooter. Still, I was playing singleplayer. I’ll give it another shot when I have some friends over.
Eh, Walkover is pretty bad. D;
Another game in this vein, with poor graphics and a lot of bugs–but still a lot of fun when played multiplayer–is Planet Wars:
http://www.winsite.com/bin/Info?21000000036522
More challenging than Triumph, but at times more fun.
i and a friend of mine beat this game a few times in co-op mode. Was really fun. Sad that darksun’s dead.